Improve Your Music

MySpace.com is one of the great Internet success stories of our time. It is in the top five or ten most popular web sites on the planet, right up there with Google, Yahoo and Ebay.

With more than 190 million registered users and hundreds of thousands of music acts setting up free profiles on the site, MySpace.com is a godsend for the independent artist.

MySpace is absolutely free and what struggling, or rather, up and coming artist does not love that?

This should go without saying, but…

If you aren’t promoting your music on MySpace yet, you need to start fast!

In order to do that, you will need to create an artist page on MySpace Music. You make one by going to the music section in MySpace and signing up. You treat it like a normal MySpace, except you can download music from your computer onto it. Now all you have to do is enter your information and genre and you are ready to go. You can upload photos, create a bio, customize your page and starting adding your music.

Just beware that you account could be terminated if the music is not originally owned and created by you or your band.

If you already have a MySpace artist profile, you need to make the most use of it so you get the widest exposure possible. You will need to include a killer headline to grab people’s attention. Properly fill out every section including your artist influences and what your music sounds like. Be honest yet original. Add as many photos of yourself (or your band) as possible. Photos are important – people are always curious to see what you or your band looks like!

Then start building a massive, yet relevant friends list. Start adding friends and people from your local area that have similar musical interests, hobbies and likes. Slowly build outside your immediate area and work throughout the country (or the world!) from there.

Post bulletins about upcoming events to grab your fan’s attention. Create a MySpace music group and invite people to subscribe to your blog. Blog daily and entertain your fans. Build a community because people will keep coming back if they can connect with other like-minded people.

When promoting on the Internet, a personal approach is ideal. Although glitzy advertising may still work in the offline world, when people go online, they don’t connect with flashy logos, theme songs or mission statements. They connect with people. And when lots of people know who you are and what you stand for, you are in an incredible position to better your life and profit from your efforts.

Keep your page updated or people will become bored and move on. Make sure you have links where fans can go and purchase your music online. Blogging can increase your page ranking and essentially draw more people into your site.

Finally, network with other bands by taking full advantage of MySpace for bands and musicians. Meeting new people and networking is one of the best ways to market yourself.The more people you meet, the more connections you have. This opens up opportunities to book gigs, sell more music and maybe get signed!

Record labels are always looking for unique and marketable musicians and MySpace can often be the first port of call – for fans, label managers and A&R to check you out. So it makes very good sense for you, as an unsigned artist, to have a MySpace music profile.

Time spent promoting your music on web sites like MySpace contributes to your overall exposure, and brings in that many more CD and music sales. Obviously,there are other sites and ways to promote your music online but MySpace is an easy and inexpensive place to start to get yourself or your band massive exposure.

We all know that good cymbals can be very expensive so it is really important to give them the care they need to last a long time. Here are 5 tips to help you look after your cymbals.

1. Get a bag or preferably a hard shell cymbal case. Most intruments that get damaged do so while being transported. Having a bag or hard case will increase the life of your cymbals greatly. Don’t just wrap them in a blanket or towel and shove them in your car. Even a cheap bag can help to prevent minor nicks and scratches.
2. Buy a cheap set of cymbals for practice. I recently purchased a full set of cheap cymbals for less than the price of one good cymbal. This allows me to use the cheap ones for practice and rehearsal while leaving my good set for performing. Simply using your good cymbals less will improve their life enormously.
3. Keep your cymbals clean. Handle cymbals by the edge only as the oil in your fingers can mark them. To remove marks use a proper cymbal cleaner and NEVER use a polishing agent. Many modern cymbals have a coating on them to preserve their finish and polishing will remove this coating. Polishing also removes metal in order to achieve a shiny finish. Doing this over a period of time will alter the tone and sound of your cymbals.
4. Use felts and plastic sleeves on your cymbal stands. Cymbals can be very easily damaged around the centre hole when you have metal to metal contact. Make sure that your stands have the appropriate plastic sleeves and felts attached. They only cost a few dollars so get some extras and keep them in your stick bag as they are easily lost on packups.
5. Stack them smallest to largest. When you pack your cymbals away, put the smallest ones on the bottom of the stack and add the larger ones progressively. Putting the small ones on top of the large ones can change the profile (shape) of the cymbal which will change it’s sound.

These are just a few tips to help you get the best value out of what can be very expensive items. If you have any other tips to add then I’d love to hear them in the comments.

Those songs we hear on the mainstream airwaves – simple, aren’t they? They also follow a very similar formula. This formula is seen by many as the basis of “western music”, and popular music especially makes use of organic “rules”, just as the physical universe has its own mysterious laws.

If you’ve been playing guitar for even just a short amount of time, I’m sure you’ll have heard of “scales”. The most common scales guitarists think of are related to lead guitar/soloing, where a harmony is created one note at a time. However, there are also “chord scales”, which work in a similar way to regular scales, but this time the scale represents a sequence of chords.

Most songs are written in a major key or a minor key, but both types are based on the same sequence of chords. Let’s take a look at the major key chord scale to make this a bit clearer:

I ii iii IV V vi vii

So, what does that mean?! Firstly, the use of Roman numerals I won’t get into right now, but there is a very good reason for using them (trust me!)

Each one of those numerals represents a chord. The capitalised numerals represent major chords and the lower case numerals minor chords.

“I” is known as the “tonic chord” as it’s the first chord in the chord scale. This is the chord that defines the key of a song (or part of a song). If the tonic chord is A major, then the key of the song is most likely the same, A major.

Now, if the “I” (tonic) chord is A major, how would we know what chords the other numerals represent? Well, as it’s a chord scale, it’s all about the intervals in between each chord in the scale.

I – W – ii – W – iii – H – IV – W – V – W – vi – W – vii – H – then the cycle begins again at I!

The W stands for “whole step” – this is the equivalent of a two fret space on your guitar. So, if you were on the 3rd fret on the low E string (the note G), moving up a whole step would put you at the 5th fret (the note A).

The H stands for “half step” – this is the equivalent of a single fret space on your guitar. So, if you were back on the 3rd fret on the low E string, moving up a half step would put you at the 4th fret (the note Ab).

So, those are the intervals between each chord in the chord scale! When the key changes (e.g. if we change key from A major to B major), then we just move this whole pattern accordingly, still keeping those W and H intervals in between the chords.

This is our “pot” from which we can pull our major key progression (we’ll look at minor key another time!)

For example, a very common major key progression is: I IV V (e.g. E, A, B)

Another common one is: vi IV I V (e.g. C#m, A, E, B)

So you can basically mix the sequence around a bit and pull out your own chord progression.

You’re probably thinking “is it really that simple?” well, this is only the very basic application of the chord scale, and although many songs only use sequences from within this scale, it’s often more interesting to include chords that lie outside the scale. These are known as “gateway” chords that create links between the chords within the chord scale.

Also, to make it more interesting, we can modify and extend the chords themselves. For example, instead of just playing a regular E major chord, we could play E7 or Eadd9. However, knowing how to spice individual chords up is a whole lesson in itself.

The more you learn about this stuff, the more you realise how closely related regular scales and chord scales are. Then you realise how closely individual chords are related to both the chord scale and regular scale.

So where do we go from here? This article should have got you in the right frame of mind to delve deeper into the theory behind this. There are many decent resources on the web to help you (and don’t forget the paper guitar books!)

Keep learning and experimenting and everything will become clear very soon.

Every now and then you come across genuine child prodigies. Young folks whose talent far exceeds their age in years. Here are a couple of examples I found recently on youtube.

First up is a fantastic snare drum solo by a 10 year old.

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP67k9_r4VY]

Next up is an amazing solo by a seven year old.

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8cvKImVadE]

This stuff really makes me feel old!

We have been talking in recent articles about various ways for independant bands and artists to sell their music online. Selling your music is only part of the process however. First of all, people need to be aware of your music. They actually need to hear it somewhere. These days it’s not hard to knock up a quick website or mySpace page to help you, but once again, how do people find you in the first place? One of the best tools for promoting and selling music has traditionally been radio. Getting airplay on a radio station has many obvious advantages. You can take advantage of a far wider audience than you would normally get to your mySpace page or your website and you can “piggy back” on the success of other bands being played.

We all know what decent airplay can give us, but how do we go about getting our music played? Well, the old fashioned way was to get hold of a mailing list of radio stations then set about putting together hundreds of press kits and CD packages to mail out. This method still works but it is expensive and many of the packages you send out will end up in the bin. Some won’t suit the station, some don’t accept songs from labels that aren’t “majors”, some will throw it away without even opening it but some, just a few maybe, may play your stuff. It’s not really a great system, eh?

Once again, the internet has come to the rescue of the indpendant musician. Airplay Direct is a great new service that acts as a “middleman” in getting artists and radio stations together. You simply sign up for an account which allows you to upload some of your songs in broadcast-quality mp3 format. Radio stations can then come along and search Airplay Direct for material appropriate to their particular station. Once they have found your music they can download it instantly and get it into their playlists quickly without having to contact you and wait for you to post them a CD.

From their website:
WHO WE ARE
AirPlay Direct is a new, revolutionary, efficient and cost effective way to securely deliver your “broadcast-quality” music and artist press kits to music industry professionals around the world.

AirPlay Direct makes life a little easier for radio stations and programmers that are looking for new music. AirPlay Direct’s “broadcast-quality” digital library includes all formats / genres of music.

HOW IT ALL WORKS
Only radio stations will be permitted to download “broadcast-quality” music from this site. They must obtain a highly secure password to enter and download. AirPlay Direct protects your “valuable music assets” by screening and verifying all radio member applicants, password protected downloads, limiting / monitoring # of downloads, and by utilizing the latest technologies in security software.

Artist and Labels register and then enter with a password, create an AirPlay Direct artist web site and can then edit their artist information as needed. This informational tool provides radio programmers with your current promotional materials; photos, bio, CD artwork, songwriters / publishing info, etc. All of your artist information will also be automatically put into your new AirPlay Direct Digital Promo Kit / DPK.

ARTISTS/LABELS
Why mail hundreds of artist packages out to music industry professionals? You can convert and upload your own tracks, or simply send your CD to AirPlay Direct and we will convert and upload your “broadcast-quality” tracks for you. Your music will be instantly accessible to thousands of radio stations throughout the world. All music genres can be posted and ready for radio stations to download; Rock, Country, Pop, Bluegrass, Alt. Rock, Rap, Gospel, Blues, Roots/Americana, Folk, Spanish, Comedy, Hip Hop, Metal, Classical, Zydeco, Jazz, etc… All Music Formats are welcome!

WHY USE AIRPLAY DIRECT?
• Reduce postage expenses
• Digital delivery’s speed to market is instant; snail mail, well you know the story
• Prevent scratched or damaged CDs
• Cut CD manufacturing costs
• A song or album can be pre-posted and then become available for download at the specified release date.
• Songs posted will be available to radio for 1 year.
• Real-time Download Tracking Reports allow you to track which stations have received / downloaded your songs for airplay, and the date and time of download. No more lost packages.

A someone who helps run an internet radio station I can tell you first hand that we use this service and have found it first class all the way. It really does provide a “one stop shop” for artists wanting to find their way into airplay on radio and all the benefits that brings.

Check them out today at www.airplaydirect.com

Here are a couple of links to some great articles I’ve found recently.

First up, here is an article on songwriting from CJ Alvarado:

Songwriting 101

There are a lot of resources out there that talk about song structure, rhyme and other theories about constructing songs but I will not touch on those in this article. This article is focused on getting you to write. Naturally, there are a number of road blocks a person can face when it comes to writing. Pressures for results, fear of rejection, failure, are just some of the big ones that can really hinder a song. The thing about writing is that you have to try and rid yourself of all those things otherwise your creativity will constantly be interrupted never given the opportunity to really flow. I remember times in my own song writing journey where I would analyze everything and start critiquing it without giving it a little room to breathe. No good! Write because you enjoy it first! Let go of the inhibitions and get that ball-point rolling.
No instruments required

Catch the rest here.

Next up we have another great post from Steve Dow.

The 7 Major Hurdles to Master to Become a Professional Drummer

1). Get professional instruction…. It is extremely important to learn the basics properly first; like how to hold your sticks, how to sit, how to setup/arrange your drums, and how to read music (i.e., drum notation and drums tabs). The latter skill enables you to perform in any situation, and, allows you to practice on your own “forever” using the many great drumming books available (especially those from George Lawrence Stone, Jim Chapin, and Gary Chaffee). Drumming DVD’s are also great tools. In addition, I feel that you should learn at least the 26 primary rudiments (there are another 13 that wouldn’t be a bad idea to learn as well). You should also learn how to develop independent coordination between your hands and feet.
2). Learn how to play with SOLID time and feel (i.e., “groove”)…. Do this by practicing along with a metronome (at differing tempos). As for me, I use up to three metronomes for many practices (and they may all be running at different tempos, but not all in the same mode). I find that doing this allows me to move quickly from one tempo to another on exercises. Remember, keeping solid time and “feel” is a drummers’ #1 responsibility.

The rest of the 7 points can be found here.

In Part 1 of Selling your music online we looked at moving CD’s through CD Baby. In this installment we are going to start to look at some of the services to distribute your music digitally ie downloading it over the internet rather than shipping a physical CD. While Cd’s still outsell digital downloads, that trend is changing rapidly as technology expands and people become more computer savvy.

There are many services now to help you to sell your music digitally such as iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster etc. Some of these services can be difficult to use as they are sometimes geared to dealing with large, professional record companies rather than a million individual bands and artists. This is where a company like Tunecore comes in. Tunecore allows you to submit your music to them for a small fee, they in turn deal with getting your music listed with many digital distributors such as iTunes and the others mentioned previously. This is particularly convenient for the independant band or artist and is much more efficient than trying to contact all those distributors yourself.

From their site:
How does it work?
TuneCore has arrangements with leading digital music retailers that let us place your music in their online stores and subscription services. You get 100% of the money that your music earns.

What’s it cost?
TuneCore charges $0.99 per track, $0.99 per store per album, and $9.98 per album per year storage and maintenance.
for example:
“Say you’ve got a five-song Album you want for sale in the iTunes U.S., Japan and iTunes Canada stores as well as on the Rhapsody service. The costs would be:
iTunes U.S. store $0.99
iTunes Canada store $0.99
iTunes Japan store $0.99
Rhapsody service $0.99
Five songs at $0.99 each $4.95
First year’s maintenance $9.98
GRAND TOTAL $18.89” *Note. all prices are in US$

Once you have paid the fee to list your album on a particular service, there are no “per sale” fees at all. You get to keep 100% of the money paid by the particular selling service. Pretty cool huh?

Tunecore also offer other related services such as CD manufacture and T-shirt/Poster printing.

For more info check out their site at http://www.tunecore.com/. You can also download a free e-book with some great music marketing tips.

OK, you’ve spent your hard earned money putting together a recording of your band, you’ve had some copies pressed and now you are wondering how you are going to get rid of them to get your money back or even make a profit! Sure you can sell a few at gigs and a few to your friends, but how do you move more than just a few copies? Just because you aren’t signed to a record label doesn’t mean that you can’t sell your music online. The internet is a great way for the independent act to bypass to whole record company thing and put some money directly in their own pocket.

There are a variety of services available these days to allow independent artists and bands to sell their stuff. This is the first part of a series of articles that will look at some of the more popular methods of online music marketing.

First cab off the rank is CD Baby – www.cdbaby.net

CD Baby is a simple service that sets up a basic web page for you in their online store. You send them some CD’s and set your own price. When someone comes along that wants your CD, CD Baby handles the credit card processing and the postage. They take a $4US fee for this and pass the rest on to you. Simple!

From their site:

Who/What are we?

• CD Baby is a little online record store that sells CDs by independent musicians.
• [In•de•pen•dent: (adj.) Not having sold one’s life, career, and creative works over to a corporation.]
• We’re just a few people in a cool Portland, Oregon, CD warehouse that looks like a playground. We listen to every CD we sell before we sell it, so we can help you find other albums you’ll like.
• We only sell CDs that come directly from the musicians. No distributors. Musicians send us CDs. We warehouse them, sell them to you, and pay the musicians directly.
• Cool thing: in a regular record deal or distribution deal, musicians only make $1-$2 per CD, if they ever get paid by their label. When selling through CD Baby, musicians make $6-$12 per CD, and get paid weekly.
• In business, and thriving, since March 1998. We’re the largest seller of independent CDs on the web.

Selling your music

• CD Baby has helped over 150,000 artists sell over $40 million in physical CDs, digital downloads, and live sales since 1998.
• For a simple $35 setup, CD Baby can get your music selling worldwide on cdbaby.com, Apple iTunes, Yahoo Music, Best Buy, Rhapsody, Napster, MSN Music and more.
• We keep only a 9% cut, paying 91% of all income directly to the artist. (For physical CDs, we keep $4 per CD sold.)
• Your CD will be available to over 2400 traditional retail CD stores in the USA. You get paid full retail price for these sales.
• We pay everyone every Monday night. Over $250,000 every week, paid directly to our musician clients.

To get started with CD baby you only need to send them 5 CD’s and $35US. This is quite a small investment for what you get. As well as selling your CD’s by mail order, they digitise your CD and make it available for sale through iTunes, Yahoo, MSN etc. The potential for selling your music through multiple outlets makes CD Baby a great first step in selling your music online.

Check them out at www.cdbaby.net

I always find it interesting to hear great players talk about their influences. One of my alltime favourite drummers is the late Jeff Porcaro. Jeff was a session player of note but to the average punter he was best remembered as being the drummer for the band Toto. In the following video clip Jeff talks about the influence that two drummers had on him in coming up with a groove for the song Rosanna. It’s a half time shuffle feel that just rocks. His main influences in this groove are the amazing Bernard Purdie, himself a renowned session player, and the great John Bonham of Led Zepplin fame.

Here is Bernard Purdie explaining the “Purdie Shuffle” in his own unique way

[Flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9hq7IEqyKQ]

Here is Jeffs explanation of the beat

[Flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwFdExvCxM4]

and here is Toto demonstrating the finished product.

[Flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB-XWwOJikk]

There are many items of technology which can improve the life of the average musician greatly and a good, simple digital recorder is certainly high on the list. At the end of last year I was looking around for some simple recording gear. The trouble was that I needed to do a variety of projects and I was concerned that I needed to buy a lot of gear. The main criteria was that I needed something portable that could take two inputs and initially I was looking at using a laptop computer as the main recording device. This meant buying some mics and a analog to digital converter of some kind. I came across the Zoom H4 Handy Recorder in a magazine and decided to check further.

What struck me first of all was that the unit could be used as a totally stand alone portable recorder. For simple tasks such as recording a band rehearsal or gig this was ideal. The H4 has inbuilt stereo condensor mics and can be used on 2 x A sized batteries making it very easy to use with a minimum of setup and fuss. Just select the file format, WAV or MP3, set the recording level and hit the record button. The results are excellent. The H4 uses SD memory cards of up to 2GB which will give you about 360 minutes of recording time in WAV format or about 38 hours in MP3. Of course cards can be easily swapped if you need more time than 38 hours!

The nice thing about this unit is that you are not stuck with the simplest functionality only. If you want to use external mics, fine. If you want to plug a guitar or bass straight in you can. It also has some inbuilt amp and mic simulation software if you need it although it’s not something I’ve used yet. It can even operate as a 4 track recorder with inbuilt mixing functions which would be great for the songwriter out on the road to use as a “sketchbook”.

Apart from using it to record band rehearsals and gigs, we took it along to a band competition recently to record some interviews. We just stuck an SM58 on a lead into it, a pair of headphones for monitoring, and off we went. The results were great.

Where it shines for me is that I can also use it in my little home studio as well. I simply plug it in to my system via USB and use the Cubase software included to record direct to my PC. Brilliant! The secret to this unit is it’s simplicity and it’s versatility. You probably won’t use it to record your next album but if your needs are simple then this device is for you. I thoroughly recommend it.