Akai's analogue drum machine & synth revealed

Akai's analogue drum machine & synth revealed
$200 Rhythm Wolf announced ahead of Musikmesse

Akai Rhythm Wolf Analogue Drum Machine and SynthNo one really saw this coming. Akai Pro, famed for making MPCs, controller keyboards and Ableton Live controllers, releasing an analogue drum machine and bass synth with built-in sequencer. And allegedly all for under $200! If it turns out to be an 808/909 and a 303 all in one, they could have a massive hit on their hands.

According to Akai Pro, the Rhythm Wolf is an authentic analogue instrument that combines the coveted sounds of early electronic and hip-hop music with genuine Akai Professional workflow. Inspired by the classic analogue beat machines and synthesizers of the past, Rhythm Wolf enables today’s musicians to harness iconic analogue sounds for music production and performance. The drum machine consists of five highly-tweakable drum sounds and includes a kick, snare, open & closed hi-hat, and metallic percussion. Meanwhile, onboard controls allow users to customize the tuning, amplitude envelopes, and volume of each drum voice separately and in real- time.

The bass synthesizer features a selectable oscillator (sawtooth or square wave), classic filter design, a filter envelope with variable decay, and is capable of creating powerful bass sounds and squelchy leads.

Outfitted with six genuine MPC pads and a built-in 32-step sequencer, the Rhythm Wolf provides a responsive interface with a classic drum machine layout. Drum patterns can be fine-tuned using the Swing function, Pattern Select, and Tempo Control knob.

A custom distortion signal path, activated by the appropriately named 'Howl' knob can be used for additional tone shaping.

The Rhythm Wolf also features independent audio outputs for the drum machine and synth bass so they can be treated separately, and it should also fit neatly into any vintage or modern studio setup thanks to the inclusion of USB-MIDI, MIDI In/Out and a gate trigger.

Set for a Summer release, the Rhythm Wolf has already got a lot of people talking. Keep an eye on the SOS Facebook, Twitter and Youtube for some footage of it in action from Musikmesse later this week!

WHY I WON’T BE AUDITIONING FOR THE VOICE (OR ANY OTHER TELEVISED TALENT COMPETITION)

WHY I WON’T BE AUDITIONING FOR THE VOICE (OR ANY OTHER TELEVISED TALENT COMPETITION)


Tonight, I’m standing in a stranger’s living room, singing at a house concert. I’m far from home and I don’t know anyone here but you’ve given me your time, your ear and your heart for two hours and by the end of the night, we know each other. We are fulfilled and changed by the experiences of the evening and life is good. We are moved, unexpectedly.

You approached me with tears in your eyes. I was standing near the tissue box so I had the honor of handing one to you. You told me what that one song meant to you, how it spoke exactly of an experience you’d had and that it meant the world to hear someone else felt the same way.

After a few moments of each of us trying to find the words, you said, “And you should audition for the The Voice!” I smiled and laughed a bit and said thank you. “I mean it,” you said, “you’re good enough! You could win! You could be famous! Someday, you’ll make it and we’ll say we knew you when.”

I’ve come to realize that this is a huge compliment, maybe the biggest compliment that you could possibly offer. You have just placed me in the company of some of the best singers you know of. You believe in me. You want me to have success and you want others to experience what you’ve experienced here tonight. I’m flattered and humbled and grateful.

For many people, watching one of the myriad singing competitions on TV is a huge deal, like a cross between a soap opera and football, exciting and dramatic and entertaining, an epic battle with a winner declared at the end. And you can be directly involved in the outcome. After all, it’s up to you to vote your favorite into the next round. And seriously, there is some pretty incredible talent on those shows, especially The Voice. So I’m flattered that you consider me talented enough to vocally rumble in the ring on your favorite TV show.

But I’m absolutely not going to do that. Here’s why:

1) I’m not interested in ‘winning’ at singing.

I sing for a living so in all honesty, I ALREADY win at singing. How strange it would be to have a celebrity judge (who probably knows less about singing than I do) listen to me for 30 seconds and decide if I’m ‘good enough’. I AM good enough to sing for a living because I’m doing it right now.

I sing for people, on purpose, at concerts and festivals and weddings and churches and bars. I studied music in college and have a degree in classical voice. I’m a singer/songwriter and I’m signed to a small and awesome record label. I sing for a living and I sing for people and I sing for myself. I totally win.

2) I’m not really interested in being famous.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not opposed to being well known or to my songs being heard by the masses or to making enough money to buy my mom a decent washer and dryer. But I have never been interested in achieving fame. Fame usually has nothing to do with the music and it almost certainly has nothing to do with talent.

It’s hard to judge the success of a musician without using fame as a measuring stick. But it can be pretty simple. Am I singing? Check. Are people hearing it? Check. Is everyone happy/moved/inspired/dancing/thinking at the end? Check. Do I want to do it again tomorrow night? Check. That, my friend, is success.

3) I don’t want to compete with other singers.

There are plenty of people out there taking advantage of musicians. They want us to perform for free. They want us to give them the rights to our music. They want us to ‘pay to play’. They want $2000 for introducing us to the guy who might use a song in a TV show. We have enough obstacles out there. We don’t need to be stumbling over each other, too.

One of the greatest joys in my life has been meeting and performing and collaborating with other singers and musicians around the country. They are my tribe. I love them and I want them to survive and thrive and make more of their amazing music. I want to share the stage with them. I want to high five the guy who is trying out a new song, even if he knows his performance wasn’t perfect. I want to be blown away by that girl with the amazing voice and not worry that she might be better than me. I want all of us to try new things, play new instruments and write new songs without wondering if the audience is going to vote us off.

I have had the pleasure of finding my tribe, some ships that have passed in the night and some who are docked in the same harbor. There are hundreds of us. Thousands of us. And life is better when we’re for each other, not against.

4) I want to help write a new definition of success for musicians.

I will admit, it’s pretty awesome to flip on the TV and see someone you know singing their hearts out for the world to see. I’ve had friends audition for almost every major singing competition, some making it to the finals, others not making it through the first round. And just because that’s not the path for me doesn’t mean that’s not the path for them, so I support them whole-heartedly.

But on many occasions, I’ve seen them give up when they get home. They didn’t win the singing competition so they decide to go to bar-tending school. Looks like they won’t skyrocket to fame, so they change their course all together. Some of the best singers I’ve ever heard are deflated because they lost out to a juggling dog. All the eggs, one basket.

It takes time and hard work to achieve whatever it is that you consider success but you won’t regret it. My life is full of music because I made choices along the way to ensure that it is. I could have given up when I wasn’t a famous singer by the time I was 21 years old. Oh, the things I would have missed. Even if fame is the ultimate goal…take the road less traveled and enjoy the ride.

As my friend and executive producer Lauren Markow always says: “Even a bad day making music is better than a good day doing anything else”. Right. On.

5) Because tonight was PERFECT.

Who says that the best music in the world is made in front of a huge audience?

It’s not. It’s made in small rooms. It’s made by people you’ve never heard of. It’s made when a musician is alone, writing a song, practicing, trying something new. It’s made when a french horn and it’s player become one entity. It’s made when your choir is rehearsing a week before the scheduled performance and everyone just clicks. It’s made at the Saturday matinee performance when the lead soprano finally understands and fully becomes her character. It’s made when I am singing one of my songs and I look up to see you, crying, nodding, completely present and I realize that I don’t even know what this song is about anymore.

So no, I’m not going to be auditioning for The Voice. Because I would much rather be standing right here, singing in a stranger’s living room, seeing your face as I sing, handing you a tissue as you tell me how my songs moved you. I am part of your experience and you are part of mine. I am fulfilled and I am changed and I am moved that you are moved. And this is what I want my life to be. Welcome to the tribe.

I will forever treasure the compliment.



PS, I would love to do a house concert in your living room! Learn more about what a house concert is hereand here. Shoot me an email and we’ll talk!

Get Paid For Your Music – The Ultimate Guide

Get Paid For Your Music – The Ultimate Guide


Fact: you’re more likely to make a decent income from sync music – that’s music in film, TV and video games – than you ever will with chart fame. Another fact: it’s easier than you might think to get into. Rob Boffard has the advice and the contacts you’ll need…

There are a lot of names for library music, such as sync, production music, stock music… In general terms, it refers to the use of music in TV and film, in video games, on the radio, in online videos –anywhere that requires a little dose of music to shine. But irrespective of what it’s called, it remains one of the most underused weapons in any producer’s arsenal – and a good way to make additional income from your productions.

A single hit can make a musician’s name; think about the use of Imogen Heap’s Hide And Seek in the television series The OC. And anyone can make library music (we’re going to stick with this term for now to avoid confusion), so although there are a few things to bear in mind, you’re not going to be using any production techniques that differ from what you’re doing already: chances are that you’ve already made some music that could work in a library, and which would also be quite comfortable sitting under the credits of a hot new TV series.

Of course, there’s also bad news – when you’re trying to make a living from music, there’s always bad news. While it can be a nice way to generate income and cement a reputation, cracking the library music safe is a very tough job. You’ll face immense competition, a massive industry that can often be rather set in its ways, and – like any producer – you’ll often have to fight to get paid! More importantly, you have to get used to the fact that once your music is being used, it’s no longer your own. You’re not releasing a track under your own name; it’s going out under the name of a production company.

In this feature we’re going to walk you through everything to do with library music – how it’s made, where it’s used, who uses it (and why). We’ll chat to composers, library owners and music supervisors, finding out what they do and getting their tips on how to get called back again and again. We’ve also built our own library track from scratch – a classical monster that would quite happily work in the credits sequence of any Viking or crusader film. We’ll use it to break down the things you need to remember when creating a library track, including how to create shorter versions and how to separate out stems, and at the end, we’ll turn it over to a music library to see whether it passes muster.

In Process

Let’s say that you want to get in on the library-music game. You’ve got a bunch of tracks together – a good demo that shows off your versatility and musical chops. First step is to find a home for it. In most cases, that means going to a music library, which is where the term gets its name from. A music library is just that: a library of music, sorted by styles, tempo, length, keywords and whatever other metadata can be dreamed up. Today, nearly all library companies are online, although quite a few still create CDs of music to send out to industry contacts.

If it works out well, the library bigwigs like what you present, and offer to put you on their roster. That means your tracks will appear on their website, available to listen to. Maybe they ask you to make more, or focus on a specific style that they can hear you’re good at.

Someone hears your track and likes it. They contact the music library and ask to license the track – ie, to purchase its use for a specific purpose. Depending on what the track is being used for, you could end up being paid a few quid – for the use of a track in a small radio ad, for example – or a hell of a lot of money if a company like Electronic Arts wants it for the next Dead Space (very unlikely, we should point out, but nonetheless a possibility!).

In addition, you’re also paid by the MCPS/PRS (Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society/Performing Right Society). They’re the organisations that collect money when music is used, and if they’re doing their job, you’ll get paid there as well. We’ll deal with them in more detail a little later.

They may want it exclusively, or they may want you to tweak a few things. If you become well-known enough, companies may begin asking specifically for your services. Music supervisors – who are in charge of selecting music for film and television – may commission you to produce something especially for them. You may be signed on a freelance basis to work on a particular project. Sometimes, music used in this fashion may have nothing to do with a library at all – it could simply be a piece of your music that someone has come to you to use.Very obviously, this is an extremely simplified version of what actually happens, but, in general, that’s how the industry works.

Click Here to read our guide to Building a Library Track



It’s a Demo

You might reasonably ask the question of why you should have a library representing you in the first place. Think of this like writing a novel. The music libraries are like literary agents: they form the middlemen between you (the writer) and the people who’ll use your music (the publishing company). They have the industry contacts, know-how and sales expertise you might not have. You have the musical skills they need.

Don’t be overly ambitious when starting out as you’ll need first to build a profile and get your name known



Putting together a demo of your material to send to potential music libraries isn’t as easy as slapping a few tracks together and firing them off. There are a few key things to bear in mind. Remember: libraries get tracks from producers all the time. Their inboxes are full of the stuff. To make yours stand out, there are a few things that you’ll need to do.

You need to spend some time finding the right libraries for you. Before you even think of submitting, you should know who their clients are, what styles they offer, and how you could fit into their roster. In addition, make sure that you’re aware of current trends within the industry – if you plan to write music for national radio ads, you should be listening to as much national radio as your time permits.

When getting your tracks together, you should aim for nine to ten tracks that showcase a wide variety of genres. If you produce only electro-house, well, good for you, but it really narrows down what you can do with your music. If, however, you’re confident with your DAW and your instruments and you can put together music from a wide variety of genres, you’ve already made huge strides towards getting noticed.

A busy producer is likely to spend very little time flicking through your tracks. Keep them short and make sure that the main ideas and audio elements are communicated right away. You want anyone listening to have a feel for the mood, style and temp of your tracks within seconds of clicking play.

Put your songs online – somewhere like SoundCloud is ideal. It should be a single place where someone can access the music you want them to hear. Beyond that, all you’ll need to do is write a friendly email (personalised, not blanket, if you please) telling why they should check you out and what you’ve got to offer. This is a good time to mention those industry trends you looked up earlier.

Find a reliable and flexible internet service provider to host a website that readily adapt and grow should your music prove popular



Gettin’ Money

Licensing laws and procedures vary from country to country. While every country will have an organisation dedicated to helping you get paid, we’re going to focus on the UK in this feature.

The Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society and the Performing Right Society have done their very best to merge into a single body accessed through a single website (www.prsformusic.com), but try as they might, they’re still dealing with two different types of bringing in money from music, and untangling who pays you what, when and how much can often be frustrating.

Definitely consider signing up with the PRS part of the programme. There’s a small fee – around £30 – to join up. PRS collects royalties for performance every time a track of yours is played; the amount varies depending on when and where this happens. They pay out quarterly, and you have to have a minimum of £30 in royalties before you can get paid.

The MCPS is somewhat trickier. They deal with what happens when your track is reproduced – recorded onto CD, say, or downloaded online. They have a different set of rates and payout schemes from PRS and they also collect the mechanical fee – the fee paid to license the track – and distribute it to the publisher and writer (the library and you). This is then split, depending on what you’ve agreed with your particular library.

Not all libraries are signed up to MCPS: some, such as Synctracks (which we’ve spoken to elsewhere in this article) are PRS-only. It’s worth checking very carefully what arrangements your library has before signing over your music to it. And of course, if you don’t actually go through a library – if, for example, a TV producer has sought you out directly to get one of your songs on their show – then you’ll almost certainly be paid a flat rate, along with royalties from PRS in those quarterly segments. In addition, some libraries specialise in royalty-free music, which lets users download a track for a one-off fee. For these, obviously, you can expect a single flat rate.

Finally, don’t expect to get paid immediately. It can often take months to see any of the money. Bottom line: if your track is sold you will get paid, but don’t expect to write a track this month to pay the rent next month. That just ain’t gonna happen…

Click here for our guide to creating different length versions



Taking Ownership

It’s worth stressing a point we made earlier: once you sell a piece of music, it’s no longer yours. Your name will appear next to it on the library-music website, the person who picks it will know who made it, and if there are credits on whatever it’s appearing on, it’ll pop up there as well. But once it’s bought? Forget it. You no longer have ownership.

Psychologically, this can be quite difficult to process. After all, you made the thing – as obvious as that sounds – and why shouldn’t you take credit for your hard work? But for whoever hears the finished product – whether it’s a radio ad, film score, TV series or whatever – is not going to associate that piece of music with you. You think that people watch the opening credits of TV series Suits and think of Ima Robot, who produced the disgustingly catchy Greenback Boogie that underscores it? You are divorced from whatever happens after your music is picked up. For everyone but Ima Robot, Greenback Boogie is the Suits song.

There’s a corollary to this: if your song is particularly good, you will suddenly find yourself deluged with curious fans who are Googling the theme song of whatever you’ve made it onto, hoping to find it and add it to their collections. While it’s certainly true that in most cases the song in question was never designed as a piece of library music – usually it’s an existing piece of music an artist or band has put out already – there’s nothing to stop the right piece of music from taking off. This is quite rare but it does happen, and you really want to be around when it does – your fan base can explode literally overnight.

The MCPS/PRS will sort out the financial side of your library work, but actually getting the cash in your pocket can take time, so be prepared to wait and don’t peg your dreams on seeing and immediate return

Range of Samples

Making library music demands not only a high level of quality, but speed as well. You need to be able to create a variety of tracks in a very short space of time. To that end, you should equip yourself with a huge range of weaponry. You should already be comfortable producing using a number of different synths and software instruments and know your DAW like you know your front door.

Sample libraries are a great way to add quality and, more importantly, diversity to your sound. They come in a huge range of flavours, and while we’d love to say you should get as many as possible, they can often be quite expensive, so what we’ve done here is highlight a few of the better options. Any or all of these will immediately set your productions apart.

Click Here to read our interview with film and games composer Chris Green



Companies such as Loopmasters and Prime Loops are often perfect for this – once you’ve bought sounds from them, they’re completely free for you to use from there on. They have an absolutely enormous range of collections to choose from and are often very reasonably priced.

The wonderfully named Violence, by Vir2, will give you some fantastic string sounds to work with. And we’re not talking traditional sounds here – the guys at Vir2 took string instruments and did some very unusual things to them, resulting in a library brimming with different textures, hits and stabs. The presets in Violence are absolutely extraordinary, and you can also tweak a whole bunch of effects to adjust the sounds to suit your needs.

Click here to read our interview with library owners Liz Robin Williams and Mikey Panting





For drums, Wave Alchemy has put together a great (and relatively cheap) library of synth drums called – wait for it – Synth Drums. Ten synths from companies such as Sequential Circuits, Roland and Korg have been sampled and are ready to go. There are more than 5,000 drum hits here, and although they’re all electronic sounds – don’t expect acoustic stuff in this collection – they’re very versatile and will find a home in any of your tracks.

For something really out-there, we’ve fallen in love with Glass Works, by Soniccouture. Among other things it captures the sound of cloud chamber bowls – an instrument so rare that they had to build their own to record it. The textures on offer are nothing short of breathtaking, and if you have Kontakt, you’ll find that Glass Works slots right in. It’s a little bit pricier than some of the other options, but we think it’s well worth checking out.

All of these options are royalty-free. Whatever you use, you need to be absolutely sure that this is the case. If not, it could come back to bite you later on…

Click here for our guide to seperating stems

Back Catalogue

You also need to pay attention to the matter of exporting, which can be a real headache if you aren’t managing it correctly. When you’re showing off your wares to companies, you can probably live with 320Kbps mp3 files – it’s high-quality enough to show off what you can do while still remaining portable.

Click here to read our interview with music supervisor Amanda Street



When it comes to delivering the real thing, however, you’ll need to make sure you’re clear about what your library expects. Most people we spoke to said that WAV files, delivered at 24-bit and 48kHz, are the standard way of doing things. You should be delivering both a full-length version of your track as well as 30- and ten-second versions. Once you’ve sent a track to your library there’s no harm in archiving the session on two hard drives somewhere (always keep multiple backups). Just make sure it’s easily accessible in case changes are needed.

Music libraries live and die by how easy they make it to find material. Producers and music supervisors looking for a specific track are far more likely to use tracks from a library if they can easily find what they’re looking for. Most libraries tag their tracks with a range of data – and you should too. DAWs such as Pro Tools let you add metadata and tags to your bounced-down files, and if you need more organisation, you can always check out programs like Jaikoz, which help you sort and tag your audio files. If you’re a Mac user, the latest version of OSX, Mavericks, allows you to add tags to files. Consider tagging audio by tempo, style, mood, genre and even specific instruments.

121 Things Not To Do In The Music Industry

121 Things Not To Do In The Music Industry

All too often, we get wrapped up in new tactics, new ideas, new plans and new ways of getting bigger and better as musicians. With social media and the internet, there’s so much information that it’s almost become immeasurable.

This is great and all, but maybe we sometimes lose sight of what we shouldn’t be doing.

There’s lots of stupid shit you shouldn’t be doing.

Here’s a quick guide to what you shouldn’t be doing.



THE PERSONAL ELEMENT
Don’t ever stop practicing your instrument.
Don’t be an asshole.
Don’t WANT WANT WANT WANT. Learn to give back first.
Don’t get defensive. Learn to take constructive criticism.
Don’t forget to learn how to take destructive criticism, too. You’ll get a lot more of it than you think.
Don’t forget that everyone’s an asshole.
Don’t stop learning.
Don’t lose your ambition.
Don’t lose touch of where you came from and who helped you out.
Don’t stop reading. Read more. Read a LOT more.
Don’t ever stop trying to meet new people and fans.
Don’t stop practicing. I fucking meant it.
Don’t make excuses.
Don’t make commitments you can’t keep.
Don’t say what you can’t back up.
Don’t exaggerate, everyone will see right through it.
Don’t be afraid to get into it.
Don’t owe anyone money. Pay it off as soon as you can.
Don’t think that they won’t fuck you over just because they’re a friend.
Don’t shit on the few friends that you do have.
Don’t be the guy who just floats along. Actively help your band out as much as you can.
Don’t rely on everyone else, make it happen yourself or lend a hand in getting it accomplished.
Don’t forget that you can’t change certain things, and bitching about it won’t help either.
Don’t forget how fucking stupid you are.
Don’t be afraid to listen to those who are smarter and more experienced than you.
Don’t forget that sometimes you’re wrong. In fact, more often than not, you’re wrong.
Don’t pretend you’re innocent.
Don’t pretend to be above something. Get your hands dirty. Hurt your back. Get scraped up and some real work.
Don’t live in the past or the future. Learn to love the moment and what you’re doing. You’re in a band. Love that fact.
Don’t lose sight of what you started your band for to begin with.
Don’t lose faith in yourself or your friends. They’ll help you out more than you think when you need it.
Don’t be naive. Believe it when you see it.
Don’t forget what it’s like to just be starting out in the industry. Explain things to people. Take on someone under your wing; teach someone something good.
Don’t blame the label. As a fan, you have no idea what the circumstances were. As an artist on that label, there’s always something you did that was probably shitty, too.
Don’t blame the manager, either. Same goes for them.
Don’t think bands are these innocent angels. They rarely are as good as they make themselves out to be. They’re people just like everyone else, and that means they can be just as shitty as anyone else.
Don’t be afraid to lend a helping hand.
Don’t get into arguments with people on social media. Stay away from it. It’s pointless.
Don’t judge a situation before you’ve heard both sides. This means you should basically never judge a situation or someone.
Don’t forget that everything is a joke and that you shouldn’t ever be too serious. No one gets out of life alive.


THE GENERAL BAND STUFF
Don’t assume anyone will care about your band. They won’t.
Shit talking doesn’t get anyone anywhere.
Don’t be that band that starts to do it for the money. It’s not that money’s bad, it’s that we can all tell you’re forcing it and no one appreciates a forced art form.
Don’t ask too much for your merch. It’s just a damn t shirt.
Don’t order too many CDs. It’s not worth having tons of them laying around.
The same goes for merch. Don’t order more merch than you reasonably think you can sell on a tour or in a small timeframe such as a month or two.
Don’t spend your money on stupid stuff. Spend it where it counts.
Don’t buy likes on Facebook
Don’t try to buy your way to the top.
Don’t skimp on gear, either.
Don’t forget to practice with a click. Drummers and guitarists, this goes for both of you.
Don’t ever stop interfacing with the people that buy your music. No matter how big or small you are.
Don’t forget to do cool little things for fans while you’re on tour. a small note or a signed drumstick will go a lot farther than you think.
Don’t expect respect.
Don’t forget that you have to do your time.
Don’t assume. Make everything as clear as you can, and get it in writing at every chance you can get.
Don’t stop creating. Not just music, either. Create in every format you can. You are a creator, after all. Photos, blog posts, new music, share music, share ideas, just put out content.
Don’t forget just how many ways there are to reach out to your fans.
Don’t forget to post on every social media network every single day.
Don’t forget to engage with your fans. If you master this, you’ve mastered the music industry.
Don’t stop trying to improve your sound and tone, both live and recorded.
Any publicity is good publicity.
And, additionally, people will hate you for anything and everything. Don’t worry about it.


BOOKING  & TOURING
Don’t ask for too much.
Don’t book a tour for your band unless you have the emergency fund to support it
Don’t book a tour with too little notice. You’re just shooting yourself in the foot.
Don’t turn down a door deal because you think you can do better.
Don’t blame the promoter when you haven’t helped promote the show, either.
Don’t blame the promoter when you haven’t helped, period.
Don’t expect to play to 100 kids a night. Be grateful for 5.
Don’t forget to say thanks to the sound guy.
Don’t forget what it feels like to be the opening band.
Don’t forget what it feels like to be shit on by the touring band.
Don’t get a rockstar attitude.
Don’t kiss ass, but don’t forget when to say thank you, either.
Don’t forget that the touring band usually needs a place to stay.
Don’t forget that they could use a place to shower, too.
Don’t think people will help you out just because. You have to give them a reason.
Don’t pretend to be better than the local bands you used to play shows with.
Don’t stop booking or helping to book your tours. Just because you have an agent doesn’t mean you can’t help out.
Don’t be the diva in the van.
Don’t be too cool to say sorry. Come on, dude, you and I both know you were being an asshole.
Don’t let what someone said get to you. Keep your cool.
Don’t forget to have fun on tour. That’s what it’s really all about, anyway.
Don’t skimp on buying your van. Quality counts when it’s the only thing getting you to your next show.
Eat at cool places and do cool things on tour. Those memories are just as good as the rest of tour.
Don’t stop drinking water on tour. Dehyrdation causes fatigue and you’re dehydrated before you even know it.
Don’t pass up the chance to shower. Ever.
Don’t buy anything that can go bad in the van. Meats, dairy, anything that’s perishable is a no-go in the van unless you eat it immediately. If it can’t sit for more than 30 minutes, don’t bring it in to begin with.
Don’t leave your dirty laundry everywhere in the van. Keep it in a sealable bag.
Don’t step without looking. You’re gonna break some shit.
Don’t gas up without checking the gas prices with the GasBuddy app. Find the cheapest gas.
Don’t get under a half tank of gas if you can help it.
Don’t pack too heavy, and I’m not talking about just your bag. Cut everything out of your life that you don’t need. Emotions and unnecessary clothes alike.
Don’t forget to call your loved ones back home. Family loves to hear where you’re at. Girlfriends love to hear that you’re not kissing another girl.
Don’t spend all your money on stupid stuff on tour. You don’t need that sombrero, homie, your money can go to better places while you’re being poor on the road.
Don’t forget to wipe a couple extra times. You can’t afford any leftovers, man.
Don’t forget to masturbate. That shit relieves stress. You’re a god damn musician, get creative and find a place.
Don’t forget to experience the locations you go to on tour. Find good food to eat, visit a national monument, go the Grand Canyon, check out Mount Rushmore, and take pictures.
Don’t forget to stop at cool places along the road on tour.
Don’t be a dick to the person who gives you a place to stay. Say thank you at every chance and try to do something in return for them. Clean the room you stayed in a little bit, help them do dishes.
Don’t be loud and obnoxious at 3:08 in the morning when you’re staying in a stranger’s house.
Don’t be the band who only cares about getting drunk or high after the show. Learn how to have a good time sober.
Don’t try and get out of driving duty.
Don’t stop talking in the van. Late night talks are food for thought and soup for the soul.


RECORDING


Don’t expect your drums to sound like Lars off the Black Album when you haven’t tuned them and put new heads on.
Don’t expect your sound engineer to work magic. This goes for live shows, too. Your instruments must sound good first.
Don’t show up to the studio without extra guitar strings, drum sticks, guitar picks, and drum heads.
Don’t forget to bring a source of entertainment. Studio time is 90% of waiting-for-someone-else time.


LOCAL SCENE AND SUPPORT
Don’t talk shit on your scene when you’re not doing anything to help it.
Don’t be an asshole, okay? Do you fucking get it? Stop that shit.
Don’t think you’re band is the best. You’re not.
Don’t stop trying to improve your live show.
Don’t shit on local bands because they’ll hurt you more than you think.
Don’t steal from other bands; Learn the subtle difference between paying homage and stealing.
Don’t show up late for the show. This goes for touring bands, too.
Don’t dip out before the show is over. Stay for all the bands.
Don’t be an elitist. If a band is doing well, then they’re doing something right, whether you agree or disagree with it.
Don’t stop supporting local music. If you start to get big, help out the local bands that you used to play shows with. They’re the same as you, and as much as you don’t want to admit it, they might deserve it just as much, if not more than you do.


AND FINALLY….
Don’t forget why you got into this.
Don’t stop putting your entire heart and soul into every show. It’s cliché, I know, but it’s true.
And there we have it. A cumulative list of 121 things to completely avoid.



Post written by Dylan Lott of BandHacks You can follow Dylan on Twitter @DylanLott

No Qualms Mixtape - Episode 4 (UK Vibe)

This mixtape is a mix of different UK genres, Jazz, Dub, Hip-Hop & Drum 'n' Bass.

No Qualms Mixtape - Episode 4 (UK Vibe) by No Qualms The Artist on Mixcloud

3D print your own dubplate!

The record is made with a system developed by an Instructables employee. Deep in Autodesk’s Pier 9 lair, I listened to a few of her printed and laser cut records.


What can you do with a 3D printer?

It’s a question I hear a lot, and there are many answers. But the most delightful application I’ve encountered so far came in the form of a thin, round disc–a record. This week, I slipped on a pair of headphones at Autodesk’s Pier 9 makerspace and early-’90s grunge eked out over a background of scratchy crackles: “Load up on guns, bring your friends/ It’s fun to lose and to pretend.” Nirvana. The band, I mean.

The record was printed by Amanda Ghassaei, a software engineer who works for online DIY-haven Instructables. Since she first posted her method for making the records on Instructables, it has garnered international attention. So much so that Bloc Party lead singer Kele Okereke announced he will use her method to 3D print records of a new song he is releasing next week.

Ghassaei decided to 3D print a record after a set of top-of-the-line Stratasys 3D printers arrived at Pier 9. The printers are very high resolution, so she decided to see just how high of a resolution she could coax out of them. Printing the tiny ridges that line records would be a great way to do so.

But first, she had to figure out how to use software to create a printable design. Records are so complex that it would be impossible to design one by hand. Ghassaei decided to write a script that would automatically turn a music file into a record design.

After a lot of trial and error, Ghassaei was ready to try her first 3D printed record (“Debaser” by Pixies). It worked.

“That was a pretty good moment,” she said.

She didn’t stop with 3D printed records. Using a laser cutter, she also made wood, vinyl and paper records. They sounded more scratchy than the 3D printed records, but that’s likely because heat from the laser cutter warped the records as it carved them. Radiohead’s “Idioteque” actually sounded pretty natural over heavy scratching.

Ghassaei said the instructions posted to Instructables are meant to be thorough enough for anyone to make a 3D printed record, but it still requires some serious work to go from song to plastic disc. She also said you need a high-resolution printer to make it work; a MakerBot isn’t enough.

Ghassaei said she isn’t sure that home 3D printers will ever be good enough to make printing records a common activity, but she could see bands following Okereke’s lead and using printed records for promotional records. They could print a unique record for each person that orders one, for example. In the end, she hopes that people who see the Instructables page are inspired or just learn something new. Even if people don’t have personal access to a high-end printer, they can use one of the multitude of online printer services to order their own record design.

Okereke recorded the song, “Down Boy,” with the help of singer Bobbie Gordon. It will be available as a 3D print December 13 and 14 in London and all proceeds will go to charity. Ghassaei actually never managed to fit an entire song onto a record on her own, so “Down Boy” is the first-ever full song to be 3D printed.

Gettin' shit done!

5 Tips for Getting Things Done and Self Motivation for Artists, Producers & DJ’s


Pro DJ and music blogger Phil Morse from Digital DJ Tips gives your productivity a kick in the pants with five reasons to stop procrastinating and get working on your art.

Creative professionals everywhere struggle with the challenges of getting things finished. Successful creative professionals beat those challenges. This is a sentiment that should resonate with the bedroom producer. With the rise of affordable music equipment there has been a flood of people trying to get into this field and the competition is fierce. But music production is just one of the more recent career fields to face these battles, as they join artists everywhere who must learn the skills of self-motivation to survive in these competitive fields.

To address this issue we have compiled five rules you can use to ensure you’re playing the game well enough to find some success. These tips are a good list to turn to when you need a kick in the butt to get started and feel serious about succeeding in music production.

1. Show up!
Mark Twain was once asked if he had to wait for inspiration to come before writing. “Yes, I do,” he replied, “but inspiration always comes at 9am sharp, every weekday!”

To succeed, you have to turn up. When you’re a solo producer, maybe doing it part time, it’s doubly important, because nobody else is making you do it and you’re busy anyway. But if you don’t put the hours in, the rest of it comes to nothing. Professionals do; wannabes just think about it.

The best way is simply to plan a certain number of hour for production into your days, weeks and months, and stick to it. Jobs have set hours, and this is a job. If you’re physically there, ready to start, you’ve already won half the battle.

2. Fight resistance
Novelist Steven Pressfield wrote a seminal book on creativity called The War of Art. In it, he identified the devil on your shoulder that stops you producing creative works, and gave it a name: Resistance.

Resistance is what makes you sort through your sample library recategorizing all of your loops and hits, instead of working on your tune. Resistance is what makes your hand move towards the Facebook bookmark to check your fan page, instead of working on your tune. Resistance is what makes you suddenly decide to rearrange your studio to put the speakers in a different place, instead of working on your tune…

In short, resistance is what makes you do something else that feels important but that actually isn’t, at the expense of doing what you’re really meant to be doing – creating. It’s particularly insidious because you feel like you’re working, but in fact you’re actively looking for anything but your important creative work to do!

A simple way to trap this creeping disease is to log exactly what you do for a few production sessions, and see how much time you actually spent producing. Once you’ve identified the apparently urgent but really unimportant stuff, the “instant gratification” tasks that you’ve been doing instead of the real, painful, worthwhile job of creating, you can start doing something about changing your habits – the kind of things outlined in our10 Tips to Fight Writer’s Block & Increase Studio Productivity post a few months back.

3. Finish what you start, then start again
How many times have you had somebody tell you excitedly about an amazing new tune they’ve made, right up until the point that you ask to hear it, at which point they shuffle uncomfortably, muttering something like “it’s not quite finished yet…” or “I need to master it first…”. How many wannabe producers do you know who never seem to finish anything at all?

Signed bands traditionally had little choice but to finish their records on time, with obligation-ridden advances, studio time booked, and record company execs breathing down their necks. Even then, there are legendary stories of albums taking years to finish (or never getting finished at all). If “real” bands sometimes never finish their work, what chance do effectively self-employed producers have?

You have every chance, as long as you set yourself deadlines and stick to them – come what may. Tasks tend to expand to fit the available time. Deadlines are your friend. Professionals produce, release, and move on. Wannabes procrastinate and spend more time coming up with excuses than delivering and getting going on the next project.

4. Accept failure as a necessary part of success
Let me make a few assumptions about you: Music is your life. Tunes express things for you that words can’t. You can say more about yourself in a musical production than you can find words to express. Bands, musicians and producers are your heroes.

So how can you possibly live up to the expectations these feelings impose on you? How can you possibly do something of worth in the arena you so admire? How will you deal with releasing something that doesn’t meet your own impossibly high expectations?

The answer is to accept that to get that success, you have to first miss the mark. You have to produce tracks that nobody ends up liking. Hell, you have to produce tracks that even you end up not liking!

Every time you miss the mark, treat it as training – or if you like, as “nudging your guided missile closer to its target”. We always learn more from our failures than our successes. Without the little “nudges” that each almost-success gives us, we simply can’t hit our final, successful goal.

With modern music distribution, there’s a real hidden bonus here. As you release track after track, piling them up on YouTube and cross-promoting them on Facebook and so on, you’re actually building up a back catalogue. And believe me, as soon as you have one success, a lot of people will want to know about that back catalogue. So treat your early efforts as banking stuff up for future success if you like.

5. Accept that it’s natural to lack confidence
We are each programmed to think than anyone, everyone, can do stuff better than us. That simply because we’re involved, anything we do is bound to fail.

Writers feel it when they face a blank page, artists with a blank canvas. DJs feel it as they warm up a night, scared out of their wits. Producers feel it in Ableton Live with a new, empty project and no ideas. All feel like they’re just not up to the task.

Let me give you an example. I have had a long, fulfilling career in dance music. But, even when I was five full years into DJing as a professional, I remember realising that I’d never lost the feeling that I wasn’t really a DJ, than I was a fraud, and that if anyone actually came up to me while I was playing – I mean, just one person out of a packed, happy dancefloor of hundreds – and told me so, I would crumple and never play again. Such was my lack of confidence. It’s better now, but it’s still there. And I’m very normal (I think!).

Here’s another thing: While it’s unlikely anyone will ever tell you you’re a fraud or no good at this, also nobody will ever come up and give you permission to be a producer. No-one will say “you’re good enough, welcome to the club”. You have to tell yourself it’s OK, and you have to do it daily.

How many producers do you hear saying they can’t stand to listen to their own work, or read their own reviews? Do you ever wonder why that is? It’s because they have that natural low confidence in their own abilities. Success and money don’t cure it, either. You just have to accept it’s part of the creative mind.

Finally…
A wonderful thing happens when you turn up, blindly believe in yourself and push on. They say “God loves a trier”, and it’s true – when you get going, the stars seem to move in your favor, synergies happen, your mind – having beaten resistance – slips into creative mode, stuff you can’t explain begins to go your way, and out of nothing – painfully, slowly and precariously – good stuff evolves. Good luck!

Phil Morse is a DJ and journalist originally from Manchester, England. He currently lives in Spain, from where he publishes Digital DJ Tips: How to DJ properly with portable digital DJ gear