Putting Together a Demo for Your Break Into The Music Industry

As a band or as a solo artist, eventually you have to start thinking about making a demo CD for A&R reps, producers, production companies, and record labels to help market, fund, and traffic your music. 

Getting someone in the music industry to take the time to listen to your demo is not an easy task. Most demos are tossed in the garbage before they are even opened and if they are listened to, even if you only put three songs on the CD, most people in the music industry won't even bother listening to the whole thing. Don't take it personally; it's the music industry.

But if you do have something special and you are ready to put together a demo CD in the attempt to get the attention of the music industry, there are some things you need to know to be successful in this venture.

Put Together a Couple of Great Tracks 

First, you have to take some time and decide which songs are your best songs that will grab the attention of someone who might want to invest some time in you. Three to five songs are all you really need. 

Special Track Structure for a Demo

To improve your chances of having more than one song listened to you should set your demo CD up like this: take 30 seconds of each song and put those clips as your first three to five tracks. Next, create another three to five tracks of the same songs at their original lengths and put them at the end of the CD. This will help when someone important listens to the CD, they will hear just a little preview of each song and they can quickly move on to the next one. When and if they do hear something they like they can go forward to the track that contains the whole length of the song for more.

Important: Make sure that you label the CD cases with the information that tells the person who will be listening to the CD that the track structure is set up in this special way to avoid confusions. 

Also, make sure that all artist names or the band's name is on the CD insert or cover along with each member of the band and their responsibilities.

Press Kit

The ideal of a press kit is to essentially tell whoever picks up your CD to listen to it, who you and or your band are, what your accomplishments are, where you have performed, and any proof of a local, Internet, national and international fan base that you have acquired throughout time under the bands or artist name.

You may also want to have some live performances recorded at a venue you frequent or in the studio where you record. Yes, it would make more of an impact to have a live performance at a venue, but you can still do some really cool stuff in a studio with a camera.

In this press kit you also want to include a bio - make sure to include what ambitions and intent you yourself or your band has along with any other info that can help you or your band standout.

Make Contact

Take some time and network with people who are involved in the music industry - ask questions and make connections. The ideal here is to find places you can send your demo CD to that are worth your while. My first demo CD I sent out, I made the mistake of sending it out to every place that was or maybe wasn't excepting demos, and to this day I wonder just how many demos I sent out that never made it out of the package before finding its way to the trash can. I'm going to assume out of probably 150 demos I sent out, only about 2 percent of them made it into a CD player, that's a lot of wasted time.

The best way to avoid wasting your time sending out demos to places or to people who won't listen to it is to make you're music solicited. Sounds tough right? It's not, a lot of bigger record companies do not accept non-solicited music, but all you have to do is talk to someone and get them to agree to listen to your music, and then you can send it to the address of which they give you and label it "Attention: corresponding name" and now you're solicited. This will help you and the company or person you send it to. A three-minute phone call will give you an exact address to send your demo to so it won't end up in the wrong hands and then tossed in the garbage. 

Get Some Representation

Let's say you have exhausted all of your connections and the Internet is a well ran dry of possibilities. You can always look to hire professionals to help you get your music in the hands of the right people. Yes, it can be expensive, yes it can seem like they're doing nothing more than what you can do, but the difference is that they probably have connections that you would never be able to get your hands on, that's their job. The question you have to ask yourself or your band is "will it be worth the money?" 

There will be a risk, let's face it, no one wants to think that they aren't good enough and no one should have to. But in this case, if you or your band still needs more practice and more experience, you should wait on spending the money on professional help until you and or your band can utilize it in the most efficient way.

You have to look at like this, if you are paying someone to help you and they know that you're not ready for this type of move yet, that person you are paying will not tell you because they want your money. Even worse, they will not give you or your band the time and the effort you are paying for, basically, because it won't be in their best interest for their career to promote your music to other professionals when they know it's not ready to be promoted.

But if you feel you are ready and you have an awesome press kit, bio and demo, and you're ready for the big boys but your connection just aren't powerful enough to get your music noticed, this could be money well spent.

Keep in Touch

Let's say you have made some contacts and you have some people who are willing to give your music a listen. There is nothing wrong with a follow-up phone call. Let's say you sent your music and the person or company has received it but has not taken the time to listen to it yet. This phone call could light the fire under someone to open the CD and give it some time, especially if you come off as someone who might just call ever week until someone does listen to it. You may also help yourself by calling if someone has listened to the CD and is on the fence about it. A phone call could show them the ambition that they want to see from an artist, and that might sway them in the right direction about what they want to do about the situation in general.

A Couple Last Things You Can Do

This is not a must, but it will help you look more professional: Get your music copyrighted. This won't only make you look more professional but will also protect your music when you're sending it out to different places. 

You can also help yourself and your band by using art work in the form of a label or a symbol that can be associated with the band or you as an artist. Again, this is not a must, but anything that can help market your name is just one more thing to add to your press kit and can help your chances of success.

One last thing that should be noted is that this is a process, making it big overnight will be like hitting the lotto. So unless you're feeling that lucky, get ready for the long hall.

How to Use Your Outboard Processor with Pro Tools

There's a trend for audio interfaces to include insert points on the inputs, greatly simplifying the use of line-level processors when recording mic or instrument-level signals. You'll probably need a TRS-to-dual-TS insert cable to accomplish this because invariably the insert will be sent and returned on a single TRS jack. Simply patch the interface's insert to the in and out of the processor, and the processor becomes part of the recording chain. Remember that anytime you involve a hardware processor with your DAW session, you must process and bounce in real time, even when using an external plug-in processor. 

If you're lucky enough to have an arsenal of outboard mic pres, simply route the output of the pre into a compressor or EQ, etc., and then route the output of the processor to the input of your audio interface. The signal will be compressed or EQ'ed before it's recorded. You now have a reason to keep some of your old hardware around!

Three Reasons Music Recording Engineers are Having a Hard Time Finding Work

Having a hard time finding work in the Music Industry as a recording engineer?

There is three big reasons why - the economy, technology and the Internet. These three factors have played a huge part in the loss of work for engineers, and here is why.


The Economy

Yes, a lot of people may think that the economy would not affect the music industry as much as it does, but in some cases it may be effected by the economy even more than most industries.

The music industry relies on people having extra money, and when times are tough, people don't buy CD's or go to concerts; a band that spends $4000.00 a year to have their CD recorded, if they can't afford it anymore than the engineers, producers and studios suffer.


As long as the economy is not doing good or even when it bounces back, if it's still at an unstable state or at least in a rescission state, the cycle will continue and it will be hard to find people who are willing to record their band or their self to make a CD that might only sell a few hundred or even a few thousand copies.

The economy also affects record labels and production companies as well. Record companies and productions companies are the financial backing to a lot of work that comes available to studios and engineers. They can pay for studio time that an artist or band may not be able to afford, but if sales down, then they will be restricted to how much funds they can use to promote a talent.

Technology

Technology is great for the D.I.Y. (do it yourself) people, but for a recording engineer it makes trying to get work very hard. Technology is making it capable to have a small home studio with big professional results at an extremely affordable price.



A studio that could have been put together 15 years ago for about $50,000.00, can now be put together in someone's garage or basement for just about $5,000 dollars, and believe or not, it can sound just as good.
Even worse for the engineer, if you're just a solo musician or a really small band, it can take even less money and even less space. Hand held recorders, computer software, compact MIDI keyboards, MP3's, flash drives etc. are just some of the products playing a part in taking the need of an educated, experienced engineer out of the equation.

The Internet (Information World)

Here is the third and final nail in the coffin for the independent recording engineer. If you have access to all of the equipment mentioned above and more, and want to learn how to use it, the internet has unlimited resources to learn from. Although, there are some things you just can't pick up from reading or watching videos - if you stick with your hobby long enough, you might just be able to be just as good as a professional without the need for schooling or an internship.


Adjust Your Game Plan
Just think about some of these factors when you go out looking for work. Understand, it might not be you or your talent that hurts your chances of getting work, but it could be that the Music Industry is changing and recording engineers are suffering from it. My suggestion to everyone is to see how the industry is changing and change with it. Find out where and how other engineers are making their money in the industry and adjust your game plan.

 

Recording a Great Album: The Golden Rules 31 - 37 of 37

Ready Mix

31. Listen in the studio to CD's you're used to hearing on your home stereo to get an ideal of how the studio's system sounds.

32. If mixing somewhere other than the recording studio you recording in, try and make sure you use the same type of speakers and set-up. If you don't, the mix will sound completely different.

33. Once you have selected an engineer (or a producer) to mix your recording, have them do the first mix. Their ears are better trained than yours. Try to keep an open mind and try to learn from the person you're paying.

34. Think about the songs as a whole and don't signal out instruments, otherwise everyone will want their instrument louder in the mix.

35. Determine a band spokesperson ahead of time. An engineer getting five different opinions on how to mix will grow tired and might cause him/her to rush through the job.

36. Decide which format you want the finished mixes to be on: high resolution .wav or .aiff files on CD-R, DVD-R, or flash drive are the preffered formast, however an audio CD or DAT are viable options as well.

37. Budget and account for unforeseen delays.

9 Quick Tips to Improve Your Vocal Tracks

Since vocals are usually the most important part to a song, they are obviously the most frustrating tracks to mix because you do not want to fall short on quality. You can spend a long time fixing and mixing and just simply not getting the sound that you really want. Here are 10 tips that might help make your life a little easier when recording and mixing vocals.


1. Boosting the EQ around the upper mid range (around 3-4 kHz) can add some more explosiveness, but be modest as this can go a long way.

2. This is the easiest way to help your vocals out. Place the vocalist in the right place. Unlike an instrument, instead of moving the mic around, you can just have the vocalist move forward, backward and side-to-side. Have them lay down some sample tracks with them positioned differently and use the position that sounds best. This is an easy process for getting great vocals. The better the initial recorded sound, the less effects will have to be applied later.

3. When deciding if you need to use a hard knee or a soft knee compressor, you really need to listen to how the singer is singing. If the singer is really powerful on the mic, you want to use a hard knee so that the vocal can be compressed right away. If the vocalist is a little less explosive, by all means use the soft knee to let the vocalist's vocals build up before it is compressed.

4. Check out your gain reduction meter. By almost all accounts, you do not want more than -6 db of reduction on the vocals. If there is more than -6 db of gain reduction, change some of the other parameters to help you get closer to this target number.

5. Unnatural sounding vocals can be caused by too much compression. If this is the case, what you want to do is to lower the compression ratio to (1.2:1 to 3:1).

6. Here is another great way to try to do some tricky stuff. Doubling up on vocals is a great way to bring some debt to the track, but what if the vocalist is not there? You can make a duplicate track and use a pitch shift plug-in. About a -15 to -30 percent pitch shift mixed properly with the main vocal could give you that fat vocal sound you are looking for.


 


7. If you are looking to clamp down on the peaks of the vocals, but you're not really looking to affect the rest of the vocal dynamics, here are some compression parameters you should go with. Choose a high ratio -  something close to 10:1 or higher and a somewhat high threshold - somewhere around -1 to -6 db. This should help you clamp any peaks, but it should be high enough not to affect the average level of the vocals and dynamics.

8. If you have a noise problem due to a noises pre-amp, which can happen, try this little trick to help prevent it. Try using a gate program with a fast attack and a modest decay. But don't do too much of this for it can cause an unnatural sound to the vocals, you want just enough to keep the buzz away when there is not a lot going on in the mix. And make sure you use the bypass function to make sure you're not affecting the vocals in any way.

9. One last thing a lot of engineers may have to ponder: Should they use a popper in front of the mic? There is only one way to answer this question and that is simply just listen to the artist perform and make a decision from there, if you need it, you need it, if you don't, even better.

Using effects to help make vocals sound better is a great way to help an engineer get a great sounding vocal for their clients. But remember, when it comes to compression, reverb, delay, etc., it can make a vocal sound great or it can squeeze the life out of it, and there is nothing worse than an uneventful or an unnatural sounding vocal.

Music Production: Always Use Your Ears for the Perfect Sound

Nowadays with the technology that we experience in DAW's (digital audio work stations) we tend to be attracted to staring at the big show of colored wave forms, super accurate meters, graphs and digital moving plug-ins that are music programs have to offer. Even know all the glitz and glimmer do serve as a purpose, we tend to forget that our ears are what is hearing the music not are eyes.


When we use both our ears and our eyes, our brains are taking in two different types of information at the same time in-turn distorting or weakening the signal of what we hear. And even know the numbers on the computer screen may never lie they don't always make the sound we are looking for.

One thing that any good engineer needs to do is turn off the computer screen or at least close your eyes when the sound that you are trying to mix is playing. You can  try other things to get away from the computer screen as well, such as getting up and walking to the back of the room or to gain a different sound perspective you can walk from one side of the room to the other. You can also try letting the sound source play while you walk out of the room for a minute then come back into the room while it's still playing to see if you can pick up anything that needs to be changed.

One last tip, something I do often  that a lot of engineers won't do is if I'm pretty close to being finished, I take the music and make a quick copy of it, then I take that copy to my car and ride around the block and listen to it; or I will take it to another room lay on the coach and set back and listen to it. A different room will give you a different atmosphere, and that might just give you a different perspective, then you can head back into the lab make some changes and finish up.


 

Getting Some Hands-on Time in A Studio with a Studio Engineer

In this day and age there may be enough technology out there to have just about all of the same technology that a high profile studio has right in the comfort of your own home. But one thing you can't buy is you can't buy the knowledge and experience that a high profile studio has.

How do you get this type of knowledge and experience? The obvious answer to the question is to read the manual, research the internet, watch videos and get as much hands on experience as you can.


But, there is another way you can get free training.

I found that engineers are usually pretty nice and reasonable people. They like to help other people chase there dreams just as they probably had mentors and help throughout their career. You can try to find studio owners or well respected engineers and ask them if you can sit in on some of their recording time. Let them know that you are using some of the same hardware and software they use and spending some time in the studio with them will be beneficial to you.





If you can get someone to agree to let you come in and sit in on a session; know your place. Watch and ask questions but don't get in the way, don't over step or be pain. Unless asked directly, don't try to help, just pay attention take notes and learn.

Now, you probably won't get anyone to pay attention to you as some smuck off the streets. What you want to do is do your homework on the person and the studio you want to approach. Look and sound professional, even if you're not yet professional, showing up with a professional attitude will help who ever you approach believe that they are not just wasting their time. And if possible always approach with a phone call and or in person. An e-mail or a Facebook message in most accounts will not be taken seriously.

The best way to break this plain between you and a professional engineer is to come off as someone who is eager to learn. Know you stuff, be persistent, know who you are approaching, the music they specialize in and be prepared to let them know what your goals are in the future, but make sure they are realistic. But, most important thing you need to do is listen and remember whatever they have to say.


In the end, if you can get a chance to sit in on a session, the best thing that can happen is you get some in-studio time, possibly some time to pick the brain of a good engineer, maybe even some hands-on experience and if all goes well, you have now made a connection that down the line can become very useful.

Four Ways to Get Rid of a Muddy Mix: Audio Recording Advice

A lot of recording engineers mix and mix their songs, only to keep coming up with a final mix that sounds muddy and muffled. So what should you do? Their are plenty of reason why this happens and here are four ways to try to fix that mess.



 

1. Stop leakage. This is the first place to start when trying to prevent muddy and muffled mixes. Before recording try your best to get all of the leakage you can out of the microphones. If you have to change mics or the directions and angles of the mics don't be lazy, just do it. If you're having problems with muddy mixes then you might want to try all kinds of different microphone situations.

2. Boost your highs. Try boosting some of the highs but don't boost a huge bandwidth, try boosting them in peaks and add just a little reverb . Highs can help brightening up some of the instruments, but be careful too much can make extra noise and can take away from the natural sound of the mix.

3. Try cutting the lows. Cutting the lows while boosting the highs can help get rid of that muddy sound. Just make sure you cut them in the right place. You want to make sure you can still hear the bass of the instruments; you are just trying to cut out the muddiness. Two or Three db around 300hz is a good start.

4. Take it easy on the effects. Don't assume that just because reverb and other effects make the song sound cool that it is the best thing for the mix. If you're using a lot of reverb, eq, echo etc. then try to back them off a little because to much can make your mix sound muddy and artificial.