After completing the tutorial you  will have:

• A strategy on handling myspace friend requests
• A proffesional Presskit (PDF)
• A Socialization campaign (Digg, Technorati etc)
• Optimized for Last.fm

Community websites like Myspace.com are getting a lot of credit when it comes down to boosting a fan base for new and upcoming artists. But what really comes from having your mp3 played 2000 times a day? who are playing the songs and even better why are they playing the songs?

Amon Tobin’s Player on myspace

Some plays generated on your profile will consist of people who came to your site to spam you or to add you. Of course not all visitors of your profile are lurkers who want to spam their own high school band in your comments section. But don’t get all excited about how many plays you got on a day. Last.fm is more liable source to measure your popularity growth. Hence the fact users of Last.fm downloaded/bought your music and play them in I-tunes or on the site. We’ll get into more details about Last.fm later.

The truth about Myspace

So what is the truth about myspace? Does it help your music career? Well yes and no. Offcourse it can help you with creating a fanbase of Internet listeners. But how many of them buy your record or pay a visit to your gig. Getting your name in the digital world really helps. But in my opinion it will only really help with networking with other musicians or artistic directors of institutions or company’s that can help you. Myspace is not a ticket for success. It does provide you with an easy way to let people find you and let you find other people.

So make some decisions. Are you going to spend hours on end adding “friends” who might accept, but never visit your profile. Or should you look for your peer’s and comment on their profile about their own music or taste in music. As long as it is about them, and not your new CD. Really it does not work. If you commented something personal, you can get away with sending them a message about a gig. Infact they might even appreciate it.

Practically?

Lets look at the steps you need to make to efficiently maintain your myspace profile. First lets see how to go about making a myspce profile? Do you know a fair share of HTML?

Designing a Myspace is not hard at all. You dont need any programming skills what so ever. Use a simple Myspace Profile generator/Editor, like Thomas’ Myspace Editor. All very basic stuff. Remember not make it too fancy, no big pictures that take forever to load. Take a look at your successful peers (similar artists/musicians)  for guidance.

Links in my About Me

As You can see In the picture above (highlighted) I link to SC, Fant00m a blog I run and Fokus Records my label obviously. Its important to let people click on images, links and let them read a little about you. If you don’t have a manager (and you don’t or you would not be reading this) who will write blog posts, a bio etc, don’t speak about your self in 3rd person. This comes across as very amateurish and in my opinion very lame. Don’t pretend.

Also note there are lots of blogs out there that post about bands they find on myspace. Make it easy for them to get some info, free mp3’s and picures. Dont put the pictures on your profile (you can upload them to your images directory’s on myspace of course) but bundle everything in a neat looking PDF file (for cross platform support).

You can create PDF files by using the open source alternative for MS Word & Excell; OpenOffice.

Make it easy for people to bookmark you add a button that enables visitors to bookmark you on technorati, Digg, stumble upon etc. Theres a nifty tool called Add This!, sign up for an account on their website and create the HTML code for myspace with a view clicks.

If you have a wordpress, typepad type of blog its useful to start a mailinglist. there are plugins to maintain mailinglists for free. Make a link to the mailinglist subscribe page, on myspace. Better yet make a picture link to the mailinglist!

Alternatively you can manage you mailing list offline with this software

Last.fm and ID3 Tags

Last.fm is being projected as the new music revolution, i went to see what the fuzz was about. Apparently there were 3 profiles with my songs on Last.fm (Thorltd / Thor-Ltd & ThorLtd) So I took a closer look at the structure of Last.fm’s  concept and ventured in to the world of scrobbles. Well this meant mayham for me. None of my mp3’s had propper ID3 tagging. Turns out Last.fm reads ID3 metatags to  index  scrobbles.

Save your selfe the trouble in the future and tag every MP3!Use this powerfull and easy tool to prevent this kind of things. Be sure to add you website, release date etc in the meta tags. Also make sure you donwload your mp3’s from sites where you uploaded any of your songs. Check if the website left the ID3 tags complete.

I really do not know if Last.fm, will be the new thing for independent artists. If you take a closer look at the structure of the concept of last.fm it seems perfect for marketing a band. The whole system is buildt arround  the musical taste/preferences of it’s users. Or more scientificaly; its buildt on their user’s playlist history. This means you can single out a targetted group of users who listen to perticular song more then 30 times in 2 weeks.  Etc etc. Just recently last.fm started to pay artists for plays generated on last.fm streaming radio stations etc. I have not looked in to this. But like Myspace its not the question; IF you join the “revolution” but HOW you do it.

Software & Sources:

OpenOffice.

ID3 Tag Editor

E-mail Marketing Pro

Thomas’Myspace Editor

Addthis

An equalization (EQ) filter is a filter, that can bring out frequencies in your mix that are to low or can cut off frequencies that are to high. This enables you to get a perfect balance in your sound.

By adjusting at least 1 parameter you alter the sound that is being processed by the EQ. Equalizers may be designed with peaking filters, shelving filters, bandpass filters, plop filters or high-pass and low-pass filters.

There are three primary types of equalizers with peaking filters:

• parametric equalizers
• graphic equalizers
• notch filters

Now to know what kind of frequencies effect all the different sound characteristics , lets look at this overview :

• Sub-Bass — The very low bass between 16Hz and 60Hz that encompasses sounds that are often felt more than heard, such as thunder in the distance. These frequencies give the music a sense of power even if they occur infrequently. Too much emphasis on this range makes the music sound muddy.

• Bass — The bass between 60Hz and 250Hz contains the fundamental notes of the rhythm section, so EQ ing this range can change the musical balance, making it fat or thin. Too much boost in this range can make the music sound boomy.

• Low Mids — The mid range is to be found between 250Hz and 2000Hz. From 250 Hz to 500 Hz, this range accents ambiance of studio and adds clarity to the bass and lower string instruments (cello and upright bass). From 500 Hz to 2 kHz, this range can give a horn-like quality to instruments (500 Hz to 1 kHz) and a “tinny” sound (1 kHz to 2 kHz).

• High Mids — this range of frequencies is responsible for the attack on percussive and rhythm instruments and the “projection” of mid range instruments. Equalization can be applied at any frequency in this range but still somewhat centers around 3 kHz.

• Presence — This range between 4kHz and 6kHz is responsible for the clarity of your mix.This range also provides you with the control of the “distance” in your mix . When you boost the full range your mix will feel closer to the listener. Reducing the 5kHz zone in a mix makes the sound more distant and transparent.

• Brilliance — The 6kHz to 16kHz range controls the brilliance and clarity of your mix. Be careful with boosting the upper regions of this range hence the fact it can cause clipping.

How to use the ranges

Well you would need an EQ to use one right? indeed. If you have good EQ’s use the ones you have, if you dont have any (good) EQ’s  lets look at the options. If you want to spend money on the EQ there are endless options i wont mention here. There are plenty, pretty solid free alternatives to get you on your way. Get a look at these mastering tools offered for free at KVR. For this tutorial we will use Pushtec 5+1A by Leftover Lasagne.

You will notice most (graphic) EQ’s already have these ranges preset as different parameters. So next time you are filtering a mix with an EQ look at the above characteristics of the ranges and actually know what you are tweaking! Most of the time you will be working with multiple filters. This means you are dealing with different specialties of the filters you are using. A common set up for a mixer track would be an EQ, limiter and compressor. Some people claim there is a golden rule in which order to apply the filters. Personally I think different situations call for different measures.

For instance; a in the beginning of a loop the velocity of a certain frequency is a lot higher then in the middle and the end it might be wise to apply a limiter first. This will bring out the lower velocity parts. After this you can EQ without boosting frequencies you would have to boost if the limiter was not applied.

Maximum glitch controle with Native instruments Kontakt and Sonic Cinema’s Drill n Crack Pack!

Drill n Crack Pack provides you with lush yet gritty glitch sounds. With this pack you can intuitively controle the length of a glitchy snare and groove with out the painstaking proces of tweaking fx for every re-trigger or loop. Voted 5/5 by KVR Audio!

All samples are 16-bit WAV and recorded stereo in a foley pit. (6,40 MB - 6.717.440 bytes)

Download:

Drill and Crack Pack (.nki file)

Download Mirror:

http://rapidshare.com/files/98989624/Drill_N_Crack_Pack.rar

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
If You like these free kits please donate a little something

Jazzy Glitches is an exclusive Sonic Cinema kit ready to provide you with some lush purcusive sounds, brush strokes and glitchy FX. Based on the powerfull NI Kontakt engine you can tweak these samples to your likings. With these samples your scores or cinematic music project has an original sound and rich texture.

All samples are 16 BIT 1411kbps Recorded stereo in a foley pit with two condenser mic’s. The glitches and FX were edited in the studio.

Download:

Jazzy-glitches.nki

Mirror:

http://www.badongo.com/file/8196204

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

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