Is your music being heard over the white noise of the internet? Advertising your band online is a daunting task, but band branding can help simplify and strengthen your marketing efforts. The internet is inundated with aspiring musicians, so in the age of oversharing, success is all about finding your niche. “Branding” is essentially telling your story…
By David Stewart Jr. Rock music has always pushed the limits of pop culture. Be it through the rebellious lyrics and aggressive vibes, or through scandalous images and (literal) pyrotechnics on stage, rock ‘n’ roll is the go-to form of expression for some of the world’s greatest and loudest artists. I have studied the greats…
+ Learning to record and mix at home? Check out Soundfly’s acclaimed online courses on mixing, production, beat making and more — Subscribe for unlimited access. Eighty years ago, people could only dream of computers making music. The first machines to do this were as large as a bus and sounded like a dying duck choking on garbage. By contrast, modern…
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times just on this blog alone: YouTube is so important to you as a musician. You might not like the payout rates or even the website itself, but it doesn’t change the fact that the platform is incredibly popular, and that you’ll be losing out…
The consensus amongst musicians seems to be unanimous: Led Zeppelin has written and performed some of the most high-intensity rock and roll music ever. Yet beneath the fuzzed out, thunderous madness of Valhalla and Middle Earth typically associated with rock’s golden gods, there is a wealth of musical ingenuity and innovation waiting to be uncovered by…
Self-promotion doesn’t have to sound like self-obsession. Learn to promote your sound, market your music, and reach new fans online.
If you follow hip-hop, you’re likely to at least know the name Chance the Rapper and recall how he’s become an indie darling of the rap world. Armed with a unique voice and a passionate fanbase cultivated over the past few years, Chance has achieved similar feats as hip-hop’s top heavyweights — and he’s done so…
There’s a very good reason why the pentatonic scale is so generally pleasing, applicable, and capable of making neck hairs stand on end: It’s something humans have been perfecting for a long time, and can be found in cultures all over the world. As a guitarist, I’ve often wondered whether the guitar was in some ways…
Cranky neighbors. A dearth of suitable space to stack amps. A shortage of cash. There are any number of obvious and legitimate reasons for learning to record your electric guitar tracks direct in. When you get this skill down pat, you’ll find the approach delivers a great deal of speed and flexibility without compromising too much on…
Scales play an integral role in any musician’s artistic vocabulary. They help us understand harmonic and melodic language, even if we aren’t consciously thinking about them all the time. When they’re properly understood, scales can be secret-revealing road maps in a musical journey. But more often than not, they’re treated like robotic exercises and nothing…
