Frankly I did not know anything about the copying levy fee for blank recordable media. However, when I recently visited London Drugs to purchase some blank CD-Rs for my studio, the levy fees added up in a significant way. Each spindle of 50 CDs was about $18, but I was charged an additional $14.50 per spindle. Since I bought 4 spindles, my bill added up to more than $100! If there wasn't any levy fee, my bill would have only been a little over $70. It may seem like a small difference, but it adds up pretty fast when you're purchasing multiple spindles.

As owner of a studio, I took some exception to this levy and had some lingering questions in my mind:

1. I'm not going to be burning CDs with copyrighted material. The CD-Rs are going to be used for burning my own demos, or for the sake of artists who come to record at my studio.
2. Where does the levy fee go to? Does it go back to the artist? The record labels? The government? If it is being used merely for the purpose of stopping piracy, then is it actually helping?
3. Is recordable media really the problem here? Most people store their data on hard drives, not CD-Rs. Maybe DVD-Rs, but rarely CD-Rs.

However, as I started to learn more about this fee, I started to see its benefits. For one thing, it is being collected by the Canadian Private Copying Collective. The primary purpose of the CPCC is to collect and distribute levies to artists and labels. Therefore, these levy fees can be of benefit to artists across the country.

Naturally, I still have some questions about how this all works, but perhaps I can get an interview with an expert on this subject and explore it in more detail.

For more information, make sure to visit the CPCC website.

What is the engineer's role in the studio? What does he or she do? Why are they so integral to the recording process?

Generally speaking, the engineer is the person in charge of operating all of the software and hardware in the studio. They are responsible for setting up microphones, checking levels and inputs, operating the click track, hitting the 'record' and 'stop' buttons, and even editing, mixing, and mastering audio. In short, an engineer is responsible for a lot of what happens in the studio.

However, how they go about their work largely depends on the direction decided upon by the producer and the band. An engineer's job is to help make the team's vision come to reality. This may inform what microphones the engineer uses, what room the band records in, what drums, keyboards, amps, or guitars they use, or what tempo the track is set at. The team's overall vision and how the engineer interprets that vision is what will ultimately affect the outcome of the project.

As you can see, having a qualified, creative, and open-minded engineer is integral to bringing your vision as an artist to fruition.

Worse yet, don't base it on one or two lessons! I have talked on this subject a fair bit already, but I think it's worth stating again: don't rate your musical progress based on a month's worth of practice and lessons!

I still have parents asking me how their kids are doing. Don't get me wrong; I think this is a legitimate concern. However, this question almost always carries some other hidden undertones or implications. The question is really, "are we getting our money's worth?", or "we're not seeing any immediate progress, is this of any use?", or something along those lines.

The attitude is subtle, but ultimately defeatist. I would not recommend asking this question in front of your child, if at all possible. With that in mind, allow me to address this concern in a couple of ways:

Ultimately, practice is about building a consistent habit. I realize that not everyone gets into the habit of practice straight away. In a sense, it is important to build an "unreasonable passion" or "burning desire" for music. Really what this comes down to is goal setting. While it is a teacher's job to facilitate an environment for goal setting, it is the pupil who has to carry out the practice regime and tasks necessary for that goal's fulfillment.

Let's be honest here: have you ever set a goal for yourself (like a New Year's resolution, for example), and you hesitated to get started? Or maybe you gunned it right out of the gate, but ran out of gas a month or two later. The truth is few people have ever attained anything great without consistent and habitual action.

Let me put it this way: When you started your workout regime, did you expect to see instantaneous results? Did you expect your abs to be cut, your chest to be chiseled, and your legs ripped in a matter of days? Maybe you did, and that's why you gave up. Bottom line is this: it's easy to do, but it's easy not to do (to learn more about this, check out the book, the Slight Edge by Jeff Olson).

Building a habit can take 21 to 30 days (it is not instantaneous!). Try an experiment: help your child practice his or her instrument for 20 minutes every day for 30 days. The first 30 days are not negotiable. After that, you can decide together whether or not you want to continue with that strict of a schedule.

In my experience, you can't judge the results of a few days' work. You can't judge the results of a few weeks work. It can be hard to judge the results of a month's worth. My recommendation is to give it 10 years, but that can be an overwhelming thought, so here's my suggestion: give it a year. In a year's time, the effort put forth will catch up with your child. You don't get to see that in a matter of weeks. It's hard to see after a single month. However, if you were to reflect after a year's work - where he or she was when they first started and where they're at at the end - you will be amazed at the results.

I don't claim to be an expert when it comes to muscle memory. However, I do know that it's individual. Everyone takes a different amount of time to absorb a certain musical passage (of course, practice is a factor too). It doesn't make anyone better or worse. It just means that everyone learns at their own rate.

What is mixing and why is it so important? Once an engineer has completed the task of editing, he will generally begin work on mixing the audio. This is where the engineer, in essence, carves out a section for every instrument in the stereo spectrum.

Here are some other things that begin to happen in the mixing process:

1. Tracks are panned. This involves placing a particular track or instrument in the stereo spectrum (left, right, and center). It is possible to do a lot of fine tuning here. However, there are many engineers who opt to have about 5 points in the stereo spectrum in which they distribute the tracks. In other words: far left, left middle, center, right middle, far right. Guitar tracks, for example, are typically placed on the left or right sides of a mix.
2. Track levels are adjusted. After the tracks have been recorded, it is still possible to adjust their overall levels (or volume) in the mix. This is perhaps the most basic of all mixing techniques. Vocals are generally loudest in the mix, while other instruments are adjusted accordingly. At this stage, some engineers will also automate tracks. This involves boosting or cutting an instrument's level at a particular point in the mix. For example, a guitar track might be boosted if it goes from a rhythm part to a lead. A vocal track might be automated if the vocalist got a particular syllable louder than intended.
3. Effects are applied. Reverb, echo and delay are used to give the illusion of depth; this is especially useful when parts of the song have been recorded in a "dead space". EQ is used to carve out an instrument's sound. It is much like a guitar amp that has a treble, mid, and bass knob. Each of these knobs or parameters is adjusted in order to achieve different sounds. Compression is used to create a consistent dynamic level in an instrument. For example, a vocal part might vary from quiet all the way to loud. Sometimes, in order to smooth out the levels between the huge discrepancies in the dynamic spectrum, compression will be used. Sometimes, however, compression is not used at all, in order to keep more of the dynamics. There are a variety of other effects that are sometimes applied.

We've only scratched the surface here, but those are some of the things that go in to mixing a track.

Although a musician won't always be involved in the engineering side of things, it is good to be aware of what an engineer's work is, and what it entails.

Editing audio is essentially the first step to mixing audio. Although it isn't always the most time consuming part, it is fair to say that it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to complete. This process might involve: a) removing tracks not being used, b) trimming tracks at the beginning or end, c) trimming tracks with silent parts, or d) other. It is not uncommon for a vocalist to have little breaks between lyrics, and these breaks are sometimes trimmed or cut off completely. Obviously this depends a lot on the direction the producer and engineer have decided upon.

This process is sometimes called "cleaning up a mix". For an engineer, it is much easier to look at a screen with fewer tracks, thereby getting rid of some of the distractions. If there are any excess tracks that are not being used in the final mix, sometimes they will "delete" them in order to clean up their workspace. This doesn't necessarily mean that data is being lost, however, as the tracks that have already been recorded will remain on the hard drive.