My own President Obama is this week off making his pitch for why Chicago should host the Olympic Games. Correction. Oops. I need to read the news. Chicago was eliminated first. But look out – our friends at Antipop (slogan: “antipop music for a pop music”) are using a different tool in their arsenal: music.

Watch the video for some fun gear spotting, plus one vintage arcade cabinet. I could point out stuff I see, but that’d spoil the fun. Shout out in comments.

There’s definitely a commercial gloss on this, but it’s nicely executed, and felt so absurdly Olympic to me that I actually couldn’t help but smile listening. (In fairness, either Chicago or Madrid ought to be able to do better than New York did with 2012; I recall dignitaries in traffic while rowers paced the polluter waters of Flushing Meadows. Yipes.)

Here you go, probably the most commercial music we’ll ever run on CDM:

Makes me want to, like, train or something.

Updated: From comments, I like these alternative suggestions by safd in place of “anti” pop:

superpop, poppypop, hippop, popcore, purelypop, universapop

Popcore is something I need to work on. It was worth posting this for that word alone.

Background: “Antipop is the Antonio Escobar music production personal studio, one of the most awarded Spanish producer and composer.” [sic]

Update: Superpop or antipop, the song alone couldn’t melt the hearts of the Olympic Committee. Congrats to – Rio!

“Building an apartment studio” to many of us means adding a laptop, clearing off a desk, and donning some headphones. But Brooklyn-based Katherine Belsey Davis, who does all sorts of wonderful (non-musical) things in wood, glass, fabric, and other materials, had lofty plans for a NYC studio job:

Since this studio was built for mixing sound and music for film and TV in a residential coop apartment building in NYC, both sound proofing and treatment had to be near perfect. It also had to look good for clients… on a very tight budget.

The studio in question is for John M. Davis in Brooklyn Heights. Even in a coop, they pulled out all the stops — silent air conditioning, sound absorbers, floating floors, and decoupled walls. (I’ve been in a few apartments in the city with decoupled walls and floors, but not in a way that lent itself to acoustics so much as deferred maintenance.)

Studio Photos
Belsey Davis homepage

Stained glass and sound studios? You’re one Renaissance woman, Katherine!

She’s shared her work. Studio construction is a science (and a dark art), and not one I pretend to understand. And much of this is specific to the job. But for those who do know what they’re doing, I imagine this could be interesting inspiration – and to the rest of us, provides some insight into what’s involved.

I also quite like the multiple screens and Novation ReMOTE Zero for compact control. Here’s the process on Instructables:

An old PC laptop could be relegated to the closet or (worse, since it’s highly toxic) landfill. But filled up with tasty freeware plug-ins, it’s a virtual studio full of tools and oddities. Via the feast of gear that is the CDMusic pool on Flickr, our friend Jumahat Leman aka uncle bigbrown artfully captures his budget software setup, described as follows:

• A 4+yrs old Acer laptop (a desktop replacement to be exact)
• Ableton Live 5.01 w/lots of freeware VSTs
• using same earphones/headphones/ToneportGx for recording

** My observation:
If you’re a “free VSTs/plugins” hunter/user like me, there’s tons of them available for download for the Wins platform in the worldwideweb. That’s where “cheap” Mac users/lovers (like me) are at a disadvantage with our OSX. So its always good to have a Wins machine at your disposal…

The Mac doesn’t get left out either, though. A G4 tower has become a virtual guitar stompbox and recording studio:

• 9 yrs old Sawtooth “Earache” G4 Mac
• Ableton Live 5.01 w/freeware plug-ins
• $80 Toneport GX
• old iPod earphones or $50 Sennheiser Headphones (for recording/monitoring/mixing)

**most times i load the “mixed songs” into the iPod to listen/compare/mix and check eq/volume.

(The guitar is a PRS SE Paul Allender.)

If these visuals got your attention, there’s another lesson to be learned here. Not only does this visual illustration give you a sense of what his workflow is about and perhaps passes along some tips, but he uses photos and illustrations as a great promotional tool. It helps that Jumahat is a talented designer. I love his mini-portfolio, below. He also makes wonderful promotional posters and stickers. As I noted earlier this week, the ability to make something visually expressive that is meaningful to your music can be powerful – starting with album art, but going beyond that.

Or, to make a more important point, Jumahat has one of the only tasteful MySpace pages I’ve ever seen — and that’s a feat.

Happy weekend projects to everyone; hope this provides some inspiration.

drechohead, Jumahat’s MySpace page
echoinmyhead @blogpspot, with more visual goodies

Updated: Plug-in List

Now, the answers revealed. (See if you guessed any of these correctly.)

BanPiracy.org is a independent organization pursuing “copyright enforcement” for pirated software, targeting studios with sting operations and lawsuits. Recently, I challenged them to demonstrate that they have other developers onboard aside from Waves Audio. That seems reasonable, given their website claims they have been contracted by “many of the biggest names in the industry” and that they’re the “leading rights advocate for the audio software and digital content industry.”

Ross Johnson of PR firm Strick and Company contacted me this week to say BanPiracy had responded to my challenge and, presumably, various criticisms these tactics have attracted. (Paris Hilton and Halliburton have turned to his firm, which is known for defending companies in crisis.) Ross writes:

“As a big fan of the lively discussions on your user forums relating to BanPiracy, I have encouraged my client to respond to your challenge recently posted.”

The response is titled “BanPiracy Says Thanks to the Brave Ones on Its Anniversary!” and was sent to various media outlets. Now, I’m likewise a fan of lively debate, so I want to thank Ross for encouraging BanPiracy to join the discussion.

But the answer to my challenge, evidently, is no, they can’t demonstrate that they have any other developers onboard. They even acknowledge that the fact that they’re a for-profit endeavor might “be a tough sell.” They manage to copy and paste supportive comments from a trade group and an anti-piracy manufacturer, but take those quotes out of context (including, bizarrely, a comment left here on CDM by one of our own contributors — he has a few, ahem, words for BanPiracy in comments now that they’ve distorted what he said).

Here’s the full response, penned by Tomer Elbaz and Michael T. David, COO and CEO respectively. I’ll say this: couched in epic battle terminology, it isn’t PR speak:

We asked to hear from some actual studios targeted by plug-in maker Waves’ anti-piracy police (aka “banpiracy.com”). Here’s one report from Nick Buxton, via comments:

I haven’t read all the comments but wanted to add our experience; all our recording software is legal, we use uad plugs but wanted to see how waves worked; couldn’t get a demo version, so tried out a “copy” on personal projects; decided what we already had was better so decided not to buy; but didn’t erase the “copy”; stupid; now maybe we were denounced, although since we didn’t use it on any commercial projects, this is not likely; whoever is behind this, got a court order by claiming that we advertised wavelab on our website, which was true, and that wavelab belonged to Waves, which is not; result, visit from a court officer, examination of our computer, legal proceedings; now we could fight this; false information for a court order, no proof we used the software, we are a tiny company; etc etc… but this costs legal fees, time, stress; so we are considering taking up the offered “solution”, ie buy the plugs, probably have to pay some legal fees, but end of story; i am making no excuses; we were wrong; but this does not seem to me the best way to sell your product