December '06 Babble-Blog
Holiday-BlendAhh, The Holidays.

It's the time of year when we haul out the tree from the forest of clutter upstairs in the back room, throw another yule log on the gas fireplace and warm ourselves with a cup of Lite Egg Nog...

... all while logging in to our secondlife account.

Yup, it's how we reconnect with what's real and important in the Digital Age. Really. Just pop off a quick IM to your mom - she'll tell ya.

Here at Babble-On Recording, this'll be the month when we get you reacquainted with a feature that hasn't been here for a while, Dropping In, our monthly music sampler. We'll also have our usual assortment of Babblings under the tree and info on voice-over recording sessions, sound-design, radio ads and other audio production projects of interest.

Thanks for checking in. And, however you choose to celebrate with your family this time of year, we hope you have a great time reconnecting. Skål.

Update - 12/07/06 - This month's installment of Dropping In has been posted along with our ever tasty Sound Effect Of The Month. Unleash your creativity! Or, cripes, just click it cuz your bored. See the bottom of the page.

Update - 12/08/06 - Something we love to do this time of year is try out new gear of any and all stripes. We just played around with the sE Reflexion Filter and thought we'd pass along our results. See below.....
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Shields Up Captain...
Seperated4
John, in Babble-On's Studio B, with a Reflexion Filter. In our test, it was unmatched at blocking Geordi's vision.

If you're like most Western consumers, you're probably getting your holiday shopping underway by checking out many of the cool tech gadgets that are dropping into big box stores like so many snowflakes - camcorders, MP3 players, game consoles, etc. Or, if you're more traditional in your approach to these types of things, (always looking for something practical), you've no doubt considered a cocktail robot. After all, what's the season without a perfectly made martini? - festively tricked out with a splash of red pimiento that's been gift-wrapped inside a ripe green olive. Merry Xmas.

At
Babble-On Recording, we're looking at cool innovations as well. The latest thing we've been kicking the tires on is something called, The sE Reflexion Filter. This device, which we thought looked really cool, is supposed to add a lot more isolation to a microphone. Although our voice-over booths are heavily soundproofed and acoustically isolated we figured, what the heck? - might be a worthwhile addition to when we want to do location recording or if we were wanting to get a particularly "tight" sound. Besides, who wouldn't want to look as cool as Geordi LaForge while cutting a VO?

The only way to give the thing an accurate ride was to let John give it that Steve Perry, Rock n' Roll, "Singin' To The Fist" test.

Well, as cool as the thing is, it's probably overkill for us since (in a soundproofed voice-over booth) the effect was minimal. Gotta say though that for voice-over talent who have their own home recording studio setup, this device would do a really nice job of reducing the noise you may get from computers, etc. Looks like we'll be stuffing our stockings with something else.
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Here's The Pitch - Buy a Gift Card, Help The Community
Gardenhire2It's called the Hot Stove League for a reason.

It's damned cold outside - 12º at the time of this writing.

So why is this man smiling? Could be any number of reasons:

For starters, his 1st baseman, Justin Morneau was recently named
the A.L. MVP - putting a surprising big hurt on guys like The Big Hurt, Ortiz and Jeter.

Might be because Johan Santana, his larger-than-life-top-of-the-roation-stud, just nabbed yet
another A.L. Cy Young Award. His second in three years.
Skipper Ron Gardenhire in studio B at Babble-On Recording

Or perhaps it's because his team won't be coughing up 50 million, learning Japanese, and stocking the clubhouse fridge with sushi this Summer. That bit of insanity belongs to the Red Sox if they manage to sign Asian über-hurler
Daisuke Matsuzaka.

Truth is, we think that Gardy is grinning because he got a chance to hang out in our Minneapolis recording studio while cutting a voice-over for a Minnesota Twins Gift Card radio spot.

The script, written by
Periscope's Andrew Hanson and overseen by Tom Witkowski is about giving the right gift - one that actually improves "...the lives of kids and families in the Upper-Midwest through the love of Baseball". Works for us. Here's the spot.
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Dropping In - December '06
Dropping-In-4SmallWell, It's been awhile since we've shared any of the new and interesting production music that's come our way through our relationships with creative shops in L.A., New York and London (to name a few).

The good news is that, although we've been pretty lame about filling this space, our production music library has continued to expand, diversify and fill out the shelves here at Babble-On Recording in a way that's, well..... far too too similar to our holiday waistlines.

This month's mash-up is built from of a vast sampling across many of the production music libraries. From light ambient, to moving pop, to some more organic textures; even a nice latin-funk track. As always, we've got a list of all tracks used in this section, so if you hear something you like in this collage, just let us know and we can dig it up for you.

Our Sound Effect Of The Month has the potential to be used for Drive-Ups, Drive Bys, Pick-Up lines or even a Robot Arm for that matter - Hey, it's your creativity - you tell us. Give a click and listen, here.
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