If you’re like me and you love perusing online music instrument stores you may have already found your favorite place to shop for musical equipment online. What if you don’t know where to shop online for musical instruments though? Maybe you’re a parent of a musician and have never played a Gibson or played out of a Mesa Boogie amp.

Well I am a active musician and can say I have probably seen 99% of the music stores online. Many of the sites online are nearly identical, but some do stand out in regards to pricing and brand selection.

Where do you shop online for your music gear?

Disclaimer: The State of Affairs received no compensation for writing this articles and is in no way directly affiliated with Musician’s Friend, American Musical Supply, or Craigslist.

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A while back I created a video tutorial explaining, in full detail, how to rewire Reason in Cubase. If your not familiar with those two programs, they are both used for audio recording and creation.

Just recently, that video was featured on Winksound.com in their “Must Watch” series. Winksound.com is a community site where members upload videos and recommend YouTube videos for other users of the community.

Here is the episode featuring my tutorial, I use JanJmusic as a username on Youtube.

Technorati Tags: rewire reason, winsound.com, best of winksound, music tutorials, janjmusic, youtube, audio recording, video tutorial

Myspace has teamed up with a few sponsors, such as Toyota, to start a contest for all Myspace Music users where users have a chance to win a exclusive record contract. Sounds great right? Sounds great indeed, but the fine print says otherwise.

By Joining You Are Submitting

Few music contest contestants ever read the fine print or the rules that drive the contest they are joining. This goes for Myspace contests or a tv show such as American Idol. Unfortunately, not only do the contest strip you of your rights, once you actually win the contracts they just take even more rights away.

Here is the first example of the rights you forfeit when you enter this new Myspace Music Contest. Taken from section 5 which states:

In consideration of a Submission being reviewed and evaluated for this Contest, each Entrant hereby grants to the Contest Entities the non-exclusive irrevocable, fully paid, universal license to use, copy, sublicense, transmit, distribute, publicly perform, publish, delete or display such Submission, or any portion thereof, including to the extent applicable (a) any information, biographical data, and material (e.g., the “Creative File”) submitted by Entrant in connection with the Contest; and (b) all video, audio, photographs, text, graphics, statements, any other creative materials, and quotations of or by Entrant and furnished by Entrant as part of this Contest (the “Material”) included in and/or submitted by Entrant in connection with the Contest), in any media now known or hereafter devised including, but not limited to all forms of electronic media, print media and all forms of internet and wireless protocol.

Boom, bam, and your music is no longer your music. Simply by entering your song in the contest, you no longer have exclusive rights to your music.

Myspace can now take your song and:

• Sell it
• Remake it
• Distribute it
• All while paying you nothing

This next excerpt is in regards to your identity\band, also from section 5:

In addition, by participating in the Contest and providing a Submission, each Entrant hereby grants permission (except where prohibited by law) for the Contest Entities to use Entrant’s Submission, name, likeness, voice, quotes, comments, biographical information, photograph and/or image for the purpose of advertising, trade, or promotion without further compensation or consideration in any and all media now known or hereafter developed throughout the universe.

From the date of your submission, you will have given Myspace and Toyota the rights to use your image, name, lyrics and other personal content FOREVER without payment.

Lessons and Reflections on Musicians Rights

The main lessons to take away from contests like this are to read the fine print and know what rights you’re giving away. If you’re comfortable giving away everything you submit in hopes of that small chance of wining, then by all means, take that chance. I, for one, am not going to censor my music and give it away to Toyota for a chance to win a highly restrictive record contract.

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If you haven’t heard of The Thermals don’t worry, they are a new band to me too. After listening too the 4 songs they have on Myspace, I was hooked by their thought provoking lyrics and upbeat rock sound.

The Thermals are a 3 piece band, Kathy Foster, Hutch Harris, and Westin Glass, with a 5 piece band sound. Many bands are trying to stay in the forefront of music by going with a 5, 7, or 9 piece band, but the Thermals stay true and rock the classic 3 piece style.

Without a doubt, this is one of the best bands to arrive this decade. Just check out this lyrics excerpt from “Now We Can See” and then watch the video.

Now we can see
The warnings and the signs
Reading between the lines
like writing on the wall
Now we can see
What do we need
We should need nothing
Nothing at all
Yeaaah!

The Thermals Tour Dates

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2008 has came and gone, but the great music and superb albums that came out last year will live on forever. Yes, it is true, not every album that was released last year will be etched in stone for future generations to see, but the ones that will, deserve the extra recognition now.

Wikipedia has a great list of all the popular records released in 2008 and I scanned through all of them to come up with this list. I am sure there are many self-released and indie records released in 2008 that should be on this list, so if you know of a album that is worthy, drop a comment below with the title and your personal review so we can expand this list past just 7 albums!

Disclaimer – All images, within this article, are covers of audio recordings, and the copyright for them is most likely owned by either the publisher of the work or the artist(s) which produced the recording or cover artwork. We are using these images solely to illustrate the audio recordings. We believe using these low-quality images qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law. (Wikipedia does too)

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You may have already heard about the new site where you can create and upload your own music and collaborate on it with others. The site is called indabamusic.com beta and I have been using it for over a month now.

Indabamusic.com has a lot of potential for musicians that want to collaborate with other musicians on the web. I have started two sessions myself and have found some really great musicians that have been lots of fun to work with.

How Indabamusic.com works

Bear in mind, at the time of this writing this article, Indabamusic.com is still in beta testing and has some small issues. Fortunately none of these issues hinder the ability to collaborate with others around the world.

When you sign up for your account at Indaba Music, you get a profile and a session page. Session pages are the heart of the site. What I did with the most recent track that I uploaded was; create a bass beat, a drum track, and a light synth (keyboard) part. Then another musician collaborated and added a guitar track as well as more drums and more syths, all within the session console.

What we ended up with, after just one days work, was a vocal ready track that sounds really awesome and could not have been created any other way. Now that is cool.

Will online music collaboration last?

I think it will! Using indabamusic.com has been a lot of fun over the last month and if I wasn’t working on a new live set with my local band mates, I would certainly have more sessions going on over there right now.

If your a musician and like to create music, then you might enjoy collaborating with others at indabamusic.com

What do you think of indabamusic.com and online music collaboration?

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Propellerhead’s Reason software is a very powerful digital music creation software. You can create drum tracks, synth tracks, guitar tracks, bass tracks, and anything else that can be synthesized.

Reason is so powerful that it can sometimes be quite difficult to learn at first. One thing that I found to be difficult at first was to create bass beats and bass tracks, but once I learned a few “tricks”, I was able to create great bass lines without all the guessing.

Create bass beats with the Thor Polysonic Sythesizer

I recommend using Reason’s Thor Polysonic Synthesizer over Reason’s SubTracktor Polyphonic Synth, mainly because of the preloaded sounds that come loaded with Reason itself. The Preloaded sounds with Thor, I feel, are more interesting and diverse then the sounds that come with SubTracktor.

There are 4 main ways, that I have found, to adjust the deepness and length of the bass sounds in Reason, but before we dive into those 4 “tricks”, you will need to set up a Matrix sequencer and a Thor synthesizer. Here are the steps if needed.

1. Open Reason and first create a new Thor synthesizer. Then create a Matrix Pattern Sequencer
2. Next on the Thor synthesizer, click “show programmer” and select “browse patch”



3. Under Thor Patches, browse to the bass folder and select any patch you would like. Simple.thor and Round Bass.thor are two that I use often.

Experiment, experiment, experiment!

Wow, that was a lot to take in! Don’t worry if some of this tutorial didn’t make a whole lot of sense, especially if you are new too reason and soft synths in general, just experiment with these 4 options and you should be able to learn along the way.

Also, this tutorial applies to all of the synthesizers that come with Reason, so don’t feel like you have to use the Thor Synthesizer, the others will react exactly the same way to these techniques. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below and I will do my best to see if I can help.

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Since the dawn of the internet and file-sharing, record companies began to see major losses in their profits. With the new technology changing the world of music distribution, the actors involved have yet to adapt. So far we have seen various responses from musicians and record labels…

1. Integrating products, software, and forced paid downloading
   Some software require a paid membership for unlimited downloads, while other companies such as Apple, produces an MP3 player that requires you to use the Itunes software in order to transfer music to the device. The hardware generates a demand for paid downloading. This is a merging of big corporations in technology and media.
2. Musicians cut out the middle man and distribute the music themselves
   We have seen small “under ground” musicians who do their own promoting, distribution, and touring. In other words, the modern musician handles both the business and artistic sides of their band. We have also seen some big artists experimenting with the idea of adaptation, such as Nine Inch Nails. There are many online resources to do this with as well. This is a decentralized industry, and it comes with more competition.
3. Using television shows to build a market for music
   We have seen the Naked Brothers Band, Hannah Montana, Cheetah Girls, and Jonas Brothers… they all came out of a Disney show, and once successful, they began to air music videos. Children are more likely to buy merchandise off of their favorite shows. This changes television to become key advertising for a product such as music.
4. Ad sponsored and paid memberships
   This will provide the funds for reimbursing the record labels. This is a moderate change from the traditional structure of the music industry.
5. Destroying the community
   Record companies can mass-upload blanks, viruses, and poor quality files to the major download sources. This will make the search more difficult and the paid downloading more appealing. Record companies can also file complaints to public uploading websites and threaten to shut down their operations.

So in the changing world, the music industry has yet to restructure itself while free music download is still flourishing. What will ensue out of the anarchy in the meantime should be interesting to watch. What has been successful so far? What has failed?

Another aspect that may prove interesting is the new technologies that may influence the future of music distribution (based off speculation and paranoia):

1. Music recognition software
   Verizon Wireless has this new software that can recognize songs. It is currently being used to assist customers in searching for a song that they heard on the radio or etc., so that they can purchase and download it as a ringtone. This can also be potentially used for restricting music uploading on community-based uploading sites. That is, if the uploading process can also include a song or video recognition…
2. Re-implementing the old restrictions
   Upload quality restrictions, file size restrictions, and file extension restrictions… however, it would not work without an organized effort between major websites, and even if they did group together, music downloading and streaming will simply de-centralize into a bunch of smaller sources.
3. Restricting internet access
   This would be on internet service providers’ (ISP) part. This could benefit the bank accounts of ISPs, but would face resistance from those who support internet neutrality and global connectivity. This may also face opposition from those who feel that ISPs should not use their technological power in an inappropriate area (such as political and indirect influence on other industries).

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The Snoqualmie Casino is located in the Snoqualmie Valley, near North Bend Washington and Snoqualmie Falls. I noticed that The Snoqualmie Tribal Casino had some really great concerts, shows, and events coming up in the next few months that you might be interested in.

To name a few; Robert Cray, Buddy Guy, and Robin Trower all have upcoming shows. Very cool indeed.

Smoking is allowed inside of the Snoqualmie Casino seeing how it is a tribal casino on tribal land.

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As a musician and composer I have came to realize over the years, how much vocals can add to a music track. I have composed over 40 songs in the last year or so and have found that most of my audiences have enjoyed the songs with vocals over comparable instrumentals.

This being the case then adding a PA system can take your band and tracks too a whole new level. We have selected 3 PA systems that cost less then $500 and are active(self-powered) so you will not need a external amp to power them.

Disclaimer:The State of Affairs received no direct compensation for writing this article and is in no way directly affiliated with Mackie, Peavey or Fender

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