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Police-album-synchronicity.jpgNo, I do not mean learning any stupid Stewart Copeland drum beats, what I mean is that most drummers spend far to much time on learning crazy fills instead of getting their limbs to sync up. As a record producer who often does heavy drum editing, I know no pain quite like trying to edit the groove of a drummer whose right hand hi-hat hits flam with their kick drum hits. This is one of the hardest things to get to sound good and natural in a recording and the cause for a loss in feeling of many records. If you hear a sloppiness and a lack of groove in your drummers playing try to get them to concentrate on locking up their limbs to hit at the same time instead of doing the latest Travis Barker fill.



Music videos are one of the most important promotional tools in promoting your music. At Musformation we are always trying to explain the secrets behind what goes into making a video that helps a band pick up more fans and get noticed. In our series Behind The Video we will be exploring what goes into a great music video straight from our readers experiences. If you would like to be featured in this series please send us your video and an explanation of the techniques, ideas and execution that helped make it successful for you.


NJ's The Exotic Aquatic made a great video for their song "Singularity" in which they simply made a cool video that fits the feeling of a song. After the jump they tell the story of the video.


What we are reading on the Internet that may be of interest to you or potentially melt your brain with its stupidity.


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Recording And Synth Nerd Links 4/7/10

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We at Musformation read A LOT of blogs. Like, A LOT! We often find things that are interesting, but we don't have the time to write em up for you guys. This makes us feel bad since we are trying to make our community a more educated and entertained one. So every Wed. I will be sharing with you Recording Nerd Links. So if you are that particular brand of nerd/insomniac/internataholic/crazy shut in, enjoy. Nerd.

What's In A Guitar Nut?

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Strymon Brigadier dBucket Delay Demo

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Too bad they're already sold, but we wanted you to have a peak at the Strymon Brigadier dBucket Delay.  These boutique pedals are certainly not cheap but the quality is evident even on this short demo.  More sound clips and info here.     


The endless debate everyone LOVES to argue about. Here's a short clip that ought to get some tempers flaring again.  While the instruments chosen don't seem to be congruent enough to prove anything, it's good enough reason to fight! 


What we are reading on the Internet that may be of interest to you or potentially melt your brain with its stupidity.


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.

18631125.mov from Pledge Music on Vimeo.

CrowdFunding is one of the more exciting things going on the industry today and  PledgeMusic is another company enabling fans to help fund artists they believe-in's lastest ventures. One of their more high profile projects is the new Gang Of Four record which is presently looking for pledges. Check out what they are doing and see if it can help you.



What we are reading on the Internet that may be of interest to you or potentially melt your brain with its stupidity.


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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One of our most popular articles discusses the idea that if you do not comment on the other members of your band's playing it will be poisonous to your songwriting. Astute commenter Cowboy Ted commented on that article saying -

"What do you do when people stop criticizing you or never do it because they 'believe in you' too much?"
This is a great questions and a very common problem. Too much trust in a player can lend to an environment of stagnancy and not reaching the full potential of a song's ability. After the jump we will discuss how to avoid this and make sure you always get the most out of your creative team.


Music videos are one of the most important promotional tools in promoting your music. At Musformation we are always trying to explain the secrets behind what goes into making a video that helps a band pick up more fans and get noticed. In our series Behind The Video we will be exploring what goes into a great music video straight from our readers experiences. If you would like to be featured in this series please send us your video and an explanation of the techniques, ideas and execution that helped make it successful for you.

Our first feature is from the band Delorentos, after the jump they will explain how they learned from their past video experiences and stepped up their video game and saw great results from the above video.
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If you haven't heard you can now run M-Powered Mackie Mixer Recording Interfaces legally. For a limited time Mackie will be giving this driver away for free. This only last till the end of May though, so move fast. More details after the jump.

Korg iElectribe First Look

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What we are reading on the Internet that may be of interest to you or potentially melt your brain with its stupidity.

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.

The Electro Wars Movie Trailer

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No word yet on the release date, but we're keeping our eyes open for this one.

Making A Beat With An Apreggiator

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We often talk about how important it is that your website has a blog with a RSS feed so that your fans and the press can keep up to date with what you are doing. That said, one of the things you can do that is a lot different than what many groups do is start your own music blog. If you are the type of group who gets a lot of remixes and finds a lot of cool links on the net it can be a great idea to start a blog of this content. You can submit your blog to aggregators such as Hype Machine, We Are Hunted and Elbo.ws to help get the word spread about your content. It is easy and fun to do. Groups like Ocelot do a great job of this with their blog Our Time United, by posting when other groups do remixes of theirs, putting up their own singles and showing off the things they are interested in like politics and architecture.


What we are reading on the Internet that may be of interest to you or potentially melt your brain with its stupidity.


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.



The Roland TB-303 is an amazing bass sequencer that is instantly recognizable and capable of amazing things. However, it's programming certainly could be easier. This video breaks down some of the more advanced programming details and dives into a bit of pitch shifting as well.

VBS.TV - London Pirate Radio Stations

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It is no secret that online radio is one of the best ways to promote your music. With services like Pandora, Last.FM, Jango, Blip.FM and other services not only can you get your music before the ears of listeners who like the type of music you make, but you can also get paid for your plays as you begin to dominate the online radio airwaves.






It all comes down to this. As you come down to entering the studio and then recording your songs you are now tasked with one of the most difficult balancing acts ever known to man (ok... well maybe to musicians). We have written countless articles on how to avoid many of the pitfalls many musicians fall into when they go to capture their material. Read on and make something great for us all to hear.









With everyday, as the gatekeepers die and the major labels lose power it becomes more and more about just having a great song. This being the case you better start brushing up on your skills! We have assembled a lot of advice and tools for you to use to write better songs on the other side of this link.






When trying to break your music out of your circle of friends and out to the whole world, you are inevitably going to have to take on the hat of doing some publicity for your own music. As you begin to take on this large task there is numerous bits of advice that you may have overlooked on how to do this effectively. We have assembled numerous articles on how to take over the world of music and get it out there.






Now that you actually have songs recorded you need to get them out to the world to be heard. With every day that passes more and more amazing tools become available for artists to do this without the help of a label. We keep an up to date guide of everything you could ever want to know about what you should do in order to make the right choice on how to get your music out to the world.






Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Tumblr, YouTube all become more and more important everyday (well maybe not Myspace, but contrary to much chatter it is still important to know the most up to date ways to make Myspace feed your other pages). We keep musicians up to date with the most current ways to use all of these social networks to promote your music. If you are not reading our guides to social networks you are missing out on the crucial knowledge of how to promote your music with the most up to date techniques.






What separates the winners and losers is how well you handle playing live and then getting your show on the road. Playing live and touring may seem easy but there are countless pitfalls that one can encounted over time. We show you all the new tricks of the trade as well as wise advice that has been passed down over the years.






Managing a group of people and keeping everyone on the same page and motivated is one of the biggest make or break factors of any sucessful group. There are many emerging tools that can make this easier and we sort through them, all the while dispensing valuable advice on how to deal with your members with minimal chaos.






Getting covered by blogs is fast becoming one of the things that everyone wants to figure out. Sadly, there is not a lot of information out there on how to do just this. We have quite a few articles with the techniques we use to get the bands we work with on to some of the top blogs out there.