Improve Your Music

We have recently looked at a number of online services that can help the “less famous” bands and artists release their own music to the paying public. Services like Tunecore and CD Baby allow you to distribute your music to a very widespread marketplace and to completely bypass the whole record company thing. But is this what you really want? Wouldn’t it be better to have some record company to throw a heap of cash at you and to look after all the “details”? Maybe, but before you decide to go down that route have a read of what Steve Albini, Producer of Nirvana’s “In Utero”, has to say on the subject in his brilliant article entitled “The Problem With Music“.

“Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what’s printed on the contract. It’s too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody’s eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there’s only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says “Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim again, please. Backstroke”. And he does of course. “

Steve goes on to show a comprehensive budget of what a “real” album costs to release & promote and shines a little light on what the band might end up with once it’s all done. The figures are a little dated but you’ll certainly get the idea. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Seth Godin is considered an expert in marketing, especially when it comes to high-tech items such as software. His many books include modern classics such as “Small is the new big”, “All marketers are liars” and “The Purple Cow” which is a study in “becoming remarkable”.

We forget sometimes that the music business is not that different to many other high-tech industries and that we can indeed learn from outsiders looking in. He recently wrote a brilliant article that applies some of his unique thinking to the problems of the modern music industry entitled “Music Lessons - Things you can learn from the music business (as it falls apart)”.

Here is a sneak preview: [Read the rest of this entry...]

What better way to usher in a brand new year but with a couple of my favourite drum solo’s.

First up we have Buddy rich with his “West Side Story” solo

And now we have my all time favourite drummer, Ian Paice of Deep purple fame. Here he is performing the Mule from the california Jam Concert in 1974.

Happy New Year Everyone!

I’d like to farewell the current year on a very stylish note and there isn’t a more stylish crew than the Dave Brubeck Quartet. May I present “Take Five” for your listening pleasure featuring a lovely solo by the amazing Joe Morello.

The pants were tight and straight, the hair was slicked back, the year was 1961 and it was swinging hard in 5/4 time.

I’m a bit of a nut for statistics and numbers & I’ve just been checking out the list of our most popular articles of 2007. Here you go folks, a bit of holiday reading.

1. Product Review - Bose L1 Personal Amplification System
2. The Wall of Sound - It’s already been tried
3. Home Recording Website
4. Selling your music online Part 1 - CD Baby
5. How To Tune Your Guitar By Ear
6. You Can Learn To Play By Ear
7. The evolution of a groove
8. More links - Songwriting 101 and Becoming a Pro Drummer
9. Flashy Snare Drum Licks - Bernie Dresel
10. Zoom H4 Digital Recorder Review

The band Radiohead made all the news shows and papers this year after announcing they were going to release an album and let the fans decide how much, if anything, they would pay.

It seems like a pretty brave move to let the customer have the product for free with no guarantee of any return but are you just setting yourself up to be ripped off?

“Online busking” is a term that’s been around for a little while but it’s usually associated with the smaller, more independent part of the industry. This was busking on a pretty grand scale!

So how did they go? [Read the rest of this entry...]

Merry Christmas to all our readers, commenters and contributors.

Thanks to you all for a wonderful 2007 and here’s to a great 2008.

We have a few new, exciting projects that will be unveiled over the early part of 2008. Stay tuned!

Nothing beats the experience of playing with other musicians. No matter if it’s performing with a band, jamming with a friend or writing a song with someone. The act of sharing is a big part of music for a lot of people. However today’s busy lifestyles make it hard to spend as much time as we’d like working on musical projects with other people. Sometimes the people we are collaborating with are quite distant to us and we may not have the opportunity to physically get together as often as we’d like. this is another area where we can use modern communications technology to our advantage.

Basecamp is an online collaboration tool that has:

• Messageboards
• To Do lists
• Collaborative writing
• File sharing and more

I originally started using Basecamp as a way of keeping in touch with my beta testers in my software business but quickly realised how useful it would be to a band. I play in one particular band where we gig and rehearse infrequently and we don’t all live in the same area. That meant we had to come up with a way of working together while being physically separated.

We use the message board to discuss issues from song suggestions to rehearsal times and it’s all kept nice and neat in one central place. Much neater than trying to keep track of a conversation by email. We can upload simple mp3 recordings of rehearsals so each band member can download them and get some practice in.

Basecamp is ideal for a teams of people, whether it be a band or a songwriting team, to work together on a common project. A tool that the songwriters will love in particular is Writeboards. Writeboards are like a simple word processor that teams of people can work on. The nice thing is that you can see what changes have been made to each document and by whom.You can compare old & new versions very easily & keep a list of every change.

The best way to find out what it does is to try it for yourself. The basic version is free.

Here is a great excercise using paradiddles that was left in the comments by reader Pete Privitere.

This paradiddle is brilliant for developing 4 way independence as you are playing diagonally across your body.In other words, your left foot and right hand play together and vice-versa. It’s not as simple as it looks. Try it out & see. Like always, start off nice and slow and till you can play it confidently then start increasing the speed.

If you have an excercise or a comment then please do what Pete did and leave it in the comments & I’ll publish it.

Hi Folks, I just want to give you all a heads up on a brand new website that I’ve launched this week. It’s called www.AVHints.com and aims to provide helpful hints and tips for anyone from the novice through to the Audio-Visual Pro. Initially I was going to start adding some A/V related articles to this site but it really is a subject all of its’ own so a seperate website is the right way to go.

If you dabble in the more technical aspects of music and production you’ll find it very helpful I’m sure. Drop in, take a look around and let me know what you think.

www.AVHints.com