“I have a Mac laptop and a DGX Yamaha keyboard. I would like to copy some of the keyboard music styles on a CD ROM for a friend to play on a CD player away at his home. How can this be done? Any advice would be appreciated.”

As the purpose here is to listen to a CD on a CD player, we are talking about audio recording, and not MIDI.

The easiest option is to connect the audio outputs of the keyboard to the audio input of the laptop, and use the free recording software Audacity, which runs on Mac OS X (as well as Windows and Linux).

To download Audacity, go to http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

After that, it’s only a matter of burning the recorded audio to CD. Audacity allows you to save the audio in several formats, including WAV, AIFF, and MP3. For CD, choose WAV or AIFF. Then it’s down to your MAC to burn it to CD. As I do not have a Mac myself, I’m not too sure what the process is but i guess Mac users will be able to find plenty of information about this on the web.

I hope that helps

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In a nutshell, the article demonstrated the theory that an artist (in the general meaning of the word) does not need millions of fans to make a living off his/her art. Kevin went on to demonstrate that having 1000 True Fans would be enough for a solo artist to make a living.

Various articles around the blogosphere and threads on various forums have been discussing the article, dissecting the numbers and examples used by Kevin. Some people have questionned his definition of a True Fan (according to Kevin, this is someone who would spend $100 a year on the artist), some others have questionned some statements in the article such as “modest expenses”,  but one thing is sure: most artists and musicians seem to believe that Kevin’s theory is right. The practical details are up for discussion but many seem to agree on the principle.

So, how useful is it to the songwriter?

Non-performing and non-recording songwriters suffer from their inability to directly take their music to the audience. Generally, they have to concentrate their efforts on looking for a publishing deal or a “cut”, that is getting their song recorded by an artist.

Kevin’s model is mostly based on the artist being able to deliver a “product” to an audience. As such, even if Kevin’s theory rings true, non-performing non-recording songwriters might find it difficult to see how it applies to them.

However, Kevin’s 1000 True Fans principles are most relevant to songwriters.

As a songwriter, this means that you don’t need to team up with a famous artist to make a living from music. You could team up with an unknown artist, a local artist whose voice and performing abilities you like.

If you recruit someone able to record at home (or if the artist has the knowledge), you could create a “product” as a team. Kevin’s theory dictates that if there are 2 people in a team, the team would need 2,000 True Fans. If there are 3 people (let’s say a producer comes on board), you would need 3,000 True Fans.

Kevin’s calculations imply that the True Fan spends US$100  year. For argument’s sake, let’s assume a value of US$50, which would be deemed more accessible by most people. In a team of 3 people, it means you would need 6,000 True Fans.

However, it is likely that some of this money will be spent on merchandise and tickets, none of which would go to the songwriter. Here is when the whole theory falls down for a songwriter…

 … but fear not! The answer is to get involved in more than one project at a time and to cement your place within each team. But is it possible?

Let’s assume an album takes about 2 years of an artist’s life (time to pick the songs, time to record, time to release, time to tour it) and has 12 songs.  Let’s assume you write 2 songs a month. So that’s 48 songs in two years. Of course, no one can write great songs with a consistent rate so let’s assume half of your songs are so-so. It leaves you with 24 songs being potentially picked up by a bunch of different artists over the course of 2 years, or 12 songs a year. 24 songs is enough material for 2 albums! Or for 4 half albums (artists might use a bunch of different songwriters on the same album)! Or for 24 singles (with downloads, the single format is working quite well for independent artists)!

So a songwriter could be part of two or three teams.

The concept of “teams” is very important.

Traditionally, a songwriter only makes pennies per album sale. It’s a percentage of the gross sale price, variable between countries, but it’s never a lot. However, independent artists using Kevin’s principles bypass the traditional music industry practices, and this is where songwriters can learn from it.

If a songwriter is willing to get invested in the final product, to provide resources for it and to promote it, the songwriter can become part of an artist’s team, and take home much more money than the royalties rate.

Providing resources doesn’t mean investing money. You might be able to provide knowledge in an aspect of making the album (for example, designing the cover); you might have marketing skills; you might be able to convince your cousin to make a video of the single for his film school project; you might invest time in participating and moderating the forum on the artist’s website.

Kevin’s principles imply that an artist connect with fans, one at a time, build up a True Fan base step by step, and interact with fans. Well, this work is rather daunting for an artist to take on his/her own. If you can share the load, you can share the benefits.

Independent artists can make a living by connecting directly with their audience, bypassing the music industry. Independent songwriters can make a living by connecting directly with their audience, except that “their” means “their team’s” in this case.

It’s not easy making a living as an independent artist, and it’s not easy to make a living as an independent songwriter. It takes time and hard work. It takes energy and willpower. But it’s possible.

If he/she wants to make any money, a non-performing non-recording songwriter needs to associate with others. But rather than targetting a music publisher or an established artist, who will only pay pennies for each song sale, you could associate yourself with an independent artist, whom you can help in many more ways than writing great songs and who will treat you as a team mate. Of course, it requires time and hard work, energy and willpower. But it’s possible

 Update (8th June):

Back in April, Kevin Kelly, the originator of the “1000 True Fans” theory has published a post titled The case against 1000 true fans on his blog.

Yesterday (7th June), Ernst-Jan Pfauth interviewed Gerd Leonhard, a specialist in media, and Gerb Leonhard said “streaming music is the new radio”. I find this particularly interesting because I’m a user of Napster subscription on-the-go service and i love it. I do not buy any CD or download now, I just pay for my monthly subscription with Napster.

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If you are a regular reader, you already consider yourself creative, as after all, this is a blog about songwriting and music recording for the creative mind. If you’re not a regular reader, welcome to the blog.

Creativity is easy to spot in situations which require you to come up with a new concept with nothing to start from, whether it is writing a new song, coming up with an ad campaign for a new product, or developing a new website.

But creativity is much more than that…

Creativity will help you make up a nice dish out of leftovers in your fridge. Creativity will help you make your wedding anniversary the most memorable night. Creativity will help you invent a fun game the next time you are stuck in a traffic jam. Creativity will help you have a week-end different from all the other week-ends. Creativity will change your life.

Are we all creative?

Many people with obvious creative talents, such as music, painting, acting, writing, tend to say they were “born with it”. The truth is you might have a natural tendency to be creative but cultivating it doesn’t hurt. Likewise, you might not have a natural tendency to be creative but developing it doesn’t hurt. Creativity training can give you a much needed boost.

How can creativity training help you?

A friend of mine and his girlfriend claim they are bored when they don’t go out drinking. Basically, they can’t entertain themselves (yes, i did joke about what they could do to keep themselves entertained…). They are both smart people, with a big circle of friends. You’d think they’d find things to keep themselves amused/amazed/excited?

The problem lies in their background. They both grew up in a culture where drinking was de rigueur. They never questionned it, they never found themselves in other situations as teenagers as all their friends always met down the pub. Basically, they have shut down their creativity as the answer to the question “what shall we do tonight?” was always the same, day in, day out.

Now, you can see how you might be creative in one aspect of your life (your day job, your hobby etc) and still have scope to improve creatitivy in other aspects. Routine kills creativity, so make sure you do think twice before answering a question the same way as you did yesterday ;)

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One mistake commonly made is to think that to produce music, you need a lot of expensive gear. Sure, good gear is useful but what matters is what you do with it. 

With this in mind, learn how to use what you have, even if you only have a small Casio keyboard, your voice and an old cassette recorder

OK, OK, i’m teasing you a bit as there are some minimum requirements when it comes to recording music nowadays, simply because people do not listen to music on cassette tapes anymore.

To start recording and self produce your music, all you need is:

• a song
• a way to create some sounds; instruments, your voice etc
• a way to transfer those sounds to your recording device of choice; cables, a microphone
• a multi-tracking system to record on; it could be a portastudio or a new computer with a state of the art software and soundcard; it could be a cheap computer with a free recording software like Audacity, or a cheap recording software like Tracktion, and  the in-built soundcard that came with the computer.
• a way to mix your multi-track recording; it is usually included with the recording device, as most hardware portastudio come with an in-built mixer, so do recording software.
• a way to export your recording to a format that other people can listen to; if you have a cassette portastudio, you could plug the master out into a computer (yours or a friends) and use a free software like Audacity to record the output; if you have a digital portastudio, you might be able to transfer your audio straight to CD, or to your computer via USB; if you are recording using your computer, you don’t need to worry about this, all you will have to do is use the “export” function of your software.

All the other stuff, like effects and so on, is useful but not a prerequisite to start recording.

Start with the tools you have, and learn how to use them.

Before considering buying any new equipment, ask yourself the following questions:

• do you really know what sound you are trying to get?
• are you sure that none of the tools you have could help you produce that sound?

Only if you reply “yes” to both questions should you consider buying new equipment.

Being a good producer means:

• being able to switch quickly from a global to a local vision of music; one minute, you need to hear how all the instruments work together and the next minute, you are concentrating on adding more mids to a vocal part
• knowing how to use the tools you have so nothing interrupts your creative process, and you find a solution to all of your sonic problems
• recording and recording as much as you can
• a strong interest in anything and everything to do with sound and music, whether it is creative or technical

 It’s now time for you to take the plunge

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OurStage.com is centred around a competition principle. Artists can win monthly prizes, as decided by the fans.

It works per channel, eg per style of music, and artists can upload music and video.  You have channel winners, and also overall winners.

So, how is it different from every other music website?

Firstly, as Quaxle is for songwriters and artists, let’s look at OurStage.com from an artist perspective.

There are prizes to win. Of course, there are only a few prizes for many artists (if the site turns out to be successful, this could be 100, 000 artists). This is the nature of competitions.

The prizes are really tempting. They include mentor sessions, performances, a Godin guitar and cash prizes.

My main concern is that it reinforces the connection between music and competition. Even though there is some truth in that, especially at the top of the music industry, i’m not sure i like the idea of a website founded entirely on this premise. I very much prefer a site like last.fm, which is about connecting music lovers with more music, and MySpace, which is akin to an online business card for a band.

I do recognise that OurStage.com will help the winners as some  of the prizes will make a big difference to bands and solo artists who win them, i cannot really condone the whole premise of the site turning music into a big competition.

This is from an artist point of view. But what about the users?

 Like many websites designed to attract artists (eg content), it fails to have an unique selling point for users. OK, it might be that they get to choose a winner, and they know that their vote might make a difference for the future of that artist. Sure, it’s nice. But as a music lover, it wouldn’t make me ditch my current favourite music website to join OurStage.com.

Overall, i wish them all the luck in the world as i can see their intentions are good but i will not bother registering with them, neither as an artist nor as a user. Will you?

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Lorenzo, over at “My Endeavour to be a published songwriter” blog, has browsed the internet for us all and found an article about a songwriting success story. Go to http://publishmysongs.blogspot.com/2008/02/contest-to-career.html and read it on his blog, or go straight to the source article at http://www.yesweekly.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=4&ArticleID=3285&TM=65330.66

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The debate is rife on songwriters forums and mostly, songwriters do not agree. In fact, this article was inspired by a thread on the subject over at Just Plain Folks.

Like many of these decisions, it depends on your personal circumstances, so here’s a quick list of pros and cons to help you decide.

Why you should pay for a pro critique of your song

•  someone you pay, as opposed to a fellow songwriter you know through a songwriting forum or a songwriter group, will be more inclined to tell you the truth as he/she will have no friendship to lose
• you are helping a pro or semi-pro songwriter to earn a bit of money in between two royalties meagre payments
• even if the critique is disappointing in terms of its helpfulness, you’ve only lost £20 ($40), which isn’t worse than having a disappointing meal at a restaurant
• you want to market your song to a specific market and the advice from a songwriter who has broken into that market would be useful
• you feel something isn’t quite right but you can’t put your finger on it

Why you should not pay for a pro critique of your song

• a live audience is the best test for a song (so if you’re a performing songwriter, get yourself out there and test your song - there’s nothing like a real audience to make or break a song)
• if they really knew how to write a hit song, why aren’t they doing it and living off the royalties?
• a pro songwriter would never want a semi-pro songwriter to get better as she/he then becomes direct competition, so can you trust their advice, or is that “pro” songwriter really a pro songwriter
• you don’t want someone to judge your song based on their rules
• you know you are the next John Lennon/Tori Amos and you don’t need anyone’s permission to record your songs

 If you want to add something, post a comment :) 

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Different instruments cover different areas in the frequency spectrum; for example, a bass guitar is lower than a guitar. Some instruments are capable of covering a large area (a guitar or a piano), while others are more limited (a kick drum).

You may have a preference for certain frequencies; some people love a lot of bass on a record, some people might like high-pitched voices. 

While it is OK to cater for your personal taste, it is a good rule of thumb to cover as much of the frequency spectrum as you can. Obviously, this rule doesn’t apply if you make an artistic choice of recording something with no bass, or something with nothing above a frequency of 5kHz.

Well said, but how do you make sure you cover the frequency spectrum?

Two things can allow you to do this. The actual note you play, and the sound settings you use. Simply put, a pure note corresponds to a specific frequency. But each instrument not only plays that pure note but also certain harmonics. The types of harmonics it plays define the timbre of an instrument; this is what makes a guitar sound different from a piano. More over, external effect processors and recording techniques can affect the harmonics and frequencies.

If you use the same instrument and settings, playing a bass line one octave higher will shift the sound higher in the frequency spectrum. When choosing where to play a chord on a guitar, think about the sound you want in respect to the other sounds on the recording. This is when voicing comes in handy, as it allows you to shift the sound higher or lower in the frequency spectrum.

The other way to alter a sound is by using an effect. While many effects have an effect on the frequency spectrum, EQ is the signal processing effect which will affect the frequency spectrum the most. Simply put, you can boost specify frequencies, or you can lower specific frequencies (or do a mix of boosting and lowering).

Going hand in hand with covering the frequency spectrum is giving room for instruments to breathe within the frequency spectrum.

If you have several guitars for example, you run the risk of having a muddy sound because all the guitars are fighting for space with each other. It doesn’t mean you cannot record several guitars, but you have to work harder to achieve separation between those.

If you have two guitars, you can pan one left and one right, so they effectively use a different space of the stereo. For more guitars, or if you don’t want to use panning, you need to focus the sound of each guitar on a separate area of the frequency spectrum. You can read more about layering guitars here.

I’ve talked about guitars but the same applies to synths, piano, strings and any instrument you want to record.

All this theory is nice and all, but what about taking the plunge? I’ll discuss this next monday.

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 I have in the past suffered from the same syndrom, unable to finish anything i was starting. How did i manage to get out of this vicious circle then?

Well, it was just a matter of saying “do it now”.

Yeah right, words are nice but what about action, you say? Well, “do it now” is all about action. Basically, i realised that doing something, even if it wasn’t the best method to push a project forward, was much better than doing nothing.

Don’t get me wrong, i do like planning and i think a minimum amount of planning is required, but once you start fretting about it, wasting not only hours but days wondering about how to go on about something, the best thing you can do is pick a method and do it.

If it turns out not to be a good method, you have educated yourself and you can then choose a different method the next time you are faced with a similar project. If it turns out to be a good method, your project is done and you can move on to the next project.

Let’s get back to our songwriting project.

You’ve come up with a great riff idea, you do a rough recording, you save the audio file as “thunder riff” and you put your guitar back into its case, satisfied with the knowledge that you have written a riff that could potentially become a hit song. The following day, you pick up your guitar again, write a lovely melody, record it quickly, and file it away under the name “nice melody”. Once again, you are satisfied. One year later, your hard drive is full of those short recordings, and none of them has turned into a song. Sound familiar?

Where did you go wrong, then?

That’s where:

“and you put your guitar back into its case, satisfied with the knowledge that you have written a riff that could potentially become a hit.”

Don’t put your guitar back into its case!!! Follow up your idea, challenge yourself to write a melody to sing to, write a few lyrics and you’ve got a verse. Now, you can put your guitar back into its case, right?

No, no, no! Having the chorus or verse of the song isn’t enough. You need to write the other parts. Once again, do it now, don’t put that guitar back into its case until it’s done.

In fact, why are you reading this? Switch off the internet, pick up your guitar, open up the short audio file you recorded yesterday or the day before, and force yourself to write a song around it. Focus your creative energy into writing parts to transform this short recording into a full song. You aren’t allowed to record any short audio clips today, you are only allowed to record a complete song.

Tomorrow, do the same with a previous short audio recording of yours.

Do it now!

Recommended reading (for tomorrow; now, you should get off the internet and pick up your songwriting instrument):

http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles/do-it-now.htm 

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