L'attirail

Let’s face it. The music industry has been deteriorating lately. With pirated songs online, and the economy in ruins, people just aren’t forking over their money to buy CD’s. But there is one section of the music industry that has been silently humming along, despite the economy (and their CD sales are still going strong). That section is the local music industry.

Local bands are still enjoying a steady stream of new work and many sell their own CD’s at the clubs they play around town. Not surprisingly, in order to get gigs and to increase their revenue, these bands need to make demo tapes and CD’s for their fans. To do this, they need a recording studio.

Now, most people don’t have a recording studio in their home. And that’s where you come in. If you have a spare section of your garage, or perhaps a spare bedroom, you can literally create a home studio of your own, one that could be generating cash for you in as little as 30 days.

With the many bands and aspiring musicians in every local town in the country, it makes sense that this would be an area that is thriving – and it is. Smart entrepreneurs have tapped into this lucrative market and are quietly raking in the dough every week.

]]>  Read more...

How To Start A Successful Music Career

by Tom Hess

Do you need some immediate help on how to start a successful music career? Here are 4 key things you can begin to focus on right now to begin.

Practice to become a professional musician – Continuously work on improving your musical skills, but before you think, “That’s obvious. Tell me something I don’t know”, there are important things to consider. It’s not necessarily about learning more techniques, improving your guitar speed or increasing the size of your chord vocabulary. Think about what a professional musician really needs to know and do musically. Playing your instrument well at home is one thing, but playing well consistently in the studio or on stage is completely different, thus the training and practicing required to play well in those professional environments are also very different.

Yes, you should continue to improve your overall musical skills, but if you want to start a successful music career you will need to specifically practice your ability to play well ‘consistently’ in a variety of higher-pressure situations. – Amateurs practice something to ‘get it right’. Professionals practice to ‘never get it wrong’.

So the next time you practice your guitar, instead of trying to play something ‘faster’ or learn something ‘new’, focus on playing whatever you can already play ‘consistently well’.  Read more...

Starting a sheet music collection is easy, once you’ve decided what you want to collect. Sheet music is inexpensive and relatively easy to find. You can find music at yard sales, antique shows and on the internet. Only music that is very scarce or rare is expensive. Most pieces can be found at a price between three and twenty five dollars. Extremely rare sheet music can carry a price of up to a thousand dollars, but few pieces fall into this category. You will find music in any color graphic or subject matter you are looking for.

People collect sheet music in many ways. Sometimes sheet music is collected by the genre or songs. You could put together a history of music in America with a sheet music collection. You could do this with the entire history of our country or concentrate on one time period or decade. The possibilities are endless – be creative when building your collection! Songs have been written about most important events in our history, including wars, plane crashes and natural disasters. Themes such as love or the evolution of images of women in music are popular themes for sheet music collections. Other collectors focus on one composer or cover artist.

Ragtime music from the early twentieth century is popular with collectors of vintage sheet music. This music is considered the foundation of modern jazz music. A ragtime music collection looks great displayed in a room decorated in the Early American style. And the cover art on rag time sheet music looks great displayed in picture frames on a wall or sofa table.  Read more...

Playing instruments is really like riding a bike. Playing an instrument is a physical, highly demanding, and coordinated activity. Nothing in playing instruments is neater than being able to get a hold of an older instrument and trying to make music out of it. One of the most important things when playing instruments is when you have just enough skill to be able to produce the music that you want. People who play instruments don’t understand why people who don’t play think its difficult, because it really isn’t.

Your child explores the world of music through singing, playing instruments, moving, and listening. Students in the early stages of music education learn by doing. Persons with almost any disability have ability when it comes to music. Experiencing music involves the creation of the following: playing instruments, dancing and singing. Creating, responding to and performing music are the fundamental music processes. Student’s experiences music through playing instruments, song and listening which makes playing music enjoyable and spontaneous. People have learned in many different ways about music and playing instruments, it definitely changed over the past 100 years. The making of music, musical intelligence, arises within the process of listening and playing.  Read more...

Regarding an inexpensive but effective Home Recording Studio, the first thing to do is to carefully go over your budget, because once you get going it will be the little bits and pieces that can nickel and dime you to death. Know how much you can safely spend without putting yourself into financial jeopardy. So many people talk about getting Financial Backers but that isn’t always the best answer since they will often want the lion’s share of any rewards plus interest until the debt is paid back in full. Backers are also very impatient about repayment and don’t want to hear excuses as to why you had to pay your Rent before you pay them! When it comes to Bank loans, the Banks usually look at the Music Business as if it were smoke, something that you can see but cannot touch or hold in your hands.

They are very practical and cautious when it comes to giving out money for the Music Industry despite the incredible amount of money that is generated every year from it. Unless you have a lot of collateral to back such a loan, wait until you can show regular income from your initial endeavors first. Thinking big is fine, but starting out small and wisely is the best policy in putting together your own studio. The terms “Starving Artists” and “Starving Producers” come from the usual way of supplying your musical interests by means of a Day Job until you can wisely transition from one to the other. Almost everyone does it and there is no shame in admitting it. Only the most obnoxious of Industry Professional will criticize you for it.  Read more...