March 15th, 2010 – If you’ve ever recorded electric guitars at home and felt like they sounded a little thin, maybe even flat, what you need to introduce is variety. When you hear thick and lush guitars on your favorite album, they’ve likely used a variety of amps, guitars, and even different microphones on the same source.

Check out a how-they-did-it feature on almost any big rock CD and you’ll find out that they rarely go for a one guitar, one amp, and one mic set up unless the producer is going for a more live sound. Typically, amps are carefully chosen to compliment each other and may all be driven from one guitar. Microphones are also matched for their sonic characteristics.

So how can us home recording enthusiasts on a budget get similar sounds? Well, there are plenty of amp emulation plugins out there, so recording one guitar track and routing it through multiple “amps” is one possibility. I think the plugins have progressed quite a bit, however they’re not quite there yet in my opinion. I prefer to close mic a speaker cabinet rather than going direct into my audio interface and into plugins. I’ll then record the same part with different settings each time. I have a Vox amp that has some amp emulations built in, so I can approximate multi-amp microphone techniques.

Interestingly, many guitarists only have one amp, but have many guitars. If you have that luxury, you can record the same part with different guitars. For example, you might use a Les Paul to try to get lower end crunchiness with a Stratocaster for capturing treble tone. If you have an acoustic guitar with an electric pickup, you could even try recording it through your amp. Of course, acoustics have a lot of low end compared to most electrics, so you might have to aggressively EQ the recording.

These are just some of the things you can try to thicken up your guitar recordings. The bottom line to take away from this is, recording variety will go a long way in filling out the sound. Whether you have multiple mics, guitars, or amps, try to record multiple sources, being careful to tailor them to the sound you want.

How do you record thick guitars?

March 14th, 2010 – If you have a small space, and nowhere to put all your guitars (must be a nice problem to have), you might be interested in the Guitar Hanger. Basically, it’s a beefy clothes hanger with one side that is built for holding onto your guitar. Your guitars stay out of sight and coddled by your shirts (if you actually hang them up instead of leaving them in piles on the floor).

The Guitar Hanger sells for $25 each which seems expensive, but I wouldn’t exactly trust my own DIY skills to make my own. Of course, the best place for a guitar (save for a specially designed humidity and temperature controlled display case) is in its case since it’s more insulated to temperature changes, but with all those clothes in the closet, and if you keep your closet door closed most of the time, the closet will be the next best place.

The Guitar Hanger via Lifehacker

March 12th, 2010 – These days, producers write songs and songwriters produce their own songs. DAWs are so powerful, and with the great plug-ins out there to compliment them, a song written and produced in the basement can rival a commercial release with thousands of dollars into it.

With people creating fantastic music on their own, many without any formal training, there are many different ways to go about building a track from scratch. Sometimes a synth line will set off my ideas, or a melody will suddenly come to me while I’m trying to get to sleep. However the idea comes, I almost always start with the hook (either melody or sound), build drums to it, then add a bass (if the bass isn’t already the hook). Finally I’ll add instruments to lift choruses, and complimentary counterpoints to the main melodies.

I tend to come up with lyrics last, I find it hard to write a song to lyrics that already dictate a specific melodic rhythm. However some songwriters I work with create lyrics and smooth them around the melody and rhythm of the already created track. Everyone has their own way that they’re comfortable building tracks, and I’m interested in hearing how you go about. How do you typically build a song?

March 11th, 2010 – I’ve always admired luthiers. They’re true craftspeople and in the modern age of mass produced instruments, it’s refreshing to play hand-crafted (as opposed to assembled) instruments. However, having a guitar made to your standards can certainly cost a pretty penny. What’s a musician to do when she wants a customized instrument but can’t afford one?

How about assembling your own from Makershed’s Saga kits? Coming with all the pieces you need to build your instrument, all you need to do is assemble and add your personal painted flair. While they don’t require anything close to a luthier’s skill, you can at least save yourself money by assembling your own instrument. There are lots of other designs. I saw a Strat, Tele, SG, Flying V, Les Paul, mandolin, bass and banjo on there.

Pretty cool concept. I have custom shop guitars, but I’ve never put one together. What makes this even cooler is that you can hack it to your hearts content, adding better pots, new pickups, or even a Kaossilator. All the basic pieces are there for you to put together as you see fit.

Saga electric guitar kit: LC-Style

Yoshi Akai via Engadget

March 9th, 2010 – If you’re an independent artist, one of the best ways to make a living from your music is to license your music for use in films, TV, or video games. Of course, it’s not as simple as putting your music out there and having the money roll in; you need to work with a company that has connections to businesses that need music like yours.

Finding a good company to represent you is a daunting task for many indie artists not used to thinking of that specific revenue stream. Indie Music Tech has a great list of licensing companies you can contact to partner with. Licensing companies only make money when you make money, and contracts are generally non-exclusive meaning you still own all the rights to your songs. This means that you can also shop the same songs to multiple licensing companies.

Normally, licensing companies charge the same percentage as publishing companies. This means that they will take 50% of the publisher’s share. You will get 100% of the writer’s share (that you share with your co-writers if you have any), and then you get 50% of the publishers share which equals 75% of the total revenue gained from the song.

I must stress that I’m not a lawyer, but these numbers seem to be pretty standard. Of course, before you enter into any license agreement (actually any contract at all), consult your lawyer.

Indie Music Tech

March 8th, 2010 – These days if you aren’t promoting yourself on sites like Facebook or Twitter, you’re losing out on a huge amount of potential fans that could stumble on you and promote your music to their friends. Facebook in particular seems quite powerful at connecting your music with new listeners. The problem is that the fan pages on Facebook leave much to be desired.

Root Music is a site that connects to your Facebook fan page, and it allows you to create a much more effective landing page. Not only does it look better than the default fan page, it allows you to upload music (through Root Music’s site) which fans can stream straight from Facebook. On top of that, you can easily update information about your band and add gig dates.

I heard about the Root Music beta and wanted to see what the fuss was about, so today I set about creating a fan page to check it out. Creating an account is very easy. You go to Root Music site (linked below), log in using your Facebook account, allow Root Music to install its app on your Facebook page, and you’re good to go.

You don’t make any changes to your band page on through Facebook, you make them from the Root Music site. Changes you make are automatically reflected on your Facebook page; there’s no need to export new information to Facebook. You’ll need to enter information about your band into Root Music, it doesn’t automatically pull the bio information. However, it will pull the photo albums already associated with your fan page.

Right now the information you can enter is pretty focused, and that’s a good thing. Too much clutter is what has caused many a Myspace site to become unwieldy. You can list band members, a location, influences and a bio. There’s another tab which allows your fans to contact you via Facebook email, phone (don’t be an idiot and put your number on there unless you like stalkers), email, and your website.

Root Music is in beta so there were a few issues I came across, none of which really bothered me that much. For one, when I first set up my account using Firefox, it didn’t get to the stage where I let Root Music access my Facebook page. However, when I used Safari, I had no problem. This may be due to some of the aggressive plugins I have installed on Firefox, and I’d be interested in seeing if any of you have the same issue.

As well, when I wanted to enter two websites into the bio page, it connected both into one address. This meant that the destination address was garbled. I tried separating the websites with a coma, and it still didn’t work. In the end, I entered only one website and it was fine.

I also had an issue uploading a DJ set on Root Music’s site. Regular-sized mp3’s uploaded fine, but the 40 minute set, despite appearing to upload to completion, did not appear in my playlist. I’m not sure if this was a limitation of the Soundcloud account Root Music has (I have the same set uploaded on my Soundcloud page), or a limit set by Root Music. If there is a limit to the song length, it would be nice to have that warning (or perhaps I missed it?).

When you edit your page, there’s a tab with a question mark allowing you to tell the developers what you’d like to see there. Brainstorming off the top of my head, it would be useful to have a place to embed videos, or even a tab for blog entries (I don’t like Facebook notes). Maybe integration with a merch store would be cool in the future too.

I could see other ways that Roots Music might make their app even more useful by adding metrics. Could you imagine being able to see the who, what, and wheres of people accessing your fan page? Your personal Soundcloud page allows you to do this, but using Root Music’s account means you don’t get access to this valuable data. Since Root Music has app access, could it not mine this data in a future iteration? I’m sure serious bands would gladly pay for this information. Root Music could even become an affordable alternative to TopSpin.

After trying out Root Music, I have to say that it’s a very useful tool. I’m not sure how they’ll monetize it in the future, but for now I suggest giving it a go and start leveraging the Facebook community. I like the simple aesthetics, and I love that I can upload music using the Soundcloud player but not have to hit on the limits of my personal Soundcloud account; I get to use theirs. It has a lot of room to grow and could become huge if it added metrics. I gots great ideas I tell you whot!

Root Music

March 6th, 2010 – A couple years back, I had a chance to move to Austin for work. More interesting to me than the work, was Austin’s vibrant music community. The crown jewel in that community is the annual South by South West conference which combines music, business, and technology all together into a huge party. I’ve never had the fortune of attending, but it’s on my list.

Many bands first break at SXSW, and many established bands also play it. Each year, songs from the bands who are attending SXSW are bundled into a gigantic torrent and offered for free download. If you’re interested in hearing what may be “the next new it band”, check it out. Or if you just want a whole wack of new music to listen to, definitely download the torrent.

SXSW 2010 Unofficial Torrents via Lifehacker

March 5th, 2010 – Have you ever wanted to ditch all the batteries in your guitar pedal rig? For someone like me that doesn’t get out of the studio much, it seems like a waste to use up all those nine volt batteries when I don’t really need the portability. Instructable user mattthegamer463, has created a $25 DIY power supply to daisy chain through all your pedals. Of course, dealing with all that electricity can potentially be dangerous, so all the standard warnings apply.

Build A Power Supply For Your Guitar Pedals

March 4th, 2010 – So lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about sampling. Legally it’s pretty straightforward, if you take a piece of someone else’s recording then you have to secure rights to do that. Whether or not you agree with the way the legal system is set up, is not what I want to discuss here.

I’ve discussed my take on sampling before and while my feelings on the subject have evolved slightly, I still largely feel the same. To make sure everyone’s up to speed on copyrights, I’ll go over them in one sentence (it’s definitely not that simple but it’ll do for what I’m trying to explain). There are two basic copyrights when we’re talking about music, the copyright to the composition itself, and the copyright to the actual recording.

What’s gotten people into trouble historically, is the copyright of the recording. Producers are taking chunks of a recording that’s copyrighted and using it in their own compositions. I’m not knocking it, I do it too, but not for stuff that I’m releasing, and if I do plan on releasing it, I use royalty free loop libraries.

However, what would happen if a producer found a sample he liked, recorded a new version from scratch, then sliced it up. I’m not talking about sampling a recognizable instrumental or vocal loop for the purposes of evoking that original song, but slicing up a sample into building block-sized pieces and reconstructing it into something completely different.

For example, say there’s a really nice funk horn loop that a producer slices out of a track. He slices it up and starts playing it out in his MPC and realizes that he could have a really great track. So to get around the master recording copyright, he calls in some of his friends who play horns and records them playing the exact same part. Now he can take their performance and chop it up just like the original sample, but without incurring the wrath of record label lawyers.

Would he also skirt the songwriting copyright? So imagine that horn sample he aped was the main melody of that song and therefore a recognizable part of the song’s copyright. However, since he’s basically sliced up the horns beyond recognition (and used his own freshly recorded version), he’s not using that melody anymore, he’s made his own. At what level, however does it become a completely new composition and not part of the original song? I don’t know the answer to that, and perhaps any of the more law enlightened out there might help with some answers here.

Some producers use samples to evoke the same feeling of the original, but remixed. Others use samples to set off inspiration and as source material to work with. The former will clearly run foul of the copyrights, but will the latter be free of problems if using re-recording the source material? I’m not sure, but it’s something I thought of, and I believe that the law will allow that.

What do you think? Can anyone with a better knowledge of copyright law than I jump in here?