Production Advice

…Wow.

I hoped it really was a good idea, but I never expected this kind of response.

I announced the idea of Dynamic Range Day almost exactly one month ago now, inspired by Derek Siver’s thoughts on starting a movement and Seth Godin’s suggestion to Declare A Holiday to publicise issues we care about.

Now, we have over 2500 people signed up to take part on the Facebook Event page, another 1000 who may be “attending”, and over 5000 more who have been invited.

People are posting on blogs and websites and talking about it on forums all over the place – here are just a few examples:

Sonic State
The Gear Page
Audio Geek Zine
Turn Me Up !
hb. hifi
Home Studio Corner
0dB.pl
AVI HiFi
Pleasurize Music Foundation
braindance.co.uk
Big Toe Studio
Digitube Blog

I’ve even been asked to support and contribute to a proposal for university research into the Loudness Wars – more on that in a future post !

And in less than 24 hours, RIGHT NOW, Dynamic Range Day will be is here !

So, what will actually happen  ?

To be honest, that’s up to you !

I have some ideas, which I’ll go into in a moment, but if this is going to work, it will be because you make it work. This is a movement, and the way to make it work is to publicise it, in every way we can.

So:

Prepare a blog post to go live on the day; invite people to the Facebook Event, if you haven’t already; use the “Share” button to promote it in a status update. Email your friends, text them, tell them about it over coffee. Write to a record label about a CD that you think sounds bad because of the Loudness War  - maybe Florence and the Machine ? Muse ? Keane ? Lilly Allen ? Metallica ? It doesn’t really matter – wear a sandwich board or a silly hat, whatever works for you !

Now as for what I’ll be doing – of course I’ll write a SHOUTY blog post on the subject, but it’s also no secret that I love Twitter, and Twitter is an ideal way to catch people’s attention. That’s because:

• It’s immediate
• It’s popular
• It thrives on hashtags and memes
• Ideas can quickly go “viral”
• The media keep a close eye on it

- and so on.

Get Twitter Trending

So, throughout the day, I will be posting articles, links and information about the Loudness War on my Twitter account, all with the #DYNAMICRANGEDAY hashtag - if you’re on Twitter you might like to follow me and join in, maybe even re-tweet a few posts.

I want to focus my attention at two time-periods, though – and this is where you can really help.

The best way to get noticed on Twitter is to get your topic “trending” – meaning, getting lots of people talking about it at the same time. If it’s in the top ten at any point, it will show up on everybody’s Twitter home page.

So, if we can all get on Twitter and start talking about the Loudness Wars at the same time, maybe we can get the hashtag (#DYNAMICRANGEDAY) trending and get lots of people clicking through to see what it’s all about !

I’ve chosen two time-slots to focus my efforts – from 11pm GMT (UK time) on Friday and Saturday nights.

Our first attempt on Friday evening was unsuccessful, but we had a lot of fun and made a lot of noise in support of less noise

We’re going to try again, tonight at 9pm GMT - follow me and join us !

These are good times because lots of people are online (and my kids will be in bed ). 11pm on Friday is leading up to the start of Dynamic Range Day in the UK (although technically it will have started 12 hours earlier, somewhere in the Pacific) and on Saturday it will be right before the end here, although there will plenty of time left in the US.

Everywhere else – your ideas

Now please don’t feel these times are set in stone at all – if they don’t work for you, get together and organise your own “Twitter hotspot times” – or if Twitter isn’t your thing, the same idea will work on FriendFeed, or Google Buzz, or Facebook, or wherever.

Anything you can do – mention it on your favourite forum, put a quick post on your blog, or Delicious page, or Stumble or Digg one of these posts – it will all help get the idea out and even more embedded into people’s consciousness.

How about you ? What plans do you have ? Leave a comment about how you will be taking part in Dynamic Range Day !

The future

And once we’ve got their attention ? Then we can start explaining about the benefits of dynamics in music – about impact, and power, and emotion, and contrast, and light and shade, and about MUSIC.

More about that soon.

See you on Twitter tomorrow night tonight !


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