Brand NEW for 2019! Session Ace SHINE: Cymbal & Hardware Cleaner

There is a lot of folklore about aged cymbals and tons of debate over whether drummers should (or should not) clean their cymbals. For some styles of music, cymbals that are decades old and crusted over with oils from our hands, dirt, cigarette smoke, spilt liquids like beer & sodas, and all of the other caustic environmental things that coat their surfaces may alter the sonic characteristics in a favorable way. But for most contemporary drummers, the cymbal we originally purchased  is the one we want to continue hearing, gig after gig and recording session after recording session.

One great example of this are my selection Paiste 602 Modern Essential cymbals. Originally designed in partnership with drumming demi-god Vinnie Colaiuta, I purchased them a couple of years ago and found their sound to be the perfect balance of everything I needed for 90% of my live gigs and recording sessions. Since buying them , I find it difficult to pull out any of the other cymbals in my collection. The Paiste 602 ME’s are just the ideal sound for me.

That being said, I want to do everything I can to keep them sounding exactly as they did the day they arrived at my studio. All of the environmental things that usually cause cymbals to darken in tone and lessen in sustain over time are the exact things I want to keep away from my cymbals. So, I had been looking for something to easily and safely clean my cymbals for a few years now. There are creams and sprays and all sort so other appliqués that I’ve found which either did very little to truly clean my cymbals or WORSE, would strip away the top layer of metal, giving the appearance of a newer cymbal while altering the tone dramatically.

(Have you seen most High School Marching Bands’ cymbals?! I can’t believe they are still using Brasso and other similar products after all these years! You’d think that the slow sanding off of a cymbal’s expertly lathed tonal grooves would be a dead giveaway!)

After trying to a few combination of environmentally friendly chemical cocktails, I happened upon a formula that clears away all of that nasty dirt, sweat, and other harmful debris while it protects that natural patina that usually happens as a cymbal ages.

The golden mellowing of patina that most cymbals experience is a result of the metals contact with the air over a very long period of time. Add to that the decades of gigs and practice sessions where we vibrate the molecules of our favorites cymbals for tens of thousands of hours and THAT is what correctly ages a cymbal into a seasoned, mature sound.

Session Ace SHINE Cymbal & Hardware Cleaner does an amazing job of getting into the grooves and pores of the cymbal to foam up & lift dirt out while leaving that beautiful aged cymbal patina intact. I’ve cleaned my newer Paiste cymbals with it as well as my vintage cymbals from the 50’s and 60’s with equal success. In a few cases, this cleaner has taken a cymbal I had written off as a lifeless “manhole cover” and brought it back to life. It helped recover the sustain and tone that I had been missing for so long in many of my dirty, severely tarnished vintage cymbals.

Over the next few weeks, I will be posting several videos of cymbals in all sorts of states of decay and show you exactly how this cleaner can bring your cymbals back to life and back to the tone that your ear remembers from that very first strike of the drumstick!

Pick up a bottle for yourself and give it a try today at http://sessionace.com/shine.

The post Session Ace™ SHINE: Cymbal & Hardware Cleaner first appeared on http://sessionace.com.

We opened the ESA V2 Pre-Sale back in September and now it’s time for us to start our first Production Run! Thanks to everyone who has already placed an order. We only need to sell 50 more ESA V2 packages to meet our factory quota and completely SELL OUT of this very first run!

To reach that goal, give even more value to you, and (hopefully) sell out our entire 1st Production Run, here’s what I’m going to do:

If you jump in on this pre-sale, I am going to give each ESA V2 buyer a special gift: ONE free hour of time with me, either here at my studio or via Skype.

Now, you can use that hour for anything that you’d like to do. I can assist you with building or tweaking your own personal live gig in-ear monitoring rig. You can use that hour to ask questions about the music business or the world of the studio, or even get some career counseling. Some of you might want to take a drum lesson, an audio engineering lesson, or a mixing lesson.

Or we can just sit around, play cards, and smoke cigars. It’s all up to you!

Normally, that hour would cost you $125 but if you buy a set of the Session Ace ESA Version 2 in-ear monitors, that hour is absolutely FREE!

(JUST TRY THAT WITH ANY OF THE LARGE CORPRATE BRANDS)

It’s my personal “Thank You” for helping launch this newly improved 6-driver IEM.

Just go to http://sessionace.com/ESA2 to get in on the presale today!

And thanks so much for helping me build and grow Session Ace as we strive to make Remarkable Tools for Musical Craftsmen LIKE YOU!!

The post ESA Version 2 Pre-Sale / FREE GIFT!! first appeared on http://sessionace.com.

Since today is Small Business Saturday, we thought we would celebrate by saying “Thank You” for 18 months of love, support, and patronage. There are a lot of cool things on the horizon here at Session Ace and we appreciate you for coming along with us on this journey!

**(We’ve also got some very special news coming about the Session Ace ESA Version 2.0 Pre-Order coming very soon! So, keep your eye on this site’s blog!)

The post Session Ace Saturday = 20% OFF!!! first appeared on http://sessionace.com.

The post Session Ace™ RiFF: Promo Video first appeared on http://sessionace.com.

A few weeks ago, I got the chance to sit down with my friend (and beta-round Session Ace EST user) Zack Albetta for the Working Drummer Podcast. Zack was a huge help to me as we were working through prototypes for the Version 1.0 EST in-ear monitors. Having working musicians like him with “boots on the ground” really helped me to find important improvements that we could easily make on our way to Version 2.0.

So, getting to talk at great length with him about the inner workings of day-to-day work life was the in-depth, “Inside Baseball” sort of talk that only a good friend like that could have pulled out of me! (We talked for about 2 HOURS!)

But in addition to all that, Zack also let me share some little known information about the How’s & Why’s behind the creation of the Session Ace company, the products I’m currently offering, and the thought process that’s going into our future products.

Some of the topics we cover include:

• Quality over quantity in social media interactions
• How being hired by someone is a continuation of previous interactions you’ve had
• “The currency of trust” – making your social media presence reflect your musical values, judgement, and trustworthiness
• Keeping your taste more elevated than your status
• Developing his own line of in-ear monitors and the other products under the Session Ace brand
• Creating intersections in your drumming community
• What networking really is (and isn’t)

Check out the full interview by going to http://sessionace.com/wdpodcast or downloading it from your favorite podcast app!

ll that being said, Zack and his co-host Matthew Crouse have been important champions of the Session Ace ethos, product line, and trajectory. Look for Session Ace & the Working Drummer Podcast to lock arms in the near a future to see how we can bring more love & value to the world-wide music community and the Universal Loyal Brotherhood of Drummers!

EASTER EGG: If you listened to that Working Drummer episode AND read this blog post, enter the coupon code WDPODCAST at check-out to save 10% on your next Session Ace order!

The post Working Drummer Podcast first appeared on http://sessionace.com.

The post This Isn’t How Our Ear Monitors Are Made first appeared on http://sessionace.com.

I was hoping to find a good reason to start a blog here at http://sessionace.com and this seemed like the best reason why: to answer your questions and talk to you (the Customer) directly. So, we’ll see how this goes….
——————————————————-

Just had an email from a brand new customer (and musical acquaintance) and this is what he wrote:

“Hey Brian, I just ordered some in-ears from you. I was wondering if there were any options on the colors of the in-ears.”

And here was my response (including any typos):

“Hey XXXX,

Just added this new email address to my phone (it’s the 11th email account I now have to check every day… WHOA!)

Right now, there is only one option for the color & backing on these in-ears, but there’s a very good reason for that (and part of a longer discussion which I’ll be tabling on an upcoming Facebook Live session). Here’s where you ask me what time it is and I reply with how a wristwatch is built….

To keep my costs down, I’m following a “Minimum Viable Product” (MVP) model. There’s a great explanation of it here –  http://ask.leanstack.com/lean-startup-fundamentals/what-is-a-minimum-viable-product-mvp

With these new in-ears, I focused on 2 important goals:

#1) Make something that gives the user great sound. (Initially, that user was me. But it very quickly became “other people” once this turned out to sound so awesome!)

and

2) Make an incredibly durable product.

Everything else was a “icing on the cake”.

One of the extra (very costly) expenses in creating these in starting up were the cosmetics of the in-ears. So, to keep that cost down, I went with the manufacturer’s catalog choices for stock ear shells & backings (of which there where only really two backing designs). The one I picked was the most versatile (and coolest looking) color of the two.

Once we hit a predetermined metric in our sales volume and sustained order count, there’s a plan in place to swap over to a custom designed backing that will feature the Session Ace logo. At that point, we will probably introduce two colors (Black & something else) and eventually, when demand for more color choices rises to a certain level, I’m sure we’ll offer them in several different color options.

For now, using this stock design allows me to keep the cost per unit down and allows us to be nimble on the quantities I order. As people use these out “In The Wild”, I will be cataloging feedback from everyone’s User experiences and we’ll see about making incremental improvements to the product over the next few months. We made significant improvements just in the 1st 12 months that I was beta testing these myself and allowing some of my working musician friends to road test them. While I think that most of the improvement we will make in the next 6-12 month will be purely cosmetic, I’m sure that having tons of people out in the world using them every day will bring up areas of improvement that I don’t yet foresee.

I’ll be taking a very similar approach with everything I release going forward. This new “Supercharging Your Drum Practice”  masterclass I’m doing online next month (that you can find at www.BrianStephens.com/practice) is an MVP for a much larger concept for an online, digital school aimed at drummers (and maybe another one later for audio engineers). I’ve just learned from past experience that the only way to be successful with any creative project, especially if it’s a product or a service, is to iterate in plain sight. I’d love to put together a whole line of musician-centric products and an entirely stocked online digital school for drummers but to do that without knowing whether or not there will be a demand for it is sort of a fool’s errand.

(From talking with musicians who have gone the online school route, I can tell you that some have spent YEARS of time, money, and effort only to open to the sound of crickets… and a few of them are “household names” in our industry.)

Long story short, yes you will be able to get custom colors, but not just yet.

Thanks for buying a set ands for sending me this note. Your package goes out at 9AM tomorrow. I’d hoped to have everything shipped out today but the order count was large enough that it took quite a while to package & address all of the mail-outs. (These literally are going from my hands to yours with a stop in the postman’s hands in-between!)

Keep being awesome & I look forward to talking to you soon!
B

Sent from my iPhone”
——————————————————-

So, there you have it. An inside look into what I’m doing both here at SesisonAce.com and in the other areas of my business life. I hope to find more reasons to put up blog posts here at least 2-3 times every week. Thanks for reading and for buying stuff I put up on this site and just for taking the time to pay attention to the stuff I’m doing. It means a whole lot to me!!

Later tater,
B

The post Letter From A Customer first appeared on http://sessionace.com.