Which Band Has Been Tops This Year?
Now that the month of August has ended, I’d like to take a little time to reflect upon some of the great music this past month brought us. I probably found myself listening to more new releases than I did during any other month this year so I feel this is a conversation worthy of having. I was able to obtain a bunch of them by way of free music downloads from RCRD LBL and some other sites, which makes the victory here even sweeter.
Without further ado, it’s time for me to share my favorite three albums that were released during the month of August. Did any of these make your list as well?
Do you know who Ry Cooder is? If you don’t, your parents probably do because the man has been around forever. This doesn’t mean that his best days are behind him, as Pull Up Some Dust & Sit Down is one of the best things he’s ever created.
The same can be said about Stephen Malkmus, the former Pavement leader who went solo a number of years ago. If you haven’t heard Mirror Traffic yet, it’s time to grab a copy of his newest effort ASAP. This one is awesome.
No album hooked me more than Skying by The Horrors though. This is a must listen if you haven’t heard it yet.
Looking forward, there’s so much more good stuff on the way as well. Through the rest of the year, we’ll see some of the top bands out there coming out with follow up efforts to their previous ones, and just about every single genre will experience a few highlights worthy of waiting for.
If you’re into the indie scene, bands like Wilco and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (remember them?) have some new stuff coming out within the next month. So do indie dance punk sensations The Rapture.
If you’re into the country scene, there’s perhaps no one whose music you could be more excited about hearing than Scotty McCreery’s. How can such a young man have such a polished, mature voice?
If these future albums don’t get you excited, I don’t know what will.
Browse much more with regards to That’s Not My Name and Real Estate Band.
Jobs In The Music Industry Most People Don’t Know About
If you like music a great deal, you may be hoping of going into some area of the music industry yourself. Doubtlessly, you will have been told that this is awfully difficult and I am not trying to insinuate that it is not, but perhaps most people who are trying to get into the music industry are applying for the same jobs.
The list of jobs available in the music industry must include teachers, songwriters, doctors, therapists and many others, not only singers and musicians, so it pays to think laterally if you want to go in this direction, because traffic on the main highway is normally at a stand-still. Anyway, here is a list of alternative jobs in the music industry and I hope that it is of some benefit to you.
There are jobs with music and record firms for staff song-writers, that is, for people who compose songs for the artists who are contracted to that label. Find a couple of artists that you respect working for the same label, compose some songs for them and apply.
If you cannot uncover a single label that suits you, you could do the same job as a freelance song-writer. This way you are not hamstrung and can compose for all the artists that you like.
If you are good with words but not such a great musician, you could become a lyricist. A lyricist might or may not team up with a musician to produce a song. Like Gilbert & Sullivan or Rogers & Hammerstein.
Jingle-writers are always in demand, at least decent ones are. Jingles need to be short but catchy. Writing jingles pays good money, but it will perhaps not make you famous outside the music industry.
A music publisher scours the market for freelance songs and buys up the copyright or license to distribute those songs or to sell or license them to singers and musicians.
A music editor might work with a composer or song-writer to make sure that the timing and the cues for the musicians and singers are feasible.
Notesetters have to have a good ear for music as their job is to write down in musical form what untrained musicians play for them. There are many, many contemporary musicians who cannot write a note of music but who can create very good songs. These songs have to be written down by someone and that someone is a notesetter.
A talent scout in the music industry has the official title of Artist & Repertoire Co-ordinator or A&R Co-ordinator for short. A step up from this rank is the A&R Administrator, who co-ordinates the co-ordinators and sets and monitors their budgets – a type of a musical accountant.
Then there are the jobs in public relations. These people usually work for record labels. They promote the artists who have signed onto a record company’s label. There are quite a few degrees of responsibility in this department.
An agent or an relations representative, is aperson who promotes his client and finds him or her work. They check the contracts and give business advice. They are well-|known as ‘Mr. Ten Percent’ although in practice it is usually double this unless you are famous.
Campus representatives advertise records to students and promotional staffers promote wherever they can – radio channels, shops, musical directors.
Music teachers teach music to classes from pre-school through to college level. Their responsibilities differ with the age of the student and the purpose of the class.
A music director has the job of supervising policy in school or college or setting the entertainment for a cruise or a holiday camp, hotel or holiday complex.
Then there are organists in churches all over the country, who frequently double in other musical careers.
Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a range of topics, but is currently involved with Bose new wave radios. If you would like to kcurrently more, please go to our web site at Bose Digital Radio.
How To Dial Up Great Guitar Tones With Your MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay Pedal
As a whole, electric guitarists tend to favor uncomplicated gear. As such, the ordinary guitarist will most likely choose simple stompboxes. That’s probably why very few guitar pedals have more than three knobs or buttons. In fact, there are a few players that feel three knobs are even too many. If this sounds like you, just face it, you’re going to have to take some time and teach yourself what the knobs on your guitar pedals do. A great place to start learning how to dial in your own sounds is with a delay stompbox like the MXR Carbon Copy.
Insert the Carbon Copy into your signal chain.
Plug your guitar cable into the input of the Carbon Copy. Plug the output of the Carbon Copy into the input of your amp.
Before you add the Carbon Copy, you’ll need to determine where to put it in relation to your other stompboxes. The ordinary rule of thumb for guitar signal chains is dynamics processing (compressor/limiters), followed by distortion/boosters, followed by modulation processing (delay/reverb).
Understanding what each control does.
Delay:
The Delay knob allows you to set the amount of delay time from 20ms (fully counter-clockwise) to 600ms (fully clockwise).
Regen:
The Regen knob allows you to set the number of delay repeats from one (fully counter-clockwise) to infinite (fully clockwise). The Regen knob functions together with the Delay knob so modifying the settings of one will affect the other.
Mix:
The Mix knob allows you to change the amount of delayed, or “wet”, signal from completely dry (fully counter-clockwise) to equivalent amounts of wet and dry (fully clockwise).
Mod:
The Modulation button allows you to add a certain amount of modulation to the delay signal. Modulation is an effect that changes the pitch of a signal by a small, regularly occurring amount, making a warbling effect.
Inside the Carbon Copy there are two internal trim pots that allow you to set the width and rate controls of the modulation effect.
Effect on/off switch:
Like most guitar stompboxes, the Carbon Copy has a foot-switch that toggles on and off.
Some suggestions:
Start with the Delay and Mix knobs set entirely clockwise and the Regen knob set fully counter-clockwise. Turn the pedal on by stepping on the footswitch. A blue LED illuminates when the effect is engaged. Now just take some time to dial in your desired sound by adjusting the three knobs in relation to each other.
Whatever your normal way of using guitar stompboxes is, don’t be afraid to just turn the knobs and see what happens. Some of the most amazing guitar tones were created by accident.
Head on over to MXR Carbon Copy. While you’re there be sure to check out our top 5 Carbon Copy videos.
Reasons Hip Hop Music Will Never Die
Hip hop music isn’t whatsoever a new product or fresh starting point for anything in recent music. To put it accurately, hip hop culture earned its path on the world good in the late 70s and from there, hip hop knocked down every barrier in it’s way. Hip hop music is in every city and in every single nation, small and large.
With this being the case, hip hop culture will live provided that it advances because hip hop has previously shown unoriginal potential from the way modern hip hop performers usually tend to imitate the style of many of those rappers just before them.
For example, female rap singers, generally had some form of focal point within the hip hop music industry. Queen Latifah and Salt N Pepa are just a handful of the female hip hop artists that obtained success in the old days, yet feminine accomplishment in the hip hop industry seemed to come to a standstill right up till there was something completely unique to emerge. Even Foxy Brown and Da Brat mastered hip hop music for some time, even so, the styles were not progressing into anything more and further than having a male rap artist standing in the shadows.
For a bit, hardly any feminine rap singers acquired any air play up to the point of Nicki Minaj’s arrival who actually delivered the quality of craftsmanship to a new stage lyrically and in hip hop music videos.
Without the steady advancement of hip hop culture, it can cease to live by way of the regular swagger jacking of musicians that have have been here and long gone. One of the very best things about the late rapper Tupac Shakur aka 2Pac was that his rap lyrics burst through numerous domains, writing about thug life to heaven’s doors and in many cases politics while not holding back. At that moment, Shakur stood out from every hip hop star in the game. Pac became untouchable and generated one major avenue for the hip hop world to stay alive.
Finally, hip hop culture is not simply a fad, though, it could quickly grow to be phoney in the event the rap performers ignore the skills element of their work, and just write phrases that merely rhyme without meaning. Hip hop culture exists by way of evolution, yet it dies as a result of a lack of individuality.
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