- How To Choose A Record Producer/Recording Studio - Part 1 - Recognizing Past Failures
- Ask A Non-Music Dork For Perspective
- Programming Note - One Year Of Musformation!
- Anatomy Of A Buzz Band - How Many Publicists Does Neon Indian Have?
- You're So Much Better Live Than On Record? Why Does No One Know This?
- Band Tip: Don't Sweat A Bad Show
- How DIY Artist Noush Skaugen Got 1.2 Million Twitter Followers
- Watch A Great Video On Pitch Speaking
- Live Lessons: Have A Backup Guitar Ready In Case A String Breaks
- GuGuChu Is A New Service To Find And Promote Your Gigs
- Use A Rehearsal Drum Set For Writing In The Studio
- Words Of DIY Wisdom From Blood Red Shoes
- I Stand Behind It - Radial Bones Y Splitter
- If You Want Your News Shared On Facebook? Put It Up On The Weekend
- Use Hydrogen Peroxide To Clean Earbuds/Earplugs/In-Ears
- Jelli Radio (Digg-Like Radio) Expands Nationwide!
- Buddy Up For Cheap Mastering
- Take Advantage Of Google Buzz Sharing With ReBuzzThis
- A Video Introduction To Root Music's Facebook Pages
(Depending on where you work, the above video may be NSFW)
What we are reading on the Internet that may be of interest to you or potentially melt your brain with its stupidity.
- Tunes for Tweens: Robert Pattison from Twilight wants to make a record
- Holy F*ck use Chatroulette to promote their new album
- Celebrity Rehab reaches out to DMX
- 311 clocks in 5 hour set on 311 day
- Girlicious band member charged with coke possession (that ain't no soft drink ya'll)
- Amy Winehouse to help Fred Perry design clothing collection
REMINDER: Each of those buttons up top will make this site show articles written only on that particular subject or you can can follow our individual RSS or Twitter feeds.
Possibly one of the great rock docs of all time, Dig takes a look at two bands who you don't need to be fans of to enjoy this amazing doc. Capturing the two seperate career paths of the bands, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols, this is one of the most enjoyable displays of rock debauchery and music industry reality you will ever see. Don't miss it.
In this series, I will explain my perspective on how bands
can make better records by learning the right reasons to choose a record
producer, rather than many of the flawed ways of the past.
As a record producer with over a decade of experience and hundreds of
record under my belt, I have witnessed bands choose me and my fellow
producers for both smart and stupid reasons. Seeing as this is one of
the most crucial decisions in a bands career, this is some of the most
important information you can learn. Making a great record is what we all want to do. Unfortunately, one of the biggest causes of a bad record is making a poor choice in who should produce your record. Many veteran music industry people still guess and use flawed logic when making this crucial decision. Over the years we have all heard records with great songs but flawed production. It happens all the time and many times we can't even get into a record because the approach taken by the producer is so repulsive that it makes it a unlistenable mess. After the jump we will begin to discuss some of the flawed ideas that have ruined many a record and in the preceding parts of this series we will discuss how to understand and fix them
- Donnis signs to Fool's Gold
- Life Of Agony Sign With I Scream Records
- OK Go leaves EMI
- Epitaph Inks Veara
- Hot Hot Heat has signed with Dangerbird Records.
- Write This Down have signed to Tooth & Nail Records.
- The Tired and True are now signed to Eulogy Recordings.
- Bayside have signed to Wind-Up Records.
- Direct Hit! joins Death to False Hope Records
- Reignition signs to Think Fast! Records
- This Century has signed to Action Theory Records
- No Sleep Records have signed I Call Fives
Getting perspective on what you're doing is one of the most important things you can do for your music. Not only are musicians too close to their art because they spend so much time with it and have so much emotional involvement, but they also know too much about what goes into the product. Some of the best advice I have gotten recently on my mixes and on my band's live shows has come from non-musicians and those who aren't walking musical encyclopedia nerds. While they might not be able to tell what kind of reverb you should be using live or notice that your room mics are phasing slightly, they might be able to tell you that your vocals aren't clear enough or that you don't move onstage as much as you could. In a given song, there is often so much going on (especially if you also record your own music) that you can very quickly lose sight of some of the most important things about your music. Many times musicians spend so much time crafting a "clever" song they forget to ask - does it have a memorable hook? The average musical listener is much more likely to pick up on this, as opposed to the many intricacies you so carefully constructed. For better or worse, they layman's point of view is often unfettered by all the "knowledge" that music dorks have lodged deep in their craniums. Sometimes asking a family member (who cares about what you're doing but probably thinks Animal Collective is a group dedicated to saving the rainforests) or a friend who doesn't play an instrument or isn't a huge music dork can yield much more interesting advice than you might expect.
Sandbox has up a great article about artist Noush Skaugen who is doing it on her own and has managed to get a serious Twitter following. Obviously if this was done through spam and bots it would not be impressive, but it seems she really gets what goes into getting a base of people interested in what she has to say and it seems it is translating into a growing following. A great read!
Speaking in Code Trailer from sQuare productions on Vimeo.
Back in September we told you that about the film Speaking in Code, which chronicles the lives and sounds of a handful of influential electronic musicians (Modeselktor, Ellen Allien, Monolake, David Sherburne). The film is now available (as of today) on DVD and can be purchased here.What we are reading on the Internet that may be of interest to you or potentially melt your brain with its stupidity.
- Gaga and Beyonce's 'Telephone' video racks up 500k views in 12 hours
- RIP: Micky Jones of the band Man
- Desperate appeal filed in Phil Spector case
- Ludacris and Bill O'Reilly bury the hatchet
- I Lost Someone: James Brown's body is missing!
- Somehow, Chris Brown has gotten even more pathetic
At Musformation we have decided to follow Twitters lead and suggest
you a Twitter feed we find to be totally awesome every week. We figure
it is time to show people by example who is using Twitter right and
good the awesome resources it holds.
It's been a while since we featured a Follow Friday tweeter, since we haven't been finding new and inspiring tweeters to point you to. That ended this week when I stumbled upon the AWESOME tweeter, CreateMusicTips. They constantly tweet out the same kind of cool tips and tricks you find on Musformation and if you like us, you will surely like them.
It's been a while since we featured a Follow Friday tweeter, since we haven't been finding new and inspiring tweeters to point you to. That ended this week when I stumbled upon the AWESOME tweeter, CreateMusicTips. They constantly tweet out the same kind of cool tips and tricks you find on Musformation and if you like us, you will surely like them.
The great electronic duo Modeselektor discusses their music (with plenty of dorky details from their personal lives) and also live setup.
Camel Audio is one of our favorite plug-in companies and Alchemy is one of the more amazing pieces of software to come our way in the past few years. Since Camel Audio is so good at everything they do, they have made the smart move of making a play-only version of Alchemy called Alchemy Player and they have made it free with the purchase of any preset library. Get the details here.
What we are reading on the Internet that may be of interest to you or potentially melt your brain with its stupidity.
- President Obama Discusses Three Strikes Anti-Piracy Law
- Atari Teenage riot reuniting for European tour
- Detroit's Movement Electronic Music Festival announces dates, lineup
- Green Day's Rock Band game gets a release date: June 8th
- Pete Doherty gets driving ban after manager's hit and run case
- R Kelly cancels tour due to throat problems
REMINDER: Each of those buttons up top will make this site show articles written only on that particular subject or you can can follow our individual RSS or Twitter feeds.
While it would seem like common sense to not put something dirty back in your ears when you can visibly see residue on it, everyday I watch musicians put wax filled dirty things in their ears. After doing this, these musicians will then wonder why their ears are clogged up and feel swollen. The easy solution is to carry some hydrogen peroxide with you in your road kit. Simply dip your plugs in and then with washed hands pull the gunk off. With In-Ear monitors, dipping the plugs in a cap-full of liquid may not be recommended, but you can Q-tip the solid part down with the liquid to get rid of any excessive gunk.
In exciting news for music fans and everyone who can't stand corporate assembled, payola filled radio playlists, people powered Jelli Radio has launched on 10 new radio stations. If you are not familar with Jelli, the radio determines their playlists purely on what is requested, much like Digg does for web content! This is an exciting way to get your music out there if you can rile up your fanbase and start requesting your music through them. Here are some of their new stations.
- WBOS Boston, MA
- WPST Philadelphia, PA
- KXTE Las Vegas, NV
- WJBX Fort Myers, FL
- WJLK Jersey Shore, NJ
- WKRL Syracuse, NY
- WKLL Utica, NY
- KISN Bozeman, MT
- KBAZ Missoula, MT
- KTRS Casper, WY
The sad reality of the music business today is that even when you are running a successful studio, there are times when there is going to be either no time or money to budget in using your favorite mastering engineer. This reality has creeped more and more into my life as time goes on and the fast pace of putting up content on the Internet has made many artists need things fast. One of the most important things about the mastering stage is to get an objective perspective on your mix and have someone else's ears hear what you may have missed. One of the most valuable things I have found in my recording world is having friends who can listen to my mix and master when there is no time to go to my mastering engineer of choice. Often times they hear what I have lost perspective on and end up giving me some of the most valuable advice I can find. If time is rushed make sure you call a buddy with good ears and get a second perspective on what you are doing, return the favor to them and you have a valuable team that can help make your recordings much better.
What we are reading on the Internet that may be of interest to you or potentially melt your brain with its stupidity.
- Gorillaz to tour UK with Clash members?
- Strokes confirmed for Lollapalooza, new album in Sept
- Animal Collective to release ODDSAC on DVD
- St. Vincent, Liars to appear on Beck's Record Club Project
- OK Go leave EMI, launch their own label
- Pink Floyd wins its court battle with EMI over back catalog
REMINDER: Each of those buttons up top will make this site show articles written only on that particular subject or you can can follow our individual RSS or Twitter feeds.
If you have never run a blog before, let me introduce you to one of the little pains that us bloggers go through on a daily basis. Often times, when a band gets a significant buzz or has achieved some success, some PR people will aggregate press releases in hopes of being associated with a successful group. If that weren't enough, some PR companies are smart enough to keep sending out press releases for their past clients knowing it will get their emails for their smaller clients through the email filters of bloggers eyes. In the hilarious pic above you can see Impose Magazine's inbox about the newest release from the Boogereater adored group Neon Indian. Their take is that the band has multiple publicists which could be the case, but I may favor some of my theories above as well as individual PR people representing the band, label/management and another for Green Label Sound who put out this one off single. No matter what, it is an interesting look at what you are up against in the war to get PR for your release. Check out Impose's take here.
What we are reading on the Internet that may be of interest to you or potentially melt your brain with its stupidity.
- Simian Mobile Disco, The Fall added to Field Day 2010 lineup
- Sofia Coppola to turn Phoenix's "Love Like A Sunset" into movie?
- Emo-ancestors: Sunny Day set to record new album
- Of Montreal stop by Yo Gabba Gabba with a zany tune
- Amy Winehouse caught looking... healthy for once!
- New LCD Soundsystem song debuted at fashion show
REMINDER: Each of those buttons up top will make this site show articles written only on that particular subject or you can can follow our individual RSS or Twitter feeds.
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