February may be the shortest month of the year, but one week in February has been chock-full of news related to Manifold Recording!
Feb 8: Rolling Stone breaks the news that Sarah Shook and the Disarmers have a new album coming out: Years. Produced, recorded and mixed by Ian Schreier, this album is proof-positive that a committed investment in local talent can achieve national-scaled recognition and results. Congratulations to Sarah and Ian!
Feb 9: Lara Downes’ Sony Music debut album FOR LENNY, is available. Video of SO PRETTY, featuring North Carolina’s own Rhiannon Giddens, is So. Pretty. (see below)
Feb 12: SuperChunk’s latest album, ‘What a Time to be Alive’ is reviewed on NPR.
Feb 15: Triangle Youth Jazz Ensemble (TYJE) make it the finals of the Essentially Ellington jazz competition hosted by Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. This will be their third appearance in the past three years! A YouTube playlist showcases three of the pieces recorded for their audition at the studio in January.
In other news, our video capabilities continue to expand. During the 2015 NAB conference we paid a deposit to upgrade one of our RED cameras to 8K VistaVision. We were told up-front that the VistaVision sensor was under development and not expected to ship until December 2015. Alas, yields for that sensor were quite low, meaning that there were enough sensors to film Guardians of the Galaxy 2, but not to fulfill the 100 or so pre-orders for folks like us. So, nothing in 2016. And nothing in 2017. But at the end of last year our pre-allocation number came up, and we sent off the camera for an upgrade. Which took longer than expected. But…in February, we got it back, with the latest MONSTRO 8K technology. It is a beast! Together with our two Helium S35 cameras, we can produce outstanding quality multi-camera productions at the studio or on location. We also acquired a full set of (VV) Tokina Cinema Vista Prime lenses to complement our phenomenal (S35) Fujinon Cine Zoom lenses. We definitely now have the video capabilities to match our audio capabilities!
We are looking forward to a major post-production project that will be landing this spring. Subscribe to our blog and/or our newsletter to get that news when it drops. And do encourage others to subscribe as well. The larger our audience, the more likely it is that we can make the right connection at the right time and become a part of the team that makes a good project something extraordinary.
P.S. The Manifold Recording channel on YouTube is finally ramping up. Ian’s SM57 Drum Mic Seminar is just about to blow past 15,000 views. But we face a new challenge: YouTube recently raised the bar for what constitutes being a “Partner” which is 1,000 subscribers. We have just over 500. The good news is that at our current subscriber growth rate, we’ll hit that number before the end of the year. The sooner we can cross that threshold, the sooner we can use the extra juice that YouTube Partners enjoy to promote the projects we do together. Help us help you and help us help North Carolina artists!