As the cost of home recording technology has continued to fall, the list of products and their available features continues to grow. So it seems timely to ask the question, “Can you put together a viable home recording set up for less than $1000?” To help answer this question, we turned to pro audio veteran, Richie DeCarlo at Philadelphia’s music superstore, 8th Street Music. Let’s see what gear goes into a prototypical home studio rig and how much bang for the buck can you get with a grand. Read more…
Music Business Income Goes Up – Music Business Costs Go Down
So, in Independence for Bands: 101 Pt. 1, I discussed reasons why record deals from big music aren’t the way to go, and some of the negative connotations associated with the old record business behemoths. However, I truly believe that things have never been better for the independent musician. Read more…
Consider this scenario: Let’s say you own a trendy shoe store. To build store traffic, you’ve printed a post card mailing going to 1,000 people. And now you’ve got two equal stacks of addressed mailing pieces in front of you.
In one stack is 500 cards addressed to people on your own list – the marketing database you’ve built customer by customer. You know where they live and what they buy. If you’ve done your homework, you even know how often they come into your store, their shoe sizes, their favorite shoe colors, and whether they buy socks and shoelaces, too. Read more…
Part 3: The truth about isolation booths
We find ourselves immersed in the building of the isolation booth, after a slight delay caused by unforeseen delays.
The room is coming along well. Two dedicated 20-amp circuits have been installed for audio power. Lines have been run for lighting. The ceiling has been insulated and the outer walls are ready to be prepped for paint and wall treatments. Now that the main part of the room is taking shape, it is time to look at the ISO booth design and construction.
I had just ordered industrial felt to “float” the inner framing of the booth when I spoke to Nick Collerian at Acoustics First. Read more…
I used to own a Lexus. A white GS400 that I bought used – or “pre-owned” as they call it. I loved that car. It was fast, quiet, and the premium Nakamichi audio system was incredible, which for a former musician is essential. A Lexus is supposed to come with all the trimmings of owning a premium brand: top notch, responsive sales reps, white glove service and repair, free loaner cars, the works. Funny thing was, for all the accolades Lexus dealers get, I was regularly disappointed by mine. Read more…
I recently took a fantastic journey to Australia where I spoke at a music conference called Big Sound in Brisbane. There I had the honor and privilege of meeting Dave Carter, a Dr. at Griffith University who was presenting a fascinating study called The Online Marketing Research Paper.
The Online Marketing Research Paper examines the web presence and sales data for 99 independent Australian artists distributed by Musicadium (a digital music & video distribution service) to identify whether any of the documented online activity corresponded with proportionally higher royalty returns to artists. Read more…
“Want a record contract?” No, not really. The good old rock ‘n’ roll myth of the perfect record deal is dead. 9 out of 10 (major label) albums cost more to produce than they make. Of all acts signed in 2007, 70% didn’t have their album released.
The point at which an artist has many fans and is proving profitable is when labels show interest in signing an artist, and is exactly the point when an artist doesn’t need a record label. Read more…
This five-part series of articles will take a real world look at the why’s, where’s, when’s, and how’s of creating a professional-grade home recording studio. The articles will be written as things happen, and I’m sure there will be enlightening anecdotes, technical twists, and surprising turns (for you and me) as I attempt to actualize a vision that is shared by many recording enthusiasts. Read more…
In the last lesson we covered a few different strategies for starting to train your ears. This included singing with your instrument, singing over a drone, and singing intervals in all the keys. Now we’re going to take it a few steps further and work to really develop our ears ability to pick out notes and relationships. Remember that these exercises take time – developing your ears is a long process. I would practice the exercises from the first lesson and this lesson over the next several months and you’ll start to see development. It’s not a forced thing, more of a gradual opening of your ears. Read more…
Rob and Monika of The Sky Drops stopped by our Disc Makers office and plant for a tour last month and were nice enough to spend some time talking to us about their music and success. They have taken their moody sonic maelstrom throughout the USA and UK to rapt audiences. Self-managed and self-booked, they have played with Cold War Kids, Chairlift, Lights, The Dirty Projectors, A Place to Bury Strangers, and Spindrift, amongst many. Their DIY ethic has taken them to tour the UK in 2006 and twice to California in 2007 (including a performance at the Clean Air, Clear Stars Festival). Watch video…
An important part of every musician’s evolution is ear training. It’s a strange concept, but becoming an active and educated listener pays off in a huge way. First lets cover a few points about what ear training is and isn’t and then we’ll get to the exercises. Ear training is a broad term used to cover two aural developmental practices – perfect pitch and relative pitch. A common misconception we’ve got to dispel right away, perfect pitch is learnable, but your expectations need to be reasonable. Learned perfect pitch is a very subtle thing. It’s not that you suddenly can call out every note in every tune; rather it gives you a deeper perception of music. The best analogy is to think of describing different shades of color to people. Relative pitch is equally important (and more-so for certain types of playing) and is the art of hearing the relationships between tones even if you don’t know the exact note e.g. minor third, descending diatonic scale, etc. This is also learnable with practice. Read more…
In Part I, we discussed some of the basics for designing DVD menus. 
Many of your best known recordings were done to analog tape. Do you prefer the sound of analog to digital?
Subscribe to RSS
Subscribe by Email
Disc Makers on Twitter
Disc Makers on Facebook
Disc Makers on MySpace
