Hands up who likes analogue synthesisers?! Of course you do; there’s dozen of models out there and the best thing is, they’re all different. That might seem strange at first glance because when you examine them, most models appear to be basically the same.

My Roland SH101 has one oscillator, one filter, one envelope generator and plays only one note at a time. Put that next to my Yamaha CS10, which is nearly exactly the same in terms of sound making facilities, and everyone except a guitarist would tell you they’re different, as different as a grand piano and a Yamaha DX7 (and the SH101 sounds far better in my opinion). And as every synth sounds different, each is unique.

Which brings us to a tiny silver box manufactured in 1982. It’s the antique synth that inspired every dance music genre since Acid House: The Roland TB303 Bassline. On paper it looks extremely limited. It has one oscillator, one envelope generator, one filter and a tiny keyboard that’s next to impossible to program. And yet, this synth sounds like no other. It’s weedy, shrill and despite it’s ‘bassline’ tag the thing it does worst is basslines. How ironic! TB303 are very rare and very expensive these days, and quite frankly you’d be better off spending £1200 on a decent set of monitors. As you may know I teach music production courses and as special treat I’m going to save you some money and show you how you can make Logic’s ES1 software instrument do a close imitation. And if you don’t have Logic, don’t worry, because these steps will work on just about any softsynth.

The basics

1. Load in the ES1 and set the oscillator to ‘sawtooth’. Set the oscillator mix so you have only the main oscillator, not the the subsoscillator. The TB303 has no suboscillator and only a dial between sawtooth and ‘square’; you can switch the oscillator to square if you prefer.

2. Set the oscillator range to 16’.

3. Make sure the ES1 ‘Voices’ setting is in ‘Legato mode’ and with ‘Glide’ set to around a 1/3 of the way up. This setting is extremely important; we must not have notes overlapping and creating chords. We need the ability to slide between specific notes too!

4. Set the ADSR to very fast attack (but not instant, just slightly off will suffice). Set sustain to zero. Set the release and decay to two thirds of the way up.

5. Set the amp to ‘Gate R’ and the ‘level via vel’ triangles to one at the top and the other 2/3 up.

6. Set the filter to 12dB (the TB303 actually has an 18dB filter but the ES1’s filter sounds far more realistic at this setting) and the ADSR via vel triangles at zero and 2o’clock. Drive should be at zero, and ‘Key’ at half way.

7. Set ‘Analog’ to 100%

8. Set both modulation faders to zero. There’s no modulation other than ADSR on a TB303!

So, with your synthesiser set up in this way, you should have an approximation of a TB303 coming out of your speakers. That’s only half of the battle: to really get that acid feel you need to play the ES1 like a TB303 too. Which actually means that you mustn’t play it but manually program in a pattern in the style of a Roland sequencer from the early 1980s.

The Pattern

1. Create a one bar region in the arrange area using the pencil mouse tool (esc > No.2)

2. Open that in the piano roll editor and draw in the notes you want to play using the pencil tool. Note that the default length on velocity setting is ideal for us because the note is one 16th note long and the velocity is 80.Remember, no chords!

Here’s where things get really clever. At the moment, you’ll probably have a string of notes, each clearly firing one after the other. The TB303 can do that, but the best patterns use glides, legato and accents to create that classic Acid House feel.

1. Drag the right hand corner of the note that you want to ‘slur’ into the next one to the right so that it overlaps with the next note. This will do two things: it will stop the envelope generator triggering again and it will make the ES1 sweep to the new note’s pitch. Nice!

2. The finishing touch is to add accents. You do this with the velocity mouse tool (esc > No.9). At the moment, all your notes will be at velocity 80. Click-drag up on the note you want to have an accent until the velocity is at, say, 100. That note will not only be louder but it will also be slightly brighter too, just like in the old days.

The finishing touches

Of course, it’s how you adjust the settings on the synth that makes that TB303 ‘performance’. The best ones to play with are the Decay/Release settings on the ADSR, Filter Cutoff, the Filter Resonance and the degree of Filter Modulation (move the fader by clicking between the two triangles). If you want to emulate the changing of the ‘accent’ setting, try moving the top filter triangle up and down. Also, you can adjust the attack setting on the ADSR; moving it up to just under a quarter of the way will give you an accurate ‘filter lag’ sound. The key here is subtlety. The real TB303 connoisseur can also add a touch more resonance on every accented note; this is most easily drawn in with automation.

Clean TB303 sounds went out of fashion in the 80s. Try these effects to dirty up your fake TB303:

1. Bitcrusher. But don’t use it to down-sample the audio. Instead, just adjust the drive setting. This will give you that classic ‘abused preamp on a cheap mixing desk’ grit.

2. Ensemble. This can help a pattern come alive, and adds a nice movement to the sound.

3. Tape delay. Throwing a dash of this into your mix can give the ES1 pattern an extra bounce and sound great with those shrill filter sweeps.

Enjoy!

To learn how to produce the classic Roland TB303 sound using Ableton Live, check out this tutorial from fellow Point Blank tutor, Danny J Lewis.

Steve Hillier teaches Music Business
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Recently, I’ve been helping an online student with the concept of networking; it hasn’t been easy. Networking is a difficult concept to define and even my best attempts have felt a bit weak. Networking is the number one tried-and-tested way to move your career forward and nothing else comes close, nothing. And that’s any career in any field too, not just music. Business is about people as much as it is about products, probably more so. And networking is how you find the right people to work with and for you. Yet if networking is so important, how come it’s so painfully hard to pin down what is?

The problem is brought sharply into focus when someone asks me ‘how do I get a record deal?’. They’re looking for a specific answer, not a bunch of vague generelisations! They’re looking for a simple breakdown of the steps needed to go from obscure to successful, in the right order and in a way that enables them to start moving today. But the music industry isn’t a maths equation, record deals are not awards. You don’t ‘qualify’ for a publishing deal. Finding a label, a manager or an agent is the process of meeting and getting to know someone who wants to invest in you and work with you. Notice I used the word ‘you’ there, not the phrase ‘your music’. That’s because your success in the music world depends as much on whether these people like you as to whether they like your music.

There have been many studies that demonstrate that business decisions are mainly made on an emotional level, not logical reasoning. No business person has the time or inclination to make every decision based on empirical evidence, weighing up the pros and cons of a situation. I’m sure you’ve heard industry leaders boasting about building their business on ‘gut instinct’. Gut instinct implies, among many other things, that people chose who they want to work with based on who they like, and no industry relies on this more than the music business. Maybe that’s because nothing in the music world is certain; signing even the best act is like betting on a horse. You might study the form, research the jockey, examine the running conditions but in the end you’re taking a leap of faith. And leaps of faith require that you believe in someone…

What on earth are we going to do?

So here’s my dilemma: it’s simple to explain to someone how to use Melodyne. The concepts are easy to grasp and the software is well laid out so even a novice can do something useful with it within a few minutes. But how do you explain how to make someone like you? How do you actually make new business friends?

What exactly is Networking?

Networking is the process of making new business relationships with people who are likely to be able to do things for you, or for you to do things with them.

How do you network?

By meeting people in a business or social context and discussing points of mutual interest, exploring ideas and opportunities together and, crucially, ending a conversation with either an agreement on what to do next or simply leaving the means to explore the ideas you’ve discussed at a later stage. This is achieved by swapping contact details.

Where do you Network?

Absolutely everywhere. Expert networkers are always on the lookout for new opportunities, new friends. This means that anywhere and everywhere is their networking event. If you’re a beginner at networking you’ll need slightly more guidance than that. In order to connect with the people you need to move your career forward, you’ll need to be:

1. Attending live shows as often as you can, preferably with friends
2. Attending nightclubs as often as you can, preferably with friends
3. Playing your own shows as often you can, and ideally all over your country or region, not just in your home town
4. Socialising within your own local music scene…at parties, pubs, conventions, meetings etc preferably with friends.

The cold fact is that if you don’t live in an area of the world where you can do that, you’ll have to move to somewhere you can. There is no other way. Why do you think so many bands are formed of university friends? Talented musicians who previously lived in disparate rural areas of a country all come together in city or town, socialise, find ideas of mutual interest and then…you know the rest.

There are online versions of these opportunities too. The term Social-Networking tells you a lot. What exactly is Facebook for other than to connect with friends? But internet connections, great as they are, are never a replacement for real-world interaction. Ask yourself this: how many of your 898 Facebook friends do you actually know? How many of them could you ask to do you a favour, a real favour, not just simply ‘liking’ your new SoundCloud upload?

How will Networking help my career?

By creating new friendships and making new acquaintances, you are in a better position to ask for help or for work than the complete stranger who cold calls a record label. This should be obvious… how keen are you to answer your phone when you don’t recognise the number ringing? And how do you feel when it’s a complete stranger on the line trying to get you to do something? I know I feel annoyed. Contrast that with the situation that occurs when you recognise the name displayed, the voice asks you how you are, what you’re up to and then invites you out for a coffee to discuss an idea that ‘might interest you’. Which phone call won the contract?

That’s the power of networking. And that power stems from the fact, yes FACT, that It’s relationships, not money that makes the world go round. So go out there into that wonderful real world and start making friends with the people that matter. Now!

Steve Hillier teaches Music Business in London and Logic Music Production Online

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So how hard is it really? You write songs and sell them, that’s all there is to it, right? Unfortunately the music industry is a little more complicated that we’d like it to be. There are a bunch of different areas that, as an artist, you must get to know and even more ways in which these areas can be negotiated and traversed. To successfully navigate the music industry you’ll have to learn the ins and outs of each of these areas and how they inter-relate. To help you get started we have a ‘Map of the Musical Universe’ courtesy of PRS (click to enlarge).

This map provides a great overview of the flow of business within the music industry. Take a close look at how and where the exchanges take place and try to figure out where you or your band might fit. We’ve also come up with a few helpful pointers to help you make sense of it all >>

1. Know your Brand

Always remember, just like purveyors of all other commercial products, you are a brand. Sure, music is a highly creative endeavor in its own right, but once it has been published, distributed, sold and bought it becomes the end product of a complex commercial industry which effectively makes you, the artist, a marketable brand. Great music can sell itself, but branding always exists in some form. For example, even an artist who rejects everything to do with ‘image’ and branding will, in doing so, create a set of branding credentials and a marketable image: that they are nonchalant, they disregard convention etc. The Sex Pistols’ anti-authoritarian and anti-establishment attitude became their brand; what they were known for.

Branding is essentially how you are seen as an artist by others and is something that you can try to actively influence with an array of marketing strategies. Alternatively you can let your Brand grow naturally as you make more releases and do more gigs. Whichever method you choose, the key thing is to be aware of how you are perceived and how this perception can be effected by different things.

With an good idea of your Brand and how you are perceived, you can begin to look for ways that to use this perception to your advantage and channel it into good, effective promotion: find other artists and organizations like promotions companies that are in keeping with your Brand and try to form some kind of mutually beneficial relationship. Find DJs and producers who play and make music that’s similar to your own and swap tracks for collaboration or playing out. Write an article for a blog and ask in return to have your music posted there. Don’t confine your creativity to the studio: think of new and original ways to get your music to relevant audiences and people who will actually be interested.

2. Build a strong fan base

The best fan base is made up of dedicated long term fans, so think of ways to build lasting relationships with fans. On Twitter and Facebook don’t just repeatedly promote your latest tracks as this will bore people and lose their attention. Keep your posts fresh, mix up the content and engage with fans as much as possible by replying to questions etc. It’s better to have a few dedicated and enthusiastic followers than a large amount who are all indifferent and disinterested.  Remember the three different types of fan; passive, participating and passionate, so think of ways you can appeal to all three.

Don’t put too much energy into selling tracks for 79p online. This is actually a very inefficient way of creating a fan base. You will be much better off giving tracks or other content away for free as this will encourage more interest and create a stronger connection between you and potential fans. The first step is to build up a following, then you can start making money from selling content. Also remember that a good sized following is something that will generate interest from promoters, venue bookers and labels and is therefore worth loads more than a few 79p downloads.

3. Be professional

A Wise Man (who loved his job) once said ‘choose a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life’. You might not see your musical pursuits as a job or career, and it’s true that the music industry is a lot more laid back than other areas of business, but it is an industry nonetheless and it is therefore vital to maintain a professional stance when dealing with the people you encounter as you navigate your way. Such situations will not always be equivalent to a strict office environment; indeed, an evening’s work might involve a few drinks whilst networking at a gig. The key here is to find a balance: Utilize the benefits of the music industry’s more relaxed conventions but always take it seriously. Nothing is more off putting than someone who acts as though business isn’t important.

One of the keys to success in the music industry is good networking and therefore a great way to demonstrate professionalism is through your communication with others. Here are some pointers:

• Be conise, don’t ramble and make clear the reason you are contacting the recipient.

• Avoid slang. Spelling should be as per the dictionary, no text message abbreviations.

• Don’t pester anyone. Once you have contacted someone, by email or phone, wait at least a few days before chasing up. Never turn up at someone’s workplace uninvited: always call ahead and make an appointment for business matters.

• Think about your reputation. The Music industry is made up of close groups so if you have an argument with someone or for whatever reason, somebody has a negative view of view, the word will soon get round. One door closing could have the knock on effect of also closing several others.

• Be considerate and helpful. The more you help people out, the more willing they will be to help you in the future. Thanking people when they help you makes it more worthwhile for them, so they will be more inclined to help you again.

4. It all comes down to the music

Hone your skill and master the craft because ultimately, if the music is good it will sell itself. The advice above is all valid but don’t get so wrapped up in the business side of things that you neglect the creative process. Don’t worry about making a certain sound, stay true to the kind of sounds you want to create and your talent will show through naturally in the music you make.

For more advice on navigating the music industry get in touch with KK Music Consultants, and check out our Music Business courses.

To be fair they’re very good at dressing up stuff to make it look impressive.  DAWs give producers a wealth of sonic potential that was almost unimaginable back in the days of reel to reel recording.  They can put vocals in tune, drums in time and make a midi keyboard sound like a Minimoog.

But despite how much we would like them to, computers are terrible at generating content; the original thought and creativity that results in some form of end product.  Where’s the ‘compose hit record’ key command in Logic? Where’s the ‘improve my bassline’ menu command in Reason? Where’s the ‘choose correct tempo’ option in Ableton Live? They don’t exist, and they probably won’t ever exist because these are artistic choices that depend on human input, creative processes that only humans can perform.  Computers just can’t create complex meaning or ideas in the way that the human mind does.

You’re probably thinking ‘this is ridiculous, I rely on Ableton everyday. Without it I’d be lost, it’s essential to my work flow’.  Well actually, not so much. Your relationship with Ableton has been holding you back for years. How come I hear you ask? Here’s what I suggest is the typical working process for a DAW user:

1.  Turn on computer.

2.  Make a coffee while Windows loads.

3.  Start DAW

4.  Mess with some beats from included loops and sounds

5.  Play around with plugin settings

6.  Throw in a bassline that sounds identical to the one you really like from that track you love

7.  Throw out that bassline because it’s not yours, then try to write one of your own

8.  Fail

9. Give up frustrated and bored after about an hour

10. Play Call of Duty

Ring any bells? By using a DAW to help you write you commit the cardinal sin of expecting some form of inspiration to come from the computer. By scouring through your various libraries of  samples, loops and plugins, you’re asking the computer to supply you with the excitement you don’t have but desperately need to write a hit. Now this method can sometimes work, but usually you’ll wind up frustrated with very little to show for the time y0u’ve spent arranging your track.

Still unconvinced? Let’s say you have found a sound you really like. So what?  You haven’t made any actual content yet and you still have all of the creative work to do. So you play around with the settings for about 20 minutes and quickly your enthusiasm dwindles because you’re trying to make a context for something that the computer made to excite you.  It may sound impressive but it’s meaning free. You start looking for another sound, all the time trying to recapture that original moment of inspiration. Fail.

We need to readjust our relationship with our software. DAWs are superb at arranging audio, creating new synthesized sounds and assembling beats but they’re terrible, just terrible for writing music. Using a DAW to write music is like a film director writing a screenplay using Final Cut Pro X, it doesn’t make any sense. You can arrange video clips and make things look terrific, but someone has to make the content first, otherwise you’re simply editing…nothing. Likewise, your DAW is superb at arranging musical ideas, but you need to have that idea first. Without it, you’re just going to waste time clicking and tweaking parameters.

So what should we do? Here’s a new kind of workflow that actually does work.

1. Do nothing until inspiration strikes. Don’t muck around with your DAW hoping for inspiration to strike. By all means play with your computer, spend as much time as you can having fun with it, experimenting and looking for cool things to do. You’ll learn loads about how things work and have fun too; just don’t attempt to make a tune this way.

2.  When inspiration strikes, run with it. It’s tempting to start assembling beats the moment you get an idea, but don’t switch on the laptop. Instead, write down what it is that you’re excited about. If it’s a bassline, sing or hum it into your phone so you have a recording of your fabulous idea. If it’s a lyrical idea then you should write down as much as you can. Lyrics depend on inspiration and if you don’t have it, don’t write them. On the other hand, when you find the inspiration, run with it!

3.  Give your idea a title. Creativity depends on limitations, and right now you have none because this tune only exists in your imagination. Give your idea a title; it will bring a focus to your work.

4.  Now that you have your idea and a title, map it out. Ask yourself some questions: what will my tune sound like? What’s its tempo? What style? What’s its mood? Which instruments am I going to use to get the musical effect that I want? Spend as much time as you can on this part because how you map out your track will effect everything that occurs next. Again, write down your ideas. Imagine your piece is like a journey down a freeway; what’s the scenery like? How fast are you driving? Who are you with? And most importantly…where are you going?

 
Now switch on your laptop. You have a clear, consistent vision of what you want to achieve. You have a plan and a clear objective. Congratulations. And if you’re still struggling to get your ideas together, this great vid gives you another 29 ideas to help you stay creative. Tip 4 is ‘get away from your computer’, naturally.

How about a plugin that starts bleeping when you’re about to waste a tall stack of bills you’ve worked so hard for?  One day there’ll surely be an ‘app for that’, but today we have to rely on common sense and bit of good luck.

But now you’ve got us on your side too: here is Point Blank’s guide to what you should and shouldn’t waste your money on! We’ve learned the hard way what not to spend money on, but also how to make the most of it. So let us take you by the hand and show you exactly how to spend your dollar, and what to avoid:

Five great things to spend money on:

1. More RAM for your computer

RAM is inexpensive and time is precious. The more RAM you have in your computer the faster you can work; you’ll have more instruments, faster access to programs, everything feels sped up when you’ve maxed out your RAM. This only works up to a point though; 32 bit versions of Windows operating systems can only address up to 4GB of RAM. This limit also applies to 32bit programs (although some programs come with the option to install either the 32 bit or 64 bit version and some can even be run in 64bit mode will).  Be sure to check that you’re software and hardware will be able to utilize the extra RAM before you buy it.  Crucial.com offers an excellent service that can check this for you.

2. An SSD hard drive

With CPUs becoming faster all the time, often the biggest (or should that be smallest?) bottle neck in a computer will be the hard drive. If you find that your laptop is struggling to cope with everything you’re throwing at it, try replacing your regular hard drive with an SSD drive. These have no moving parts, are silent, require less power to run and are much faster than regular drives.  In fact the only negative here is that they’re relatively expensive: a typical 128 GB drive will cost around $250, but they’re worth every cent.  Here’s one on amazon.

If you can’t afford an SSD drive, consider a hybrid drive such as Momentus XT from Seagate.  They combine 4GB of SSD space with 500GB of regular hard drive space in one drive. This gives you a speed boost at a great price.

3. The best monitors you can afford

Ask a dozen engineers which are the best monitors and you’ll get a dozen different recommendations.  There will always differing opinions when it comes to personal preference so the best piece of simple advice here is to keep in mind that you get what you pay for.

There are of course plenty of fine cheaper audio solutions, but for a really decent pair of studio monitors you’ll need to spend around $900.  Check out the KRK and Dynaudio ranges, and have a look at this feature on junodownload.

A low monthly subscription can give you access to the huge music libraries on services like Spotify, Grooveshark and Pandora.  these services also provide access to music on your phone, and the best thing is you’ll find that you stop buying music, so you’re saving money too!  The three sites mentioned here are the biggest music streaming services but there are others out there so be sure to shop around before you sign up to one.  Have a look at this comparison chart for quick info on exactly what each of the big three provide.

5. One genuinely excellent synthesizer, sample library or musical instrument.

Just one? Surely the more the better? Actually no, it’s better to learn and use one instrument back to front and inside out than to buy a whole bunch of plugins and rely on presets. Why? Because when you truly know an instrument, you can explore hundreds of possibilities that you’ll never find in a bank of presets. Here are some of our favourites:

- Native Instrument’s Massive
- Rob Papen’s Predator
- Nostalgia
- Spectrasonics

Five terrific ways to waste your money. Don’t bother with any of these:

1. Registering your songs online.

‘Pay us to include your songs on our database and ward off plagiarism, songwriting disputes and copyright theft! Only $50 a song!’. This scam works by ripping you off before any one else has a chance to. In most countries in the world you control the copyright in your work without having to register it anywhere… anywhere at all! You certainly don’t need to pay anyone to add it to a database on the internet.  So don’t.  If you are that worried about protecting your copyright, consult a music business lawyer instead.

2. Any scheme where you have to pay someone to send your music out to their extensive list of A&R contacts.

Again, this scam works by appearing to offer you exclusive access to record companies, publishers and the like. All you have to do is pay some money upfront and they’ll guarantee your music will be listened to. But what reputable executive will ever listen to a piece simply because someone else has been paid to play it to them? Can you name any artist who has been ‘discovered’ in this way? We can’t either.  The music industry makes money by selling music, not through artists paying to have their music released.

3. Blank Audio CDs.

They’re just like any other CDr except they’re more expensive because a levy is paid to the music industry as a charge for putting audio on them. Don’t bother, use regular CDrs instead. But don’t buy the really low price disks; they fail far more often than branded CDs.

4. Leaving your desktop computers in sleep mode/standby

Modern computers boot up so quickly that there’s
little benefit to leaving them in sleep mode (my 2009 Macbook Pro goes from cold to desktop in 8 secs).  If you do leave computers in sleep mode they’ll still be using power and therefore costing you money.  Shut them down. This also applies to musical instruments, mixing desks, televisions, in fact any appliance that you wouldn’t think twice about leaving on overnight. According to moneycentral at MSN.com… ‘Of the total energy used to run home electronics, 40% is consumed when the appliances are turned off’.

5. Equipment carry bags

You rely on your musical gear as the tools you need to perform.  You expect it to be in top working condition at all times but this can be tricky to maintain with the amount that your equipment gets thrown around in taxis, subways and even planes on the way to and from gigs.  We know we should protect our equipment, but how much protection does a plastic or PVC bag actually give you? Not much. In fact, the use of these bags might even cause you to damage your instruments if you carelessly throw them around thinking they’re protected. Don’t bother with them, and instead spend just a little bit more on flight cases

http://www.flightcasewarehouse.co.uk/music/index.asp?groupID=2399.

Steve Hillier teaches Music Business in London and Logic Music Production Online

Getting Your Music Heard

You know your aims, you’ve found your niche, and you really have your own style going on. The music is recorded, mixed and mastered… but just how do you get it out there? As an up and coming artist, working without the backing of major label money, it is essential to have the latest skills in self promotion as it is down to you to head the campaign and make sure people know about the music you are making. Here are some ideas and marketing channels to boost your release promotion. Focus on engaging your audience and increasing your online sales by linking to your music wherever possible.

WRITE DOWN YOUR GOALS

Write down your goals and know what you’re aiming for within 3 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years. This will not be a rigid plan and will constantly change and develop over time. Have your milestones set out for the coming year detailing how you will manage each progression – such as launching your website, single release dates, press releases, gigs, conferences, networking events, meetings, online promo campaigns in terms of deadline times, knowing what action you have to take and when, and keeping others informed if they are working with you.

ESTABLISH A TIMELINE FOR YOUR MARKETING PLAN

Establish a timeline for your marketing plan so you know when you should start to prepare material and when it should be released and sent out. You should have individual campaigns for promoting specific things, like a new album, free downloads, gigs, tours, music conferences etc. Choose one thing to promote at a time so that the aim of your marketing is clear and concise for the audience you want to reach.

ESTABLISH A ‘BRAND’

Establish a ‘brand’ based on your style of music, which is an honest reflection of you as an artist. Look at how the artist/producers that you admire do this. It is important to have a look and feel to your name, logo, websites, images and sound which makes you and your work easy to identify for your audience. You want people to remember you right? Getting your brand right from as early on in the process as possible will really help you to make best use of resources. – You don’t want to spend your time and cash on creating your web design, branded items, demos etc and then have to change your name 1 year later and go over the same ground again. Until you are sure about your artist name, brand and style, its best to carry on with all the promotional moves you can make without splurging your money too soon.

CREATE A PROMO PACKAGE

Arm yourself with a tool box of promotional material that is ready to go, as and when you need it. Keep well organised folders with the files of your artwork for flyers, posters and website, promo photos, your press releases, biography, discography, WAVs, HTML files, collection of press you have received and your contact information to allow you to add content to any marketing networks quickly and easily. Being able to get your promo material out rapidly makes you look professional and makes best use of the window of time you have for marketing each of your milestones.

SET UP A SOUNDCLOUD ACCOUNT

Set up a SoundCloud account and upload the best material you have and keep this up to date. Get to grips with how to use this platform to its full potential here: http://soundcloud.com/tour SoundCloud has replaced the need for sending out CDs as promo material and the majority of radio stations and DJs are used to receiving content this way.

SET UP YOUR SOCIAL NETWORKS

Set up a Facebook Fan Page, Twitter account, MySpace and Reverbnation account among others to keep your followers up-to-date and whip up further interest in you/your work. There are certain etiquettes you need to observe when using your social networks, so always be mindful of this. Those 140 little characters are powerful, and can either make you look like a king…or a bit of a plonker.

SET UP A YOUTUBE ACCOUNT

Set up a Youtube account so you can add videos and music that people will actually want to watch and listen to. Youtube is great for viral marketing and sometimes an amazing video can help your music to rise in popularity as fast as your Youtube viewing stats – The ‘OK Go’ videos are a prime example.

BUY THE RIGHTS TO YOUR DESIRED DOMAIN NAME

Buy the rights to your desired domain name: even if you don’t design and develop it all straight away you can use your website as the hub for all your online activity and link to your releases and connect your networks together. This should only be £2.00 – £20 annually from an online host, and if you end up sticking with the name you work under now, it will be really useful to own it from the start. If not, it’s worth the chance now rather than struggling to get the web address you want later.

PROMOTE ONLINE SALES BY EMBEDDING BANNERS

Promote online sales by embedding banners with links to sites where people can buy your music on your social networks. Juno Download has a great page to help with this: https://lms.juno.co.uk/lms/promote/index.php

SEND OUT EMAIL NEWSLETTERS

Send out email newsletters with info, photos, links to your work and press articles, to the right people with relevant info. Don’t make it more than two scrolls of a mouse, as surfers bore easily. Only send to people who have signed up or you will end up spamming and being a nuisance.

GET YOURSELF GIGS AND PLAY YOUR MUSIC OUT

Get yourself gigs and play your music out as often as you can and if you don’t plan on being the performer yourself, find DJs that will include your tracks in their mixtapes and will also put these up on their SoundCloud pages, along with radio shows that might just give your tracks airtime.

KEEP TRACK OF CONTACTS, EMAILS, INVOICES, DOCUMENTS

Keep track of contacts, emails, invoices, documents, making sure you keep a neat system that will make it easy to utilise your database of industry contacts and fan network. Keeping folders of important emails, invoices, documents and especially contracts will help you operate smoothly because you will be able to find the right information you need easily and in the event of any legal issues that could arise, you will have a good record of things in written format.

DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY

Don’t worry, be happy – getting to where you want to be with your music is a battle and you will have plenty of knocks along the way. It’s the same for everyone and lots of people do make it in the end. Make sure you are one of them by keeping working at it and remember to relax a little and enjoy the journey.

For more detailed information on how to market your music check out our Music Business courses in London or Online. www.pointblanklondon.com www.pointblankonline.net

Put in the plainest terms possible, additive synthesis is the summation of simple tones to create more complex ones.

The sound is constructed from partials (or frequency components) firing in parallel, changing amplitude and even frequency over time. Additive synthesis is a very powerful sound design tool because the many micro-variations in the frequency and amplitude of individual partials mirrors those that makes natural sounds so rich and lively, and the resulting sound remains clear and precise at all times, even when heavily modulated.

The diagram below shows a very basic form of additive synthesis; three sine waves that have been added together to create a more complex composite wave.

The following video demonstrates how to go about building an additive synth in Reaktor plus an overview of some of the other techniques that you will learn on the Point Blank Online Sound Design course. Even with this fairly simple example consisting of just 8 partials, you can begin to hear how an additive synth can create an impressively rich and malleable sound. So when you think that Razor’s additive engine consists of up to 320 partials you can start to see why everyone is so eager to get their hands on it!

With the vast amount of different DAWs, soft synths, hard synths, midi controllers, mics, soundcards (I could go on!) out on the market, choosing your first batch of equipment can be a daunting prospect for new producers. However it is a very important thing to consider – solidifying your set up quickly when you are starting out is the key to making the learning process as stress-free as possible. These initial choices will form the foundations, upon which you will be able to build an efficient workflow and master the core instruments that will shape your sound.

This is obviously not the be all and end all… it is impossible to be certain that a particular set up will be best suited for you until you have worked with it for a while and then compared it to others. It will inevitably evolve and grow as you seek out new sources of inspiration or solutions to any creative barriers you may face. However when you consider that treading down the intrepid path of music production will take such a large investment of your money and time, it is well worth trying to hit the nail on the head first time round.

Many producers swear by hard synths, insisting that the sound from the digital imitations will never quite match the crispness of their analogue counterparts. Other prolific producers are adamant that everything can be done ‘in the box’ (ie. using only the plugins and effects that come bundled with your DAW); they claim even the most critical of ears won’t be able to tell the difference if the music is well produced, not to mention the fact that your average consumer of music does not give two hoots what you made the sounds with, as long as it’s got the groove!

More traditionalist music makers also bemoan the throwaway nature of soft synths and the lack of hands on knob-twisting that you get with hardware, but if its hands on you want then there are plenty of midi controllers for that!

As you can see, all the conflicting arguments have their validity and counter -arguments therefore there is no right or wrong approach per se… so, I hear you shout, where are you heading with all this? How should we approach building our set-up?

Well I believe the most important thing to remember, and a notion that all producers will agree with is that having limitations enhances your creativity. Equally it is very easy to get bogged down and loose your creative flow if you have too many options available.

Before you cripple your hard drive with that new Waves bundle or clutter up your studio with another vintage synth off ebay, think to yourself, have you really mastered all the instruments that you already have at your disposal? Why not try making a tune using just one synth? Is there a plugin you always use that has parameters that you still don’t understand? These parameters might just create the effect that you have been searching for so seek the answers. By mastering one synth at a time you will 1) learn the science of synthesis far more thoroughly 2) open up new avenues of sound which might have otherwise fallen by the wayside if you had not fully explored that instrument and 3) be able to get musical ideas from your head onto your arrange page as quick as possible, before they frustratingly evaporate.

In music production less can most definitely equal more!

To emphasise this point here is a video of someone who has created a tune using just his Korg Monotron. It may not hit the Beatport no.1 any time soon but it’s a great example of what can be achieved with a simple little synthesiser and a lot of creativity.

… and here’s Zombie Nation having a mess about with the same synth in his studio in Germany

Check out the setups of some of the Point Blank students and post your own in this forum thread

On a different note, but again dealing with corporate music organisations, this is an account of someone who signed their music through music distribution company, Tunecore. Apparently many people have fallen victim to this. Full story here.

Nothing can explain the indefinable ‘magic’ that makes a song a winner and captures everyone’s imagination. But while there’s no scientific recipe for a Top Ten hit, if you follow these guidelines, you’ll be sniffing coke off a hooker’s ass quicker than you can say ‘back stage blow job’:

1. Always remain a fan – keep listening to loads of music and absorb it. It will come out in your writing and keep it fresh.

2. Find a great hook – whether melodic, lyrical or instrumental, hooks are what make pop songs memorable. Make everything hooky.

3. Be brutal – if it doesn’t work, chuck it out. Less is more. And not everything you write will be ‘genius’.

4. Be original – try to stand out from the crowd and say something interesting. Or say the same thing in a new way.

5. Work hard – just because its rock and roll doesn’t mean you can goof off and sit in the park all day. Get on with it!

6. Work with other humans – working with people keeps you fresh and gives you someone to bounce off. This will keep you from going stale and getting bored.

7. Get hooked right up in there – hang out with the right people and be nice to them. They are your route to the top and you wont get anywhere without connections.

8. Study your art – you can always get better and nobody’s perfect – yet! So analyse other songs that you like and see how they are put together.

9. Keep writing – the next song you pen may just be the one that makes it.

10. Get famous before you kill yourself – otherwise your suicide or overdose will go unnoticed.

Want a chance to get a headstart with your songwriting? Enter this competition in association with Soundcloud and you could win:

• Any Point Blank Online course – worth up to £1,600
• Free subscription to a Pro account at SoundCloud for 1 year
• A day in Point Blank Studios with Jony Rockstar
• The opportunity to sign your track to Point Blank Music Publishing

Find out how to enter by clicking here.