- 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
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
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.
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.
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.
- Control your iPod with ease using the iPod Serial library
- Goldbaby's The Fat Juno 6
- Renoise 2.5 Is Out Now & You Can Try It For Free
- An Interview with Multi-Platinum Record Producer Steve Migliore, aka Mr. Mig
- Careful Drink Placement
- EQ Before or After Compression?
- Ear Training: Acoustic Guitar
- Native Instruments Introduces Evolve Mutations 2
One of the most interesting pieces of data that people are always wondering about is when to post big news about your music. Many people say 9 AM EST on a Tuesday, while others will say to get the weekend buzz going with a mid afternoon Friday post. Fortunately, there are some nerds out there who will actually crunch this data! As far as Facebook sharing goes, blogger Dan Zarrella has written up an extensive summary that finds that the most Facebook sharing is done on the weekends, since many workplaces now have Facebook blocked. He has a very insightful blog post where you can take away some interesting thoughts on how to get your news spread around the net more efficiently. Check it out.
If there is anything most bands regularly hear from their adoring fans it is that they are, soooo much better live than they are on record. While some of this hyperbole just comes from the energy of live, loud music and enjoying it with others, there is many a time a band can bring a whole new experience to fans with their live show. The funny thing is, many bands who are great live do not exploit it and show this fact off to their fans as much as they should. After the jump we will go over some ideas on how you can show off your live skills.
In a move that is becoming a regular promotion for buzz bands with a passionate following, weirdo-rockers MGMT are launching a scavenger hunt that they claim will yield life-changing prizes. The band will announce the location of the MGMT Mobile Vehicle in different cities where upon fans can descend to the location and claim these hyped up prizes. If done right, this could be a great way to get awareness and buzz going for a band who needs to defy the sophomore slump to keep their hype going.
In the past, we have discussed the importance of having share buttons on your site so your fans can easily tell everyone about you. If you haven't heard, Google recently launched their new sharing system Google Buzz. While this new feature may have been met with skepticism, if your fans want to use it to tell their friend, why not let them? The site ReBuzzThis has made you a wide variety of buttons so you can enable this. Take advantage now and spread the word!
Drowned in Sound has up a fantastic article on the buzz band Blood Red Shoes, who have dispensed some amazing DIY advice to up and coming groups that you don't get to hear everyday. A fantastic read with great advice like the tidbit below.
"This is a sad fact because there are people around our band, and a lot of bands, who really believe in what they're doing and will work fantastically hard to make things happen. I have a lot of love for these people. A lot of folk in the music industry are not evil contrary to popular belief. Actually they mostly start out really genuine music fans who want to work in a music environment and the issue is actually the system itself, which like everything else under capitalism, is set up so the workers are the ones getting ripped off the most. Nevertheless, no-one will quite feel like you do about your band, nobody will have that 10 minutes of suicidal end-of-the-world depression you get after a shit gig. Or that utter disappointment when you see they've printed your album sleeve on the wrong kind of paper."
This past Saturday was March 6th, which while being insignificant in the
grand scheme of things, this was a big day for Musformation. After two
months of planning, brain storming and research Todd and I officially
started posting to Musformation on a daily basis on 3/6/09. It wasn't a
planned launch as much as a bunch of bugs got fixed, we started giving
out the URL, and we had something to say. The later part of that saying
is a lot of what this site is about. We have something to say.
- How To Pursue A "Corporate Sponsorship" To Get Funding For Your Music
- Band Tip: Spend Energy Making New Fans Instead Of Badgering Your Friends
- Lessons On Building Fan Community From Lady GaGa
- Surround Sound Coming Soon To iTunes
- Getting Paid By SoundExchange - Watch The MetaData!
- Music Business Reality - You Need Smart Management And A Smart Label
- Root Music Is A Great Way To Make Your Facebook Page Look Fantastic
- Why Attending Your Mastering Session Can Hurt Your Record
- RockBand Network For Unsigned Artists Has Launched
- Exercises To Improve Your Controller/Button Timing
- Initial Reports On Rock Band Authoring Is DIY Is A No Go
- Scratch Off Record Covers Are All The Rage - See The New MGMT Cover In Action
- MP3Cut Is A Website To Edit MP3s/Make Ringtones
- Mistakes You Shouldn't Make When Writing A Press Release
For a third time we have to link this fantastic film. It is now available to watch for free online. By far one of the best films made in showing how Creative Commons licenses can benefit your music. A must watch
- Anti- signs Lost in the Trees
- The Maine Sign To Sire Records
- His Name Was Iron Inks With Masquerade Recordings
- Paper + Plastick signs A Loss For Words
- Borderland Gets Signed
- The Fall Of Troy Breaks Up
- Ya Boy signs to Konvict/Interscope
- Nicki Minaj signs to Cash Money/Motown
- Century Media Signs Vampires Everywhere
- 6131 signs Such Gold
- Don Giovanni Records signs Byrds of Paradise
Ohhh Ahhhh! Now that is a good looking Facebook page! RootMusic is a site that offers a great looking Facebook App with a great sounding player, a very clean layout and show listings. If you are looking to get a nice clean Facebook layout and do away with some of the lamer options for putting music on Facebook this App could be a a great idea for you. (via GetFresh)
Control is a hard thing to give up, and after you have made your record you now need to put it in someone's hands to do crucial final tweaks. If botched it can ruin the experience of your record or if done properly it can accentuate and give your record a breath of fresh air. Mastering is the last creative step in making any record that has the potential to be great get to that greatness. Unfortunately, many times trying to keep control at this stage can be one of the things that brings down your record. The relationship between an engineer's speakers and their ears has a value which can never be calculated. That said, many times artists/producers will walk into a mastering engineers room and try to make critical decisions on the sound of a record when they do not know the room very well and can't make proper judgments. In the hundreds of records I have made over the years, one of the smartest decisions I have learned to make is to stay home from the mastering session and have the mastering engineer send me files to listen to on my own speakers in my own room so I can make educated decisions on how I want the record to sound. By being in my own comfortable environment this has made it so I am happier with my records and know I am always making the right decisions.
Sometimes news comes in pairs but it appears the RockBand network launched today as we were writing the last article on it. Check out 100+ new artists on your gaming system. More at Wired.
Over on The Music Think Tank, Brian Hazard has authored a look back on his experience authoring his own music's Rock Band upload and so far the reports are looking grim. I have heard the same from a handful of artists that we work with that this process is near torturous experience. As per my usual personality I am skeptical when anyone complains until I saw what you went through to do this. As someone who has worked on a DAW daily for the past decade I was shocked at how techie and annoying the process can be. If you are looking to do this and have money to burn TuneCore offers up a pricy solution and we have seen a few studios starting to offer the service. We will keep you posted as more options develop, but for now be warned that if you choose to go this route yourself it can be a long and painful process.
Last week, we linked you to a cool scratch off album cover, it seems MGMT caught on to this idea too.
Yesterday, we all flipped our lids when we saw OK Go's latest video spread around the Internet and saw that they yet again made one of the best viral videos the world has ever seen. The small detail that made this video a bit more interesting was that it was sponsored by State Farm Insurance and contained a little message from them at the end. We have long been told that the future of music is in corporate sponsorships and partnerships, but the question is how do you go about getting one of these? Follow us to the jump and we will give you some ideas.
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