Who is this Christopher Ave character?

Are you new around here?

I thought I’d take a moment to introduce myself to anyone who recently stumbled on this blog, to reveal who is behind this oddball mix of multimedia tips, music musings and Beatles trivia.

I’m Christopher Ave. Nice to meet you.

I’m a musician who creates original tunes for clients and for pleasure through my side business, Music for Media Productions. I have delivered tracks for videos, multimedia projects and radio commercials. I produce a podcast for Wealth Magazine, and I’m recording and producing some music for other artists. A couple of my own “pop” tunes are available on iTunes, Amazon, Lala and elsewhere. I periodically perform around the St. Louis area, where I live. And I play guitar in a worship band at my church, The Journey.

If you’re a journalist, you may have heard one of my songs, “Copy Editor’s Lament (The Layoff Song),” my commentary on the news industry and on copy editors in particular. And yes, there’s a video:

I’m also an incurable Beatles fan who has had the pleasure to have written about the group. I especially enjoyed the few times I’ve gotten to speak with the band’s balance engineer, Geoff Emerick, a supremely decent fellow, and I’ve talked to several authors who have studied and written about the group extensively.

On the journalism front, I direct political and government coverage for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and its website, STLtoday.com, including supervision of our bureaus in Washington and the state capitals of Missouri and Illinois. I have been a fulltime professional journalist since 1987 and have worked for newspapers in New Jersey, Illinois, Texas, Florida and Missouri. I’ve also written about music technology over the past several years, including reviewing some products that help musicians record their masterpieces.

So what’s this blog all about? What I’m trying to do here is write about the creation and use of music, especially in multimedia platforms. If you design web pages, record music, create television advertisements or just listen closely to music, I hope you’ll find something interesting around here. If you have any questions, suggestions or complaints, hit me up right here!

Music a crucial part of cancer recovery

By Erik M. Lunsford, STLtoday.com

I wanted to point you to an excellent story by my friend and colleague Michele Munz,  who wrote on STLtoday.com and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch today about how therapists help young cancer patients by teaching them to write and record an original song. You’ll find this in the story:

Studies show that music therapy can reduce stress, anxiety and pain. While the research is lacking on whether such therapy improves medical outcomes, doctors can see the power among their patients.

“Emotional and spiritual healing contributes to physical healing,” said Dr. Karen Gauvain, pediatric oncologist at Cardinal Glennon. “Music therapy is creative way for our patients to express their thoughts and feelings and allow for healing of the whole person.”

Also, don’t miss the audio slideshow by photographer Erik M. Lunsford that accompanies the story.

Just a post script: Michele was the star choreographer, dancer and “evil boss” in my recent music video for “Copy Editor’s Lament (The Layoff Song.)”

Beatles remasters: Engineer’s goal was to get back

Here is the story on the Beatles remaster project I wrote for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and STLtoday.com. If you’ve read my previous blog posts on the subject, you’ll recognize this as a much tighter take. It includes interviews with Abbey Road engineer Allan Rouse, the head of the four-year remastering project, as well as Geoff Emerick, the original balance engineer on Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s and Abbey Road.

You can also find by clicking above a quick guide to some of the differences between the mono and the stereo tracks. For those of you wondering which to purchase, I hope this helps. I reproduce it below:

BEATLES IN MONO

Wednesday’s release of the mono Beatles mixes allows fans to hear the mix that, in most cases, the band itself worked on. These mixes sometimes include sounds that aren’t on the stereo versions. For example:

• From “Revolver”: The liquid, buzzing, backward guitar starts early, when John Lennon sings “Lying there and staring at the ceiling” in the second verse.

• From “Revolver”: The tape loops — sped up or otherwise distorted sounds the group looped in and out of the mix — are considerably different, seeming to fade up and down more quickly. Also, the guitar solo sounds more distant.

• The entire “White Album”: By the time this album was recorded in 1968, the group was spending more time on the stereo mixes, and there aren’t as many different sounds in the mono mix. But throughout the album, the mono mix enhances the instruments, putting the lead vocals a bit farther down in the soundscape, according to Brian Kehew, author of “Recording the Beatles” and an engineer and producer himself. “The mono version has a more ‘rocking’ sound to it — louder drums overall,” he said.

• “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise),” from “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” Paul McCartney’s voice can be heard scatting over the final chords, as the song leads into “A Day In The Life.”

• “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” from “Sgt. Pepper.” Lennon’s lead vocal is treated to automatic double tracking, an effect that gives it a more ethereal, ghostly sound compared with the stereo version.