Today it’s easier than ever to get your own original music recorded either at home or at a professional studio. Once you have the perfect recording of your original song it’s easier than ever to sell your music to your fans. The beauty of current online music distribution channels such as iTunes or Amazon.mp3 service is that anyone can get their music sold through those channels. Today I’m going to tell you about a very easy way to get your music distributed through iTunes, Amazon.mp3, eMusic and many other major online music distributors.
There’s a service called Tune Core that let you manage all of your songs from a single interface. All you have to do is sign up, upload your singles or albums along with liner notes and album art, and your music will be delivered to iTunes, Rhapsody, Amazon MP3, Napster and others for distribution. You will get 100% of the royalties from all of your music sales.
So what does it cost to upload your music for worldwide distribution? It’s only $9.99 per single and for albums it’s less than $50. That’s an incredible deal for taking the hassle out of contacting all the online distributors individually to try and get your music approved, uploaded and listed.
There’s another interesting aspect to distributing through TuneCore. If you’ve recorded any covers of popular songs, you can also upload those for sale and distribution. You’ll get any royalties paid for you cover versions as well.
I figured since it was almost St. Patricks day that we ought to have a little St. Patty’s day humor. Today I’m posting up a video of the Annoying Orange, who is truly annoying, giving a Leprechaun a seriously hard time. I hope you all have a great St. Patricks day!
I’m a pianist as well as a guitarist and I have an old Kranich and Bach baby Grand Piano. I’ve had my piano tuned professionally only once since I’ve had it and naturally, over time it has gone out of tune. So I decided to tackle the job myself to see how well I could tune my own piano. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be and the results have been very good.
I was able to tune my piano with just a few simple tools. The basic tools are as follows:
Piano Tuning Hammer
Felt Temperament Strip
Rubber Mutes
Flat Blade Screwdriver
You can purchase a basic piano tuning kit that includes the tuning hammer, felt temperament strip and an assortment of rubber mutes.
I also purchased a book to help get me started tuning my piano. The book I got is called Piano Tuning: A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs by J. Cree Fischer. This book gives you a very good overview of how your piano is constructed, how your piano works and how to tune your piano. The book is very easy to read and you don’t have to read the entire book cover to cover to be able to tune your piano. You can simply use the book as a reference and read the chapters that are relevant to what you need to do to tune your piano.
Finally you will need a tuning reference for setting the pitch. Simply by using a tuning fork you can use the guide in the book to tune your piano by ear. I have a very good ear but tuning a piano by ear can be a daunting task. It is a skill that can take years to perfect. That’s why I used my trusty Peterson Strobe Tuner instead of a tuning fork.
The tuner I have is the Peterson 490-ST AutoStrobe tuner which is extremely accurate. It is pre-programmed with several piano specific stretch tunings. These stretch tunings will help you set the temperament on your piano making the rest of the tuning process much, much easier. The Peterson AutoStrobe tuner is an essential tool for tuning your own piano. It’s fairly expensive but it will easily pay for itself in savings when you tune your own piano.
So there you have it, all the tools you need to tune your own piano are in the links below.
Peterson 490-ST AutoStrobe Tuner with Stretch TuningThe Peterson 490ST AutoStrobe Tuner with Stretch Tuning allows automatic (handsfree) note selection for fast, accurate tuning of instruments for students, technicians, and musicians at all levels. This feature also permits realtime display of intonation to improve performance and listening skills while playing. Includes stretch tuning capabilities for enhanced tuning of stringed or percussive instruments such as the piano, bass, guitar, marimba, steel pan, and others.
One of the most neglected aspects I’ve seen with live bands over the years is the backing vocals. I’ve seen plenty of bands that have an excellent lead singer or even multiple lead singers that nail the lead vocals every time. But they are severely lacking in the backing vocals. Too many bands just don’t take the time to learn and then fix problems with their backing vocals.
I’ve written many times on Live Musician Central that the ability to sing is crucial to your skills as a band musician. It’s up to you as an individual player to take ownership of singing backup vocals in your band. Along with your regular, personal practice on your instrument you need to take the time to practice your backing vocals. I often practice my singing while I’m driving as it’s something I can do without my hands. Make sure you take the time to learn your individual backing vocal part before you have a band rehearsal.
The next step in getting your backup vocals in shape as a band is to have a dedicated, Vocals only band practice. Set aside at least one practice a month to work solely on the band’s backup vocals. If your band really struggles with singing backup vocals then you’ll want to have a dedicated vocal practice more often. Spend the entire practice working on vocals only.
When working on vocals it’s a good idea to have a keyboard handy to help you pick out individual parts. Using a keyboard is an easy way to isolate individual vocal parts and help the weaker singers to find and follow their part. With a keyboard you can hear how the parts should all sound together. You can also use a guitar to strum chords while the band practices vocals. This will help you hear how the vocal parts fit in with the chordal harmony.
When rehearsing vocals in my band, the first thing we do is find all of our vocal parts using a keyboard. Then we’ll make sure each individual singer can sing his part. After that, we’ll strum the guitar and have everyone sing their vocal parts with the guitar. Finally, we’ll sing everything Acapella to make sure that everyone is listening to each other and singing in tune with each other. It’s honestly a great feeling when vocal harmonies come together because they sound so awesome when sung well!
It’s also a great idea to practice backup vocals for a few minutes every single band practice. It warms up the band member’s voices and helps get everyone focusing on singing. If you have a song that everyone struggles with, give it extra attention. Practice those vocal parts before and after you play the problem song as a band. By following these simple steps and having a dedicated vocal practice, your band will easily separate itself from all the bands out there that are lacking in the vocal department. Your band will be the one getting the most gigs!
I played a gig in the live band I’ve started with my 3 oldest sons this past weekend. The name of the band is Bonne Nuit and we play a lot of current hit music. The band is a four-piece comprised of two guitars, bass guitar and drums. We are playing some seriously synthesizer based songs using only guitars. We cover the Black Eyed Peas, Metric and Gary Numan and we play these songs on our guitars.
We are able to take the main synthesizer parts and using my prowess as a patch programmer on my guitar effects units we are able to capture the overall feel of the songs with guitars. I use my trusty Fender Cyber-Twin SE amplifier and Erik uses my Digitech 2120 guitar effect rack. Between these two excellent guitar units we can create enough synthesizer type sounds to really flesh out the songs and make them work using guitars.
We played a live, online concert using a Shoutcast server streaming from our recording studio. We run all the instruments through a Pro Tools setup and then feed a mix to the shoutcast server. Anyone with an Internet connection is then able to listen to our music stream using the Shoutcast.com mini-player, Winamp or iTunes. We marketed the gig primarily through Facebook. There was also a live chat session going right here on Live Musician Central so we could interact with our listeners.
We had a pretty good show with quite a few people signing on to listen to the concert. The band played pretty well although we did tend to make the rookie mistake of playing some of the songs too fast. It’s a fairly common problem with young musicians to rush the songs when you have the pressure of a live audience. Playing these shows online is giving the band an easy way to get used to playing for an audience.
The live chat gives the concert a more interactive feel than just playing for the broadcast. It really gives you a sense that, yes, you are actually playing for people that are listening to the band. It was great to see so many friends had signed on to listen to the band. There was definitely the same type of rush that you get playing in front of a live audience.
We had a few technical difficulties with a faulty pair of headphones, thank heavens Sennheiser headphones have replaceable cables. We recorded the entire show so we can evaluate our performance. We played well with only a few obvious mistakes but nothing we couldn’t recover from. It was a very fun gig if nothing else and we’re getting very close to playing an actual live show outside of our studio. Hopefully you’ll be able to come see us at a venue near you, very soon. -Matt-
There’s some pretty good music parody movies out there. One of the more irreverent ones is Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story starring John C. Reilly. There are a lot of funny scenes in that movie and today I’m posting up a clip of Dewey Cox singing a song with Darlene Madison (played by Jenna Fischer). The song is called “Let’s Duet” and it has some very hilarious lyrics in it.
Bonne Nuit Is A Band Featuring Live Musician Central Author - Matt Rushton
My band, “Bonne Nuit”, will be playing a live online concert on March 3, 2010 from 7:30 pm-9:00 pm Mountain Time. The band members are Matt Rushton, Erik Rushton, Austin Rushton and Skyler Rushton. Bonne Nuit plays a few cover songs and some original music too. It’s all guitar based rock-n-roll with the instrumentation being two guitars, bass and drums. We’re very excited to be playing an online concert as it’s a real thrill to explore new ways of playing live in a band and reaching an audience.
The show will be broadcast using a Shoutcast server. It’s very easy to connect and enjoy the show. The name of the Shoutcast station will be Bonne Nuit Live and that’s what you will want to search for when you go to Shoutcast.com.
The best way to listen to this concert is to listen to it using either Winamp or iTunes. They are both extremely stable for listening to online Internet radio broadcasts. I have written a tutorial on how to use either iTunes or Winamp to listen to a live online concert. You can find the tutorial here: How To Listen To Internet Radio Using Winamp Or iTunes.
The easiest way to listen is with the built-in Shoutcast Mini-Player but it is also the most prone to crashes. We’ve had a lot of reports of browser crashes and freezes using the Shoutcast Mini-Player. If you want to use the Shoutcast Mini-Player to listen just follow these easy directions:
1 – go to www.shoutcast.com
2 – In the search bar, type in: bonne nuit live
3 – when you find the station, click the button labeled “Tune In”
4 – select ‘Play In Mini Player’ to listen.
So take your choice of these three ways to connect and listen to the concert. I personally recommend using Winamp but if you already have iTunes installed on your computer, it’s very easy and convenient to just us iTunes.
We will also be having a live Chat session going on at the same time as the online concert. To join the Chat simply sign on to Live Musician Central Chat. If the Chat isn’t working, you may need to install Java on your computer. To get Java go to http://java.com/en/ . We will also be watching the Bonne Nuit page on Facebook so feel free to become a fan and leave comments there as well.
Highway 6 - Matt Rushton, Heidi Nedreberg, Tom Nedreberg
I got the opportunity to play in Highway 6 this weekend at the Vertical Diner in Salt Lake City, Utah. Highway 6 is an all-original band that is fronted by the Father/Daughter duo of Tom and Heidi Nedreberg. They have just released a new CD called “Love Songs To The Desert” on which I had the opportunity to play a lot of the guitar. So when they got a gig at the Vertical Diner they asked me to join them.
The Vertical Diner is a small vegetarian restaurant in Salt Lake City with a small stage tucked into a very prominent corner. The Diner can seat around 100 people and it’s a medium sized room. The standard entertainment is all acoustic instruments but I just couldn’t duplicate my parts properly on an acoustic guitar. I am an electric guitarist so I brought my trusty Fender American Deluxe Ash Stratocaster and my Fender Cyber-Twin SE amplifier to the gig. These are the same two pieces of equipment I used on the the CD.
Tom and Heidi had done some very good marketing to promote the show and when we took the stage to play, the Diner was filled to capacity. All the seats were full and a few people were left standing where they could to catch the show. It’s always great when friends and family come to support your band because it makes you very comfortable to look out and see familiar faces in the audience.
We started out with several tracks from the new CD and they were very well received. The mix of acoustic guitar, acoustic bass and electric guitar gave us a rich and full sound. I know I was enjoying playing and listening to the warm mix from the stage. Highlights of the original songs were “My Water”, “I Don’t Wanna Live Without You”, The Bridge” and “Champagne Suicide”. They translated very well from the full band instrumentation to the instrumentation we used at the Vertical Diner.
We also played a couple cover songs that were very well reveived. We played Neil Young – Rockin’ In The Free World and Journey – Separate Ways. It was a real challenge to get Separate Ways to to work on acoustic guitar, acoustic bass and electric guitar but we pulled it off and got some seriously loud cheers for that one.
All in all it was a great night and we have been invited to play the Vertical Diner again. That’s always a sign of a successful gig. Watch out for more upcoming shows by Highway 6 by checking out the Highway 6 MySpace page.
For todays Sunday Funnies I’m posting up another great music video clip from Saturday Night Live. This one features Andy Samberg as a rastafarian wannabe named Ras Trent. It totally cracks me up because he’s the being the perfect poseur in this video. I hope you get a laugh out of it too.
If you play in a smaller live band such as a 2 to 4 person group then I’m sure you understand the need for a smaller P.A. system. A lot of acoustic duos will go out and play with a small amp, a couple mics and a pair of small speakers. But with a larger 3 or 4 person group I’m sure you’ve learned that you need more than just a little 4-channel powered mixer head and a couple of speakers.
I’d like to talk about an excellent P.A. system for smaller groups of two to four people. The Yamaha EMX512SC/S115V is a complete P.A. package that will have your smaller group completely covered for all your P.A. needs. At the heart of the system is an dual-channel, 500 Watt per channel, powered mixer that has 8 total microphone inputs. The really nice thing about the EMX512SC is the added bonus of four of the eight channels being able to function as either mono microphone inputs or stereo line inputs. This gives the amp/mixer a total of 12 input channels.
Four of the input channels are dedicated, phantom powered mic inputs while the other four can be used for either more microphones or as stereo instrument inputs. A great way to set this mixer up is to use 4 mic inputs for vocals and then stereo inputs for a guitar, keyboard, drumset and bass. This amp head really does have your whole band covered if you’re using an electronic drumset. It seems like it always has just enough inputs to get a small band hooked up.
Another thing I really like about this powered mixer is the built-in compression control for the 4 primary microphone channels. Everyone knows that vocals can get out of control with wild dynamic swings and the built-in compression control will tame down peaks while giving you the ability to boost the vocal volume to the front of the mix. That’s really invaluable and it’s a nice addition to the built-in effects unit which includes reverb, echo, chorus, flanger, phaser and even distortion.
This mixer is also loaded with two graphic Equalizers, one for each 500 Watt channel. The built-in FCL (Feedback Channel Locator) system will help you custom tailor your EQ settings to any room you play in. It gives you visual indicators for which frequencies are causing feedback so you can set your EQ’s to eliminate feedback problems.
The Yamaha EMX512SC/S115V P.A. package comes with two Yamaha S115V club speaker that feature a 15″ woofer and 2″ tweeters. These are proven speakers in live situations and they give excellent frequency response. The speakers are perfectly matched with the powered mixer. I love the fact that you also get two SM12V 2-way floor monitor wedges with 12″ drivers and 2″ tweeters. Having excellent floor monitors like these will really help your band stay together and keep in tune. Also included are two speaker stands for the main P.A. speakers that will help you direct your sound for the best audio performance.
The Yamaha EMX512SC/S115V P.A. package comes with four decent Audio-Technica M4000S handheld dynamic microphones. These are good, solid microphones that will certainly get the job done in most live situations. Please remember that there are no mic stands included in this package so you’ll want to pick up any mic stands you may need.
To round everything out, you get all the cables you need to hook up the microphones, the main speakers and the P.A. speakers. That’s a lot of cable and it’s a great deal that they’re all included in this package.
Yamaha is known for excellent quality musical products which are extremely reliable. The Yamaha EMX512SC/S115V P.A. package is one sweet system for your band and it should last for years. Everything you need for your band P.A. system is included and I highly recommend it.
Recent Comments