Vicente Belenguer & T. Tommy feat Delerium - After All

Music Producer - Suitable For You?

"Music producers are the individuals who create compositions, from instrumentals to the latest Top 40 hits. Music production has become the backbone of success for most musicians that have excelled in the music industry. The production aspect of music is almost as lucrative as the internal publishing and distribution.

Few steps for a good start point

You' ll need a personal recording studio before trying below suggestions:

• Incorporate your own personal recording studio. A personal recording studio opens many doors for gaining revenue. You can opt to rent your studio out, engineer recordings for vocalists or only produce tracks. All of these avenues create revenue, which enables you to invest back into your studio.  

• Build your repertoire. Nothing helps music producers more than diversity. A wide range of music along with experience with several genres of music expands the horizon of any production platform. It opens doors for innovation along with the cultivation of new concepts and ideas. Many producers have gained a lot of eclectic success with a wide repertoire alone. 

• Market your product. This requires deciding on a target market. Your target market consists of the listeners you plan to cater to. Whether your target market is alternative, children, teens or urban, make sure you are catering to that market. Too many changes can confuse consumers. Stick with one target market and branch out after you have established a name for yourself.  

• Advertise yourself. Music producers are human advertisements. The clothes you wear all the way down to how you carry yourself are all essential to personal advertisement. For example, if you specialize in urban music, dress that way. Hang fliers, build a website, give sample discs away and even opt to give away tracks. Your focus is being heard. Your music is your credibility, therefore it speaks for you. Do whatever it takes to make people hear it.

• Sell your music. Today's marketing platform is equipped with several avenues for executing sales. This can either be done online or by marketing at local clubs, mixers or publicity gatherings. 

Don't forget to keep an eye on some basic rules:

• Networking is a strong key to success in becoming a music producer. Make sure you communicate with lots of people to gain rapport with musicians, producers and possibly artist and repertoire directors. Some of the greatest success in the music industry was derived solely from social networking.

• Use the Internet to you advantage if you can. The Internet can be a strong marketing platform if you use it effectively. (See Resources.)

• Always invest in yourself. When you make a profit, invest it into yourself, your studio and your business. Due to the ever-changing status of today's music industry, technology and other innovations directed toward creation and marketing, you must keep up with these changes. This ensures that your music quality stays inline with society and the target market.

• Always copyright your productions. This ensures that your music, concept or initial idea is not stolen, used or distributed without your consent. If actions transpire without your consent, it will be quite difficult and tedious to take action to rectify the problem."

Article source: www.ehow.com, written under Creative Commons License.

Black Eyed Peas - Boom Boom Pow (Gabi Vegas Remix)

Beginner's Guide in Making a Music Remix

"The basic idea behind what we have, has been around for far longer than many realize. Its roots are in Jamaica, where in the late 60's, producers like Lee "Scratch" Perry and King Tubby started releasing dub versions of tracks to occupy the B side of 45s. These would usually be made to sound different than the original by adding effects (spring reverb, tape delay, flanging, eq, etc), and by cutting and rearranging the individual parts.

In a remix, it's possible to change the style, feel, even the emotional meaning of the track by changing the context of sections, reharmonizing melodies, adding additional elements, etc. Though the remixer has a foundation of existing material to build on, they are not restrained in any way. You're free to take that foundation, shift it around, and make it raise the roof!!

Steps:

• Select the right track. This is very important; since this is a derivative art form (you can't remix a nonexistent piece of music). You'll need, at the very least, a complete mixdown of the original track (taken directly from the CD). If you can get separate tracks (especially for vocals) directly from the recording artist, it will make your remix better, and your work easier.
• Try to identify what you will contribute to the track. This can range from changing the feel by adding new rhythm tracks, to total destruction. Think about what sections you like best; what would you keep intact, and what will you change? This is an important stage, because it will shape your workflow throughout the project.

• Dissect the track. Take the materials you have to work with, and do most of the slicing and trimming up front. You can do this in an audio editing suite, especially when it comes to cutting loops (see below for tips and links).
• Experiment! Try all the available effects in your DAW/audio editing software to see how they will sound on each part! There are plenty of things to choose from ... delay, phaser, chorus, flanger, filters and other eq, reverb, amplitude modulation, ring modulation, frequency modulation, timestretching, pitch shifting or correction, vocoding and more.
• Reconstruct (remix). First, set the BPM (tempo - beats per minute) and time signature (usually 4/4 in popular music) in your looping software. Next, import your loops. Once they are imported and time corrected, you should be able to choose any tempo you like, with very little loss of quality. (Note: If you are using Ableton Live, be sure to select a time correction method that jives with your sample type. Beat mode is fine for drums, but may not be great for vocals. Texture mode is fine for many samples, but will often affect the pitch of the sample slightly. Tone is usually good all around.) Now you can start to reconstruct the track. A safe and easy way would be to follow the form of the original (intro, verse, chorus, verse, bridge, and chorus) but you can also completely change it and make it your own. You can layer the vocals from the verse over a portion of the chorus. You can take a verse as-is, cut individual measure of vocals, and superimpose them reversed. You can reharmonize the vocal or lead lines by introducing completely different elements. Have fun, and experiment!

• Export your creation (mastering). When your remix now has a start and finish, and you are satisfied with it, you should export. Save all or export to a WAV or AIFF file (don't encode an MP3 just yet). Load this into your audio editing software, and normalize it to 99%. This will ensure that your levels at their highest point reach almost the maximum volume. In addition, you can make your remix seem louder by applying a compressor effect to it before normalizing.
• Distribute your remix. Convert this file to MP3, using Lame, or your favorite MP3 converter, and send it all around!

Tips: 

• Watch your quality settings when you convert. 128 is the usual default bitrate, but produces noticeable audio flaws. At minimum, one should encode at 192, but a lossless format such as FLAC is the best choice.
• Remixes show up in nearly all styles. In the pop world, it is usually a functional thing rather than an expressive one - converting pop or rock tunes to be club-ready. The important thing, whether in dub reggae, hiphop remixes, house remixes of pop tunes, or whatever, is that the remixer adds their own personal touch to the track - bringing some important elements of the original, while adding their own recognizable style.
• If you are remixing a song that you do not own the copyright of, do not distribute your song without permission from the owner. Serious actions may be taken by the artist, but they probably won't unless your song becomes extremely popular.

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