How Musicians Can Rock Twitter

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Pistachio Consulting and publicist extraordinaire Ariel Hyatt (CyberPR) have come up with a number of guidelines for musicians who want to maximize their exposure for free by using Twitter. Here’s what they came up with (let us know what you think!):

1. Surround Yourself with Successful People
One of the oldest rules in the book of business success is to surround yourself with successful people. Find someone inspiring to watch and enjoy the little snippets of their life that they share.

2. Join or Organize a Tweetup. Get out there and Network
Invite people to come out for a drink or to watch a show. Any meeting in a public place provides an opportunity to meet and network with potential fans. Famous already? Do this the way you might do an in-store or other more controlled public appearance

The really major friendships and business relationships that have come to me have been a lasagna of different layers building on each other: connecting online, connecting in person, hanging out online, seeing each other at another event… it builds up to some very powerful, loyal connections.

3. Use Twitter to Share Audio and Video Links
Twitter is primarily text based, but that doesn’t mean you can only share text. Use Twitter to share links to other material, including photos, audio files, and video clips. You can even share a live video stream that you can deliver using nothing more than a cellphone using technologies like Qik.com or Flixwagon. Imagine letting fans watch (and then later embed on their own web pages) an impromptu jam on the tour bus. Your authenticity – and access that YOU get to control – is very enticing.

4. Use Twitter to give your fans a Sneak Peek
Speaking of which, imagine being backstage at a gig warming up and letting fans experience the sound check without any hassle or cost on your part. Again, that mobile video cellphone, or webcam live streaming, or even just links to audio, Twitpic.com put your fans there.

That type of content can make fans feel connected and it costs almost nothing to make available. It also lets you take back a fair share of the “Papparazzi economy.” Good money is made exploiting stars’ privacy. Go straight to your fans instead and use the content the way YOU want to.

5. Take Twitter on the Road with You
It’s hard to sit down and compose a blogpost when you’re on the road on tour. With a phone in your hand, it’s easy to share snippets as the mood strikes. And since it’s Twitter, people don’t expect well-thought out, composed and polished updates. They just expect you to be genuine.

6. Twitter is powerful because it’s not in-your-face
Don’t try too hard. Don’t be pushy. Just be authentic. Talk about stuff that you would remark on out of the power of your own heart. All the soulful things about musicians are the very same things that will make you successful on Twitter.

People want personality; they want authenticity; they want a genuine look at the person behind the music. You’re not dealing with the paparazzi coming in and invading. You’re saying, “I want to share something personal, and I’m going to let it get out there in a way that is totally on my terms and in a way that benefits by business as a musician financially.”

7. Don’t push; Pull instead
Get people involved in your life, in your artistic ideas and expressions. Share a photo and say, “this is where I write most of my songs.” You can get people excited and involved by letting them know when you have a new album, when you do a signing party, when you have a tour going… don’t send tweet after tweet saying “buy my album, buy my album,” because you won’t get an audience that way.

People can get a real sense of what you’re like just from reading 4 pages of tweets. It always astonishes me how well I know someone by the time I meet them, just fro those little offhand remarks.

BONUS: Be creative.

Creativity is what you do for a living, right? Try using your name, a song, album or venue to “tag” your tweet by putting a # in front of the word, especially when you ask a question. Instant communities have formed on Twitter by sharing a tag in common. Searching http://search.twitter.com for your tag (see hypothetical for The Beeristas: #Hartfordshow) lets everyone follow the conversation.

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Internet Bands: How to Record Around the World

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The Web has changed not only music commerce, but music creation and production as well. The pairing of broadband lines and computer-based recording has made for the very real and very exciting capability to record with musicians from around the globe and even form so-called Internet bands. The concept is simple and really easy to launch on your own.

To build a band, you first need to find other musicians who want to collaborate on a recording, and a good place to start is in music chat rooms. You could post a request and see if any of the respondents share your goals, and then see if they have audio samples to share. If you like what you hear, you’ve got your band started. Another option is to check out musician pages on social networking sites, and then ping a player you like to see if he/she is open to working together.

Next, everyone who participates should have a high-speed connection plus some way of digitally recording and exporting audio. They don’t have to be wired like Real World Studios, but they need a computer running some kind of sequencer/recorder (Garageband, Live, Sonar, Pro Tools, Logic,  etc). Whatever the system, make sure you can import and export compatible file types (wav, aiff).

Here’s a basic scenario: Musician #1 will start a song, laying down a drum-loop beat and a rhythm guitar part. Once that’s mixed down to an MP3 file, it can be emailed to Musician #2. That player imports the MP3 into his DAW and then records a new part on a separate track (without mixing in the loop and guitar). Once completed, Musician #2 exports his new track to a file and mails it back to Musician #1, who imports it into the master session. When files are really big, you might need to swap them using a content-delivery service (yousendit, MegaUpload) in place of email. 

After you get the hang of that basic process, you can start exchanging files with any musician in the band or recording project. Today, lots of bands are cutting complete albums using this exact method. Some players are even using sophisticated VNC programs to control the mice on each other’s computers, allowing for collaboration on a mix. Better still, these two musicians can talk to each other during mixdown using Skype.

Whether you want to form a full-blown band or just find someone to fly in a keyboard part, you can find a ton of musicians who make their services available online with a simple search. Clearly, there are some great creative possibilities that a few years ago were only a dream. You could start a band right now from where you’re sitting.

— Pete Prown

Guitarist/Writer Pete Prown has written hundreds of guitar articles and is a contributing editor at Vintage Guitar magazine. Pete’s latest CD release, Sir Clive and the Raging Cartographers, is a manic chunk of guitar-fired surf and psychedelia.

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Cash and Creativity

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adrianleggMy UPS guy looks like Chris Cornell. Which makes me wonder: Is my UPS guy Chris Cornell? Is that the Loud Love howler himself coming up the walk in brown shorts, asking for my autograph? His last record with Timbaland never did get off the ground….

But Chris looks really content whistling his way up the steps, and I’m thinking now that this gig must be pretty sweet for him after years of label pressure, relentless touring, and a lawsuit with his ex-wife/manager (whoever was right or wrong, she had more than a dozen of his guitars).

If all he really ever cared about was making music, it must feel great to be free from all of that. Now he collects a reliable paycheck, and on his own time he can go down any creative path he chooses. He’s making money and he’s making music. A completely liberated artist.

Of the many musicians I’ve had the good fortune to meet, the few with a peaceful balance of income and artistry make their money in one place and their music in another. Far as I can tell, the two are opposing forces. Even if you become a phenomenally successful artist, and I hope you will, it’s a whole new ballgame once your music is commoditized. I doubt any pro would tell you differently.

Another scenario. I once caught a set by guitarist Adrian Legg at a small venue outside of New York City. Legg is terrific — a world-class fingerstylist on the order of Leo Kottke and Phil Keaggy. I went up to say hello afterwards, but he was busy putting the squeeze on the kitchen crew for a free sandwich. He was putting up a fight, too. Later I saw him humping his own gear into his own beat-up station wagon, packing up for a late-night, 3-hour solo drive to the next gig. Again, if you don’t know Legg’s playing already, the guy is absolutely top shelf.

We all say we would kill for a career in music. At the same time we say we’re not in it for the money — but aren’t we? Is music really its own reward, or is every gig a little prayer that we will someday make a living making music? Be careful what you wish for.

—RM

The Punch-In is edited by Rich Maloof, who has a long history with TrueFire as artist, educator, and producer. Rich’s body of work as a published author and Editor in Chief of Guitar magazine has been distributed and translated internationally.

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