There are tons of articles on marketing music so why would I try to write one? Because this is my experience and I have run across a lot of other musicians that don’t know some of these things. One thing many don’t know is that for 10 bucks you can publish a song to cdbaby, verizon, napster, itunes, rhapsody and a total of 20 other places at cdbaby. I am not affiliated with cdbaby, but I have used them and gotten great results.

The main strategy I use is manufacturer, distribute and market. The combination of these three I call publishing. Technically you could call cdbaby or one of it’s competitors a publisher. Createspace.com an affiliate of amazon.com is another publisher. Both have handy instructions to guide you through the process of distributing your music with them. They also have great blogs and other resources for marketing the music.

Marketing the music is the hard part, or should I say marketing it to my expectations is more difficult than I expected. I have some tips that I put together that I learned from trial and error.

First are the basic steps:

1: Create an EP.

2: Copyright music. Go to http://www.copyright.gov/eco/ and pay $35 per album or $35 per song, licensing the lyrics is separate from the sound recording which is the cd. I would advise to just record the ep as a sound recording for a one time fee of $35. Upload songs and follow the online instructions carefully allotting three hours of no interruptions.

3: Open an account at BMI or ascap, I use BMI Lots of paper work, but self explanatory.

4: Create professional biography.

5: Create artwork, this is the hardest part. You have to have two different size images for the same album art for amazon and cdbaby.

6: Submit to cdbaby.com - costs about $39 for submitting it and $20 for a bar code.

7: Submit to amazon.com - usually costs $35 but was free last time I did it.

8: Make a press release kit with songs and album artwork.

And then some tips:

Before you get started, make sure you have a good photo editor that can resize and crop you can quickly use. Every site and place needs a different size image. You need a good picture as in a logo, I would get a photographer to take yours and use you. Or have a good logo or both. Create an image in your mind and be consistent. Always be patient. Try to portray your image in your mind through your art.

They will see your picture, banner and logo before they hear your music. Never set your music to autoplay - people hate that. Never use the words, “check this out”. These are all the mistakes I made. Get all your tracks into different folders and tag the mp3s with a tagging program. “Google mp3 tagger”.

You want 320k, 256k, 192k and 128K get a good biography, you need one description that is short for places like ReverbNation, you also need like a 350 word, 500 word, and 750 word bio - different versions of the same info, preferably a professional written one. Mine is semi OK.

Keep all your album art together with different sizes in a folder. Keep everything in folders and back that folder up once a week. Remember that once you upload something, you might not be able to change it and it might go everywhere. Never delete posts like videos, or delete songs; I did this and messed up. Fans had it on their profiles and I lost fans I never had.

Make a RPK, I will send you one I just made as an example. Send it and your album to allmusic.com, they will provide this info to AOL, Yahoo, etc… My profile images there are blank because I didn’t’ do that.

Read all the terms of agreements and keep a copy in a folder. Yes, “terms of agreement” should be the name of that folder.

Keep all contracts.

Join BMI or Ascap Copyright your music. You can’t submit your music till you get your copyright back which is 4 to 12 months later, that is cool.

NO CONTESTS! Contests are bad news. Try to avoid sites that vote or have thumbs-up. Keep positive. Try to find the talents in your fans, fans have artistic and technical ability and will help if you treat them right, but don’t promise anything, and pay them something if they do a good job. You now have a team. Get some reviews for your album, 25 bucks is fair, or a good fan will do it for free. I can’t think of everything right now, but it’s an ongoing process.

Good luck and great success I wish to all.
Rybird

Some unorthodox methods of repairing electric gear, no schematic needed. Tools needed. Can of compressed air, or refrigerant, magnifying glass, source of bright light, goggles, large hammer. When trying to troubleshoot an item such at a guitar pedal, amplifier, or other electronic component, we always want to make sure power is off for safety reasons, but we really need to know that we did indeed have power to it and that isnt’ why it’s not working. So always try a know good battery first, before disassembling it, or a different plug.

We are going to try a couple of proven methods that have random success in repairing electronic gear and need no knowledge of diagram type troubleshooting. First we are going to hold the circuit board between us and a bright light and inspect it for cracks, These cracks we are looking for are usually so fine that we cant see them unless light is shining through the circuit board. IF we find a crack and it goes through some of the foil layers we can carefully scrape off the insulation and solder across them, being careful not to get solder on the adjacent foils thus we would be shorting it out.

The next technique involves the magnifying glass. We want to gently wiggle or just apply some slight pressure to the components on the one side of the board while we look to see if the wires going through the board into the solder are loose in the solder. We call this a cold solder joint and it is not always visible, so many times if I find one, or suspect one, I will reheat every solder connection on the board to eliminate a bad solder joint that has weakened due to temp changes or vibration.



The next technique involves the compressed air or if available refrigerant. We are going to turn on, “safely that is’ the equipment with it hooked up so we can hear if it starts working and freeze the components on the board using the compressed air or refrigerant.. Many times a transistor especially will cease to function when it warms up or gets hot. So we carefully start at one end and freeze a transistor and wait 30 seconds for the temp to drop before moving on to the next transistor. If we hear that the pedal or electro widget starts working, we have found the culprit and as soon as it warms up and thaws out it will fail again, But we can hopefully unsolder it and find a replacement transistor for it.

The last technique involves the goggles and the heavy hammer and should only be used in case of frustration. This last method usually gives us the most satisfying results in the long run with new gear shortly behind doing this. It also deters someone else from doing all this and wasting all their time and they might not have a hammer to meet their needs. However if you did find the problem and fixed it, then you can simply save the hammer for your computer or another loose connection.

Stay tuned to Rybird for more blogs, tips and help.
The bird is the word!


www.rybird.com

What is my transistor up to? I have to write this down to remember clearly what a transistor actually does. The first thing that comes to mind is amplify, but how and I know it does more than that. A transistor has three legs to it and I refer to them as the source the control or gate, and the sink. Sink in these definitions is the same as what you might think ground is, a lower stable voltage. The source is the supply voltage accordingly. The control is similar to a gate on a tube but controls how much current flows from the source to the ground.

How is this going to amplify or control anything? The transistor acts as a variable resistor and placing the transistor in series with a fixed, or sometime another transistor as in a push/ pull type amplifier will cause a voltage divider network and the point between the source leg of the transistor and the sink leg of the resistor going to the source. That point is the output. OK we are all but lost. Let’s just say that a transistor can use one signal to control or generate another signal. That is the easiest way to understand a transistor, to know that the middle leg controls how much power flows through the transistor from source to ground and that the power can be tapped between there at points between other resistors.

I will try to keep everything simple like myself, but some things aren’t as simple as other, Rather than try to convey formulas or get boring, I feel it better to understand certain physical laws and their principles. This way common sense can be applied rather than a calculator to approach a real life problem. Stay tuned for next week we take a calculator and a spiral notebook and make a laptop computer.

Rybird
The bird is the word.

At first it’s simple, a transistor is something used in solid state amplifiers that give it that clean sound or if you overload that poor transistor it lets out a harsh sometimes desirable distortion that is dirtier than tubes and cuts through the plaster. So why do I need to know about them? I don’t’ know about you but I don’t’ want to go without my amplifier for three months and pay 90 percent of new to have it repaired. Since that means I will be getting that new viper or bulgera amp and I don’t’ have the money then I want to fix it. So what do I need to know?

Usually the power transistors go out simply cause they handle the end stage before the speaker and generate the most heat, so we will look for some three wired creatures mounted on some heat sinking material usually aluminum and might have fins or might just be a plate. Ah Ha, I found them, now what?


You can click the album cover to buy and support Rybird, thank you.

I will try to visually trace, yes look at the wiring to try to see what channel if it’s stereo and narrow down which is the problem child. One thing I might do is listen carefully if there is no output and hear if there is any hum? Hmmm, I hear hum, then the output stages might be working and it could be something on the input side. Perhaps it’s a good time to close her back up and take her to the shop, but no, this puppy has no sound, or it’s distorted all the time or worse, it plays fine for 2 minutes and starts cutting out. Then we are at the source of the trouble, the output transistors, I knew I should have read the blog about series parallel before hooking those 4 other cabinet up to this amp. But fear no more and warm the soldering gun up while your friend looks up the service manual on the web. No service manual, no problem The transistors of this type are usually in a tin can with three legs, wires, coming out one side through a socket or phenolic circuit board, I am going to get that solder off those legs using some braid or suction bulb or some other safe means and pull it out and get that number off the top and keep a close eye on it so as not to lose it cause I am taking it to the electronics shop. But wait. I only have one, they almost always come it pairs, two for each channel. It is a good thing I marked them carefully which one went where and I read Rybird’s blog before running off. After ordering them by part number or matching them up at the local electronics part house, if they have them anymore, I will carefully solder them back making sure not to spend much time as to overheat them.

Now is the time of reckoning. Plug it in, fire up the guitar or pa and you are good to go. If not, you can sigh a relief that you at least tried and feel better about spending the repair, since the pair of transistors didn’t’ cost that much. So it works though and you feel better about the one before that didn’t’ go so smooth. , Its’ a great day. Stay tuned for more free music, advice and reading.

The bird is the word
Rybird

What is the difference between the number of electrons charged in your body and the nearest surrounding thing? Zap! Static electrical discharge, not quite the same as capacitance discharge but almost. The principle of two conductive surface areas separated by an area of insulation. Such is the capacitor in which its simplest form is just that, two conductive surfaces called plates, separated by an insulator called a dielectric. Dielectric basically means it opposes or tries to stop the flow of electricity.

Capacitors play many different roles depended on how and where they are used, They can be used to store electricity , by the building up of electrons on one plate and the deficiency of electrons on the other plate creating a potential, or voltage that is kept at bay by the dielectric. They can also be used, quite commonly, to change the phase of the current flow by using a unique characteristic of the capacitor. When the electrons flow onto one of the plates, or flow off from the plates, this takes time, so the current takes place right away and the voltage builds up between the two plates.

There is another characteristic of capacitors that is used often in audio applications. That is the fact the higher the frequency the less time the current has to flow, so the voltage has less time to build up. This characteristic can be used to create oscillators or to carry a high frequency to ground, to squelch it, or in series to block the flow of low frequencies as in a crossover where the tweeter doesn’t’ need to have the lower frequencies present as it cannot create those frequencies and the extra power creates heat, and also distortion.



The size of the capacitor, measure in capacitance, is directly proportional to the size of the plates. Capacitors could get physically real large so often times the plates are rolled up together with the dielectric between them as in a roll of toilet paper. You may have tow plates of thin foil separated by an efficient insulator and rolled together tightly. This is the most common form of construction.

Capacitors are used in automobiles, electric motors and fans and a large amount of electronics gear. To understand the principles of capacitors and capacitance can be biennial whether you need to troubleshoot a device or whether you are building something like a two way speaker. To answer the first question of this blog though would be to say the body can store electricity, but it is only one part of the capacitor, acting as a plate, hopefully and not an insulator as in shorting out a charged capacitor, Ouch, that’s shocking!

Capacitors will be mentioned as we cover other areas, such as crossovers and power supplies.

Remember, the bird is the word and Stay Tuned for more Rybird blogging.
Thank you
Rybird.

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Hello again, and this is a continuation sort of, from the series, parallel talk we had in the last blog. We learning that putting a power source in parallel didn’t increase the power, but only the availability of that power. And we learned that putting a power source in series resulted in basically the sum of all the power that was in series. But with loads, such as speakers, we have a slightly different situation. When you hook two speakers in parallel, you do increase the load by decreasing the resistance. Resistance is measured in Ohms and speakers usually give their Ohms cause they know you want to play and change them out and hook them up different, cause why not?, you want to get the most.

We will cover what the most really is and also the various ways of hooking speakers up so we can best know how not to blow a speaker. First tip: Overpowering a speaker does not harm it as much as under powering it. How is that? When you over power a speaker we know what usually happens or maybe we don’t, we know it might make a fizzle or nothing at all, a speaker usually blows the voice coil which is that coil of copper wire that is wrapped to make and electro magnet to make the cone move with the signal. When the volume of that signal is too high the coil will reach very high temperatures and melt into at some point and might create a burning smell or it might just quit. The other way a speaker can blow is physically extending the cone to past its limits and physically destroying it mechanically. Under powering a speaker will hurt it quicker because, one we won’t’ hear the distortion as well and the signal becomes very inefficient because it the signal itself will put out more current that isn’t used to move the cone so that energy is turned to heat. So it is better to have a 600 watt amp and a 100 watt speaker and just don’t turn the amplifier past giving it 100 watts than to have a 100 watt speaker and a 60 watt amp and distort the signal into overheating the voice coil.



More speakers are better is not my opinion even though I like to have four speakers instead of two. It is better to have two good matched speakers than to have four good ones and two bad ones. The old’ only good as the weakest link applies in most cases to this scenario. We know this but we have four speakers and want to hook them up so how do we best go about it? Now we need to know how Ohms law applies to alternating current, AC, because the music signal to a speaker is alternating...

When we hook two 8 ohm speakers in parallel we have 4 ohms which puts a greater load on an amp. The main principle to understand in this whole blog is perhaps that an amplifier will try to put out what the load is drawing. Which means if an amp is putting out 100 watts at 4 ohms, and then if you were to double the amount of speakers in parallel then the amplifier will see a load of 2 ohms and try to put out 200 watts, twice the power. If the amp was a 120 watt amp, then we can see we will be overloading the amplifier in this case, another source of signal deterioration in addition to hurting the amp, we can hurt the speakers. Now what if we hook the speakers up in series, and tie the positive of one speaker to the negative of the other speaker and hook the remaining single wires from each speaker to the amplifier? The amplifier will see ½ the load and the speakers will also only get half the power each so they won’t’ be as loud. We will have to make a decision based on what we know about the amplifiers limits, the power rating of the speakers and the number of speakers we have. And there is such a thing as a series parallel hookup in which we would need four speakers on each side of the amp. This we might run into slaving PA speakers at a gig. Slaving is a slang term for hooking more than one speaker on each channel of the amplifier.

I will explain how to hook four speakers in series parallel with each speaker being the same rating and end up appearing as the same load as the one original speaker was. To do this you hook two speakers in series first and consider those two speakers as one. Then you repeat that for the other two speakers. Then you take your two circuits of speakers you just created and hook them in parallel. This should do the trick.

Back to the tip about more being better. Since the four speakers as a unit are only getting the same amount of power as one speaker hooked up this way, then for the same amplifier it will not increase the loudness and will only sound as good as the weakest of the bunch. It is best when in doubt to use the least number of speakers and to use the best in the batch when faced with this dilemma.

Don't get circuit bent; stay tuned for more blog flow.
Rybird.

We are talking about the flow of electricity and two of the many ways we control it. When we hook a load to a source, which is hooking something, the load, to the power, the source, it is usually enough just to know the source is sufficient enough to power the load. But when we hook more than one load to a source the method of how we hook it becomes a thought provoking decision making process.

What is the difference and what do we call these two methods of connection? They are commonly referred to as series and parallel with series representing end to end and parallel is side by side. Let’s give a couple of examples to be able to visually understand it without a diagram. When you hook two batteries in a two cell flashlight you are hooking the positive, tit, of one to the negative, butt of the other and are drawing power from one end of one to the other end of the other battery. If we were to place the batteries side by side and connect the two positive ends together and the two negative ends together, then we would have a parallel connection. So the names series and parallel fairly describe this process.



How do we determine the method to connect a circuit such as speakers or batteries. We will use the flashlight for both and explain the difference then put a kink in the theory and explain it for speakers since every musician has or will have to wire several speaker together some time or another. For each battery that is in series we add the voltages together to get the total voltage supplied to the flashlight. So three 1.5volt cells would be 4.5volts and would be close enough to power a 5 volt flashlight lamp in most cases. If we added another 1.5 volt battery we would be providing 6 volts to the lamp and it would burn brighter but the life would be reduced. But that might be desirable or undesirable depending on what we are trying to do. When we hook the batteries in parallel the voltage to the load stays the same.

Now why would we want to hook a supply such as batteries up in parallel if the output voltage is the same? This is because batteries have a limited amount of current available and by doing so we have doubled either the maximum amount of current that can be supplied or we have doubled the length of time that the same amount of power can be supplied. This is not always true though as we may see when we discuss hooking up speakers in another blog. But before we go we need to know the power law, or power formula. That is voltage times amperage equal watts? This concludes this lesson and those that did not fall asleep can grab their interments and play. The rest get to sort screws.

Stay tuned for more seemingly but not nonsense mindstuff.

The bird is the word

One of the most important things any soundman or engineer should know and understand is Ohms Law. Ohms Law is all about relationships. It is about power and it’s about resistance. It is about overcoming and going with the flow. And it has everything to do with limits. Every action has a equal and opposite reaction might be true, but for Ohms Law that is only part of the equation. For Ohm’s Law all changes can have a proportional or inversely proportional behavior. So why is Ohms Law so important and why am I capitalizing it as it were Divine? It is a universal law of nature, specifically to actions we cannot see and is the behavior of electricity. And it affects the musician and the music in everyday life.

So what is this Ohm’s Law? Ohms Law is the relationship between three different entities, voltage, current and resistance. You might be thinking that it’s only important for a guitarist to know the difference between a 9 volt battery and a 3 volt battery. And you might be thinking I haven’t seen a 3 volt battery? That is because a 3 volt battery is two 1.5 volt cells tied in series. We will get to series and parallel in a subsequent blog. For this lesson, let’s just say that there is a need for a 3 volt battery rather than a 1.5volt battery. That need would be more current, or to maintain the same amount of current if the resistance changes.

We need to know the math formula behind ohm’s law, a formula so simple that a simple diagram can portray it and most of our daily needs requiring it can be calculated in our head. That formula is triangular and not a linear formula, it isn’t a non-linear formula either. “Zignit will like this.” The formula is most easily understood by a drawing and it equates to nothing else outside the drawing. It is:

In circuit analysis, three equivalent expressions of Ohm's law are used interchangeably:

I is the Current, R is the Resistant and V is the Voltage.

Ohms Law actually applies to DC, direct current and AC, alternating current has many other variable and is much more complex. For the sake of simplicity, I will create an analogy to the relationships using principles of water. In the analogy, Voltage is the water pressure available, Current is the flow of the water and Resistance is the physical restriction of the water. If we increase the resistance of the water and keep the pressure of the water the same, less water will flow and if we decrease the pressure of the water, but keep the resistance the same then less water will flow and vice versa.

Although Georg Ohm was not the first one to discover the relationship between voltage and resistance, Ohm was the first to publish his discoveries in a book titled Die galvanische Kette, mathematisch bearbeitet.

I don’t know which direction I will go in the next blog, so I will have to stay tuned to find out.

I hear people talking about loops and sometimes samples, but wonder what the difference is. Especially when I see where a licensing company or a music contest says no samples, content must be an original composition. So I will try to explain what loops and samples are in my world and all the differences.

A loop is a musical sound or beat that last for a short time, usually less than a measure but one or two beats, typically lasting for a fraction of a second to several seconds long depending on the loops. One unique design about loops is the length is fixed in such a way and they can be repeated, placed end to end and the beat will stay in time The also usually contain pitch and tempo information and can be stretched longer or speeded up or slowed down within the recording software which I refer to as sequencer. I call it a sequencer simply because it will play the loops in the sequence at which you put them in the program.

There are many types of loops, from every instrument known to vocals to synthesizers and sound effects like gun shots and door bells. Effects can be added to loops and different loops can be put together to make a complete song. Rybird’s “Eve of Reeds” and “Flash Darter” are example of songs composed entirely out of produced loops. But many times loops are just used to enhance, fill or add to an existing composition.

So what is a sample? Loops can be samples; however samples refer to recording an existing composition that has already been published. Technically this is a derivative of the original work when such a sample is used to create another composition. This is what the contests or licensing companies are talking about when they say no samples may be contained in the work. You can use loops almost always royalty free in your own work and do not have to have permission to use them to publish as your own work so long as you have combined them together or added something that it isn’t just the loop by itself. However it is best to check the agreement with the place you purchased or received the loops to be safe. Samples, on the other hand have to be cleared with the original copyright holder that owns the material the sample was taken from or there could be liability issues.

There is another kind of sample which is samples of real instruments that are included in the library of sample synthesizers which will play back these samples to sound like the original instrument or a variation thereof.

But basically if it was part of another composition it is sampled and if it was made strictly for the purpose of putting with other samples to create an original composition then it would be called a loop.

Hopefully this clears up some jargonometric depinions of reifference.

Digital Audio Workstation: OK that makes perfect sense to me, but what is it really? A DAW actually can refer to a computer program in which music is recorded and manipulated to alter or complete a piece of music. This is done by editing, mixing, arranging and adding effects or any combination of them. But it also can refer to the entire computer with the software and the hardware to get the music to and from the computer. This hardware can consist of an audio interface and or midi interface and any other controlling devices. Usually by the time one adds a mixer and monitor speakers it is called a studio. I suppose once you have a guitar and a microphone attached and ready to record a studio would be an appropriate word.

On the software side of the DAW there are many vendors and software packages to choose from. Being a graphical interface type of program in that you can see the controls and the audio waveforms , there is much personal preference to what one may decided to use as well as different features and capabilities being important in choosing a DAW. My experience along with others seems to be that the first one that one learns well ends up being the best or preferred one for that person. Personally I use Sony Acid Pro, but have used other programs as well such as Mixcraft and Adobe Audition.

Sometimes DAWS are referred to as sequencers although there are sequencers of a different type. This is because music can be spliced or edited to create a sequence that repeats or can be as complex as an entire arrangement of a song. DAWS use plug-ins which are as the name implies, add-ons that are not included in the original software but add features such as effects and virtual instruments. We will cover effects and virtual instruments in an upcoming blog so stay tuned as I like to say.

Some of the features and capabilities of many DAWS are the number of simultaneous tracks that can be recorded or edited, and the type of plug-ins that it either comes with or can use. Other things to consider are sound quality, efficiency and reliability. Since making music with a computer is relatively new technology and can push the envelope a DAW can become unstable or unreliable. This makes choosing the computer and hardware to run the DAW important to consider.

But remember the DAW is a tool for the musician, composer or producer and the outcome of the product relies on the person’s ability to use it well. Like a calculator inputting bad data will achieve less than desirable results. But with the right computer set up and a good working knowledge of a DAW, excellent music can be a result of the users talent and can rival the quality of expensive studios. Soon we will discuss more about the features such as effects and what virtual instruments are and more.
Thank you,
Rybird