Ahmedabad rocks through various college fests

There are two major reasons why rock lovers in ahmedabad are always looking forward to the winter season.

1)      To get away from the sweltering heat and scorching temperatures of the summers

2)      Get a chance to attend over five rock shows on a span of couple of months

The second reason is one of course of prominence. Festivals of colleges such as IIM, CEPT, HL, NIFT and DA-IICT are always scheduled around this time of the year. And almost all these fests have a night of rock music be it through a competition or a performance by a prominent rock band from national rock circuit. In the past, these colleges have hosted bands such as Prestorika, Parikrama, Superfuzz, Junkyard grooves, Mother Jane who normally abstain from performing in the city due to either poor sound or disappointing audience. However, these colleges are able to garner enough sponsors to arrange for a proper stage setup and sound for the bands to enjoy performing.

This season has not been any different. With RockParva also entering the frame, the rock lovers had a early start to the rock season. Recently concluded rock competitions at CEPT – Metamorphosis and IIM – Blizzard of Rock also had participation from bands across the country. One of the major changes noticed this year was the increase in genre of bands participating. No longer are the shows dominated by metal bands. It’s a refreshing change to hear bands such as On second Thought and Raid. Trash Crash do seem to be improving with every performance as they won Metamorphosis and were 1^st runners up at Blizzards of rock after Manefus, who won for the third time running.

It’s been great so far and with more shows and competitions lined up, the city is tuned up for a rocking time ahead.

Cheers

Music and Money – hand in hand

In the present age, when internet is crossing all borders of connectivity, accessing any information be it informative or creative is easily available. However internet also proves to be a major source of infringement for several Intellectual Properties especially in the music industry. With the rampaging damage caused by piracy and drives for free music, it has become more and more difficult for the artists to keep a tap on their own compositions being misused by others without prior consent. And there are several incidences where the word “inspiration” has been used by just tweaking the original music piece and tagging ones own name with the song.

To save the day for musicians comes Licensing. Copyrights prove to be a very useful investment for artists aiming for a musical career. With strong drives in strengthening the Intellectual Property Rights laws across the globe, Copy right provides a good protection to the artists. Also licensing is one of the major ways through which an artist can spread his name as well as earn some money out of it.

Music can be used in four broad categories under copyright law: Adaptation, Recording, Reproduction, and Public Performance.Depending on where and how someone is going to use a song, there are mechanical rights and synchronization rights that have to be negotiated, and the various parties involved may include the songwriter, publisher, and record company, usually holder of the master rights. Depending on the success of the song, an artist can charge the licensing fees as per the usage requirement of the other party.

However, while granting out rights to ones work, an artist should be careful as to not grant broad rights to the user so as not to be exploited.

A very interesting article on details about money in the music industry can be found at http://www.musicbizacademy.com/articles/gman_money.htm

Copyright your work and earn royalties! (considering your work is original)

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Megahertz goes International!

After working on the bollywood project and several other band recordings, Megahertz has now been recognized internationally. It is with great pleasure that we announce the profiling of Megahertz Studios by an international publishing house Examiner.com.

Under their program of identifying home recording setups used for professional recordings, they have profiled Megahertz, for its setup as well as modes of operation. For further details check out

http://bit.ly/572F7W

Cheers

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Track composed!

Finally after a 10 day marathon composition session at the studio, Ranjit and Divyang have come with the final scratch for the song. And given the hardware limitations faced, they have come up with very great sound and composition for the song. The duo have worked non stop over the past 3 days to get the final mix ready. The entire experience has been a great learning curve for all of us at the studio. There had been several instances where we had been facing dire situation, but the end result has worked out very well indeed. Hard work does pay off after all.

It was necessary for the song to have a neo classical feel to it, to match with the background and description of the video. Hence it posed a great challenge for both ranjit and divyang on the musical front to compose out of their usual genre of music. And the final mix i must say did blow away the audience who were present at the pilot test!

Though there were a few hardware glitches at the studio (and few software ones too but cant really blame windows too much :p) the team worked around them and delivered the song before the deadline.

Hats off to the composing team and a very big thanks to all those who supported the team throughout the process.

Best of luck to the team

cheers

Bollywood comes to Megahertz

Past week has been pretty exciting for all of us working at the studio. Thanks to our programmer Divyang and his friend Devansh Patel, the studio was given the opportunity to compose a title track for a prominent bollywood director for his upcoming release. Ranjit Negi and Divyang have been composing through day and night working on the project. Devansh , a prominent bollywood critique and script writer, has been guiding the team through the work so as to meet the requirements of the director.

After the music composition a tough decision was to be made as to who to rope in for the vocals, and after a strong brain storming session it was decided to call Shadab Fiaridi, the Lux Junoon fame. Shadab has risen from reality TV shows to giving play back voice for films in bollywood such as Tum Mile.

The studio would like to thank him for coming down and singing for the song. It was great to hear him live at the studio. Wishing him all the success..

Keep checking for more updates about the bollywood project

The studio would specially like to thank Devansh Patel for giving us a chance to work on such a mammoth project.

Cheers

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Know the Band – Wranglers

Wranglers is an upcoming metal band based in Kolkata, West Bengal. The band is well known for its high octane live performances and head banging OCs. As one of the band members quotes ” We try to make music from our soul and try to prove our inner talents”.

The Band members are:

• Partha – Guitar
• Bubung- Guitar
• Subhojit- Bass
• Suvo – Drums
• Sourav- Vocals

and Aryan & Shubendu As Managers !
Their music is mainly influenced by Lamb of God & Slipknot and even some other bands like Opeth, killswitch engage, avenged sevenfold, spineshank, caliban, as i lay dying, all that remains  and many more metal bands.

With the recent trend in desi rock bands picking up, The band might be well ahead of the pack with its Bengali Rock Compositions. Not treading away from their heavy metal sound, the band composes its music both in English as well as Bengali. Their compositions reflect the moods their songs go through with heavy riffs followed by clean interludes and shredding solos !

The band has been acclaimed at TCS, NIRMA College ( Winner ), RCCIIT ( Winner ), Techno India ( Runners Up ), Prerona 09 ( Runners up ) Jadavpur University ( Runners up ) and Times Of Youth Finalist among 82 bands & BIT College 2nd runner up. Recently the band performed at RockParva, Ahmedabad and were highly appreciated for their tightness and energy on stage.

Catch Wranglers at the following link for their music:

http://www.myspace.com/wranglers666

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Wranglers In Studio!

Here are some of the pics while Wranglers recorded at Megahertz!. Hoping to see the band perform soon..

Wranglers!

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It was great having you guys over for the recordings!

best of luck and keep rocking

cheers

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Mixing And Mastering: The difference

Recently came across this interesting article explaining the differentiation of mixing and mastering. It proved to be really helpful in clearing out some of the misconceptions. For all those into recordings and want to know why there is a separate effort which goes into mixing as well as mastering, the article will help clarify the concepts.

Mixing and Mastering is the Same thing. Right?

-Sam Risien Jr

Do you now the difference? Until a few years ago I myself was clueless about the difference in mixing and mastering. Have you ever heard the saying (don’t worry about the levels because it will be fixed in the mix)? Well, I have and I thought mastering and mixing were the same thing. However, they are two completely different processes that help to enhance the final recording.

Mixing- The overall level adjustment, eq, and panning of the composition. Additional steps such as compression and time based effects such as reverb and delay may be used as well. Most challenges faced during mixing is the room reflection due to issues in the control room. Most home and professional recording studios have this challenge. I will suggest ARC, a product from IK Multimedia to help you with your room correction problems. It helped me tremendously. It would take me over 10-20 drafts to get the mix right. Now, I often
nail it on the first try.

Mastering- The final stage for your music to help get the major label quality. First you have to see where the RMS level of the song. In popular music today the goal is to try and get it close to -10 or -11 RMS. Threshold, attack, release, and eq are used to raise the overall levels of the music to give you the final product.

-

Thanks a lot Sam..

Cheers

Wranglers record at Megahertz!

Wranglers, a heavy metal band from kolkatta, recently performed in the city during the RockParva competition. The five piece band were the only metal band to be short listed for the second round of the competition.

Fast riffs and Head banging compositions sum up the sound that wranglers brings out at each of its performance. Very tight at playing live, it is easily evident that the hardships if regular jam sessions has paid off. Watching the band perform on stage is a treat with high octane performances and synchronous head banging. Despite there being a language barrier when they play their originals in Bengali, the music makes up for everything. Good music crosses all barriers!

Megahertz opened its doors for the bands for the last two days, and with the band extending its stay in Ahmedabad, it was possible to record two original compositions. A bengali and an Enlish version of their track has been recorded at the studio. The drums were programmed in by Siddharth Nair (Decayed Souls). It was great having the band around the studio jamming their songs. With a chilled out and down to earth attitude, the band was total fun to work with. And of course there was jojo with that unique Scratching sound on the guitar!

Looking forward to seeing the band perform live again in the city, soon and also get them back t the studio for rest of their album recordings. For now we await the release of their single. keep checking blog for updates and photos!

cheers

RockParva Rocks Ahmedabad!

The rock weekend at Ahmedabad has just come to an end with a great show by Agnee. Good music, great composition, rocking audience and one of pioneers of rock music as the headlining band – what more can a rock music lover in the city ask for.

Saturday witnessed the second round of eliminations for the RockParva, which had 4 bands shortlisted out of the seven bands which made it pass the first round. The show was held at Hutheesing Art center, CEPT campus and kicked off around 7 30.

Meghdhanoosh(Ahmedabad) was the first band to take stage followed by On second thought (Ahmedabad), sweet blame(Ahmedabad), Manefus (Vadodra), Raid (Anand), Highway 61 (Pune) and Wrangler (Kolkatta). The audience were mesmerized by the original compositions played by the band. Each band had a different genre from Punk rock to blues to Metal. Mohan and Koko, band members from Agnee, who were the jury members had a tough task at hand to judge the bands and shortlist the finalists.

At the end of the performances, both Mohan and Koko critically evaluated each band and gave individual reviews for each band. The reviews also included tips and tricks on fine tuning a bands’ performance. And then of course the results, which had top 4 bands instead of 3 bands as the finalists.

The four finalists were:

• Highway 61
• On second thought
• Manefus
• Sweet Blame

Sunday saw rock lovers of ahmedabad as well as from rest of Gujarat and few from other states converge at YMCA grounds, Ahmedabad for the RockParva show where the  4 finalists would be sharing the stage with Agnee. For the first time a rock show in Ahmedabad had a queue of rockers lined up before the gates opened. A great sight to see for rock bands playing In the city and a proof for others that the city can rock! Gates opened up at 6 30 pm and soon the ground was packed with rockers from different age groups. Close to 3000 people turned up for the show!

There was a slight disappointment since Manefus couldn’t make is for the final show. However, Sweet blame kicked the show straight into top gear with their high octane performance. Punk energy at full blast got the audience on their feet and jumping. On second thought followed next and with their groovy music they moved the audience. Tight compositions and ear-licking solos highlighted their performance. Highway 61 was the third band to go on stage and as they “say reserve the best for the last”. The band had great audience participation and with strong vocals backed by great musicians it was a treat to hear the band. It was not a surprise when the audience demanded a “Once more” for their final song “Mazhab” and the band obliged. Highway 61 set the stage for Agnee to play. Agnee took stage after Highway61 and carrying the great music on, the band played their popular releases such as “kuch ankahee”. Mohan got the audience singing on most of the songs. The rockers had a ball on the night with Agnee.

Finally the results of the RockParva competition were announced. It was no surprise to hear Highway 61 declared as winners followed by On second Thought as runners up and Sweet Blame as second runners up. The bands were awarded a Yamaha electric guitar. Congratulations to all the bands for the great show

It was a great show and a great effort for pushing the rock scene in the city to the next level. Hats off to the organizing team. Looking forward to hearing the album from the finalists.

Cheers

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