All Categories

Send Indie Preserves to SXSW (Again!)

8/8/2016

"Again? Didn't you just present at SXSW a few months ago?"

Damn straight we did! And we loved bringing IP's message of self-archiving and community preservation to the music industry, so we wanna do it again!

This time around, we're taking some of our friends along so we can talk about how institutions are taking the lead on preserving local music scenes! We've invited Andy Leach (Senior Director of Library and Archives at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!) and Megan Fraser (of UCLA's LSC Punk Archive -- remember that time we wrote about the project??) to talk about their projects, along with Norie's own Houston Folk Music Archive at Rice University.

Our proposal is now up for public voting on SXSW's Panel Picker website. SXSW staff and their Advisory Boards ultimately pick who gets to present, but public voting (that means y'all!) accounts for 30 percent of their decisions. That means your input is important! If you have a spare minute or two, please consider voting for us! It will only take a minute and will get us that much closer to helping the DIY music scene.

Thanks for reading, and apologies to anyone who already voted for us!

HOW TO VOTE VIA SXSW's PANEL PICKER:

0 Comments

Embedded Booglaoo: Audio Metadata II: The Batching

6/22/2016

0 Comments

Embedded Boogaloo is an Indie Preserves series that looks at different kinds of embedded metadata formats for the digital file formats most likely to be used by music labels.

Scott here. When last we talked about embedding metadata in your label’s digital content, we talked about PDFs, photo metadata, and before that, audio metadata. Today we’re going to return to the world of audio meta tags and talk about ways that you can speed up your own metadata processes.

In our previous coverage, we talked about the many varied forms of metadata, pursuant to the particular file type being saved. To recap our larger points:

Embedding metadata in audio files = a way to hedge your bets for future metadata readability.
Making meta embedding a regular practice = highly recommended.
A plethora of graphical user-interface music taggers (both open source and proprietary) exist.

If you read between the lines on that piece, we were subtly aiming at people just starting off with a label, or those without much audio data to steward.

But what happens if you have -- as we have previously termed it -- a buttload of data that needs to be cleaned (or a buttload of files without any tags at all)? Starting from scratch is a daunting process that can really put you off the job.

Luckily, when it comes to humans, we’ve pretty much wrote the book and bought the t-shirt when it comes to batch-automation of otherwise boring work, and metadata automation is just one example. There are a couple ways to do it -- with some more technically inclined than others -- but we’ll show you how to get started.

WAVs
When it comes to WAV metadata, BWF MetaEdit is the gold standard for the de facto high-rez audio standard. While some freeware (and many hostageware) programs claim to do imports and exports, most will only export the given metadata from a directory. The great thing about BWF MetaEdit is, once you’ve exported and sussed out what metadata needs to be fixed (or in most cases, added from scratch), you can upload the same spreadsheet of data back into BWF ME to overlay on your WAV files.

To wit:

From left to right: export the core (WAV) metadata from BWF to a CSV file, then perform some painful metadata cleaning, and finally re-import your audio metadata using BWF.

If you want some hints as to what goes into editing such metadata, I would recommend downloading Open Refine, an open source application that helps you clean messy metadata.

MP3
The same principle can be done with MP3 files -- god knows you won’t be saving your master audio as MP3s (riiiiight?) but if you offer complimentary digital downloads, it’s probably a good idea to embed those meta tags for your paying customers. (It’s just common courtesy!) Or more importantly, if you send off MP3s as promotional or review copies, I can’t think of anything more embarrassing than asking people to give your label’s music a chance, only to find out that your digital audio is as bereft of information as a redacted CIA dossier.

Luckily, I got you covered. Over at GitHub, I’ve posted a fairly simple Python script that will allow you to revise and embed the ID3 tags in your MP3s in almost exactly the same way as BWF MetaEdit (except without the snazzy graphic user interface). You might need to ask one of your nerdier friends to help you install Python on your computer (along with Mutagen, a Python library for editing digital audio metadata), but once you have it up and running, it’s a breeze.

0 Comments

What Happens to Your Stuff at an Archive?

4/27/2016

0 Comments

Norie here. Today, I’m going to be shedding the “we” voice that Scott and I usually use. It’s time to get personal.

Let’s start at the beginning. When I was only a babe in the womb, the waters came down heavy in Tulsa. Whoops! I don’t want to go back that far. Let’s take it back to the fall of 2015.

With the help of Bill Coxsey (reel-to-reel aficionado) and Scott (sound genius), I started digitizing the 2-track reels in the KTRU radio records. KTRU is Rice University’s student run radio station. The recordings range from 1968-1988. While immersed in everything 70s, I stumbled upon concerts and live in studio performances by local folk musicians. Not being a Texas-native, I was unaware of the Houston folk scene (1960s-1980s) that centered around venues like the Sand Mountain Coffeehouse, Anderson Fair, The Old Quarter, Theodore’s, and Corky’s (among others).

After noting that no other institutions were archiving this scene and getting approval from my superior, I decided to get moving. In January, I created the Houston Folk Music Archive. We’ve already gotten some interesting collections and have many more planned.

Now all of that is on the table, let’s move on to the business at hand: what happens after we receive a collection. I’ll break this down into steps. (If you need to, you can rewrite NKOTB’s masterpiece “Step by Step,” but use words like “process,” “re-folder,” and “acid-free.”)

Step 1: Get a Deed of Gift
The donor signs a legal form that transfers ownership to the institution. Within the document, the donor can provide an inventory and show how much copyright control s/he wants to keep.

Why do we do this? It proves that the owner wanted to transfer the materials.

Step 2: Immediately Rebox

We transfer the papers/items into acid-free boxes. So far during this project, we’ve received items kept in acidic boxes and even a mothballed suitcase. Moving these items to an acid-free box ensures that the items won’t degrade further and that they won’t be hanging out with insects that will eat the paper.

Step 3: Ascertain what is in the collection
Before becoming one with the collection, we need to know what is in it. We’re going to spend a bit of time looking through the boxes. We need to know the different formats (paper, photographs, negatives, audio, video, memorabilia). We also check out the condition of the stuff. For example, has there been water damage? Is there rust? Are there any silver fish? This helps us determine what supplies we need, what might need extra attention, and a rough idea of how to organize it.

Step 4: Process the collection

This is when we organize and preserve the collection. Here are a few of the things that we do during the most time-consuming part of this process.

PAPER
- Remove rubberbands, paper clips, rusty staples.
- Unfold paper.
- Weed the collection of multiple copies, tax information, or items not related to the focus of the collection.
- Place like-minded items in acid-free folders -- or, if already well-organized, transfer into an acid-free folder.
- Label the folders.
- Isolate items that need conservation or more TLC.

GRAPHIC MEDIA
- Organize photographs.
- Place in protective mylar sleeves if needed, or in acid-free envelopes.
- Place slides and negatives in special sleeves.

AUDIO/VIDEO
Ascertain if the audio and video are good candidates for digitization. Then, move forward with a digital preservation workflow.

DIGITAL MEDIA
This requires a digital preservation workflow, which we will address in a later post.

Step 5: Organize the folders
We organize them into “Series” -- in other words, categories. The series can be organized by subject or date. Folders within each series could be organized alphabetically by title, year, or subject. It depends on the collection and the archivist.

Step 6: Create a finding aid
Now that everything is organized in boxes, we create an inventory down to the folder level. Then, we write other information that spells out if there are any restrictions, who donated it, citation information, among other bits, and most importantly a biographical/historical note. This is called a finding aid. At the Woodson Research Center, we place the finding aid online, so people can get to it using Google. Click here for an example of the Wheatfield and St. Elmo’s Fire collection.

University and public library archives and special collections generally want to make information available to the public. We want researchers to look at it; we want it to be used in the classroom. We don’t want to hoard the world’s knowledge, we want to put new information and new voices out into the world.

Other institutions might have slightly different archival workflows, but this is how we do it. Sadly, Montell Jordan doesn’t do it the same way, but then he doesn’t process archives. He specializes in being “faded.”

0 Comments

SXSW Wrap-Up

4/12/2016

0 Comments

Jeez, is it April already? Your friendly neighborhood preservation evangelists have finally come out of their respective SXSW-induced stupors to report back on the good ol' time in Austin!

Along with Jessica Thompson, a Grammy-nominated restoration and mastering engineer, and Sean Bohrman, the co-founder of California’s cutting-edge record label Burger Records, we brought our preservation evangelism to a small (but engaged!) crowd of artists, label owners, and casual music fans at the SXSW music conference on March 17.

Our presentation focused on describing the rationale and need for formal preservation plans, especially in the digital age when someone’s entire creative life might exist solely on a hard drive. Jessica addressed the issue from an audio perspective, noting that preserving work may also mean opening the door to monetization down the road. Finally, Sean regaled the crowd with true-life preservation stories of his own label, and how he came to view preservation planning as an undeniable necessity for his life’s work.

We'd like to thank our guests for being on the panel with us, and everyone who showed up and asked wonderful questions!

The sheer scale of SXSW ensures the impossibility of hitting every event and concert at the uberconference, not to mention a major case of the psychological condition known as Fear of Missing Out -- after all, we’re talking about a lineup of 2,200 performances in over 100 venues (and that doesn’t even include the inevitable “unofficial” concerts and parties).

Despite that, we were witness to some amazing events on our trip:

- Keynote speaker Tony Visconti — Known primarily for producing David Bowie, Visconti used his speaking time to lament the current state of the music industry by telling a dystopian story. “Don’t show them what you think they want,” he told the crowd near the end, “be courageous.”

- “Goodbye to Your Tunes? Tech’s Race to Save Music” — Jason Gross, editor of the long-running online magazine Perfect Sound Forever, brought together a cavalcade of experts, including Andy Leach, director of the library and archives of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and NPR music correspondent Ann Powers, to discuss the state of audio preservation in the age of online streaming.

- I am the Blues — This documentary, also screened in the film festival, journeys through the swamps and juke joints of the Deep South to find the last generation of original blues men (and one woman) still keeping the tradition alive.

- The American Epic Sessions — Screened as an entry of the SXSW Film Festival, the American Epic Sessions shows top American artists recording music directly to disc, using the first-ever electrical recording system developed in the 1920s.

0 Comments

Interview: ...Indie Preserves??

2/23/2016

0 Comments

Last month, your intrepid Indie preserves shepherds sat down in a stuffy, unused office in the library basement that one half of us calls home, and talked to Lost in the Stacks ("the one and only research library rock’n’roll show"), a radio program on WREK, the radio station of Atlanta's Georgia Tech (91.1 FM). We talked a lot of this very blog, and previewed some information that we'll be sharing next month at SXSW. (We also requested a bunch of our favorite music be played -- and they were!)

The direct download of the episode can be found here. The full playlist can be found here.

Happy listening!

0 Comments

<<Previous

Find Out How to Save Your Label's Stuff

Send Indie Preserves to SXSW (Again!)

Embedded Booglaoo: Audio Metadata II: The Batching

What Happens to Your Stuff at an Archive?

SXSW Wrap-Up

Interview: ...Indie Preserves??

Who are we?

Categories

Archives