First of all, it has a music player on it so you can listen to our students’ songs while you surf the site. This player is a pop-up player allowing you to have complete control of the music. It does not automatically play when you arrive on any page of this site. Next, there is the Facebook feed in the right sidebar so you can see the latest posts and people who “like” Carolina Studios. On the bottom of each page, you will notice a “Share” icon that gives you a multitude of ways to share that page with virtually every social networking site out there. Also incorporated into the site are videos, which are Youtube videos embedded into the site. For blogging, the site has the ability for multiple people to make posts, as long as they have an assigned password.

The site now features an area for our new and exciting Mobile Studio, including a real-time schedule and interactive calendar that displays where it will be next and gives you the option to get a map, times, and other info. As we continue to develop this awesome concept, I will be adding much more to this section of the site for everybody to see!

One of my favorite things about Carolina Studios is being one of the first people to hear the freshest songs that come out of our studios. It makes me proud to announce that we now have an official “Song of the Month” page on the new site…in fact, it is the easiest way for visitors to find out about these students, partly because they literally sing about all of the things going on in their lives!

Make sure to check out some of the picture galleries in the media section…they are sorted out so you can view them in an intuitive manner using lightboxes, similar to Facebook. The site also features no Flash content which makes it APPLE friendly. As it turns out, Flash is a dying breed, quickly being replaced by css3 and html5 code languages, which are just as capable, and readabale by Apple machines.

As for the design of the site, you will notice a recording studio mixing console background, a vivid color scheme to portray the awesomeness of our program, a skinny left sidebar that contains fading partial images of our mobile studio, and a strong focus on buttons that get people interact with the site.

Other features include an e-commerce store (coming soon), a press room for the latest news and articles about Carolina Studios, a media relations area, a sponsor area, and some other pages that provide some great information on our program.

Please do not hesitate to contact us through the contact page if you would like to comment on the site or if you have suggestions or see errors. Thanks and Happy New Year!

Sincerely,

Dan Logan
Advisory Board
Carolina Studios

Thanks!

Pecha Kucha

The mobile studio is monumental, and we can’t thank Denis Gallagher and STA enough for making it a reality. There it was, a converted school bus parked right by the stage. Kids going in and out of it all evening. I can’t wait to get it rolling around our beautiful Holy City, and see the reaction from kids all over town who will now be able to drop beats, write, sing and rap their own songs, and burn a CD to prove it. This bus will not run on enthusiasm alone. Your help is still needed. Currently, we are offering fourteen unique annual sponsorships through our “Get On The Bus” campaign. Interested parties should contact our Community Liaison, Alexis Gist at (803) 622-4294, or by email at alexis.gist@carolinastudios.net.

To our sponsors: We are forever indebted to you for your generosity. None of this would have happened if it weren’t for you. A giant thank you to all of the celebrities who took the time to help turn this inaugural event into a grand debut. Also high marks go to the folks at Daniel Island, and the Nationwide tour who just flat out do it right. The Carolina Studios Board, and advisory board are full of talented, clever, enthusiastic folks who all worked hard to pull this off. A special thanks to Frank and Alexa at Empire Sports as well for amazing event coordination.

Come check out the bus when we roll into your part of town, and let’s do it again next year.

Joyously,

Mark Bryan

Some kids are involved with sports in their after school time, but what about all the rest who might not have athletic ability, or are just more apt to choose a creative outlet. There are many children who don’t have another option and will end up making bad choices in those crucial after school hours when their parents are still at work. The original idea for Carolina Studios came from a social worker in the school system who found that music was the best way to relate to kids who were struggling with grades and behavioral issues.

When a young person learns how to use a computer to make their own song, then burn their own CD to play for their parents and friends, they are thrilled, and feel a sense of accomplishment and completion. In the process they pick up valuable computer skills, and learn universal commands that translate to many software programs. They also get to tap into their creative side, and it becomes a healthy outlet for whatever they may be going through in their lives. Ultimately they are learning skills that can create opportunities for career paths when they get older: musicians, songwriters, engineers, producers, and even studio owners.

I know it works because I have been watching it work for close to ten years now. I see the smiles when they figure out the process, and the unbridled joy when they first play their creation for someone. There have been some excellent opportunities for some of the kids to perform live over the tracks they’ve created, and we are going to do it again at Daniel Island on Oct. 25. Please come join us as the kids will be opening for me, and my band The Occasional Milkshake, and we will back Darius for some songs, Pat Green, Branford Marsalis, Colt Ford, Johnny Lee (“Lookin For Love”) and some other surprise guests.  See you there!

Assuredly,

Mark Bryan

I just got back from New Orleans where I attended the dedication of the Ellis Marsalis Center, in the Musician’s Village of the Ninth Ward. Local superstars Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr., teamed with Habitat For Humanity after Hurricane Katrina, to make sure the legendary musicians from that neighborhood were able to maintain their roots, and sustain the cultural phenomenon that we know as New Orleans music.

The center, named for the world renown pianist, and father of saxophonist Branford, boasts a state of the art theater for performances, and several studio rooms for rehearsals and recording. I learned that Ellis Marsalis was Harry Connick Jr.’s piano teacher from a very young age. I couldn’t help but aspire to building something like this in Charleston. Hopefully it won’t take an act of God for it to come to fruition someday.

After the dedication, there was a show at the House of Blues – N.O. I took the stage for a couple of numbers, before joining Branford, Harry, and an amazing lineup of virtuoso musicians, through a two hour, jam-filled set. Charleston favorite Paul Sanchez (formerly of Cowboy Mouth) joined us as well.

It wasn’t the first time I had been to the Ninth Ward. In the Fall of 2006, we ended a Hootie tour in New Orleans, and spent a week gutting houses with the Araby Wrecking Crew (featuring members of the band Bonerama), and constructing one of the homes with the Habitat folks. It was very fulfilling to be there five years later, and see the whole thing come full-circle.

Please don’t forget to join us on October 25 out at the Daniel Island Golf Club, for the Celebrity / Pro-Am Jam to benefit our own Carolina Studios. Branford Marsalis will be there, as will Texas troubador Pat Green, and many others to be announced.

Thanks for your time,

Mark Bryan

August Update

Well if Rory McIlroy’s near perfect US open didn’t get you fired up about golf this past weekend, maybe the Tuesday Pro/Celeb-Am of the Nationwide Tour Championship at Daniel Island, brought to you by Carolina Studio’s will. That’s right, if you buy a team, you and two others will play with a touring pro, and a celebrity (TBA). That evening will feature a live concert on the grounds, with me and my friends, that you won’t want to miss.

Last weekend, on behalf of Carolina Studios, I played at the Piccolo Spoleto Finale in Hampton Park, after a rousing introduction by our fine Mayor, Joe Riley. I performed songs from my solo albums, and Hootie, and played excerpts from the wonderful tracks our Carolina Studio’s kids made this Spring. You can hear them on our Song of the Month page to the left on Facebook.

This Summer we are working hard on writing grants, and to expand our program, including potential involvement in the school day, as well as after school, and the possibility of a mobile recording studio…..more to come.

Stay cool,

Mark Bryan

We are getting ready for a big Summer at Carolina Studios. Our West Ashley location will be open starting very soon, and even through tough times at the Boys and Girls Club downtown, our program will continue at that location, as one of the featured activities for the kids.

We are announcing our first annual fundraiser. On Tuesday, October 25, we will host a pro / celeb. / am. golf tournament in conjunction with the Nationwide Tour Championship at Daniel Island. The event will also feature a concert that evening. It is inspired by the great success we’ve had with the Hootie and the Blowfish, Monday After the Masters. Here are some of the details: FUNDRAISER .

Josh Smoak (Site Manager) and I went to West Ashley High School the other day and set up a Carolina Studios work station with a microphone. We wanted to let those kids know about our Playground Rd. location, right in their neighborhood this Summer. Josh showed one student how to drop a beat, and it just took off from there. They just started taking turns laying down one track after another. One of the guitar players played a piano melody. We had a trombone player put together a nice string patch. Live bongos were played, and it all culminated in a one verse rap. Enjoy the song of the Month. Click on the “Song Of The Month” link to the left here on Facebook.

Stay tuned for more, and please support creative expression for our youth,

Explicitly,

Mark Bryan

My short answer is “no”. However, using virtual instruments is a practice that is being used increasingly by musicians, producers, and sound engineers alike. Similar to using a sound bank inside of any electric keyboard, modern digital synthesis technology has made it possible to use real pre-recorded sounds (eg. “samples”) as well as surprisingly realistic sounds created by a synthesizer. There are a variety of companies selling virtual instruments, and many digital music creation software suites come with literally thousands of them built-in. These host programs are called Digital Audio Workstations (“DAWs”). DAWs today can do just about everything except for write the music itself, and they can even do some of that to some extent. They include vast virtual mixing consoles, live recording capability, effects processors, sequencers, automation features, and of course, virtual instruments. Carolina Studios uses a DAW software called Logic Express, made by Apple, but there are many others, including Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Garage Band, Cubase, Reason, Cakewalk, Ableton Live, and more.

This technology is in part why we can offer our exciting core service to our children at Carolina Studios. These children learn how to make music using the virtual instruments. For example, one student might start with a guitar melody that they had in their head after school one day. When they get to Carolina Studios, they can open up the DAW and use a virtual guitar instrument to add the melody. They use a MIDI-enabled keyboard to enter the melody’s notes into the computer. The interactive interface allows them to compare what they had in their head to what they are entering because they can make the software play it back. If they need to move a note up or down, or shorten or lengthen it, or alter the volume of a certain note, it is a matter of a few mouse clicks. Then, they need a beat, so they open up a drum machine virtual instrument and create a groovy custom beat behind the melody. Next might be the bass line using an emulated Fender Jazz Bass running through a virtual bass amplifier. Within ten or fifteen minutes, this student has his melody in a format that is listenable and savable. At this point, he will be able to apply different virtual instruments to the melody to see what they would sound like, and then tweak them as needed.

Now back to the virtual instrument discussion. Usually, these instruments are generated through a sampler that takes a large number of recorded samples of real instruments and processes them together. Often, you would enter in the notes for the instrument using a midi-enabled keyboard which is connected to the computer running the DAW software, although some DAW programs offer the ability to enter it using a piano roll, such as the one in FL Studio. So, for a nylon-stringed acoustic guitar with twenty frets and 6 strings, there might be 120 different samples for a basic simulation. If you enter in a c5 note, the software will access that specific sample and reproduce it. But now software vendors are taking it further. They are now taking multiple samples of the same string being plucked in different ways. A great example is Native Instruments’ Komplete 7, a very advanced virtual instrument software package that includes over 90GB of real samples from hundreds of different instruments. For example, they have made it possible to adjust string noise, articulate imperfections that are normally heard by a human’s natural feel, such as fractional time differences and even micro pitch variations. As another example, virtual organs, such as the famous B3 organ used on so many hit records, can be used and tweaked beyond your wildest dreams.

Carolina Studios’ students are able to create entire songs using some of these types of virtual instruments, and they are addicted! There are huge amounts of things that can be tweaked, which certainly enhances a child’s ability to navigate through complex computer software.

So, I will let you decide for yourself if these virtual instruments can ever replace a real person. Just watch a few of these YouTube videos to see some of the most recent ones in action. As a musician myself, my personal gut feel is that, even with these fantastic advancements, there is still no substitute for the real thing, but using virtual instruments can be a great tool for writing music in new ways, and of course a great tool to inspire and educate our children.

Native Instruments Funk Guitarist

Native Instruments Vintage Organs

MusicLab Real Guitar 2

MusicLab ReaLPC

Vita Virtual Upright Bass
Thanks for checking this out and please consider supporting Carolina Studios.
Dan Logan
Board of Directors

There is no better way to experience what is going on at CS than to experience the music first hand. That’s why we just introduced the “Song of the Month” feature on our Facebook page. I spoke with our instructors Josh and Sam today and their energy was palpable. Sam said that the Boys and Girls Club’s Carolina Studios attendance is increasing weekly. He also reports that some of the younger kids at that location are learning their way around the program quickly. There is even one eleven year old child who went all the way through to burning a CD of his own song, on his first day. Our director reports that kids are coming by just to be around the positive vibe.

Josh, our West Ashley instructor, reports that there is a group of three young girls who are making about four tracks a month and have advanced to engineering, mixing, and editing their own material. Twin sisters, Shantel and Ashley, and their friend Mackenzie, call themselves The Fab Three.

There is no reason this kind of creative enthusiasm couldn’t exist in after school programs all over Charleston. More federal funds for after-school programming are going into the schools now, rather than towards stand-alone programs like Carolina Studios. But it doesn’t matter to us whether we are inside or outside of the schools, we just want to be where the kids want to be, in every neighborhood in town. Once a kid experiences the creative satisfaction our program has to offer, they can’t wait to come back. Please help us continue to make a positive impact, and expand this great concept.

Unwaveringly,

Mark Bryan
Chairman of the Board