Observation

I had sent out questions to a few bands a few weeks ago, but haven't received any response, so I decided to switch my topic from an interview to observation.

On March 12th I went to a small show in Portland to see my friends bands, We Are The New Year, The Bay State, and Faster Faster. While I was there, I observed things like how they promoted for the show, how they set up, and what tour in general was like for a small band.


Since the show was on a school night, and all of the bands were fairly unknown, the show took more promotion than normal to create a crowd. All of the bands promoted for it by posting fliers and bulitens on Myspace, and telling their friends to spread the word. The crowd was small, but a pretty good size for small underground bands on a school night. Each band had all of their equiptment in one corner of the venue, and they were all very organized when setting up and taking their equiptment off of the stage. We Are The New Year was the only band with a merch table, which seemed surprising to me since these days merch sales are basically the only way bands make a profit. Touring is becoming hard for small bands who don't have the support of a label because of all the expenses. There's gas money, food, the cost of promotion, and there's always the problem of finding a place to stay. Most bands their size spend all day in a cramped up van with four other sweaty, gross, dudes, just to play for about 25-45 minutes for a group of kids who may or may not know them. All of this self promotion is completely necessary. It may seem crazy to drive ten hours, play 25 minute show, and then end up sleeping in your van because no one wants to take you in for the night, but it's completely worth it. Spreading your fan base when your band is still small and accessable is so vitale to your bands future. A wide spread fanbase also catches the attention of record labels, who, if you one day sign to, will cover the costs of touring & promoting. If you're in a small band, you need to prepare for a completely DIY music scene. Until you're well known in the underground scene, labels won't even look at you. The compitition grows as more and more bands pop into the scene. There's a new drive to be original sounding along with eye catching.

One of the bands stretched out before playing. This is so important. Spending a day in a tiny van can be brutal on your back and legs. You should be stopping every 3 hours to stretch for about 15 minutes, but most bands are on a tight time scheduel, and just don't have the time to stop. After for sitting for so long, you need to stretch before jumping around on stage with a guitar, even if it's for 25 minutes.

No one likes a tiny band who no one knows with an ego. Don't be cocky. Stay accessable, keep in touch with your fans, answer their emails, take pictures with them. The fans who adore you in the begging when your music is all bedroom recorded and you get about 50 plays a day, are the ones who are going to spread the word about you, and make you into something huge.

Promotion, merch sales, and making sure the show goes smoothly is extremely important for a DIY tour.

Therefore I Am recording debut album RESPONSE.

I think it's really cool that Therefore I Am has signed to a fairling decent sized record label, Equal Vision. They're a boston band, and I always like supporting the local stuff.
I also think it's interesting that they're releasing vinyl singles of one of their old songs. I wish I had a record player to listen to it, but I think a lot of people will. As much as it seems like the record & vinyl are dead, they're still out there.

Therefore I Am recording debut album

This article talks about a newly signed band, Therefore I Am, writing and recording their first full length album. They have been in Rhode Island recording at Strangeways Recording Studio for a few weeks now.
They also plan on releasing a 7 inch vinyl single of one of their EP songs. There will only be 500 copies of this.

News - EARN IT YOURSELF OPENS SUBMISSIONS FOR THE 2009 VANS WARPED TOUR EARN IT YOURSELF OPENS SUBMISSIONS FOR THE 2009 VANS WARPED TOUR RESPONSE

Sites like these are really important to help launch small local bands, who don't have a label or management to do it for them. I like how it's really getting the musicians and bands to get out there and promote themselves, instead of depending on someone else to do it. It's really focused on showing young musicians the right way to do things. With Earn It Yourself, you create the profile, and do all the promotion. It's really similar to a myspace page, but if you get a lot of votes on EIY, you could win a spot to play a huge music festival. Warped Tour is by far one of the best places to get your name out if you're an underground band. To play on it is most bands dream.

Earn it yourself opens submissions for the 2009 Vans Warped Tour

Earn It Yourself is a small independent music magazine, radio show, and website. The magazine focuses on helping bands create a logical approach to a business plan. There website is now taking submissions for local bands to earn a slot in their region on the 2009 Vans Warped tour. The artist or band would make a profile on their website, and who ever gets the most votes in a certain area, would win a slot to play a date on the tour. Earn It Yourself is mainly to help musicians build careers from the ground up.

Digitech Pedals response

I think all of the pedals sound really cool. The fact that they come with built in drum beats and amp settings is what caught my attention most. To be able to get 100 different amp sounds from one pedal is really cool, because one amp could cost you almost a thousand dollars, and if you have all of the different sounds of the amp in one pedal, it saves you a lot of money. Since it comes with drum beats, you could have a certain beat playing, and write guitar lines over it. It's a really helpful way to write music if you're a one man band. The 20 second looper is also really cool. A looping pedal records whatever you play in guitar, and plays it back over and over again. If you're the only guitarist in a band and you want to solo over something, you could record the rythem guitar and play over that for as long as you want. 20 seconds isn't that long of a loop, but it's enough considering all that these pedals come with.
As cool as these sound, I'm not sure how great the quality is. Digitech has had a reputation for making cheap pedals, but they can also make decent ones. I'll have to read more reviews on these to know if they're worth it or not. I have two digitech pedals that seem to work fine for now, but if I was serious about using effects in my music, I would want something more high quality.
The price is what makes me think they might not be the best. Pedals with one effect can range from 100 - 500 dollars, and to see a pedal with all these effects for only 80$ makes me question it's quality.

DIGITECH® REVAMPS LEGENDARY RP SERIES WITH FIVE NEW PEDALS

Digitech has released 5 new effects pedals.
The RP55 comes with 80 preset effects, a built in drum machine, a chromatic tuner, 12 different amp and acoustic settings, and it can make 10 effects at once. The RP55 is 80$.
Next there is the RP155. This comes with 100 presets, 60 high quality drum tracks, 83 amp, cabinet, stompboxes, and effects. It also has a 20 second looper, for on the go looping and live shows. This one costs 160$.
The next 3 pedals keep getting better with more effects, looping time, drum patterns, and amp settings.

kyle S responce

good topic! Its veryinteresting. You also seem to know a lot about it or at least your finding a lot on it. Good job.

Mitchel's Response

I enjoyed reading your articles. The only thing that I saw as a problem were the titles of your opinions to the article. But other than that the articles and responses were great.

alex Response

I thought your blog was well done and I thought that your articles were well written. I think that you have a good understanding of your topic.

My Opinion

I think the "THE band" press kit is great! If you're a tiny unsigned band then the press kit that this offers you is perfect for booking shows and getting a labels attention! It sounds like they do really high quality stuff that's still affordable. Stuff like this is definately part of the reason so many underground bands are emmerging onto the music scene.
This sort of gives tiny bands the same respect as huge, well known bands when booking a show. Stuff like this press kit is helping increase the music scene for better or worse.
One problem I see with all this promotion is even if the band has an amazing press kit, and everything looks extremely proffessional; the band could have played two shows in their life, and they could be asking to book at an arena. The music scene gets a little clogged up with bands who don't know what they're doing, but look like they do, so they earn some form of respect.
With all this at home promotion there are so many bands that are starting to make it that sound exactly the same. I'd rather have a few original bands than a million that sound similar, but each one has it's ups and downs.

THE band press kit makes band promotion and marketing

This article talks about the "THE band" press kit. When a band wants to book a show, or send their information to a record label they need what's called a press kit. This includes things like their band bio, band photo, myspace, some of their songs, any other websites, and bands they've played with.
The "THE band" press kit sets all of that up for you online. It's an easy promotion packet for bands who aren't signed to a label who does that for them. They have professional designers who create your press kit for you, and it's all printed on high quality paper and shipped directly to you.

My opinion

As convinient as Itunes and online music sites are; I'm pretty sad to see the CD slowly dissapearing. I like to have the hard copy of music with me and flipping through the CD booklet when I'm bored. It comes in handy on car rides, and CDs just have much better quality. I absolutely hate limewire. The only reason it's semi legal is because the people who upload the songs have to edit them the slightest bit, but it kills the song. If you compare a song on a CD to the same exact song on limewire you'll be able to tell a huge difference. Sure, free music is great for you, if you like horrible quality. Lack of CD sales is causing record labels to become broke. Bands can't depend on music sales anymore, they have to make a proffit off of merch and shows. Itunes is the quick and easy way to get music, but a CD is really the best.

CD sales drop 20% while softened by digital

this article talks about how itunes has taken over CD sales.
some of the facts from the article:
-Itunes has claimed the lead from wal-mart as the most popular US music seller.
-between 2007 and 2008 CD sales have dropped 20%

My opinion

I thought this was pretty cool because I have the korg MicroKORG synthesizer, and it's a lot of fun, but I'd love to compare the two when the mircroKORG XL is released. Synths have changed these sound of music so drastically. It's pretty amazing. My synth is loaded with ridiculous sounds and features that I can edit and change, and that's the small synth! The big, expensive ones come with so much, it's crazy. I like the vocoder on my synth, but it's not the best so I'd also like to see what the vocoder on the microKORG synth XL is like.

Korg microKORG XL

This article is about the new Korg synthesizer; the Korg microKORG XL.
features;
-128 sounds
-choose your musical genre & instrument type
-3 performance knobs for quick editing
-16 band vocoder

It's considered the Korg microKORG's "older brother"
It'll most likely be released in February 2009, and it doesn't have a price yet.

Good info - color coding? titles to notes?

Katie - You need citations!!!!!! See me to work on the blog elements that need revision. Also, the font on your latest entries needs changing . . .

My Opinion

Personally, I'm sad to see CDs dying. There are so many sites like Limewire where people can download all of the music they want for free. I'll always be one to support a band and pay for the album, and I buy CDs instead of downloading whenever I can. Itunes has its pros and cons. For major labels, it's taking away their proffit, which causes them to come up with other ways of getting an income. This is good and bad. Labels have known they would need to prepare for this at some point, so it's good they have alternative ways to make a profit rather than depending mainly on music sales. On the other hand, Itunes can be a great thing for tiny local bands. Lets say you have a nice studio at your house, and you've been recording songs that are actually worth buying. No CD store is going to take some no name band, so that's when Itunes comes in handy. Any musician can put their music on itunes, it's a great way of promoting. It seems ridiculous, but today you could actually never leave the house and become one of the most popular musicians out there. All you need is the Internet. With Myspace to promote and let listeners sample your music, and Itunes to sell it, it's possible to become a huge hit with out going anywhere.
Labels have been expecting Itunes to take over CD sales, it was just a matter of when.

Digital Sales Surpass CD Sales At Atlantic

The article I read was about Atlantic Records selling more music through online stores like Itunes, rather than CD sales. Atlantic is the first record company for this to happen to, and it's a pretty big milestone in the music world. This has greatly affected the company. When a listener buys a CD, they're paying for all of the songs at one set price. With Itunes and other sites, they can pick and chose the songs they want, and because songs are only a dollar, the record companies lose profits. Labels are turning to other ways of making an income such as band merchandise and different ways of promoting bands.

My Oppinion

I think it would be absolutely ridiculous for AP to take out the album review section of a MUSIC magazine. Once you take out something so important like that, the whole magazine will start to spiral down, kind of like mtv did. I can already see how the magazine has started to change. They've taken out music sections and added clothing ads, it can't afford anymore change with out losing readers. I think the idea of just reviewing singles is a horrible idea! You can like one song, but hate the album. A single says nothing about the album as a whole. That's also very mtv. It's not just the dropping of one article that some readers may not read. The thing that makes me mad is that they'll drop this section, then it'll be the whole music aspect of the entire magazine. Next thing you know the new bands and tours will be out of the magazine, and there will be one page dedicated to a few bands. That's not what I want to see happen to AP at all. AP really (or was) a magazine for the ALTERNATIVE music, the bands most kids didn't know. It's turning into something bigger; something mainstream. I don't want to see that happen to it because this is one of the only decent music magazines out there that covers everything in the music scene. Reducing music articles will lead to less and less of what the magazine stands for. I'm really glad the readers responses were similar to the way I feel about this. I agree with the reader who said she wouldn't take the time to check it online. It's much easier to have a magazine to carry with you.

I'll be looking at an AP from this time last year, and compare it to the one I just got in the mail box, and the change is ridiculous. Their are more clothing and make up ads than there used to be, and I wouldn't be able to stand seeing them remove a much needed review section, and replace it with something like a Glamour Kills Clothing ad.

Alternative Press Considers Cutting Review Section summary

This article was about Alternative Press magazine considering cutting their album review section. It talked about the pros and cons of a music review sections. Critics don't seem to love the section, but readers do. It is one of the top three most read sections in the entire magazine. Plus, AP IS a music magazine, so an album review section seems pretty necessary. AP also considered switching the review section to just a singles review section. AP said they would keep the album review online but take it out of the magazine. They asked readers what they thought of removing the reviews, and it was unanimously agreed that it was a bad idea.
One of the readers responded by saying she would carry AP around with her and read every page when ever she got the chance to sit down, but the part she mainly focused on was the review section. If this was put online, she wouldn't have it with her at all times.
Another reader said they would be less likely to check online to read reviews, and it was much more convenient to just read the magazine.

5 paragraph responses

Music and how it's changing is what interests me most out of everything! It's something I'll want a career in, whether it's playing and making music, or recording and producing. All of the information I'll find will help me in the future. There are so many branches off of changes in alternative music that it will be more than enough to keep me eager and interested. I'll need to know all of this at some point anyways, so I might as well take advantage of the fact that I can do it in school and get credit for it.
This topic will change enough within the next five or six months for it to be worth while. There are always new ways of promotion, and new tours and bands. Every thing's always changing, mostly the sound, which is what I'm most interested in.
There will be so much information on this topic, that I'll probably be a little overwhelmed with it. There are so many people I could interview, like my guitar teacher, employees at guitar center, and small CD stores. I would also want a bands input on how music is changing and how it has affected them. It would be amazing if I could talk to a small record label and ask them how they've had to change the way they promote bands.
There is definitely a basis for my topic because I have so much I could branch out on. It will change over time, but not drastically. The minor changes will eventually end up in a whole new sound to alternative music.
Researching changes in alternative music will stretch my thinking. It's something I really want to research, and I'll be using the information I gather for the rest of my life. I don't know anything about how synth is done, or how to edit music. If I want to go to school for recording and engineering, I want to go there with some sort of basic knollage of how things are done.

Cole's Response

It sounds to me like you pretty much know what you want to research. I think that this would be a great topic for you. I will be interested to hear what you find out about this subject. I suspecty that being able to talk to a band that is actually going through this process will be extremly helpful. It will be interesting to hear what people say about the cd sales and itunes. Also opinions on the changes in the stylistic aspects of new alt. music.

Title

Sounds like you have some great choices. If you decide you do want to fellow a band on tour or something, Use Your Head!, a hardcore band from Springfield, Mass, is about to go on tour. They are small and don't get a lot of attention and they are doing their tour by themselves also, not with some company. "Another State Of Mind" is a movie about a tour thSocial Distortion and Youth Brigade did in the 80's, I don't if that would help but it might help.
Another thing to consider is how the home recording has changed because I know the punk and hardcore bands have been recording their own stuff since the 70's-80's. You could probalby get in touch with members of USA Waste or Clinic Bomb and talk to them about being in the "alternative music" scene. They are both punk bands from, I think, Bangor.
Doing your I-Search on MySpace and it's affects sounds fun as well. If you were to look up USA Waste or CB, you could find them on Myspace. You're right with that a lot more bands can now have a website, which makes promotion a lot easier. I was talking with a guy who said that he believed that there would never be a band as big as a the Beatles or someone like them again because of the information aviable on the internet.

If I did my I-Search on punk or "altenative" music, I would do it on the DIY ethic how it has evolved through out the ages.

This really sounds like a good idea, but if I was you I might be worried about finding information about this in newspapers and such. Something that you probably will find is articles on how software like limewire and other free downloading programs are taking A LOT of the sales away from the bands, but at the same time, starting bands are getting publicity through the internet. This sounds like a really cool topic to pick even if it could sometimes be hard to find information on it. Maybe you could combine fallowing a band with this subject, and ask them how these issues have effected their music.

I think its good that you have an interest and you want to run with it, but I think it would be better if you branched out.  One thing I did when I was choosing my topics was try to pick diverse ones, where as with you it looks like you only concentrated on what you could do involving music.

It sounds like like you've already decided on your topic, so you dont really need any advice on other possible topics. This sounds like an interesting choice, because music now can be changed so easily with technology, even with programs that are as simple and standard as Garageband. I think this topic will be of great use to you, since you already record your own music. It's cool that the sub-topic is the internet and music, because internet basically controls the music industry now. I have noticed that Myspace now has a much more prominent music setting than before. You should als0 check out last.fm, if you already havent. Another possible sup-topic is how pirated and online music may affect the bands.

topics!

One of my options was to research how technology has changed music and the music scene. With synthesizers and computer programs, you can make any sound you want; music has no limits. With so many bands using synth, the “alternative” music sounds much more techno. Electronic drum kits, synth, and keyboards have really changed the sound of music.
Another topic I was considering is following a band. It would have to be an active band, that’s constantly playing shows and touring, but one small enough that would message me back. This topic would be fun for the first month or so, but I think I would get bored with it.
I want to research changes in alternative music. There have been so many technology changes that it has greatly altered the music scene. MySpace has changed the way bands are being promoted, home recording studios and set ups are making it so anyone can record their music and post it online, which means there are a lot more bands out there now than there used to be. CD sales are suffering because of itunes and other music download sites. Record labels have had to completely change the way they promote bands. I would want to interview small bands and ask their opinion on the changes. I think this is the topic I will do because there are so many sub topics off of it I could research, and I don't think I'll get bored with it.