Every weekend Live Musician Central picks some of the best new releases along with some “must have” albums. I pick music that is very popular since there will be a better chance of more people being familiar with it. When your band plays a gig it’s always best to play music that as many people that are there will be familiar with. The music I pick is geared toward dance and dance rock bands. So here are the Live Musician Central weekend album picks for the week of 7-27-2008.
News, Reviews, and More!
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A Classic Performance From Sister Rosetta Tharpe
After playing music for so many years and being in the business I do tend to get a bit ho-hum about all the greatness out there. I start saying “Well, another Van Halen clone…yawn.” Or “Wow, 500 notes per second…snore.” Then something truly great will catch my attention.
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Follow-up To Yesterdays “Importance Of Learning Piano” Post
Yesterday I posted about how much learning to play the piano has helped me throughout my career as a musician. My post is titled “The Most Important Instrument To Learn – The Piano“. Dr. Christopher Foley who teaches at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Canada and is also the author of The Collaborative Piano Blog has written a fine article referencing my post. His article is titled “Piano as a Second Language” and you can read it by clicking on the title.
Chris makes some excellent points in his article that I’m sure you will want to check out.
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The Most Important Instrument To Learn – The Piano
Steinway Concert Grand My first step into my music career was learning to play the trumpet when I was 10 years old. It came naturally for me and I enjoyed the instrument. When I turned 11 years old my sister began taking piano lessons. One day I sat down at the piano and my sisters beginning piano book was on the piano. I opened it up and proceeded to play the entire book in one afternoon. That book was John Thompson’s – Teaching Little Fingers To Play.
It was easy to read and learn from and my soul as a musician drank it all in. Naturally my parents had been listening to me working on that book and suggested that I may want to take piano lessons along with my sister. I did and from that point on the piano became the musical root of everything I have done musically since.
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Practice With Free Metronome Online
Click Me To Practice! If you want to get stronger, faster and more accurate on your instrument then there’s no substitute for practicing with a metronome. Metronome’s are perfect for building up the muscles in your hands. Today I want to turn you on to the free online metronome at www.metronomeonline.com.
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The Police – Salt Lake City Concert Review 7-19-08
The Police 2008 Tour I went and saw The Police play at Usana Ampitheatre in Salt Lake City on Saturday July 19. They are very close to the end of their 2007-2008 Reunion World Tour. It was a hot summer evening and there was a sellout crowd on-hand to listen to The Police play. I was very excited to hear this concert as The Police are one of my favorite bands and one of the few I’ve never had the opportunity to see play live.
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Sunday Funnies – SNL Gotta Have More Cowbell
This skit is already world famous and I’m sure you’ve all seen it. But that being said, I still laugh everytime I watch it. So here it is for your Sunday Funnies from Live Musician Central.
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Live Musician Central Weekend Album Picks 7-19-08
Here are this weeks album picks. Here at Live Musician Central I focus primarily on new releases but I also include some fun stuff and a few personal favorites.
The new releases are intended to keep you on top of what’s happening in the music industry. A lot of the new releases here are the albums pushed the hardest by the industry. This helps your band in several ways. You can listen to what types of music the industry is pushing the hardest and see how your band compares. It also helps your cover band by giving you a selection of new music to learn that is going to be heavily marketed. That should translate into more people being familiar with this music at your gigs. So even if you decide to simply play it on your iPod you’ll have some familiar music for your audience.
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Putting Together Your Band Demo CD
Make A Live Recording One of the most important parts of your bands marketing strategy is your Demo CD. The Demo CD is going to be one of your biggest selling points in getting new gigs for your band. I’m going to give you a few tips for putting together a Demo CD that will help sell your band to club owners.
I was listening to Demo CD’s one night with a club owner who was trying to sift through prospective band for his club. I remember he kept saying things like “Studio recording”, “Studio Effects”, and “Too Produced”. And he would toss those Demo CD’s in the trash. What the guy was looking for was a live representation of how the band would sound when they played in his club.
So the most important aspect of putting together a successful Demo CD is to make a good live recording of your band. Preferably with a lot of crowd cheering mixed in. Club owners want an accurate snapshot of how you’ll sound playing in their club. They want to hear how you talk to the crowd and how the crowd is reacting to you. So a live CD is the must for getting into clubs.
If you do want to mix a few studio tracks on your Demo CD that’s okay, but put them at the end. Club owners really don’t care what you sound like in the studio. The best thing to do is have the live demo for the club owners and a studio demo to give to fans at your shows. The studio demos should also have some live tracks at the end because you never know when one of your fans is going to put a Demo CD in the hands of someone who can line gigs up for you.
There are a couple ways to capture a good live CD. One is to record your show at a club that you regularly play at and hopefully you’ll catch a good night. Another way is to control things a bit more and invite a rowdy crowd of friends to a more controlled environment for recording. I’ve done both and the demo’s we’ve recorded with a crowd of friends has usually turned out better just because the band was more relaxed and interacting easier with the crowd. Remember, the club owners want to hear some stage banter.
Finally, put your best songs on the Demo CD. Make sure they’re the songs that everybody will know and recognize. If you want to really show off your skills with a highly technical song, only put one on. Also, unless you want to play weddings, only put one slow song on the Disc.
It’s really excellent practice to record all your live shows because you never know when you’re going to have that perfect gig. You just may get the live recording of a lifetime. So be prepared by having a recorder at the gig recording your show.
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Live Musician Central Announces Products From Music123
Live Musician Central has now added product links from Music123.com . I have shopped many times with Music123 and have always been pleased with their customer service and ease of checkout. I bought my Line 6 TonePort KB37 from Music123 and I buy my Dean Markley Blue Steel Strings from them as well. Today I’m going to give you a few links to Music123 so you can check out the excellent promotions from this great online music store.
