FEEL THE POWER! An article about TUBES!

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Dan Sorber

Just recently I replaced the tubes in my amplifier, a Carvin V3 (thats that pretty amp used up there in my banner). Well, what is a tube? To quote www.eurotubes.com:

The Carvin V3 Amplifier

100 watts of tube goodness...

“They are magical little bottles of joyful tone that allow us to express ourselves in a way that no other device on the planet can…”

Or a more proper definition:

“A valve amplifier or tube amplifier is a type of electronic amplifier that makes use of vacuum tubes to increase the power and/or amplitude of a signal”

Basically, vacuum tubes are used to increase the power of a guitar amp to an audible level. Tubes have been in use for decades in audio equipment, TVs, military applications (radar), and transmitters. Tube amplifiers were largely replaced in the 1960′s and 70′s with solid state amplifiers which use transistors to produce the sound. A solid state amplifier is more reliable (since the transistors don’t degrade over usage as tubes do) and for portability: tube amps are heavy!
Tubes, while seemingly an archaic technology, are still widely used in certain applications such as high power RF transmitters, microwave ovens, and audio amplification equipment: particularly for the electric guitar, recording studios, and high-end home stereos. It’s widely accepted that the tonal characteristics of tubes (also called ‘valves’) are more pleasing to the human ear than transistors.

The problem is that they do not last forever and will need to be changed. There are two reasons someone will change the tubes in their amp:

Tubes in action!

Don't tell me this doesn't excite you...

  1. They die:Its not a question on if they will fail, but when they will fail. Tubes, much like batteries have a limited life. We push them into distortion and make them scream their little heads off… they can only take that abuse for so long before they begin to loose the ability to drive your rig. As you can see from the picture at left, these are tubes in action. When properly biased (meaning adjusting the amount of voltage the tubes are drawing while ‘idle’) the amp will get nice and HOT!

2. To completely change the sound of your amplifier:

The type of tube used can DRAMATICALLY impact the sound of your rig! I had a Peavey Triple XXX back when my band began playing out a few years ago. I almost returned the amplifier. It was my first high gain all-tube amplifier (I did own a Fender Hotrod Deville, but thats hardly metal) and it was really just… missing something. So I did a little research on tubes. I come to find out that each different type of tube has different gain structures and harmonic and EQ responses. I thought, “why not? Let’s give this a go…” I ordered a set of KT77s for the power amp and some high gain 12AX7s for the preamp and hoped for the best. Long story short… I dropped these puppies into the amp and fell in love with it. It was a completely different amplifier.

Tubes in a Carvin V3

"You think this puny cage can contain us?!"

Guitarists are notorious for “tone chasing”. Well, what is tone? Thats one of those things that we all seem to understand as guitarists but lack the ability to really put in words. If refers to timbre and pitch color and a whole myriad of things that have a direct effect on the sound coming out of your speaker cabinet. It’s a lot like trying to explain to someone how sugar tastes… And don’t use the word “sweet”.

Tubes

"MOAR TUBES"

Alright. Take a look at this picture on the left. You should notice two distinct type of tubes.
The smaller set of tubes is part of the preamp section of the amplifier. The preamp does the basic tone shaping for your amplifier (its also the part of the amp most responsible for gain or distortion). The larger set of tubes belongs to the poweramp  section of the amplifier. This is the power house that drives the whole thing. It basically ‘amps’ up the preamp so it has enough ‘oomph’ (these are technical terms here…) to drive the speakers. BOTH sections of the amp are responsible for your overall tone (equally so), so you will need to replace all of them if you really want to change the sound of your amp.

Ok, so tubes can completely change your sound, right? So how do you know which ones to go for. Well, you can ask an expert. Or use Google. I don’t want to get into too much here, as this article is meant to be more of an introduction on tubes, but I will go over the basic types:

PREAMP – 12AX7
a 12AX7 tubeThis is a preamp tube (one of the little guys from the picture above). You have different version such as the ECC803 S, ECC83 S (including versions where the pins are made from gold) There are other preamp types, such as the 12AT7 and the 12AU7. It is beyond the scope of this article to go into too much detail, but each tube has different gain structures, EQ response and will react differently to your playing. At the end of the article I will provide some resources you can do your own research with :)

POWER AMP – EL34
The EL34 is the tube responsible for that “Marshall crunch”. For guitarists that should require no description! They do make updated types, such as the E34L and the KT77 that tighten up the low end while still maintaning that nice sizzle in the top end without making your ears bleed! If you want that British amp sound, but with a bit more complexity and low end ‘oomph’ try the KT77.


POWERAMP – 6L6
6L6GCBThis is the last tube I will cover for this article. These tubes provide BIG low end compared to the EL34 style tubes. They also have much more complex mids and the highs aren’t anywhere near as brittle as an EL34 (but it certainly doesn’t ‘crunch up’ the same… less aggression in this tube).

This barely scratches the surface on what’s available on the market today. I recommend that you do your research on the different types of tubes before making a purchase. They have a HUGE impact on your overall tone and are a rather large piece in the never-ending quest in the pursuit of tone. Oh, and here’s another thing: As long as the tubes draw the same voltage… you can mix and match them for even more tonal possibilities! You will need to get them from a pro, like Eurotubes, to make sure the tubes are MATCHED. If they aren’t, you can end up with a less than stellar performance from them.

So what do I have in that Carvin V3? I have an integrated quad of 6L6′s and E34L’s (Matched of course!) for the power amp and a set of high gain ECC83S’s for the pre amp. I am definitely digging the tone!

They can be expensive, but try and have some fun trying out different types. Happy shredding!

Oh, one last thing. Check out my friends over at Eurotubes. There, you can find comprehensive information about tubes, not to mention these guys have some of THE BEST customer service in the industry and will help you choose the right tubes for your amp and you as a player!

Posted in Amps, Gear, Guitars | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Tao of Practice

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Dan Sorber

Just practicing isn’t enough. If you want to see true results in the quickest time possible it’s not about quantity, but quality of the time spent woodshedding (that’s guitar-speak for “practicing”). With the proper focus you can improve in days or weeks what might have taken months or even years. In this article I am going to try my best to outline some guidelines that will help you get the most out of your practicing time. In this, as in any article or lesson I may write, I do not claim to have or know all the answers. Most of this stuff was picked up from my own teachers, method books, articles, magazines, books or my own revelations made in those brief moments of clarity. What you can count on is that this stuff has worked wonders for me as well as my students. An important lesson in life is to take what you learn here, digest it, and experiment with it to the best of your ability… and when you truly understand it in your bones… forget everything I have ever said and just play.

One of the first things that I highly recommend is that improvisation should be a part of everyone’s practice schedule. You need to be able to apply what you’ve learned or else you just spent a lot of time on nothing. So, one of the things I do is at the end of the week, or even at the end of a practice session, I will throw on a jam track and try to apply the ideas and techniques I’ve been working on. Sometimes the results aren’t very pretty, but it definitely gives me a better idea on how to use the stuff I’ve been working on. My teaching style is based around this whole idea and it’s worked very well for my students and improvisation is a great way to work this stuff out after you’ve had some time to absorb it.

Another approach to this idea is to write your own etude, or “a piece composed for the development of a specific point of technique”. Basically it’s taking that exercise and making a short song out of it.

I recommend BOTH of the above ideas, but writing etudes is just extended improvising, so if you had to pick only one (read: lazy) go with improvising. Whatever the case may be, learning the material is only half the battle. You have to able to work what you are learning into your playing style. This came has a pretty heavy revelation to me and was something I didn’t understand until just a few short years ago. I, for the most part, was just practicing what my teachers gave me or working out of method books on topics that interested me. I stunted my own growth because I didn’t take the time to fully digest the material I was working on and many topics and techniques that I spent many hours of practice went quickly out the window when I didn’t try to make music out of it. Use it or lose it, as the saying goes…

The Tao of Practicing … so you want to get serious? You’ve made the decision that it is time to take playing to the next level. You’ve read articles on your favorite players and you’ve found that Steve Vai and Joe Satriani use to spend 6, 8, 12 hours a day practicing back in their former years. Don’t kid yourself. While the more practice the better, understand that you need to be realistic with the amount of time you can commit to practicing. There’s nothing more frustrating (personal experience as well as that of some overzealous students) then coming up with a big, detailed 4-hour practicing sessions and not being able to fit more than 2 hours of it in on any given day. Sometimes procrastination is to blame (once again, personal experience), but sometimes we overestimate the amount of time that we have available to spend just on practicing. Not to mention you will burn yourself out, quick, trying to cram an 8 hour practice session when you are use to spending 30 minutes to an hour. The trick is this: really be honest with yourself with the amount of time you have available to spend on playing the guitar every day. If you can only fit an hour in every day than that is fine. Try to build up to longer and longer times as your focus on the instrument increases and your consistency has been…well, consistent. If you are finding you can fit that hour in everyday for, say two weeks, then add an extra half an hour and see how it goes. Don’t get overzealous; you will just burn out as quickly as you started. Just as the weight lifter must start out with lighter weights and a less intensive exercise program in order to avoid hurting themselves so must you begin with a less intensive practice schedule. When the muscles have healed and strengthened themselves then the bodybuilder may increase the weight, reps and range of exercises. Only when you adjust to the practice schedule you have laid out can you increase the intensity. It’s difficult to remain focused on something for long periods of time, especially if you are not use to it. You will bore easily and practicing will become some torturous and arduous chore that you will not be looking forward to everyday. You picked up the guitar because it is fun to play. Don’t forget that. Keep forging forward but no matter how far you get you picked up the instrument for a genuine love for it and music. Don’t lose sight of the beginning no matter how far down the path you travel. Always “wear the white belt” (one of my favorite martial art references) and play with the true heart of an amateur; someone who does something for the love of it. You’ve stepped off the path if you aren’t excited about learning anymore, but it’s not as difficult as it may seem to get back on track.

I would like to add one more thing concerning the amount of time spent on practicing. We all know that life can throw some unexpected curve balls at us and it can seem like on some days everything is working against you getting that hour of practice in. If after a hard day you find you only have 5 minutes to spend on practicing… take it. Choose one scale, one exercise, one chord, one arpeggio and practice it! I heard someone say awhile ago that if you practice for 5 minutes you will be 5 minutes better at the guitar than you were before you picked it up! How does the saying go? Oh yeah… carpe diem.

After a time has been set aside you must gather the material you intend to use. Even if I am your teacher I can not exactly tell you what you need to practice. I will most certainly make suggestions, and if you are currently a student of mine you know of the “laundry lists” I write down at the end of every lesson. But these are just suggestions based on the observations I made watching you play. Sometimes it’s advice on correcting a particular technique. Other times it’s exactly a laundry list: Practice this chord progression, then this scale, then this song. What you practice will be based largely off what your own goals are, where your interests lay, temperament, current playing level, and a myriad of other variables. Understand that I am not you and you are not me. What works for one person may not work for another. What should I practice you ask? You have to answer that one yourself. Take an honest and constructive look at your own playing and make your own laundry list based off of your own goals.

And that brings me to the next point. Prioritize. Once again, personal experience speaks for itself here. I have the tendency to get WAY in over my own head; attempting to practice more things then I have time for. I end up with the above scenario. I “practice” a lot of stuff, but I never fully focus on any one thing enough to assimilate it into my playing style the way I’d like. The key here is to first write down everything you want to learn and do. Then order that list from most to least important. Now you have to figure out how much time you can spend on each topic and cut the things you don’t have time for. Save them for another day. Prioritize. Focus. And before you know it you’ll be on to the next thing. Also, do not be afraid to break your practice session up throughout the course of the day. No one said you had to sit there for a two hour block staring at your music stand. Larger practice routines can easily be managed by working in a half an hour here and a half an hour there. Practicing in bursts will also help to keep your focus. It is much easier to focus for 15 minutes at a time then for two whole hours.

When overwhelmed with the amount of material to cover take to heart and old Samurai adage: “Attack the corners” … the little things that stick out. Then move on to the big stuff.

I think I need to take the time to point out something very important that should be thought long and hard about. Don’t make the mistake of comparing your progress to others. While it’s healthy to be a little bit competitive as it can drive us to practice harder and focus more, it can also become a hindrance. But unlike sports, music is not inherently competitive. It is an art and should always be treated as such. Music should never be confused with a competition. It is a life long journey that is something you can constantly improve and reshape. The goal in sports is to run faster, jump higher and score more than the opposing team. There is an end in sight: winning the game, the competition, breaking a record… there is no concrete destination in music. The journey ends the day you die and for those special few may carry on to further inspire those of future generations. No sooner. In music, the only opponent is within.

Until next time…

Dan is a professional teacher and guitarist located in northern New Jersey. You can check out Dan’s work at the following sites:
www.dansorber.com
www.twitter.com/DanSorber
www.facebook.com/feroxcanorus
www.reverbnation.com/feroxcanorus
www.twitter.com/feroxcanorus

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String Talk – Electric Guitar Strings

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Dan Sorber

In recent months I’ve been experimenting with different string types trying to find the right combination of playability and tone. Not just on my electric guitar but on my classical and steel string acoustic as well. I’ve tried a great deal of strings out but I am always looking to try something new.

When choosing a new set of strings there a few factors you need to keep in mind: gauge, material, construction methods and coatings. The first of these factors beginner to intermediate guitarists start experimenting with is the gauge. Out of the four factors, this one will have the most noticable impact on your tone and playability of the instrument.

GAUGE
Gauge is simply the diameter of the string measured in thousands of an inch. The general consensus is that the thicker the gauge the better the tone, but the more difficult the instrument becomes to play. Thinner gauge strings will fight you less and make the instrument ‘easier’ to play, but loose out on the thicker tone since not as much material is used to construct the strings. As a result they tend to be a bit ‘thinner’ sounding. What gauge you choose will ultimately depend on your personal preferences and how you want to balance tone and playability. Also, you will need to consider the TUNING you intend on keeping your instrument in. Lower or dropped tunings will need a thicker gauge to keep the strings tight and in tune at the lower tensions. Going down to ‘C standard’ with your standard 9 gauge strings isn’t a good idea if you want your guitar to actually stay in tune.

 

MATERIAL
Strings can be constructed out of a variety of different materials and each can have an impact on the players tone. Materials are usually chosen depending on what is emphasized tonally.

For electric guitars your most common choices (not necessarily your only ones) are: Steel, Nickel Plated and Pure Nickel. Steel guitar strings have a very bright tone, with a strong low end. Nickel plated strings offer a slightly warmer tone and better intonation due to the 8% nickel plated wrap wire. Pure nickel strings offer a warm, vintage tone. Good for blues or classic rock. These strings, the wrap wire is 100% nickel as apposed to 8%. In most of these strings, the unwound, treble strings are usually still plain steel.

CONSTRUCTION METHOD
How the string is actually constructed can have an effect on your tone. The most obvious form of this is the wrap wire profile and there are three basic ways to construct it: round wound (the most common), flat wound (like a violin string) or half round. Round wound has the brightest response with flat wound giving you a very smooth and mellow sound. The half round is middle ground between these two strings: not as bright as round but not as mellow as flat.

Some companies also have special fabrication techniques, such as DR’s ‘Tite-Fit”. Basically they start off with material totaling more than the final gauge measurement. Through compression winding, they squeeze the string down to a smaller size. Dean Markley cryogenically freeze the “Blue Steel” electric guitar strings in order to strengthen the metal at the molecular level.

Others might use a round core (DR) or a hexagonal (D’Addario) core to construct the wound strings. The core wire and the wrap wire can also be made of two different materials, furthering the tonal possibilities. I’ve seen brass core wire with a pure nickel wrap wire.

COATINGS
A string can be coated with another material such as Elixir’s ‘nano-web’. It’s basically the same stuff that mountain climbers use on their ropes. The coating is meant to protect the string from rust and corrosion and to help it last longer. If the coating is too thick, it has the effect of mellowing out the tone. In response to this, Elixir also puts out a thinner, ‘nano-web’ coating. Many companies offer different coatings, but the general use of it is to help preserve the string. The coating prevents moisture and the oils from your skin from getting down into the wrap wire, where you won’t be able to clean it out. While they do have prolonged life (up to 3x longer) they tend to be up to 3x more expensive. Different companies offer their own take on this approach.

So what do I use?

My “go to” for the longest while has been D’Addario .10 gauge and then the  9/10 gauge hybrids. To me, this strings always seemed like “jack of all trades, master of none”. You get decent tone and good playability, but it was nothing to write home about. Ernie Ball Hybrid Slinky are comparable in price and tone… and in all honesty, if you put one or the other on the guitar without telling me I wouldn’t be able to tell you which one it was.

I’ve tried Elixir and Yngwie Malmsteen’s signature from Dean Markley… that was a weird one… the gauge set is all over the place with the bass strings being on the heavy side and the treble strings being really light. I found the G-string constantly slipping out of tune and actually replaced it with a slightly heavier gauge. I found the thinner treble strings to have too much of a ‘rubber band’ effect to them… though it was fun being able to bend up a major 3rd with no effort…

Drum roll please…

My current string of choice is Thomastik-Infeld Power Brights. Heavy bottoms cause I’ms alls metals and stuff.

The wrap wire is a different alloy, though I haven’t been able to figure out what (the package is pretty vague), and offers great tone and string life. The heavier gauge (I tune down to D-standard sometimes, usually I stay in standard tuning or E-flat tuning) keeps the string tight and articulate.

The treble strings are actually brass instead of steel. I noticed the high-end is particularly warm sounding thanks to this, while the low end has a great snarl and bite to it. No one likes flubby low end. Damn love handles. And I’m not too found of highs that make your ears bleed. But to each his own.

Now that you know my secret I’ll have to kill you…

So for the next article how about a discussion on picks? Or do you want to see String Talk Pt. 2, Acoustic Strings?

Posted in Gear, Strings | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Updates

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Dan Sorber

Hello everyone!

Over the course of the next couple of weeks or so dansorber.com will be getting an overhaul. I will be switching over to a new format that will make the site easier to maintain and easier to add content to. Up until now my methods for updating the site have been very…. archaic…

The design of the site won’t change much, but you can expect me to update a lot more since the process will be streamlined. Also, the site will be a tad more organized and easier to navigate. On top of this, I will be adding a BOATLOAD of new content to the website. I won’t tip my hand yet, but there will be some lessons on here that will follow some sort of ‘method’ rather than my past ‘write-a-lesson-based-on-whatever-the-heck-I-feel-like-doing-approach’… I will also get my butt in gear and get episode 2 of Riffology on the air.

In any case, the only part of this site that will be accessible until then is the blog.

I will be back on the air shortly… Happy shredding.

-Dan

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Is learning to read music necessary?

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Dan Sorber

“Do I need to learn to read music?”

This is probably one of the most asked questions I get from students. Many students approach me with the subject and very few even know what they want out of it. Some believe the have to learn to read simply because somewhere down the line someone told them “they had to”. It is a common misconception that in order to be a decent musician you HAVE to learn to read, and in fact, that particular thought is mired entirely in the past. Others truly have the desire to broach the subject, but few are even aware of the benefits learning to read has for the modern guitarist. Practicing ANYTHINGwithout being aware of it’s benefits is like an un-sharpened pencil: pointless. Then there is the last group of students: those that outright refuse to learn about it even if they strapped down in a chair with their eyes pinned open and forced to watch rerun after rerun of “Sex in the City”. *shudders*
What is more ignorant then learning something without understanding how it can help you is refusing to learn something without understanding how it can help you.

Even teachers themselves are fiercely divided on the subject. Many staunchly defend their antiquated ways without adjusting the pedagogy to match modern guitarist’s needs. They force EVERY student to learn… whether or not this has any benefit to that student. Others avoid the subject entirely either not aware of the benefits it CAN have or they just can’t be bothered to convince a stubborn student otherwise.

At the risk of receiving volumes of hate mail from my peers in the teaching community I am going to outright just say it: it is not necessary to learn to read music. Let me point out this is purely from the perspective of the modern guitarist. I can not speak for this school of thought on other instruments and I simply don’t care to. I also want to point out that I am a very capable sight-reader and I always have a discussion with my students about the pros and cons of the system. What I do with that student depends on what they need.

Learning to read music has to be a skill that is inline with what your goals are. First off, reading music on the guitar is notoriously difficult. It is simply not a system designed for an instrument that has nearly all of the notes across it’s range found in multiple positions. Think about it. Let’s do some math. A 6-string, 24 fret guitar only has the range of 4 octaves from the lowest E on the open 6th string to the highest sounding one on the 1st string 24th fret. If you look at the neck itself you will see the 24 frets along each of the 6 strings means there are 144 physical locations for these notes. A range of 4 complete octaves means you have 29 notes. On average, each one of those notes can be found in up to 4 different locations. (Some notes are repeated more than others) That means you have about 4 times the memorization of just about any other instrument using the same system of notation. So when you look at a “C” note in standard notation, a guitarist has to figure just which one of those 4 “C” notes he or she should be playing.
Hard to do on your feet. Choosing the right position can mean the difference between a musical phrase falling neatly beneath your fingers or becoming an awkward jumble of string and position shifts. This can also be compounded if you are sight-reading the piece; playing it for the first time without getting a chance to familiarize oneself with the music.

So what is a struggling guitarist to do? Learning to read on the guitar to any level of proficiency can take months, even years of diligent practice. How embarrassing is it to spend months practicing only to barely be able to sight read a simply melody like “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”? I’ll be a rock star in no time! Just as soon as I can get through these blasted children’s rhymes…

Ok, so maybe your progress wont be THAT painfully slow… but I think you get the point. As a guitarist, we have another option… one that in a single lesson I can have you reading it at the same level of months of study of standard notation. That notation is called tablature.

Tab for short, is a system of notation that evolved from an instrument called the lute. The lute is a precursor to the modern day guitar. Ever see those old Renaissance paintings with the Elven looking guy dancing around in green tights carrying something that oddly looks like a guitar… but wrong? Yea, that’s a lute. They used tablature way back when.

The fact is that tab represents the notes graphically on the guitar. Six lines represent each of the six strings and the numbers tell you what fret to play. It is a system that works only for the guitar and can not be applied to another instrument. It’s sort of the opposite of how standard notation is sort of universal while tab is instrument specific.

Tab has it’s shortcomings as well. It inherently does not display rhythm, or the duration of each note. It’s a system that relies on you already having some knowledge of how the song is suppose to sound. Modern methods have created a marriage of the two systems. Tablature with the rhythm markings of standard notation in order to display the proper duration of each note. All on one nice little line of music.

But what are the advantages to learning standard notation? For this article I sound is if you shouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole… I know many students that wouldn’t even throw the pole at it.
Standard notation can give you intimate knowledge of the notes and their locations on the guitar. Sure, it can take a long time, but if you can sight-read a moderately difficult piece you are tapping into a more powerful skill than you can imagine. So by learning standard notation you are focusing more on the notes themselves and less on the paint-by-number approach of tab. In tab, it doesn’t really tell you if that note is a C or a D… you have to just know.
Another advantage is if you have a desire to learn music from another instrument. If you hear a violin piece you like for instance, you can try figuring it out by ear… but what if you can’t find a recording? You can buy the sheet music and learn from that.
If you are writing music for a band that may use traditional instruments such as the piano or violin, then you can write out the melodies you want them to play.
If you want to become a session musician you will need to learn to read… since you NEVER know what is going to be placed in front of you.
And certainly if you want to study music at college.

So what do you all think out there? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Hey. I got a joke: how do you get a guitar player to turn his volume down? Put sheet music in front of him.

Cheers!

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Social Networking – Marketing Holy Grail or…?

Posted on September 5, 2010 by Dan Sorber

I don’t think it needs any discussion that the internet has put people on the map. Much like reality TV turning wanna-be actors into stars sites like Youtube, Facebook and Myspace have opened doors in terms of getting your material out to an audience. Sites like this have opened the floodgates regarding content on the internet. Combined with advances in inexpensive technology in the audio and video medias means we all better head for higher ground… and quick. Or wear helmets. With the sheer amount of content these websites put out we’ll need protection.

No doubt most of us have at least one profile on these sites. It’s inevitable these days. Whether you are using them to meet new people, keep in touch with friends from high school, or maybe you are one of the people at the heart of this discussion: musicians trying to promote your music. Since you have one of these online profiles, you have no doubt been a victim of band spam.

That brings me to my main point: do you think social networking sites have helped with bands promoting their material or is it at this point hurting us all? We’ve all heard of more than a couple of bands who launched their careers through their Myspace alone; some not even playing a single live gig or the entire album being recorded by a single musician in his/her bedroom. This signaled a massive influx of people hoping to do the same thing. Get famous without leaving your house? Without even putting on underwear? Why not!

Its a double edged sword: on one hand it’s good because it does give you a cost and time effective way of getting your material out there. On the other hand EVERYONE is flooding the airwaves with their music, most of it subpar AT BEST, that it has become almost impossible to be heard above the din without resorting to some sort of ‘spam’. I can’t tell you how many times I send invites and reminders out for shows on Myspace to talk to the person later to only discover they had no idea I was playing any shows at all. It has gotten to the point that most people tend to ignore all the incoming messages.

Back before the onset of affordable home recording set ups and the internet you had a built-in weeding process. People without talent had too many roadblocks in releasing their own material. If you couldn’t impress bookers/labels/promoters your music didn’t stand a chance. Period.

I use the internet as my biggest marketing tool… however at some point the magic was lost. If you didn’t take advantage of it soon enough you are more than likely lost amongst the crowd: just another band trying to solicit their music to someone who never asked to hear it in the first place.

About a year ago I tried an adder program for Myspace. All I had to do is go to a band’s page, get their Myspace ID #, put it into this program, and it would add all their friends to my account. Great idea right? The short of it is that the adder program didn’t help my band’s situation any. I found people ignored you just as easily as if you didn’t add them. The whole ‘friend’ process is a farce. While the internet has allowed me to connect with people I might have otherwise not had the opportunity to meet, it still takes elbow grease and actual SOCIAL networking to get the band known. I used the internet to find out who the big name promoters and bands were in my area. I went out and meet and supported these people and actually networked with them.

I think it’s a fact that people are lazy. They don’t want to get out there and do the leg work THE RIGHT WAY to further their career. Instead they find these programs that do the ‘work’ for them and think if they flood the airwaves enough SOMEONE has to hear them. In reality it has the opposite effect:
Think of the crazy preacher on the street corner, completely convinced that the world is about to end and we will all burn in hell if we don’t repent. At first you might listen, but these people are nuts and completely fanatical. Eventually you just stop listening. When approached by someone similar in the future you ignore them without even listening, even acting as if the person is socially diseased by taking the long way around them and ignoring eye contact.
Something similar takes place on these social networking sites. People reach a critical mass with how much of this they can be bombarded with and then they just stop paying attention.

In short I feel the internet has become a powerful marketing tool, no doubt about that. The problem these days is the opposite of what it use to be back in, say the ’70′s: instead of struggling to impress the music businesses’ so-called “Gatekeepers” to get them to invest in you and help further your career you are stuck drowning in a miasma of content. I have this hilarious mental image of 1000′s of people in a room, each one representing a band. An overwhelming amount of them are running around, flailing their arms about and YELLING at the top of their lungs; all in an attempt to get attention. As one person gets louder, the others increase their own volume to compensate. Eventually, the sound become deafening, and here you are, the musician who just wants to build a fan base in an honest way being left to deal with this chaotic circus.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this.

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