The following “performance tips for singers” are courtesy of Los Angeles vocal coach and professional singer, Teri Danz. If you sing, we strongly encourage you to go to Teri’s website, www.teridanz.com and sign up for her free monthly publication, The Singer’s Newsletter.

1. Command the stage. This is why your stance is so important. your body language and ability to stay centered, stay planted and calm tells you audience on a nonverbal level that you are in control of the stage. Always stand center stage when you deliver an important message (such as the top of the chorus).

2. Have reverence for what you are saying. Don’t throw away phrases and end notes. If you are dancing, stop to address your audience when you sing. There is power in the contrast between motion and stillness.

3. Don’t hide. Be present in the song. Even if you drift momentarily or get distracted, get back to the song as soon as possible.

4. Have an open body stance. Standing straight, shoulders down, head and jaw relaxed, and head straight forward, eyes open (focused on a point), arms relaxed and wide. Watch Bono, Jagger and Aretha to get the idea.

5. Open your eyes. It is NOT more emotional for your audience if your eyes are closed. Your audience identifies with you through your eyes, gestures and outward expression of your inward thoughts.

6. Remain calm. If there are mistakes, “Act as if” everything is part of the act. Don’t allow your audience to know that you have made a mistake, are having vocal problems, can’t hear yourself, etc. It is your job to be professional.

7. Get a vocal technique, and learn to stay on pitch so that you are confident in your singing.

8. Work out your set list. Have a song order and how it will flow, when you will speak, and what you are going to say.

9. That said, be flexible with your set list. Have alternatives ready to go in case you’re feeling congested & can’t hit the top end, or you get an energy going with the audience.

10. Get it down. Rehearse what you’ll be doing well enough to let go of it onstage.

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I absolutely hate manuals. Let me say it again… HATE. Typically dry, boring, bad illustrations, written from a prototype hardware product or 0.9 software version that never includes the final fixes (no wonder they seem so poorly written). That’s why I was so happy to discover HowAudio.com, whos’ motto is, “cause reading the manual sucks.” Ha! I knew I wasn’t alone. HowAudio.com is dedicated to providing the highest quality, easy to use on-line, video based training for the audio recording enthusiast as well as the working professional, and they got it right!

If the time and energy required to read the manual has become your learning disability, kiss your “mental block” goodbye. Looking through the HowAudio.com audio titles is like being the proverbial “kid in a candy store”.  And they are consistently adding new titles to their library to ensure that you have all the tools at your disposal to create the best music.

Is this awesome, or what!

Take a look at a few of HowAudio.com’s newest titles from the common to the esoteric:

• What’s New in Pro Tools 7.4
• Torq with Xponent
• Building Your Own GTR FX Pedalboard
• Cubase 4: The Essentials
• Ableton Live 7
• What’s New In GarageBand ‘08
• Acoustic Guitar Miking Techniques
• Preparing For Mastering
• FM8 - FM Synthesizer-Native Instruments
• Essentials of Podcasting
• What’s New in Propellerhead Reason 4
• Apple Logic 8
• Miking Techniques for Drums (studio)
• Analog to Digital: How to get sound into your computer
• and the ever popular titles such as Drum Tuning and Maintenance, How to Relic A Guitar, and ProTools LE (a comprehensive tutorial just under 10 hours!).

Constantly being updated, HowAudio.com offers two simple ways to subscribe: $199/annually or $19/monthly. Both options give you complete access 24/7 to over 1200 tutorials on over 40 subjects. HowAudio.com also sponsors regular FREE podcasts available on youtube.com, myspace.com and on the HowAudio.com website.

Register Your Namba Bag, Get 1 FREE Month of HowAudio.com

Now get this, when you purchase a Namba Gear bag or backpack and register your Namba bag online using the UPC code on the hangtag, Namba Gear will give you a month of HowAudio.com subscriber service to check it out. Decide for yourself. If you are like us it is pretty easy to get hooked on the idea of getting the most out of your gear for what feels like a very reasonable price. Cudos to Joe & Thiel, the co-founders of HowAudio.com. Learning audio has never been so easy.

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Guest Blog by Koorosh Daryaie

Hello Friends,

Many of you know my work as the drummer for rock bands like Silence and LXIX, and solo artists such as Woody Moran and Kirsten Hansen. What most of you might not know is that I spend as much time playing percussion and programming drums as I do actually drumming.

Last year I was in the studio programming drums and playing percussion on my great friend Woody Moran’s Tu-Toned Stranger album when the resident studio engineer, Ryan Kushner, asked me what my secret was to humanizing programmed drums. After an hour-long explanation and perhaps being sorry that he asked, Ryan encouraged me to share my thoughts and procedures with other aspiring drummers and drum programmers.

Choose Your Drum Programming Tools Wisely

I’d like to first discuss my programming tools. I usually do the majority of my drum programming using Pro Tools with the Strike plug-in. I also use Live 7 with Battery 3 or EZ Drummer. My midi controllers are Mandala V 1.0 and 2.0 Drum Pads, Roland HPD 10, 15, and SPDS Percussion pads, an M-Audio Trigger Finger, and a Korg Wave Drum.

The most important thing to point out is, that these are plug-ins and hardware MIDI controllers that I have used for a long time and the ones I’m the most familiar with and efficient on. Remember time is money in the studio, and no one wants to throw away money because you don’t know what you are doing. You should choose the application based on your needs and ease of use.

Before You Program The First Beat

I’d like to discuss some of my procedures. I usually like to get together with the artist a few times for rehearsals, to play either drums or percussion with them.  By doing this I usually get a feel for the songs and learn the structure of the songs. I then spend a few hours after the rehearsal talking to the artist about the songs, their influences, and what inspired them to write the song. By asking questions I can get a feel for what the artist was thinking when writing the song and what direction they like to see their song go in.

With a metronome at hand during rehearsals, I tap tempo the songs and get the BPM (beats per minute). I listen to the feel, the groove of the song, to see where the song pushes, or drags. I then calculate the different sections of the song (verse, chorus, bridge, break), and if necessary ask the artist to make a decision to either speed up or slow down the song for a stronger feel.

Let’s Make Some Beats - Tracking and Programming

I like tracking programmed drums first. By laying down the drum part you are laying down the foundation for the songs where all other instruments will follow and use as their guide track. In programming I usually don’t quantize the Kick and Snare Drums, but do quantize the Hihat, and Ride Cymbals. I usually follow the Hihat track with a Shaker that is not quantized, and then a Tambourine track playing the down beats, also not quantized. After all the programmed drum parts are tracked in to Live or Pro Tools, I go in and start cutting sections for fills that lead from Verse to Chorus to Bridge, and so on.

Once the sections of the track are cut out, I start over-dubbing fills and lead-ins and change-ups in the areas with the holes.

The Finishing Touch

At this point I have already had a few cups of coffee and nice cigar, and am ready to lay down live percussion instruments. I don’t like to quantize any of the percussion tracks unless all the drums were live, and the percussion is what was tracked first. I usually start with the Conga, and work my way around to the Cajon, and then the Timbale if the song calls for it. I do a lot of Middle Eastern percussion work as well instruments such as Darbuka, Zarb, Daft, Boolangoo, and Tabla, and because of the nature of the way these instruments are played, and the technique applied, quantizing the tracks will not translate too well.

This is a multipart series on humanizing your drum tracks. In Part II, I will let you guys know how adding some effects can change the feel of a groove drastically.

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I just got an email from  keyboardist & guitar player, and my long-time friend, Tom Kennard, about GigMasters.com. Tom & I had been discussing bands & getting better gigs, and like many musician’s, Tom is in multiple bands. In one of the bands, he plays keys for a country singer who may be on the verge of stardom (someday…) and Tom plays “boom-chinka, boom-chinka” piano parts, which is what the original songs call for, but leaves Tom less than inspired.

However, Tom was contacting me because of his 2nd band, called Round Trip. Like Tom, all of these guys are accomplished musicians and they have been rehearsing together for almost a year getting a repertoire of cover songs together. Tom said that they felt like they were ready to go in Feb/ March and put up a web site and a profile on GigMasters.com. In three weeks they had three gigs via GigMasters totaling about $12,000. And the gigs continue to come in.

From my perspective, it looks like the thing that is driving their success is that:

1. they can be an instrumental band or add vocals;

2. they can play funky enough to dance to - or jazzy enough to listen to;

3. and they did some cool live videos to show the customer what they can expect, that way there are no surprises for the customer about what they are booking.

I’m going to show you Tom’s email to me with the caveat that with his enthusiasm Tom sounds like he is getting paid by GigMasters.com. I can assure you that this is NOT the case. “Yo Woody:  Hope you had a good gig.  My band played last night in West Lake Village for a High Brow Fund Raiser/ Auction.  Tom Selleck, Tiger Woods, and Alex Trebeck were there along with many people from the movie and music industry.  They paid us a week in advance.  I like that plan!  That site I told you about is really paying off; Gigmasters.com. We’re getting big buck gigs left and right.”

So I asked Tom to give me a little more info on GigMasters.com and this is his response, “Our band is called Round Trip.  Go to www.Gigmasters.com, type in California and then type in R & B and we should come up somewhere on the first page or so.  Click on Round Trip and our video starts.  There’s only three videos on this site as opposed to four on our www.Roundtripband.com site.  You pay for different packages.  We will play 500 miles radius.  We nailed a $5000. gig this last week in Long Beach and a couple of weddings for $3000. and $2500.  We pay Gigmasters 5%.  There was a band we checked out that booked 46 gigs last year with Gigmasters.  They’re for real and national.”

So there you have it. GigMaster seems to have a category for just about every genre of music, so I will forward Tom’s advice on to you to “check it out.” If you have used GigMaster.com and would like to share your experiences, or if you have another idea to share, we’d love to hear from you.

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I received an email invitation today that spoke about an upcoming showcase May 19th at the Temple Bar in Santa Monica, CA which would be filmed for the Blue Comet Cafe. Since I was not connecting all the dots, I followed the link to discover a very cool new resource for us.

Radio has vacated its traditional role as the gateway through which new talent finds it’s audience.

Citing that radio has “vacated its traditional role as the gateway through which new talent finds it’s audience, and thus creating the need for another way for fans to find new music”; the Blue Comet Cafe is a virtual showcase club. It features top-level artists performing live and presented in streaming video that can be viewed on demand or downloaded.

I found the front-page, featured artists were all unknown to me, but every one of them was an exceptional talent and deserving of our support. The brainchild of Larry Ahern and Tom Crosthwaite, Blue Comet Cafe is accepting video submissions (hint, hint). Video channels are Dance, Jazz, Rap/Hip Hop, Soft Rock, Blues, & Sailaway Collective. Namba Gear says, “check this out!”

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Years ago, my good friend Jamie McWhirter (from my time of ”I’m going to live in Boston experiment”), showed me an alcohol induced party game that has morphed into the greatest resource for songwriting lyric ideas.

We had an old Victorian 3-story house on the top of a hill with a commanding view of our picturesque New England hamlet, just north of Boston. It was a winter weekend and we had a few friends over to drink a little wine, but while we were chatting away beside the fireplace, we were getting another layer of fresh snow outside. The road conditions had turned treacherous and so we invited our friends to stay for an impromptu sleep-over.

It Was A Cold and Stormy New England Night

This was when Jamie showed us how to create a journal which he labeled, “Things That Hang Independently of Themselves.” The idea is pretty simple (it had to be for our wobbly-wino group). Get a clean notebook and use it to write down ideas, quotes, sayings, etc. that seem to have a life of their own. It doesn’t have to be profound, just an interesting turn of phrase is enough. Jamie started us off by going over our recent conversations of the night and giving us some things that he remembered.

I think the best one came from my wife Lisa in a conversation about good restaurants and the associated high prices, “Unfortunately, we have the mixed blessing of gourmet taste.” Another friend, in talking about trying to find a place to hide when his wife has PMS said, “I’m in the amen corner… and I don’t say another word for two days.” I just used the line, “I’m in the amen corner” into a new song many years after this conversation because it is such a cool phrase (and yes I used it in the same context). Killing all the wine in the house and moving on to coffee and Kalua, we filled a good four pages that night.

Here’s another example, I read an interview with David Bowie and he said, “My enthusiasm in all things is contagious and infectous.” OK, that one actually seems profound. Hasn’t made a lyric yet, but I’ve used it as part of my email signature. I had a little boy in New Orleans try and sell me sweet potato pies and his closing line was, “Now whatcha gonna do?” It made the book, and the line reactivated the sweet potato pie story for another new song (although I didn’t use the actual line that I wrote down). I’ve even cut out cartoons and taped them into my journal. All I can say is, start building your own journal right away.

Jamie McWhirter Where Are You?

Now the sad part of this story is that after many years and a few moves in between I have lost my journal of “Things That Hang Independently of Themselves”. So if you have a phrase or cool thought that makes you smile (or makes you turn your head like a Cocker Spaniel), basically “Things That Hang Independently of Themselves”, please give me a shout and help me rebuild my book of thoughts and phrases. It’s all good.

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Guest Blog by GuitarJunky 

If you haven’t read “Here,There and Everywhere” by Geoff Emerick, you must.  Ever since this book was recommended to me by a friend, I’ve tried to tell all my musician buds about it.

I know, you’re thinking this is all about another old guy and his memories…yada, yada, yada!!!   But, this time it’s about so much more.

For some background, it’s the telling by Emerick, of his experiences in the recording studio with the Beatles.  His tenure with the band started with the “Revolver” album and went thru “Abbey Road.”   He also tells of his fascination with sound starting in childhood and landing his dream gig at Abbey Road Studios.  That being said, there’s so much more to the book. What began as seemingly random associations of people assigned to various tasks, including recording this band of “kids” emulating musicians (the prevailing attitude of the time), that became full blown relationships is amazing.

While most have heard of the symbiotic relationship between the Beatles and George Martin, I dare say the contributions of Mr. Emerick made to the Beatles is no less important.  In some ways, perhaps even more so.  Let me explain.   Motivated by his fascination with sounds and sheer creativity, Emerick succeeded in pushing the curtain of conventional recording studio wisdom aside to peer into the world of what-if.  His take on microphone placement as well as other ground breaking recording techniques helped define a sound that not only became synonymous with a generation, it set into stone the high recording values of all rock artists since. While the influence of George Martin is undeniable and helped set in motion the musical maturity of the Mop Tops,  I think it’s the sound of the Beatles that non-musicians and musicians find instantly recognizable from any distance.  This ultimately created a phenomena whose sound and influence was greater than the sum of its parts.

The book also gives us insights that to date have merely been speculation at best.  After all, he was there!  Great stories of struggles all around: the band, dealing with celebrity, ego, power, creativity….the studio, dealing with a changing of the musical guard, boundries stretched, (or obliterated in some cases), and subsequent adventures after the Beatles moved on to their solo careers.

In his career, Emerick went on to work with Paul McCartney & Wings, the Zombies, Badfinger, Supertramp, America, Jeff Beck, Robin Trower, Split Enz, and Elvis Costello.  

A great read, check it out.

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By now I would assume that most of you have discovered Pandora Internet Radio. What makes Pandora so cool is that you “program” your own radio stations by providing an artist or even a song and Pandora plays that artist and then will play selections that you should enjoy based on that artist. You can continue to “fine tune” your radio station by commenting on songs with a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down”, and Pandora makes the adjustments in continued programming to play more of what you will like (and less of what you don’t like). From an indie artist viewpoint, this becomes very exciting if you can get your songs in rotation on Pandora and you can introduce a new audience to your material. Their submission instructions are sort of hidden in the FAQ section, so click here on the Pandora Submission Instructions.

The Music Genome Project®

Pandora calls this ability the Music Genome Project, and here is how they describe it, “On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever. Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or “genes” into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it’s about what each individual song sounds like.”

Pandora Podcasts Provide Info To Energize Your Song

So that was all preamble to sharing the discovery of a Pandora resource page of fantastic podcasts. Pandora Presents is the title of this page of podcasts and it is aimed at listeners who might want to learn a little bit more about the criteria for their Music Genome Project of song analysis. The podcast presentations are straightforward and easy to understand, contain a bit of music theory, and tons of musical examples to illustrate the points being made.

I found the podcast on vocal harmonies very interesting and immediately started reworking some of my harmonies based on their examples. Although in some ways this is a back to basics series of programs, I found that the information being shared and the way it was being shared was really inspiring for the composition and song-writing process. Not only do I highly recommend these podcasts, but if you are ever stuck for composition ideas or looking for ways to energize a song, spend a little time on this page. Good stuff.

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When can you actually claim ownership of your new song? The legal definition is that you own the song  the moment that you have finished writing the lyrics and playing the final note. The real question is, when can you prove ownership? Not to be paranoid, but with digital distribution to the masses available for independent artists, independent films and TV looking for a low cost alternatives to the big budget film score, it wouldn’t be difficult for the unscrupulous to take advantage of the independent artist and steal their work, or even for another artist to incorporate your work within their song. Of course this plagiarism comes to the surface once the movie becomes a hit or the plagiarised song makes a dent on the charts. You look up one day and say, “Wait a minute, that sounds like my song.”

Jackson Browne tells a great story about licensing “These Days” to Nico from Velvet Underground that was being produced by Andy Warhol, and even playing electric guitar on the new version of the song. Many years go by, Jackson has pretty much forgotten this as nothing ever came of it,  and as he is sitting in a movie theater about to watch a new film, a guitar intro begins and Jackson thought, “Man, I used to play guitar just like that.” Sure enough, it is the remake of “These Days” with Jackson on electric guitar.

In this case, everything was legal and above board. Only Jackson’s memory seemed faulty. But as you can see, it would be easy enough for a song to be appropriated, especially from an independent artist, and show up years later. Fortunately, we have ways to protect your ownership claim which are relatively inexpensive and will give you some proof and confidence if you ever get into a dispute over the ownership of a song. In the U.S. it’s called getting a Certificate of Registration with the United States Copyright Office.

There are several types of works that can be registered; you will want to register a Sound Recording using Form SR. You only need Form CON if you don’t have enough room on Form SR to complete the registration, otherwise just ignore it. Fill out this form online and print it out (print two copies so that you can have one for yourself). I will usually wait until I have instrumentation and arrangement completed on my song and send in a rough mix to the Copyright Office, however you could also either send a simple demo or a final mix & mastered version. The more complete the song is, the stronger your claim for arrangement (in addition to sound recording, words, & music). Now you are ready to send off Form SR and an audio CD or cassette tape copy of the song, right? Not so fast monkey boy, here is where it gets interesting.

Tip #1 - Register Each Song Separately, Not As A Collection

There is a $45 registration fee per submission and it is allowable that you can submit a ton of songs under one fee, which is of course what I was going to do before I spoke with my friend and patent/copyright attorney, Tom Turner. Tom advised me that it is easier to prove a claim for a single song submission than for a collection of songs of which any one song is simply part of the collection. If a single song is submitted for registration you hold a much stronger claim of ownership. I was going to do the collection registration even with Tom’s advice to the contrary, and when I told him Tom said that he would pay the $45 per song if I didn’t have the money, and that’s how important it is to register them separately. No, I didn’t make Tom pay… No, I won’t give you Tom’s phone number so that you can ask him to pay for your songs…

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The first question we have to ask ourselves is; Why did you think that you could have a meaningful relationship with another human being and continue to pursue your music dreams? Of course there is no good answer to that; anyone involved in the arts is going to have a high degree of passion for their art as well as for the people that they care about.

So the real question becomes; How do I keep my private life and my art of creating and recording music in balance? Yes, balance is the key. But how do we attain that balance? Jeez, this is starting to sound like a bad Kung-Fu movie… OK, then it must be story-time.

How The Problem Developed

Several years ago, my friend J. Chris Griffin, NYC mixing engineer (Madonna, The Corrs, Janet Jackson) shared with me some of the difficulties he was having balancing the demands of a very successful career mixing top caliber recordings against having time with his lovely wife, Janet. He would find himself in the middle of a music project that was due within the next day or two and wind up staying in the recording studio, mixing the tracks until midnight or later in order to get it finished.

Since Janet works normal hours, typically she had already gone to bed by the time he came home each night, and she was up and gone before he awoke. I’m sure that by now we have all correctly identified Chris and Janet’s problem.

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