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Caught Bruce Hornsby on the Howard Stern show yesterday. The topic was American Idol.
He said that there is some amazing talent on the show, but that great singers are pretty common. You can walk in just about any chuch, especially a black church, and find at least one or two.
But what about good songwriters? They're much more rare.
Something to think about...
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The LA Times has some interesting things to say about SoundExchange, such as...
...Washington-based SoundExchange released a list
of 9,000 recording artists with unclaimed royalties in what it
described as a last-ditch effort to distribute $500,000 worth of checks
to the musicians for digital broadcasts dating from the late '90s. And
the clock is ticking: The artists forfeit the money to SoundExchange if
they don't claim it by Dec. 15.
The release of the list of
unpaid artists has become the butt of jokes on industry Internet
forums. And the disclosure comes at an inconvenient time for
SoundExchange, which is arguing before the Library of Congress that it
should remain the exclusive distributor of digital performance
royalties that amount to millions of dollars a year.
"It says
obviously how well they do their job — which is not well at all," said
Fred Wilhelms, a Nashville lawyer who helps performers and songwriters
collect back royalties. "How do you not find the Olsen twins? All
you've got to do is get off a bus in Salt Lake City and you'll find the
Mormon Tabernacle Choir."
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Music Business Radio is now up on MySpace. If you are also, please add us as a friend.
And speaking of Music Business Radio and MySpace, I just did a great interview for the show with Tracy Gershon, VP of A&R for Warner Brothers Records. She had some great comments about MySpace that I know you'll find interesting.
This show is currently being edited, but will air soon. To make sure you don't miss it, make sure you subscribe to the Music Business Radio podcast.
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Jay Moonah just launched a new music business podcast at onlinemusicmarketing.com.
Jay is looking for interesting stories from folks who have used (or are trying to use) new online channels in music promotion. As people learn as much (or more) from failure as success, both "good and bad" stories are of interest. And if you don't agree with what Jay says, he's open to hearing that too!
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by Mike Zanov
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One day you will realize that your guitar doesn't sound as good as your friend's, and not because he is a better player. You are playing the same chords, but your guitar sounds crummy! Why? Because your guitar is not perfectly tuned!
If this is happening to you, then you must really work on tuning your guitar. Once you get it perfectly tuned, only then the chords will came to life! If you're not perfectly in tune, you're missing out on the entire experience. This is especially true when you're playing electric guitar with distortion. When the notes of a chord are played together, the result should be one full sound that stands on it's own. This is what occurs when you are in ideal tune.
There are two tools that you can employ when tuning your guitar. One is an electronic tuner and the other is your ear. Tuning by ear is far more important because you must be able to be familiar with different pitches in sound. This is vital to being a musician. Ear training takes time. Don't get upset because you can't tune by ear in a week. Your brain needs to get familiar with the notes in music.
I want to share some different ways to tune your guitar. The first is the most typical. It involves matching the notes on the neighboring strings as follows:
6th string, 5th fret and 5th string open
5th string, 5th fret and 4th string open
4th string, 5th fret and 3rd string open
3rd string, 4th fret and 2nd string open
2nd string, 5th fret and 1st string open
With this technique you are matching the notes precisely to obtain the correct tuning. All of the notes are the same in pitch. If you're off on one of the strings, the rest of them will be out of tune, so be careful when tuning.
A second way to tune is by octaves. An octave is the interval between two notes with the same name. If you played the C major scale: C D E F G A B C, the two Cs are one octave apart. You can tune with octaves as follows:
6th string open and 5th string, 7th fret
5th string open and 4th string, 7th fret
4th string open and 3rd string, 7th fret
3rd string open and 2nd string, 8th fret
2nd string open and 1st string, 7th fret
By now you're most likely wondering, "What about the tuning of the 6th string?" Good point. When you tune the rest of the strings from the 6th, it's called "Relative Tuning." Even though you may not be in tune with a piano, you WILL be in tune with yourself and that's fine for practicing.
If you want to be in "Concert Pitch", you will either need to tune from a tuner, another instrument or a pitch pipe. I advise that you get a pitch pipe to start with. It's fine for ear training and it's easier to fulfill than a piano!
One additional way that I tune guitars is by simply using chords. Once you know how they are expected to sound, they become very handy in tuning. Start with E major, then play a G major and tweak it a little if needed, then play the D major. All three are the open position chords at the top of the neck.
After properly tuning your guitar, if you can't get a rich vibration when playing chords then you might consider adjusting the intonation of your electric guitar, as well. You'll be amazed at how great a perfectly tuned guitar will sound! After all, there is really no other alternative!
Provided by the MusicDish Network. Copyright © MusicDish LLC 2006 - Republished with Permission
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by Lou Lombardi
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Do you want to really beef up your lead tracks? Are you jonesing for that huge vocal sound? Maybe you're having trouble getting a track to "sit" in the mix without sounding tacked on. This is a common problem with vocals.
Try this:
Using the track copy feature in your software make at least 2 copies of the track. EQ each track differently. Make one track very bright, leave one flat and create a track EQ'd with a lot of bass. Don't be afraid to get drastic with your settings.
Now you have three frequencies that you can simply access by working your faders. If it is sounding a little thin, blend in the "bassy" track. Too dark? bring up you "treble" track, etc...
You can also experiment with varying degrees of pan and effects. Try creating a track that is soaked in verb and then just barely blending it in with the others. If there is a certain frequency that you just can't seem to hear create a track just for that one. Then blend it in as needed. I have songs with ten or more tracks all EQ'd and effected differently...very fat!
You can apply this technique to other instruments as well. A cool thing to do with the kick drum is to create 2 tracks. EQ one for "snap" and one for "thump". You can have both sounds and simply mix them to taste.
This yields a much more of the "three dimensional" sound that you hear on most recordings today.
This isn't a "cure all". There are lots of other factors to consider, but I have found this technique to be very helpful.
Experiment...have fun!
Provided by the MusicDish Network. Copyright © MusicDish LLC 2006 - Republished with Permission
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SoundExchange owes artists royalty money, but can't locate many of over 9000 of them...
Click here to see the complete list.
If you know of (or are) any of the artists on the list, please have them contact SoundExchange immediately via the link above.
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My friend Bob Baker is doing a free teleseminar this Monday about "Living the Full-Time Indie Music Mindset." This event is limited to only 100 people, so hit the link for details on how to call in and be part of it.
I just finished up at Americana Music Conference this week and talked to a company who works with Bob about organizing similar, but in-person events with both of us. Since I haven't had a chance to talk to Bob about the idea, somebody attending his teleconference please pass on this information for me. :)
Seriously-- I've taken a lot of time off the road this year to concentrate on non-speaking projects, including Music Business Radio. And yes, I know that is ironic considering Music Business Radio is nothing but me and my guests speaking... But I'm preparing to hit the road hard in 2007 and I hope to see you out and about...hopefully with Bob Baker beside me.
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CD baby.com, or how a guy who never wanted to start a dot-com business survived the boom and bust and now has a dot-com business worth millions
Frank Silverstein, producer, MSNBC
I’m working on a story about how entrepreneurs find the right marketplace to sell their products. We decided to look at musicians selling their CDs. We thought they’d be a good model for people making products that appeal to a narrow but loyal customer-base — and we wondered how they manage to get their CDs to their customers when they don’t have the advertising and distribution leverage of a big corporate music label.
We discovered that one way independent musicians manage is through a Web site specially designed to serve their needs, called CD Baby. It was created by a musician who never wanted to be a businessman. All he wanted to do was sell his own CDs. But since none of the record stores online would put his music on their Web sites without support from a record label, he bought a book about it, and figured out how to set up a Web site for himself.
The guy is Derek Sivers (rhymes with ‘rivers’) and he says he never really intended to start a business in the first place. However, his company, CD Baby, is racking now up sales in the millions of dollars, employees are working seven days a week, and there are well over 75 people on his payroll.
It’s a lot of work, he told me, but it's work that Sivers says he enjoys doing because he knows it makes a difference in the lives of the musicians who use his service. And, it's work which seems to have paid off big time. He says several of the big music labels have made offers to buy his company, offers big enough that he could retire for life — but he’d never consider selling his business!
I wanted to know, why wouldn't he ever sell?
“People have offered incredible money to buy CD Baby and I'm just not interested because this what I love doing best and no amount of money could replace this."
“Come on," I said. “That’s awfully hard to believe.”
But Sivers explains: “I saw friends start businesses with the best of intentions but once somebody started waving around tens of millions of dollars in their face it was hard for them to say no. They would say: “Ooh, ooh,” and they'd think of all the things they could do with the money. And, at the end of the day they sold out their dream. It killed me that they would take this small cool business that they started with a mission, and just sell it off to the highest bidder and they'd often be miserable afterwards. They'd have a big bank account and they'd just be lost, because they loved the business they’d created and they’d sold it to someone else."
CD Baby’s success on the Internet beat the odds for the dot-com industry. When most of the dot-com businesses went broke Sivers’ continued to grow. I asked Derek how come he didn't go bust like everyone else.
"I think one of the main reasons CD Baby survived the boom and bust is that I never had any investors. I was really running CD Baby the same way you would run a hot dog stand. Which is, I only had $500 when I started it. I put my $500 into it and everything since then just stayed profitable. It was just me on a little folding card table in my bedroom. And, ever since the second month in business it's been profitable. I’ve never had to take any investors, never had to take any advertising and all that stuff that really caused the dot-com crash didn't really apply to me because I was running it like a little hot dog stand. I really couldn't afford to lose even a $100 for a month. I had to stay profitable and so that's why it has slowly and modestly stuck around.
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A band in Toronto called Uncle Seth has done something right when it comes to building a mailing list...
When you sign up for the Uncle Seth mailing list, you'll get a download of the band's new single, "To Be An Angel"...a good incentive for fans.
Also take a look at the band's podcast promo for this promotion. This is another great way to use the Podcast Music Network that every band and musician should use.
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