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The Tyranny of Music Genres
As a recording or performing artist, you find yourself answering a familiar question: “What kind of music do you play?” How do you answer? Maybe you have a stock reply — “rock,” “folk,” or “pop.” Or maybe you try to be a little more descriptive — “modern rock,” “folk rock,” or “indie pop.” Or maybe…
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Are You Serious About Your Creative Work?
Seriously. Do you give your best to your art? Maybe you do creative work for yourself, maybe you do it for others. Maybe it’s a mix of the two. In any case, whatever you’re up to, if you’re not serious about it, it probably won’t amount to a hill of beans. Sound a bit harsh?…
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Stop Waiting for Creative Inspiration
Of course it happens to you. It happens to everyone. You want to write, you want to make music… but you’re just not feeling it. Creative inspiration, it seems, has forsaken you and your prodigious talent. It has vacated the premises. And you have no idea where to find it again. What can you do?…
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Finding Your Natural Audience
Songwriters, do you know who your natural audience is? Your songs exist at a point within or outside the commercial mainstream. If they fall in the mainstream, they are similar to other songs, and are most likely to be embraced by a pop audience. If they hang out on the fringes, they are discernible from…
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Warming Up Your Digital Mixes
So you’ve just recorded and mixed your latest song digitally in Logic or ProTools, and gotten every little detail just the way you want it. But something, you decide, is “missing” from your mix. And it’s not just that — something actually seems to be wrong with it. Your ears detect it, and complain to…
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Why Originality Matters
If you’re a musician, you probably get asked whether you do original songs or covers. And as unassuming as that question sounds, it’s actually a hornet’s nest buzzing with speculation on your intent, ambition, and talent. Do you have your own thoughts? Do you have something engaging and identifiable to say? Or do you just echo…
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DIY: Echoes of the Echoplex
In 1982, I bought a used Maestro Echoplex, old and worn and scarcely functional, at a little music shop in Fairfax, Virginia. The store carried as much used stuff as new, and I paid all of $25 for this battered, little black box displayed under a glass counter. My friend assured me: “You have to…
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The Artist Compensation Storm
As sure as dark clouds gather in hurricane season, a storm is brewing around artist compensation. Art and technology are at odds. However, it wasn’t always that way. From the advent of cassette multitracks in the ’80s, to the arrival of digital multitracks in the ’90s, to the maturation of digital audio workstations in the ’00s,…
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Aux.78: Sun and Shadow Past the Border
If a hurricane strikes the office of your record label on the day of your album’s release, what do you call the album? The Sun Decays Them. The new album from Aux. 78, a.k.a. Nicholas Matta, is a beam of muted sunshine, as light as a snowflake and weighty as a gale-force wind. While Wampus…
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Building Context for Your Creative Work
Why do you make music? Write books? Make films? You might know, you might not. Either way, you do it for a specific reason. Maybe it’s to explore. Maybe it’s to affect other people. Maybe it’s to inject a little fun and excitement into your life. That reason gives your creative work context. So does your…
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