ARCHIVE: Do-It-Yourself

August 09, 2007

NJ Recording Studios 'n' Home Recording

I had the opportunity to provide a little commentary to another recording-studios-facing-threat-of-home-recording themed article published today by the Courier News, kind of similar to the recording studio article last week.My new hero is John Forrestal, a 19-year (old also quoted... Read More

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July 27, 2007

Big Recording Studios vs. Home Recording Studios

Scott Galupo of the Washington Times wrote an article titled Music from a Closet about the recent passing of many large recording studios (the Hit Factory, Cello Studios, Music Shoals Sound Studios, and most recently, Sony Music Studios), and the... Read More

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May 14, 2007

The New Artist 2.0

Great, great article in the NY Times yesterday about the new breed of Artist 2.0s in today's online world, the ability to release music and video directly to the public, the ability to interact directly with fans (and the resulting challenges),... Read More

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May 01, 2007

Handmade Music, Sonic Bananas, and Slime-O-Trons

Create Digital Music, MakeZine, and Etsy Labs sponsored a "Handmade Music" night in Brooklyn, NY recently.  Seriously, these people are crazy.  But it's that lovable kind of crazy that paves the way for brilliance in digital music making.  You need... Read More

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March 14, 2007

Interview With DIY Rocker and Coder, Scott Andrew

Once again, I am inspired by DIY greatness.  Scott Andrew is both creator and coder, rocker and designer, lyricist and melodist. (I think that's a word, right?)Seriously, the guy's got skills.  Musicians and music fans will dig his beautifully written... Read More

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March 12, 2007

Kompoz, a New Collaboration Workspace for Musicians

Interesting.  Kompoz released a beta version of an online workspace for musicians to collaborate in the creation of new recordings.  Think Apple's GarageBand audio recording software meets MySpace Band pages, where the social network revolves around song projects.Basically, anyone can... Read More

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February 19, 2007

How Not to Produce Amateur Recordings

If you're new to the home recording scene, and want to avoid some classic pitfalls of an amateur recording, avoiding these top ten recording pitfalls is a great way to start.  Uneven  or muddy vocals, and especially acoustic bleeding caused... Read More

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January 14, 2007

Updates to GarageSpin.com

This weekend may have been one of the most active and surprisingly productive in a while for me: Worked on my next song, "Take a Stand", and now have the chord progression for a pre-chorus and chorus.  Chorus lyrics are... Read More

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October 23, 2006

Recording Studios Adapt to Home Recording

While some big-time recording studios fall in the wake of do-it-yourself home recording project studios, others have begun to adapt, and even cater to, the home recording artist.Check out Talmage Music, a recording facility which positions itself as an extension to... Read More

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September 20, 2006

SpliceMusic Offers Free Online Music Mixing Software

I'm impressed.  SpliceMusic has created a free, online music mixing program that enables any user to mashup loops of music and sounds licensed by Creative Commons.The interface is smooth and clean; every track has volume, pan, mute and solo control. ... Read More

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September 18, 2006

Fans Fund Band Album Production Through Sell-A-Band

I love novel business ideas like this one. SellABand has developed a model allowing fans to finance the production of a band's album, and benefit from the album's (hopeful) success thereafter. It works like this: 1) Band creates a profile... Read More

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July 25, 2006

Jonathan Coulton, and the Thing A Week Project

Jonathan Coulton is an awesome DIY musician success story -- if you haven't yet, check out his stuff.  He writes, records, mixes, and masters his own music on his PC home studio, and does it all friggin' extremely well.  His... Read More

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May 16, 2006

Interview With DIY Artist, Brad Sucks

As I mentioned yesterday, Brad (of Brad Sucks) is a successful one-man-band that writes, records, mixes, masters, and sells his own music.  He's managed to build up a huge fan base by encouraging fans to "steal" his music and musicians to... Read More

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May 15, 2006

Brad Sucks, The One-Man-Band With Tons of Fans

Brad is my hero.  If you haven't heard him yet, you should check out his stuff.  This guy is a DIY musician poster child -- he writes, records, mixes, masters, and sells all of his own music through his home... Read More

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May 01, 2006

Stickam Gives Bands Video, Photo, Music, and Chat Tools

There is a very long list of companies offering interactive tools that let just about anyone sweeten their blogs, MySpace pages, eBay listings, whatever, with multimedia functionality.Stickam is one of the cooler ones I've seen.  Bands can upload music, video,... Read More

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April 26, 2006

Recording Studios Adapting to Home Recording

The Boston Globe has a nice little article about how professional recording studios are adapting (some are not) to shrinking record label recording budgets and the increase in home recording practices.  Mike Denneen, co-owner of Q Division studios, said this:"This... Read More

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March 15, 2006

DIY DJ Builds An FM Station for $1

Raghav Mahato is the MAN.  Talk about DIY, he started his own pirate FM radio station by building an FM radio transmitter with equipment costing under $1, and setting up camp in a shack stacked with cassette tapes and a... Read More

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February 21, 2006

Laptop Deathmatches - Electronic DJs Battle It Out

More and more electronic musicians are battling head-to-head in Laptop Deathmatches.  It's the techo-music-geek's version of a rap battle, where laptops replace turntables, and hardware and software rule the stage.I haven't seen one yet myself, but since reading an article... Read More

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February 10, 2006

WikiRecording, Free Audio Recording Guide

Jeff Einowski recently started WikiRecording, a free guide to audio recording based on the Wikipedia engine (and under the same GNU license Wikipedia uses -- anyone can edit it).It's only been up for two weeks, and already has about 50 articles... Read More

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February 03, 2006

American Idol Pay-For-Rotations Music Site

American Idol recently launched American Idol Underground, a music hosting site capitalizing on the show's brand name and its audience's dreams of stardom.Any artist can get a free profile page with gig promotion and fan club management.  Song submission, however, requires... Read More

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February 02, 2006

TuneCore Launches Beta iTunes Music Submission Service

TuneCore happily declares it will submit your music to iTunes and Rhapsody for you, while letting you keep all of your song rights, as well as any money made from either iTunes and Rhapsody.Pricing involves a 1-time $0.99 per song upload... Read More

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January 30, 2006

How to Break an Act

Breaking An Act is a good post giving practical advice to new bands trying to make it big.  Most of it is practical - I'd still look to Bob Baker for creative marketing ideas.  A good read, though.(via SpinMe)... Read More

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January 25, 2006

Real Launches RealCommunity, Unsigned Artist Site

RealNetworks just launched RealCommunity, free music community that lets unsigned groups and artists upload their own music, create profile pages and sell their music online.RealMusic and RealGuide users will be exposed to top-ranking artists (based on user rankings) in RealCommunity.  Both digital... Read More

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January 24, 2006

XingTone Launches mStore, Ringtone Store Creator

Xingtone, developer of ringtone- creation software, recently launched a beta version of mStore, a self-serve ringtone store generator.One cool mStore feature is the ability to both create an external store that Xingtone hosts, as well as insert the actual mStore... Read More

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January 23, 2006

GarageBand 3 Hits The Streets

I'm sure you've heard that Apple's GarageSpin 3, er, GarageBand 3 is out.  Many of the new features involve beefing up podcasting options.  Some of the new features include:Insert images/photosMore sound effects, instrumentsSpeech enhanceriWeb (web publishing)iChat (conference recording)iMovie scoring (sync... Read More

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January 18, 2006

Interview With ARTISTserver.com Creator, Gideon Marken

I mentioned an interview with Gideon was approaching, and voila. For those unacquainted, Gideon Marken is the programmer/musician that single-handedly built and maintains ArtistServer, a free music-hosting platform that empowers artists with music promotion tools including blogs, podcasts, feeds, newsletters,... Read More

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January 05, 2006

ARTISTServer: One Man, Thousands of Artists

Vision and drive. Two huge intangibles that work wonders. Enter Gideon Marken and his brainchild, ArtistServer. Named one of the best music hosting services by Time along with GarageBand and CDBaby, ArtistServer empowers bands with the ability to host, stream,... Read More

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December 23, 2005

Sonar vs. Cubase vs. Pro Tools vs. Acid

Digital Music Doctor, a site that sells 2-3 hour video courses for music product software packages, reviewed Sonar 5, Cubase 3, Pro Tools 7, and Acid Pro 5 to compare price, audio features, MIDI features, and special functions in an "Ultimate Shootout".Who won? ... Read More

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November 30, 2005

Home Recording Studio History: Videos of Synth Greats

Music Thing posted a bunch of links to video clips of dudes using their synths, including Pete Townsend (The Who) and Dave Gilmour (Pink Floyd) and others, back in the day. Pretty cool clips, worth checking out to see a... Read More

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November 15, 2005

DIY-Only Label Launched

Simig Media, Inc. launched a new record label that differentiates itself by only publishing and distributing records that are wholly recorded and produced by the musicians themselves. I love love the concept, which is very much in the spirit of... Read More

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November 07, 2005

Harvey Danger Experiments With Free Album Download

Harvey Danger hit gold with “FlagPole Sitta” in 1998, had less success with their 2000 release, was then dropped by their label, and broke up. Now they’re back sans label, experimenting with a promotion strategy including a free digital download... Read More

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September 28, 2005

DIY Musicians Challenge Major Label Artists

Alexis Akwagyiram at BBC wrote an interesting story about Sway Dasafo, an unsigned, home studio artist from north London that beat out major label hop hop artists (including 50 Cent!) at this year's Music of Black Origin awards. Sway's accomplishment... Read More

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August 11, 2005

More Acts Going the Independent Route

Justin Glanville from the Associated Press wrote a nice article about the increasing number of signed artists going the independent route, taking the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) approach to financing records and tours, securing distribution deals, and promoting/marketing the music. Sing it,... Read More

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