The Weird and Creepy World of String Harmonics
Experimenting with string harmonics can lend an eerie, etherial sound to your compositions. Here’s how to get started.
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Finding Your Ideal Guitar Tone: Guitar Pedals
There isn’t a single guitarist who can possibly keep track of all the different pedals that are on the market today. With hundreds of boutique companies surfacing just in the last ten years, we know that the challenge isn’t finding cool pedals, but figuring out which ones are right for us, so let’s break down…
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12 Ways to Get More Facebook Likes (and Engagement) for Your Musician Page
+ Pursue your next social media marketing goal with a Soundfly Mentor like Marta! Soundfly offers four-week mentorship sessions with a pro, customized to you. Get in touch to learn more. I was just invited to Like a Musician’s Facebook Page from a friend. I clicked through and decided to give it a look. I started browsing around,…
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Tips from the Independent Producer: 6 Tips for Successful Self-Producing
A couple weeks ago I wrote a post about how hard it is when you’re self-producing to know when you’re done with a recording. It’s hard! But despair not; this time, I’m going to offer some ideas on how to make well-produced recordings. The easy and obvious way to make good recordings is to find a good producer…
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You Are Your Business: The Top 5 Things Musicians Need to Do
As an artist, performer, band member, bandleader, or however you want to label yourself and your pursuits, you are a company. Congratulations! The good news is that you are chief in charge of your destiny. The bad news reads much the same way. You are your business. Meaning you are now solely responsible for carving…
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Entrepreneurship in Music: LANDR
Entrepreneurship in Music Series: 004 LANDR Founder, Justin Evans Landr is computerized track-by-track mastering. The team that built MixGenius years ago is back with a new identity and a bold new take on audio with a self-learning algorithmic program that works off of an enormous bank of references, and is trained to…
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William Ryan Fritch’s Unusual Path to Film Scoring
William Ryan Fritch is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter who has been making music for film and releasing records professionally for about 7 years. I only came across his music recently but was immediately taken aback by his wide range of sounds and compositional tactics, that despite their different origins, all feel distinctly and familiarly…
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DIY Touring Course Now on YouTube!
All 17 episodes of Soundfly’s “Touring on a Shoestring” course are now available on YouTube! Check out the full playlist here. With Soundfly courses on YouTube, you can easily share single videos, embed them in your own blog, or binge watch the whole series in a single sitting! And you can skip forward through the…
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How to Keep Your Musical Resolutions
Stockings are coming down, crumpled wrapping paper’s being shoved into recycling bins, and people worldwide are skeptically patting their winter weight in anticipation of the coming year. While we whole-heartedly support your decisions to start taking cross-acro-zum-fit classes and maintaining a strict paleo-free-tarian diet, why not add something painless to your resolution list? Here are two…
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6 New Year’s Resolutions Every Indie Musician Should Make
2016 is, finally, coming to an end. After an exhausting year like this one, I love looking ahead to New Year’s Eve. Not just because I love champagne and countdowns, but because it’s that special time of year to break out the new planner and set some goals in stone. This time of year is perfect for…
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Soundfly Seeks New Team Member to Lead Marketing Efforts
Soundfly is looking for a full-time marketing hire to drive growth and revenue in the coming year. Soundfly is an online music education company looking to help curious musicians all over the world achieve their musical goals. We launched in the summer of 2015 with a single course and fewer than 300 students, and now…
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How to Choose a DAW: 7 of the Best DAWs for Every Musical Need
Whether you’re working out of a home studio or a small project studio, your Digital Audio Workstation (or, DAW) is probably the single most important part of your setup. It’s the bridge of your musical Starship Enterprise, containing and co-ordinating all the software and hardware you use to create and communicate each of your decisions. It’s…
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4 Questions to Help You Figure Out If You’re Ready to Work with a Producer
So many artists want instant gratification: to shoot to fame before working hard to create something meaningful. It’s understandable, musicians today are forced to compare themselves to artists who have won a certain level of “overnight success.” But even those overnight-success-story artists have probably put in a ton of work behind the scenes over the years…
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Quick Tracks Monthly Challenge Roundup: July
Quick Tracks is Soundfly’s monthly series of creative musical challenges. To get your right brain bubbling with creative ideas, we love thinking up short production and songwriting challenges, aimed at helping you solve fun musical conundrums. Feel free to tackle any one you like. 1. Record ahead, behind, and right on top of the beat…
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8 Music Crowdfunding Campaigns We’ve Got Our Eyes on and Why
It’s all about the story. Fundraising experts will say this time and time again: “People fund people, not ideas.” In other words, when asking for money, what tends to get through to your audience the most is having a compelling and personal story, and a drive to succeed, not necessarily a great business idea. When it…
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The Pros and Cons of Touring in the Summer
Ah, summer. Beautiful weather, beach trips, bike trips, trips to who-cares-where… let’s just get on our bikes and GO! There’s nothing quite like that feeling of playing an outdoor gig in your neighborhood with the sun going down behind your band. But… is it the right time to go out on the road? That’s a…
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What You Can Do to Get Your Songs on Spotify’s Official Playlists
+ Welcome to Soundfly! We help curious musicians meet their goals with creative online courses. Whatever you want to learn, whenever you need to learn it. Subscribe now to start learning on the ’Fly. Gaining placement on one of Spotify’s official playlists has become a bit of a Holy Grail to the emerging artist. With streaming taking the front seat to…
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What Happens in New Brunswick Shouldn’t Just Stay in New Brunswick
James Bauman of the DIY New Brunswick venue Mount Moon discusses community building and running a music venue in a house basement.
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New Trends in Touring
Touring is the most direct, in-person way to bring your music to your fans, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t changed as a result of new technologies!
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US Artists Touring Abroad: What You’ll Need and How to Procure It
+ Welcome to Soundfly! We help curious musicians meet their goals with creative online courses. Whatever you want to learn, whenever you need to learn it. Subscribe now to start learning on the ’Fly. For many artists, it’s a dream to see the world through the windshield of their vehicle. Touring and making a living on the road is an exciting…
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Quick Tracks Nº 7: Write a Theme Song for Your Own TV Show
Welcome back to the dance floor, Quick Trackers! Once a month, we hook you up with a short production or songwriting challenge, aimed at helping to up your musicianship. To respond to the challenge, just email us, leave a comment, or post to social media with the hashtag #quicktracks and tag us @learntosoundfly. We’re excited to help you…
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How to Create Instagram Ads That Connect with New Fans
+ Pursue your next social media marketing goal with a Soundfly Mentor like Marta! Soundfly offers four-week mentorship sessions with a pro, customized to you. Get in touch to learn more. Instagram is yet another quintessential outlet to showcase photos from your shows, concert flyers, promo images, music videos, and your general artistic #aesthetic, whether you’re a signed…
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How and Why You Should Use a Reference Track During Mixing
+ Welcome to Soundfly! We help curious musicians meet their goals with creative online courses. Whatever you want to learn, whenever you need to learn it. Subscribe now to start learning on the ’Fly. Arguably one of the most important skills in mixing audio is the ability to listen. Listening to what others have done with their songs specifically and being able…
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Wilder Daze on Figuring It All Out By Doing It Himself
Welcome back to Soundfly’s weekly interview series, Incorrect Music, curated by guitarist, singer, and composer Lora-Faye Åshuvud (of the band Arthur Moon). In this series, we present intimate conversations with artists who are striving to push the boundaries of their process and craft. New York’s Wilder Daze released his debut album, Golden Hour, this fall: a bright, narrative journey through the…
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Puerto Rico: One Musician’s Story and the Venue That’s Helping Her Through It
Story by Jhoni Jackson. Photo Essay by Jose Juan Garcia Camacho. Shanti Lalita was asleep when Hurricane Maria nearly ripped off the bedroom window of her fourth-floor apartment in the San Juan neighborhood of Santurce. It was 5:00 a.m., and the 27-year-old cellist and composer was napping between bouts of vigilance as the category-five storm that ravaged the…
