The Music Shrink » Odds & Ends

You can mix your song at Abbey Road without leaving home. Here’s how.

Jim Powers — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 18:19:31 +0000

Wherever you are, you can have your music mixed at the same place as John, Paul, George, and Ringo. At legendary Abbey Road studios. Thanks for this bit of fun from our friends at Hypebot.

Mix your song at Abbey Road.

Create for Creation’s sake!

Jim Powers — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 18:02:09 +0000

Sometimes you can free your ideas up by simply creating something, anything, without expectation. You may be surprised that it isn’t as easy to silence your inner-editor as you might think. Dive in anyway and be open to serendipitous moments that may be surprisingly powerful. Create for creation’s sake. and put your editor-beast into their cage for awhile. You can unleash them later if you want.

Here is a great example of Gyda Vattysdottir, formerly of Múm, and drummer Julian Sartorius, creating music by the moment. (From Vincent Moon’s wonderful “nomadic record label”, petitesplanetes.)

collection petites planètes • outtake • ÁRóRA & ÚRVERK from Vincent Moon / Petites Planètes on Vimeo.

Apply Your Creativity to Revenue as well as Music.

Jim Powers — Mon, 09 May 2011 15:55:59 +0000

Tie. Rock differentiator.

Damian Kulash Jr. of OK Go noted in a recent Wall Street Journal article, the taboo that once surrounded licensing your music for uses in commercials, tv shows, or, to a lesser extent, films, no longer exists. Read his insightful perspective here and note his examples of how bands are rethinking where their value lies with fans. In short, apply your creativity to all areas of your career to generate new paths of income.

The New Rock-Star Paradigm.

Succeeding in the music business isn’t just about selling albums anymore. The lead singer of OK Go on how to make it without a record label (treadmill videos help)

Death Metal Vocalist Tip of the Day

Jim Powers — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 17:01:00 +0000

Even in Death Metal, pitch is everything:

Death Metal Vocal Exercises

Good On Ya! Australians Support Music.

Jim Powers — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 21:28:29 +0000

According to this interesting Gizmodo article, Australia is one of the few markets where digital music sales have made up for the loss in CD sales. Yes, music fans there are paying for their downloaded music. Nice!

Would you say Aussies are more honest than the rest of the world, or do they simply appreciate the value of music the most? Either way you gotta love them for it.

Rebecca Black’s Song Friday, $, and You

Jim Powers — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:11:10 +0000

The saga of junior high school girl Rebecca Black and her inadvertent YouTube smash “Friday” is a lesson in both vanity production deals and how behaviors can change when income appears. Spinme.com details it very nicely here.

The performance royalties from the recent (and hilarious) national broadcast of Stephen Colbert’s version of Friday, accompanied by The Roots generated thousands of dollars in income. The question now apparently is, “for whom?”

Lesson in short: never sign something you don’t understand.

With 14million MySpace bands, can you create a unique band name that you like?

Jim Powers — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 17:15:03 +0000

I spoke recently with Mark Caro, a writer for The Chicago Tribune and friend, for an article he wrote about the challenges of coming up with a unique band name these days. He also noted that MySpace now has over 14 million bands! Read it here.

Was it easy to come up with a name for your band? Were you able to go with your first choice or was it already taken? Any tips for new bands?

Btw, if you are looking for good summer read, check out Mark’s engaging book “The Foie Gras Wars: How a 5,000-Year-Old Delicacy Inspired the World’s Fiercest Food Fight” (Simon & Schuster)

Music Website Heat Map

Jim Powers — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 00:22:27 +0000

Where is your music heard on the net? Make sure you have your digital exposure covered:

http://virtualmusic.tv/2011/02/2010-music-website-heat-map/

(courtesy of virtualmusic.tv)

A 2010 Fave: Sharon Van Etten’s “Epic”

Jim Powers — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 07:03:13 +0000

If a lemon and smokes breakfast yields songs like hers, I'm in.

Happy New Year! I’ve been in Colombia hearing some remarkable music that I’ll be writing about soon. I mention it now as an excuse for the delay in mentioning a favorite album of 2010, Sharon Van Etten’s, “Epic.”

The singer/songwriter genre is particularly tricky one. The lyrically gifted ones can detail a personal struggle for insight from anguish that summons us to reflect on our own lives . Those less talented confuse earnestness with relevance or self-absorption with awareness. On “Epic”, Sharon Van Etten hits an artistic grand slam. Listen and learn, kids.

On each track of Epic, Von Etten’s vocals are front and center, her evocative lyrical tales supplanted occasionally by echo-laden ambient vocal sounds and a smattering of drums, reed sounds, pedal steel, and bass. Every element frames the songs beautifully. The entire album is testament to the powerful reach of sonic simplicity and outstanding songwriting.

Can’t wait to hear her music live when she plays Lincoln Hall in Chicago.

Check out: Sister Don’t Mind

Record label: Badabing Records

Interview: Sharon Van Etten Village Voice

Sharon Van Etten Tour Dates (courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan)

AC/DC’s Highway to Hell

Jim Powers — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 06:14:04 +0000

I may not be able to recall the numeric combination on the lock I use four times a week, but I can tell you exactly where I was when I first heard the AC/DC track “Highway to Hell.” June 1978, alone, listening to WLUP, driving my parents silver ford Fairmont wagon with red pleather interior, on Molitor Road, heading south of I-88, Aurora, IL. (Yep the Aurora of Wayne’s World. A bit which was as remarkably accurate as it was funny, imo.) The late afternoon summer sun was bright on the windshield as the drums kicked in behind the opening D chord of the title track.

Producer Mutt Lange was in full maestro-mode on that album, fleshing out the very best elements of a great hard rock band and distilling them to their most potent punch. When Bon Scott’s voice kicked in, I nearly drove off the road as I cranked the volume to “11″ and my foot hit the accelerator.

If you want a lesson in doing things right in the studio, listen closely to this recording. The line-up is basic: vocals, two guitars, bass, drums. Each track’s arrangement and mix is tightly constructed and meticulously straightforward. There are no accidents on the album. Every note, every swelling chord, every accented beat, sounds like it could exist in no better space other than that precise moment. As with all great music, on Highway to Hell, God is in the Details.