But I’ve found that I think of bass playing and laying down the “bottom” differently now than I did when I began playing.  And I thought I’d write about that today.

MELODY & RHYTHM

When I first started playing, I tried to make my bass lines sound like melody lines, or riffs.  And I was experimenting with chords on the bass, and doing guitar like things as I played.  I think of it as two different sides to music.  Melody and Rhythm.  At the time that I first started playing, it was all melody and no rhythm.  What do you expect from a former guitar player?

Now this is not to say that melody isn’t good for a bass line, in fact the best ones are the hummable ones.  Again depending on the song itself.  When does the bass line stand out in the song?  Does the section “build” towards a musical crescendo?  How does the bass help that section?  Without getting into too much western music theory, I’ll just offer this little thing that I think of sometimes as I’m trying to come up with bass lines.  I read this somewhere….

Music can be seen as consisting of two categories… consonance and dissonance.  The consonance is the “tonic” or “key” or first chord of a song.  And the dissonance (in varying degrees of dissonance) is everything else in the song.  In a scale the first note is the “tonic” or consonance.  Then every other note in the scale “wants” to get back to the tonic.  The dissonances are called Supertonic, Mediant, Subdominant, Dominant, Submediant, and Leading Tone.  You’ll never use those phrases again. 

All this to say that the bass can help get the chord progression from dissonant chords, to tonic chords by the lines that are chosen.  Leading into the “tonic” chords by walking up to them, or jumping from the (V, Dominant).  Of course all this is too technical right?  Probably, just something to think about.  Emphasize the different sections in the song that you are going to.  And use your ear to do it.  Do what sounds good.

LOCK INTO DRUMMER

So, then one day while I was recording.  I realized this. 

I really didn’t need to play that much.  Some of the best lines I’ve heard really aren’t melody lines, but they are just notes that are rhythmically locked into to the kick drum of the drummer.  It’s like the bass drum and bass are one instrument. 

When I first did this on a song, it kinda opened up a whole new world in how I put together bass lines.  Because it sounds so tight and locked in, and it freed up the rest of the band to play on top of that rock solid foundation.  The whole band began to play better because I started to play less but totally in sync with my drummer. 

I think drummers appreciate it also, because it makes their bass drum sound huge.

You’re not going to be able to catch all of the hits, but if you and your drummer get together, and figure out the bass kick pattern, then go off of that.  I think you’ll notice a big jump in the sound of the entire band as a whole.

good luck.

You’ve rehearsed a lot, and are ready to lay down some tracks at a nice, or not so nice recording studio.  You’ve probably like I did, paid a bunch of money to have someone engineer the demo and are really wanting things to go well.

Here are just some thoughts about what things to think about once you are ready to go and get everyone together to play.  I recorded some pop songs, and so these are the things that I had to keep in mind, but I guess that the process would be slightly different say if you were recording a hip hop track, or classical concerto, or anything in between.  But for us, it was all about planning…

ARRIVE ON TIME and READY

To me, nothing gets me more aggravated then not having the little things in place before I go and spend money for all the minutes that I’m at a studio.  Most studios charge by the hour, so every minute counts, and if your guitars need to be restrung, or people in your group show up late, it can be expensive and annoying.  My thought is to be overly prepared and ready, because inevitably, setting up the studio itself for a good sound takes time away from playing.  And if you are on a low budget like me, then it pays to have some things good and ready to go.  Here are just some things that I had planned and ready…

1. PRINT OUT A SONG LIST / MUSIC CHARTS marked with verse, choruses, etc.

Even if your band doesn’t need them, it’s a good idea for the engineer to follow them easily with lyrics and all so that she is on the same page as everyone else.  Not to mention at the very least, the engineer will know what to title the ProTools project.

2.  BRING A TUNER, CHANGE STRINGS DAYS BEFORE SESSION

Just do it, have it ready, with cables and everything in an organized place so that the quicker you can set up, the quicker you can get to playing.  No earrings (because of headphones), and no jangly pieces of clothing (because the mic might pick it up).  Everybody turn their cell phones off.

NOW PLAY

Hopefully, as you all are about to play, you’ve been rehearsing with the band by playing with a metronome.  Most likely you will play with one during the recording, so know who will count off the clicks and how each song will start and end.  So, if you are going to fade out a song once its’ mixed, you all need to know to keep playing at the end of the song so that there is enough to fade with.

Stay loose, and try to react to the players around you, and not focus too much on your own part.  Now is the time when all the rehearsing comes in, and if you have rehearsed in a way that it beneficial to the playing now, or if you didn’t rehearse enough.  Your own part should be second nature by now, and the differences between a good take and a bad one have more to do with feel with each other.

Also be very polite to your engineer.  I feel like people in the music world have to deal with too many attitudes and egos.  You generally will be able to get the engineer on your side by being nice.  Just a thought.

SING LIKE YOU MEAN IT

So, my problem when I started was that I was focused on “blending” which is a term used for choir singers to match the tonal quality of the person next to you.  Thereby giving it like a more “rounded” or smooth sound.  When you add 50 people to it, it sounds large and reverby.

However, when you use that technique for rock singing into an SM57 or some other microphone, all that comes out is this wash of a sound.  I think that onstage microphones used for rock, or hip hop, reward staccato ryhthms and “sharp” sounds.  Sounds that are able to cut through the loudness of the stage itself, and the din of live music.  If you have a band, and the bass is taking care of the lows, and the keys, and guitars are in the mids, and cymbals are in the highs… it really doesn’t leave very much frequency range for the human voice (which reside somewhere in the mids).  So, “blending” to get a round sound doesn’t do very much except add to the wash of sound.

I believe that the correct path to take is to sing as if you were the lead singer with your parts.  With conviction.  And try to produce a tone that is clear and bright.  The blending should be taken care of by the reverb and other effects of the PA system.  One important note about that is that it’s important to be sure that the rythms of the melody are in the right place.  That way, things will sound locked in.

PUT YOUR MIC WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS

Another common mistake that I see people do is to sing “across” the mic, rather than into it.  In the rush to setup for a gig, in New york there is like five minutes of time from when the other band leaves to when you have to go on, I’ve seen some people point the mic to set it up and then leave it for the rest of the show as they play their instrument and sing “under” the mic.  Maybe pointing the mic at their eyebrows or something.

Every mic has it’s sweet spots for where it picks up sound the best, but to make it simple, in most live situations, you’ll find a mic not unlike the Shure SM58 or something like that. 

So, Just keep in mind that you want to point your mouth directly into the mic.  Pretend you are singing into the bottom of the mic.  As if you were singing into a paper towel tube. If that means adjusting the mic on the stand and at a lower level than you may be accustomed, then so be it.

I think you’ll find the sound more to your liking.  Good luck.

IDEAS

When I get an idea for a part of a song. I jump onto my instrument of choice: the guitar.  I start singing what I heard in my head and finding the base chords for that part. I then decide if it’s a bridge or a chorus. In this case the particular song I’m working on has started with a verse part.  I usually riff on this for awhile and then find a chorus by playing chords next to it or complimentary to it. I’m not a classically trained musician so I tend to strike chords around the area that I’m playing in and then something will resonate with me. I call that the beginnings of a chorus.  I now have a chorus and verse. Or if you are keeping track in songwriting land: an A and B part.  With these I can lay out the body of a song.  I usually get a rough version of it going by laying it out ABAB(verse, chorus, verse chorus).

BRIDGES

Now whatever I’m doing is down to finding a bridge using the same method I used prior to find the chorus. The only difference is that  I have a little more freedom to use a chord that is not so complimentary to my ears. I explore it. I lengthen it. I slow it down. I play it faster than the rest of the song. It’s supposed to be experimental. Sometimes it works right away and others it ends up taking the most time out of the entire process.  Most of the time, I write every song with the same form initially so that I can have a whole song to play: so I put the bridge or the ‘C’ part after ABAB….C and then I end on the chorus again: ABABCB.

TROUBLESHOOTS

When I have a whole song laid out, it allows me to see it for what it is. Do I like it? Does it drag? Where am I having problems? What is the ‘hook’? How can I accent that the best? Songwriting is a series of questions I ask myself to trim away an influx of ideas. Form is determined when I can stand back and see it as a whole.

THEN I try and fuck that up to make it as original as I can.  I haven’t said anything about lyrics because I usually do them last. I always have notebooks and word documents laying around about ideas for songs. I find something that I like and stick with that theme and then I’m off to write way too much about it and then I work on trimming that down. Now, for you it might work exactly the opposite and that’s great because you should use whatever works for you. There is no ‘right’ way to write a song, but you should have something that you are proud of and that you can perform.

I find that these days, people need to keep things moving and use their time wisely.  Sometimes, it’s tough to get that many people together in the same space.

So, here are some thoughts on how to get some paperwork together for your indie band.  Two things to get ready.  Lyric sheet and Chord Chart.

LYRIC SHEET

This is pretty strightforward I guess.  Just your words to your original song written out line by line, you know like a poem. If your song falls into these categories, it’d be helpful to put your verses into sections.  So, let’s say, there is a “Verse 1″, or maybe call it “A” section, or whatever idea you got.  Then maybe a “B” section, or “pre-chorus”, or “chorus”, you know.  It doesn’t really matter I guess, just as long as you can say, let’s try this part from the “pre-chorus 2″, or “D” section.  Now all we need is some manuscript paper….

CHORD CHART

A chord chart is just a simple lined manuscript with simple names of chords written out.  For those of you who don’t know, manuscript paper looks like this:

It is just your simple lined music paper that people use to write notes and stuff on, but we’re only going to use it to keep our Chord Chart neat.

Incidentally while we’re here… I found this good place to download free PDF versions of this file, so that you can print out a copy.  (pick the 10 stave version…)

FREE MUSIC MANUSCRIPT PAPER: http://people.virginia.edu/~pdr4h/musicpaper/

or this place too!

MORE FREE MUSIC MANUSCRIPT PAPER:  http://www.blanksheetmusic.net/

So, now, you’re ready to go…

1. Draw your treble clef on the top line if it doesn’t already have one…

2.  Draw vertical lines to divide the music staffs into 4 even sections.  Do this for the whole manuscript page.

3.  Now you’re ready to write chord names in the bars.

4.  Label your sections, verse, “A”, or whatever you might need.

So, really, it’s a simple chart to keep everyone in your band playing the same parts.  And it looks kinda professional once you get the hang of it.  Hope this helps.

]]> http://www.simplemusician.com/how-to-write-out-a-chord-chart/feed/ 0 http://www.simplemusician.com/how-to-write-out-a-chord-chart/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/simplemusician/~3/hWto1emC48A/ http://www.simplemusician.com/how-to-practice-music-guitar/#comments Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:31:01 +0000 Michael Wei http://www.simplemusician.com/?p=225 When I was a kid, I was very regimented about the way that I practiced music.  I was break it up in to sections, and train my fingers to do endless scales and such.  And in those years sitting in my basement, I gave up a lot of my high school years.  Now that I am older and have been playing music for years, and briefly went to music school, and then dropped out of music school, been in bands, and played with lots of different people (no one famous), I feel that I was a little misguided back then.

Scales and practicing are definitely needed, but I was way too anal about it, and I feel a little too regimented.  And the net result was that when I went to music school I needed to unlearn stuff so as not to sound stiff.  I guess we got to remember that I grew up in the eighties when “shredding” was king.   Maybe I could have used my practice time as a kid better. 

But if you are starting out, or learning to practice, and don’t really have a plan for practice and want to get better, then here are some thoughts…

PLAYING SONGS NOT BY ROTE

One of the things that I could have done more of was playing songs.  It’s probably been this way all throughout history, where you learn a song you want to play and then you learn to play it.  Rather than spending all your time preparing your technique to learn a song.  Of course, some songs are going to be too hard to play at first, but finding a simple song that you like to strum to, and then practicing it, gives you a sense of accomplishment once you succeed.  It’s much more satisfying than learning to play a scale at 160 bpm.

Here’s a link to guitar tablature on line:

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/

Or you can just type in guitar tablature into google and go to town.

The trick with learning to play songs is that in order to get better at playing music, you should learn it exactly as it was played.  And try to land every strum, rhythm, beat, note exactly.  The reason is not to be anal, but to train your ears to listen intently to the music.  And listening is something that takes a long time to master, but it will put you on the right path to playing with other people.

THE PLAN

Playing songs doesn’t mean that that’s all that there is.  It is only a part of it, but it’s also important to do the other stuff to get better.  Basically, you need to train your fingers to have some technique.  Then you got to train your brain by learning music theory.  And of course, there is the songs, and playing and listening skills.  ETC.

SONGS-for listening skills, for the fun on playing music.

TECHNIQUE- scales, learning chords, right hand picking excercises.

THEORY- learning how chords, and notes, and reading music and all of that stuff is put together.

Of course, I’ve known people that didn’t have good technique, and didn’t know a damn thing about theory, but when they played, you couldn’t help but listen because it was so beautiful.

So, I guess there’s that.

Along with people’s playing level, there are different styles of playing, and (just like in dating), you have to figure out what to play.  That’s why it’s best if possible to go and see someone play at an open mic to get a sense of what kind of music that they play.

Of course, that’s probably not going to happen if you are going to craigslist it and find someone off of there.  I’ve done craigslist a couple of times, and I feel like there are some ways to prepare to get a good result.  Here are just some ideas that it might help to think about when trying to find a new person to play with…

CRAIGSLIST INTERVIEW

If you are looking for someone to jam with on craigslist, here are some questions you might want to ask…

1. How long have you been playing?  Have you ever played in a band, or with a music project before?

2. What kind of music relationship are you looking for?  (Sounds like dating).  I mean are we going to jam every once in a while, or might it grow into something more?

3. What songs do you know?  What kind of songs do your originals sound like?

4. Do you play with a metronome?  Wanna play with a metronome?

These first questions in talking to another musician to play with really has to do with evaluating if the person can play “in time” with you.  That would be par for the course to be able to play with someone.  If their timing and sense of rhythm is all over the place, then it’s kind of a non-starter.  So, these questions need to evaluate if you will be able to musically communicate on the basic level.  Of course, it doesn’t need to be perfect, but it needs to be in the ball park.

Then there’s the metronome…

METRONOME

So, I’m a big fan of the metronome to play with people at first.  Or at least a part of the time.  I know no one’s timing is perfect, but I believe that doing some training with a metronome is at least good to have an impartial starting point to progress.  When you’re first playing with someone, everyone’s sense of timing is a little different, so it’s good to have a referee to begin.  Of course, if you’re playing with a drummer for the first time… then you’re probably not going to be able to hear it.

CHARTS

So, before meeting up, it would save time to write out a few chord charts.  Even if you both know the songs, it’s good to be able to point to something and fix something, or get on the same page.  Look for another post on how to write out a simple chord chart.

Then, it’s time to play.  Stay loose, be fun.  And hopefully, you’ll bemaking out by the end of the first date!

If you are like me and picked up playing bass guitar from playing regular guitar, then there may be some new things to learn about as you try to lay down the perfect bass line.  It took me a little while to focus on certain things that have helped my playing down low.  Coaxing different sounds to create a mood for a song has made me open up to the instrument and stop thinking about chord changes, and theory.  It has made me focus on feel, and ambience, and drama.

In my experience in indie-type rock, the bass is the dark heart of the music, creating a landscape that the rest of the music plays in.  But technically it took me a little while to see that world.

FINGERTIPS or PICKS

Every instrument has a language that it speaks in.  If you were playing violin, you could bow it, pluck it, legato, or staccato, etc.  The same goes for the electric bass, but perhaps it isn’t so obvious if you are picking up the bass after playing guitar.  There is the finger sound using the meaty part of your fingertips…

REST STROKE

1.  Place your index finger or middle finger on the “bottom side of the string (floor side)”.

2.  Rake your finger through the string and have it land on the string above it (towards the sky).  This is the basic “Rest Stroke”.

This should sound meaty, and thick and warm.  Dulled when compared with playing with a pick, but different.

PICK

1.  Pluck the string with a pick as you would a guitar.

The rest stroke and the picking technique is only scratching the surface of what types of sounds one can make on a bass, but it is good to think about it as a starting point into a world where you are being creative with sounds coming out of your bass.

I was in the orthodoxy when I first started that I would only learn how to play with my fingers and not pay attention to using a pick.  The bass lines and playing in those times started to sound the same.  But as I kept gaining experience, I noticed that certain songs required a certain “touch” when playing with my fingers.  Harder, softer, lazier, “on top” of the beat.  Then it dawned on me that I should open it up to all of the tools that could possibly be used to play music with.  And that not only includes picks, but it includes the sounds that you set on the amp, or on the bass itself.  It all depends on the song and what it needs or how you can be creative with a song.

If you are using your fingers, do you want to use the tip of your finger to get a more staccato sound?  Or the meaty fleshy part to get a warmer sound?  Or the side of your thumb (like Sting does it?). Or partly muted with the palm of your hand?  Or getting a soft pick?  Or a thick pick?

It’s endless.  But it is something that I feel a bass player should start out playing with the intent on being creative with as many tools as possible.  And one day, they’ll be writing bass playing techniques about playing bass with your tongue!

MadMimi is an marketing email creation and delivery service that allows you to manage the email list of your fans.  This quick tutorial will walk through how to set-up an account, import your emails, and send a promotion.

Steps

1. Go to MadMimi.com and click on any one of the “sign up” links
2. Choose the free plan with up to 100 contacts.  But what if I have more, shouldn’t I get a paying plan, you ask?  Well, because you want to test it out and make sure it’s something you’ll actually use and then just upgrade to a paying when you’re ready.  See, we know how commitment-phobic you are!
3. Give them your info, username, password and the like.
4. Figure out how many lists you’ll want to have.  Most artists just need one, but if you have vastly different content to send to say, fans in town vs. out of town, then you may want to segment them.
5. Add your subscribers email addresses.  If you’ve been keeping them in a spreadsheet you have to make sure it’s in the right format and then can upload it.  The quick and dirty way is to click “Add 5 People” which lets you type in up to five email addresses along with first and last names.
6. Once you’ve added some peeps, you’ll notice two tabs on the right side.  Make yourself a “Web Form” to put on your website/MySpace page/etc (”Suppressed” will show you those who are signed up but haven’t confirmed clicking on a link in their email.)
7. Now for the fun part, find the “Promotions” tab and start creating your newsletter.  Upload your logo, pics from your last show, or anything else that will make your promotional email look more interesting than plain text.
8. Click “send”, choose your audience, and watch it fly!

What’s Next?

You’ll want to send you and your band members a test email first to get used to the interface.  Check out the “track” link associated with your promotion to get a feel for what types of statistics you’ll be able to see.

Finally, start communicating with your audience!  Tell them about upcoming shows, a new song, or just a weekly this-is-what-we’ve-been-up-to email.  Don’t go overboard but definitely let your fans know that you’re still around.

But rehearsing a band has its’ own challenges and skills that must be learned.  Here are some ideas.

LISTENING

The most important part of playing in a band, is listening and playing music “with” each other rather than “at” each other.  When band members spend more time listening, then the music becomes tight the music gets to another level.  This all presupposes that you know what you are going to play like the back of your hand, which I know is probably not the case.  What is probably the case is you are in your own world trying to figure out what to play over a new section or remembering the changes for another section.  I’ve often been in the situation where I had to learn a new song quickly and write my part as a bass player quickly as well.  But maybe the better way would be to slow down the process.

BREAK IT DOWN

I’m of the opinion that, especially in New York, bands never seem to have enough time to rehearse.  Making music can be time consuming, especially if you are writing original music.  You want your music to be different, creative, and good.  And that usually takes time… at least for me.  But I would always want to play sections of songs and work on them a piece at a time instead of the whole thing all at once.  If your band keeps just playing through the song, over and over, then it will cement in there at a particular level, and then no one has any desire to change things to make it better later.

So, playing the first verse and stopping and maybe someone has an idea for a way to make it better or make it tighter.  Or design a section where everyone plays a musical idea together.  Or many other creative things that you can come up with if everyone is on the same page as far as rehearsing a music in the same way.  Here’s another way to really get everyone listening…

SLOW TEMPO

One exercise that might help with training the band members to listen to each other is to slow the tempo way down to a tempo that you would never really play it at.  Comically slow.  It’s also a good exercise to help with “groove”.  So, as you count off your comically slow tempo, all of the members in the band will be listening to each other to find the next beat for the next thing that they have to play.  And hopefully, everyone lands on the measures, and the sections at the same time.  And if it doesn’t sound great, it’s really just a listening exercise anyways, and when the song is back up to full tempo, you’ll “hear” the music from a different perspective.  Then try faster tempos…Couldn’t hurt.

Good luck Rehearsing your band!

FIND YOUR LEVEL-NEWBIE

If you are looking for people to “jam” with and are trying to get better as a musician, then you won’t be trying to look for musicians that have been gigging for years and are looking for a good music project to work on.  And there is nothing more disappointing than playing music with someone who is not as good at basic musicality.  Heading for an uncomfortable time not liking the way things are sounding.  A musician needs to be able to play to a reasonably steady beat, and be able to listen and begin to work on nuances of what sounds good when playing with other musicians.  Of course that means different things to different people.  But as practice, a less experienced player should play as much with “play along CD’s” and work with metronomes as much as possible.

Once you are there, have some sheet music, or chord charts, or lyric sheets ready work on.  Or songs you’ve written.  Fire up a craigslist ad, and see who shows up.

FIND YOUR LEVEL-EXPERIENCED

So, then let’s say you are getting back into music, or you moved to a new town.  You’d want to network with other musicians and see what the scene is like and start playing with people who are working on music projects.  Hopefully one day, this site will turn into a meeting place for musicians, but for now, try the Open Mic scene in your city, and clap for people.  In my experience open mics are good places to meet people because people are trying out material, and generally people are friendly and open about what they are doing.  It would be better to play at an open mic so that people hear what you are all about too.  And it saves the “I wonder if this guy is good enough to play with” question that can be on some-one’s mind.

The other technique is to go to other peoples’ shows, and listen and try to introduce yourself.  But at shows generally, a band is already staffed up as it were usually.  They are more into getting you signed up to a mailing list than looking for people to play with.  One more idea is…

CRAIGSLIST

Then there’s craigslist.  Here’s a link to the New York City Craigslist musicians community.  I’ve always found that craigslist is hit or miss. I’m sure there are good players there, but it’s hard to tell how much experience people have.  Ask lots of questions, get their myspace page, or what have you.  And then schedule a short jam session, or rehearsal.

Good luck.  If anyone has any other tips or articles, please send them to us.

I have been playing in the New York City scene for a decade or so, and I have noticed some issues to consider for this particular music scene and I feel that some bands could improve their chances of highlighting their art if they rehearsed in a way to consider some of the factors in playing a live show.  Here are some thoughts on the preparing for the gig.  Please post comments below if there are other strategies that you have encountered.

THE MUSIC

The main event.  People come out to hear your music, so be sure that the music is rehearsed and tight.  Be sure that the accents in the music are together and that the music has dynamics.  Or if it doesn’t have dynamics, be sure that that is on purpose.  The tighter the songs, the better the feel, and hopefully the music will have attitude and energy and you’ll be able to connect with your audience.

In rehearsing the music, I’ve found it helpful not to play a song the whole way through at first, but only rehearsing a “trouble spot” first.  I believe it keeps band members from falling into the rut of just playing the songs by rote during rehearsals and more into crafting the songs.  When you rehearse parts of your song, instead of just getting together and playing, you get band members to start listening more to each other, and that is really important.

SOUND BALANCE

One of my pet peeves about seeing live music is that the balance is never right.  In fact, you’d be lucky to find a sound person at a club who will actually do very much besides turn the PA on.  One of the problems is that less experienced bands play with too loud of a “stage volume”, thereby tying the hands of the sound person who will just try to cut down on the feedback.  If you are at a club with a good sound system, have a chat with the sound person and try to keep your stage volume low enough so that it doesn’t blast.  Sound issues are always difficult, but allowing the sound person to balance your sound for the room is better than the band members trying to do it with their amps.  Inevitably they’ll compete with each other and it’ll be messy.

THE PATTER

Patter are the little remarks of the show that keep things moving, or introduce the band, or keep the audience otherwise occupied while your band is switching instruments, tuning, or just transitioning from one song to the next.  It may be more involved where there is a direct connection with the audience, or as simple as “the next song is….”.  Either way, it is important to think about it at least once and maybe more, because there is often times when there is a lull in the proceedings.   Your guitarists strings may break, or your sound person might be getting feedback, or your drummer starts to OD.

Now, your performance may not need patter at all.  But it is a good idea to have something to say in your back pocket in case something goes wrong, and you are staring at an audience waiting for music that you are temporarily unable to perform for them.  I find that if you are playing at a bar, drunken audiences always appreciate a dumb joke.  Tell the dumb joke, and before the boos, and hisses get too bad, count off the next song.

THE SHOW

Open up.  Rock out!

I have met many musicians who were otherwise very good performers, thoughtful songwriters, and great band leaders who none the less really weren’t that great at tuning their guitars. I guess that it is no surprise since most people first learn how to tune their guitars in the comfort and quiet of their own home, but once they are thrown into a live playing situation, then all kinds of other issues with sound sometimes get in the way of setting up a good sounding instrument. If this is your first time tuning a guitar or have been doing it a while, we’ll go over some things to keep in mind for tuning your guitar.

TUNING YOUR GUITAR… with a guitar tuner

The easiest way to tune a guitar, and probably the most common among people just starting out is to buy a guitar tuner and plug it in and follow the blinking lights to perfect in-tune-ness. If you have an electric guitar, or using the tuners built in mic if you have an acoustic guitar.

1. Turn on your tuner, and plug it into your electric guitar and turn up the volume knobs on the guitar itself. … Or hold the built in mic near the soundhole of your acoustic guitar.
2. Pluck any string with a sense of authority to ensure a strong signal for the tuner to pick up. (However don’t pluck too hard where the string itself vibrates too much and distorts or sounds bad.
3. ***IMPORTANT TIP*** Grab a hold of the tuning pegs with your other hand and *DETUNE* the string slightly. In other words, make the string “looser”, or make the note go “flat”. Then slowly turn the tuning peg to tighten the string until the tuner reads in tune. The reason for this is because you want to avoid the string “slipping out of tune” through vibration of playing the instrument…
4. Skip around to the other strings and repeat this process. You will most likely need to re-do strings you have already tuned, but as you tighten and change the tension on each string, you change the tension on the guitar neck itself, and that slightly changes the tension on each string, which makes it necessary to re-do tunings on each string. When you are doing the fine tuning, it isn’t necessary to “DETUNE” as much. But I always do anyways.
5. Sturm a chord and write a song, you’re done.

I’m not sure of the actual physics of why you need to detune a string to keep it in solid tune, but I imagine that since the string is under tension, if you unwind the tuning peg to loosen the string, the guitar string itself could bind at different points around the tuning peg itself,(or the nut, or the bridge), and later slip causing the string to loosen further and send you out of tune once you start playing. If anyone has a more scientific explanation, please leave a comment below.

But there are other issues to take into account that affect the tuning of the guitar that are important to how it sounds.

STRING TENSION

Depending on how new the guitar strings are, you might want to break them in before you stat tuning. You’ll need to stretch them out a little just to get them more flexible. Again, the idea is that you’d want to stretch out the strings so they are less likely to bind while you are tuning them. Same goes for strings that are too old which are too stretchy and won’t be able to hold a tuning.

FRET INTONATION

You can do everything right, but once you start playing a chord it all sounds out of whack. That might be an issue and a problem with intonation. That is, you can spend your time tuning the “open” strings, but once you put your finger on a fret, if the intonation is off, then you have to take a step back and set up the guitar better.

Here is a good link on the web to learn more about How to Tune your guitar.

http://www.howtotuneaguitar.org/

And if you click on each of the letters on the “tuner widget” below, you can hear what it is supposed to sound like….

Ba Rock Obama Fundraiser in Greenpoint NYC

A few weeks ago, my band AM, played this fundraiser for Barack Obama’s campaign. It was basically a hipster neighborhood event in Williamsburg/Greenpoint in NYC where they got a bunch of bars together to host a bunch of indie bands. One ticket got you a bracelet that allowed you to go to any bar that was hosting this thing and see all the music that was being made. It was called Ba-Rock Brooklyn.

So, it was pretty cool to meet all the bands there that night, and to my surprise (since I am a pessimist when it comes to people showing up at shows), there were a lot of people out that night and everyone raised $2500 for Barack. Not bad for a neighborhood thing.

I realized that part of the success of these kinds of nights is the “Music scene” aspect of it all. It works better to ask your audience to go to an event where they will be able to hear lots of different musics than just hear your band. So, the draw is “Come see a night of local indie music”, rather than “Come see my band”. A slightly different pitch. But to me anyways, it feels as though having people gather has a couple of effects. First it was a great way to meet other bands in the scene, and musicians have to stick together. It’s a band thing anyways. One day you’re playing with this band, the next time with another. And sharing tips and experiences with each other can only help in figuring out how to navigate the whole indie music thing. In addition, sharing audiences is good because well, it’s always the more the merrier anyways, and it winds up being a better for your audience as well.

And I believe that that is how music scenes are made. People in the audience checking out the music, then checking each other out, and making friends, and if it works, it might grow into a scene. I guess of course, that the music has to be interesting and all that. But of course, I’m sure it is.

The music scene aspect of playing music for your friends that grow into more friends etc, is what a bunch of social networks sites try to replicate. But I feel like it’s still way different from being in a smokey room a little drunk and really getting into some music while some hotties over there are into it…and in my case, go try to meet them, get shot down… but fun nonetheless.

Whoever can replicate this in the Internet virtual world, will have taken musicianship and the music business to the next level.

Setting up a network is fast and easy.  Figuring out which features make sense for you, and moving or linking to any other content you have on the web, might take a while but is something you can do in phases and complete over time.  Here’s what to do:

1. Go to Ning.com and choose a name for your network, probably just your band’s name or your name.
2. Sign up for an account — you’ll use this login for when you make changes or want to make more social networks for your other projects.
3. Describe your network, add a tagline, keywords, etc.  Make the network public so that anyone can join and they don’t need an invite.  (You wouldn’t be that snobby would you?)
4. Add the features you want into your layout.  Be sure to click on the link that shows all the features.  For now, only drag over stuff that is relevant — you can always change it later.  For example, if you don’t have any videos leave it off until you do.
5. Choose a theme and change the colors are you see fit.
6. Once it’s launched, click on the “Manage” menu item and make sure all your settings look ok, as well as offer some basic promotions like a Facebook widget.  The “Track Statistics” link will allow you to add Google Analytics to see who’s on the site.  It’s free and could give you an idea of how many people are using this network and what parts of the world they are coming from.
7. Find the “Badges & Widget” section and customize the widgets (including your music) that will be available to your fans to put on their own blogs and profiles.

What’s Next?

Start populating your pages! Add your music and videos and start a blog.  Use the RSS feature to pull in all the other things you’re doing online.

Definitely use the “Events” feature if you have any gigs coming up.  For that matter you can add “special appearances” to that calendar, like “going to be at the coffee shop reading the newspaper on Tuesday morning” and your fans can RSVP to them.  You can even put a link to more venue info or a map.

Throw in a text box and put links to your other locations on the web, like your myspace profile or your t-shirt store.  While you’re at it, why not throw in a link to an Amazon wishlist set up for your music related stuff?  Finally, allow your users to create groups within your networks so that you can get a better idea of who your fans are and what they like to do when they aren’t listening to your music.   This is a social network you know.

Now start telling your fans, friends, family, neighbors, associates, attendants, sugardaddies, and anyone else who has an internet connection, and get them to sign up.  Encourage them to invite others they know as well as put your “badges” (widgets), including your music, on their own blogs or other social networks.

Remember to keep your content fresh by writing often, putting up pictures after a show, etc.  You want your fans to keep coming back to checkfor any new stuff and keep you in the front of their brains.  What’s nice about having your own social network though is that your fans will take up the slack when you’re too hung over to blog, and add their content about you as well.

Also check out our review of Ning.com

When you make and share music you are creating a community. It may be a big audience at a show, or a small group of friends blasting your tunes in the high school parking lot. In collecting an audience you are often bringing together people who have more in common then just an appreciation for your art, like the way they dress or the other music they listen to.

The promise behind Social Networking on the web is that it allows people to parallel   what goes on in “Meatspace” in virtual form. Ning.com is a site that helps your fans    connect with each other and keep up with your artistic endeavors.

Overview

Ning makes it super simple to create and customize a brand new social network. It allows you to go beyond the simple profile that the Facebooks and MySpaces of the world allow. Your fans can even create groups within your network that are based around, for example, where they live or who their favorite band member is. A certain rapper famously used it as a tool to keep in touch with his audience and also make some extra pennies (Free Social Media Tools Unite 50 Cent Fans).

Once it’s up and running, and you have your fan base using it, you can do things like: blast out notes to everyone on the network, keep a calendar of your upcoming shows, write blogs, and upload pictures and video. Many of the features of Ning overlap with what you’re doing on other sites. This is fine because you can just pull in feeds through RSS or widgets (they have an easy way to integrate with Flickr too) and still only update content in one place.

Costs

Singing up is free and for most musicians the basics are good enough. You’ll have to put up with a not-so-easy to remember URL (your-bands-name.ning.com), some ads on the side of the page, and extra ning promotional links. For a various monthly fees you can change any of those things and clean up your network to focus on you. You can also get more storage and bandwidth if needed but you’d have to have a REALLY active networkto need it.

One thing to consider — once you have a good amount of traffic — is signing up to “Control the Ads”. It’s $20 a month but will allow you to run your own ads (e.g. Google AdSense) and potentially make money. How cool would that be?

Final Thoughts

The focus on having your own social network is getting your fans to interact with each other in the context of your music. Ning accomplishes this to an extent and hopefully will continue to provide features to bring the site beyond being a glorified profile on another social network. Right now there isn’t a whole lot for your fans to do past posting to forums, creating groups, and checking out other fans. Allowing users to share their own pics of your shows or blog about your music without having to use the forums would be nice.

Regardless, it is an easy way to make a website for your music with a lot of functionality and the social aspect can just be a bonus — or if it really catches on a great way to really expand your audience.

Check out BrokeDownVan’s social network at brokedownvan.ning.com It took about 10 minutes to set up, which you can tell by the ugliness of it.

Also check out our blog on setting up a social network with Ning.com.

Craig pointed me to this mashable review of a new Internet startup company that allows people to upload their own music for tv, video, etc and and sell them to people looking to buy stock music. Customers of Stock music buy for $1 for a minute or less, $2 for 2 or less, etc. And the composer gets approx half of the income, with Audio Micro getting the other half.

This seems to be kind of a healthy cut of the profit just for having a site up and using their bandwidth and storage..doesn’t it? Not sure how it all works out. But as an editor of tv, I do see that there could be a need for this in the future when the television and Internet converge and there will be a need for more video content.

However, stock music is not really what the indie artist actually wants. Stock music is supposed to be unobtrusive and easy for the ear to listen to while listening to something else, like an interview or a narrator speak. And it probably won’t do much to build a “Brand”. Unless your stock music is really unique sounding…

But money is money, and if this is of interest, here is the link to the mashable review of Audio Micro..

Mashable news of Audio Micro Internet Startup.

And here is the link to Audio Micro itself…

http://www.audiomicro.com/

On a side note, the things that I look for in tv music is good beat, cool quality sounding instruments (not a problem if they are synth, just not too “casio tone” like), and simple progression for an “A” section to a “B” section. Doesn’t change parts too many times. Just my two cents as a failed musician and equally crappy editor.

Is there really still money in this? Also, it looks like EMI, the Rolling Stones’ old label still will retain publishing to their songs. I wonder then, who will make the money when they switch the old catalog to the “digital age”..?

“Universal Music Signs Rolling Stones to Long Term Deal”

Listen to “Rocking the House”

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/episodes/2008/02/21#

New ways to expand your audience…Pretty interesting.

Check out this ridiculousness: Universal Music tried to have a video on YouTube taken down because it shows a, “toddler learning to walk with the Prince song ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ blaring in the background.” Aparently the Big Labels send thousands of these requests a year and most of the time the target just removes the offending video and slinks away.

Well, this time the mom refused to pull it, and decided to smack the label with a lawsuit: Mom fights music giant

Now, I don’t think Prince is going to go bankrupt from this sort of thing. But even if this wasn’t coming from a big label on behalf of a well established successful musician, it is still a baseless and gross use of obnoxious copyright laws. This reminds me of the owners that try to get paid when their buildings are in the background of movies.

We need a new way of thinking about intellectual property and cases like this are forcing us to confront the boundaries of art and commerce.

If you something like this happens to you just add a comment to the video saying you were happy to hear your music playing during such a momentous event… and then add a link to your website.