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Hi! I’m Dave from boyinaband.com. A belated Happy new year to everyone, I hope you’re not still hung over.
Today I’ll be talking about what’s been going on with boyinaband in January and what I have planned for February, then revealing this month’s featured artist!
The main boyinaband-related things that happened in January are:
- The new look boyinaband.com website being launched
- The Hip Hop Composition Competition winners being announced!
- Me getting my Axe-FX Ultra and making a bunch of videos, including my first hardware review
- Gaining over 700 new subscribers since the last video blog
- Work has begun on my band You and What Army’s 2nd EP!
- A bunch of custom video tutorials
Website
The new boyinaband site has had a great reception – especially for people wanting to find sample packs quickly and easily in the new “Resources” section. It beats trying to type obscure keywords into google, praying to your deity of choice or threatening your computer with kitchen utensils.
In addition to that, there are bunch of new services (more on those later), a reviews section and I put together a quick video explaining about me for those that are interested – that can be found here!
The Hip Hop Composition Competition
Thanks to everyone that took part in the competition – due to it’s popularity, I’ll be sure to have another competition soon! Congratulations go out to the winner “Riton”, with his amazing track “On the Edge” – his 5 sample packs provided kindly by primeloops.com have been sent and he’s no doubt making even more frickin’ sweet beats! Check his track out here.
Congratulations also go out to Gary Gaugh and M.R.I. for snagging the runner up prizes, as well as to “Super Alex” from the boyinaband.com forum for winning the prize for most helpful forum member – he’s been helping loads of people with tips and constructive criticism, so kudos to you Alex!
So I guess this raises the question – what genre do you guys want for the next composition competition? I’ve had a lot of requests for Drum and Bass, which would be an excuse for me to sit down and listen to a tonne of disgusting yet awesome drops, but I’m open to other ideas!
Axe-FX Ultra
Christ on a bike, where do I begin? Since I first plugged a mic into my computer I’ve been trying to get a professional sounding guitar tone. I’ve finally got it. I love my Axe-Fx so much that the £1900 price tag hasn’t even given me buyer’s guilt, and I’m the kind of person that regrets buying a Crunchie bar if I’ve eaten recently (Though that may be because I don’t like chocoloate… except white chocolate. I’m a confectionary racist, I guess.).
As a result, I’ve put together a bunch of videos – an unboxing for those people who like to re-live the christmas-like moment of opening the Axe and just seeing what it looks like, as well as the nice surprise I found in the box, some videos showcasing some choice presets with some assistance from my homeslice Kieran from guywithaguitar.com (Cheers for that buddy!) and a Review of the Axe Fx showcasing its amazing versatility just as much as my sub-par guitar playing “ability”.
That review was my first hardware review – something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I intend to do more of them, since the Axe Fx Review is now my fastest growing video with regards to views! Oh, and something pretty cool; Cliff Chase, the guy who made the Axe-Fx, watched the review and said that apart from the fact that I didn’t record in Stereo which meant some of the effects weren’t as snazzy as they could have been (Okay, he didn’t use the word snazzy), it was “All-in-all a nice job” which is awesome.
There is another very positive thing that’s come out of the Axe-Fx videos; more on that later!
Stats Time!
We’re now over the 2800 subscribers mark – ace! The channel is growing really fast now, so keep referring my videos to your friends and I’ll keep giving you shiny new content!
Boyinaband.com also grew a lot in January – it broke the 1400,1500 and 1600 visitors a day milestones – it’s all very exciting.
The Band update!
My band You and What Army has been hard at work recording the 8 songs for the new EP “The End of the Beginning”, which we hope to release at the end of March. I’ve been using the Axe-FX on the guitar and bass in it and I’ve never been happier with the result. I’ll play you some audio clips next month, by which time I’ll have hopefully mixed the majority of it. Incidentally, if you haven’t already got our debut EP “Soundtrack to the Apocalypse”, you can grab that from iTunes.
Other than that, we’ve been organising some more gigs, working on press packs and making our live performance tighter than a 6 year old’s snare drum.
Custom tutorials
Thanks to everyone who’s supported boyinaband with donations and by ordering custom video tutorials! It’s you guys that have allowed me to stay alive long enough to make all these videos available to everyone for free!
If you’re curious about how to make a specific synth sound, or want to sponsor a 7 day song (that way you get to choose which genre I do!) head over to the services section on boyinaband.com for more info. I also make beats, to one-to-one skype tutoring and fix marriages, so long as the wife is willing to diet.
Alrighty! So that sums up January, February looks to be even more exciting, with…
- A frickin’ sweet sponsorship from a frickin’ sweet company “G66″ that means you get more stuff!
- A 7 day song tutorial
- Hopefully a week’s worth of exciting new types of content!
G66
As I mentioned, I made a review for my Axe-Fx. I bought my Axe-Fx from the only European distributer for the product, G66. I sent them my videos, thinking they might find them useful for their site and they like them so much that they gave boyinaband a feature on their website G66.eu and commissioned me to make a bunch of video tutorials as well as writing regular articles for their site!
So thanks to G66 you’ll be getting one video tutorial a week explaining how to use the Axe-Fx, from the basics all the way up to creating some mental sounds and high quality patches. There may be more stuff that G66 are doing with boyinaband too, so stay tubed for that!
7 Day Song
Since I was so busy last month, I didn’t have time to put together a 7 day song, but I’ll do one this month for sure. I just need you guys to help me choose! I’ve put a poll on the boyinaband.com
sidebar asking you which genre you’d like and at present, “Bassline” is winning, closely followed by Psytrance, Hardstyle and Dirty South.
So either get on boyinaband.com and vote in the poll, or use the contact page to send me an e-mail if you’ve got a bit of cash to splash and are interested in supporting boyinaband by sponsoring a 7 day song tutorial (in which case you get to pick the genre!)
All new content!
If I can find a spare moment in February between making the next 7 day song, writing articles, making custom video tutorials and working on the business plan for boyinaband to get some external funding in the future (Which would mean WAAAY more videos) and attempting to eat and sleep, I’ll be putting together a new type of 7-day content that will be more about the history and culture surrounding different genres of music. If you’re interested in helping with putting together some information for this project, just get in touch via the contact page on boyinaband.com. If you want to learn more about a certain genre of music, just tell me in a comment!
Featured Artist:
This month’s featured artist from the boyinaband.com forum has to be Riton, the winner of the Hip Hop Composition Competition – he’s made several brilliant Hip Hop productions – check out his youtube channel here. My favourite track is probably his competition-winning track “On the Edge”, but since I’ve already linked to that once already this video, check out “Imperial” – a very original sounding beat, heavy on the piano.
If you want to be the featured artist next month, head over to the boyinaband.com forum at the oh-so-surprising url www.boyinaband.com/forum and post your music in the “Share your music” section. Make sure you share your opinions on other people’s songs as well, otherwise you won’t be eligible! I want to encourage friendly constructive criticism 
That’s it from me in January 2010 – Remember to stick to any new years resolutions you may have made regarding learning more about music production! Hope you enjoy the videos coming up in the next month, and I’ll see you all again for another monthly update at the end of February! Cheers for watching and have a nice day!
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awesome as usual, Dave!
sign of a sickopath for hitting your computer with kichen utencils. good to be updated from you
x
stoked as! have been using your tutorials heaps to help my dnb and breaks production. hands down best tutorials on the net. big ups all the way from New Zealand!
BOY IN THE BAND IS FREEKIN SWEEEEEET !!!!
Love what your doing with the site so far dave and I think The Composition Competition Should be on the best pokerface remix since you already have a starter for most beginers it would be much easier to build to it.. also theres alot of different genres to remix to like dnb , electro etc … so instead of people voteing for the type of genre they want give everyone a chance to show there skills
if the winner is indeed the same one that recentally got signed to ed banger recordss, im sure hes putting them loop packs to excellent use !
BOY IN THE BAND IS FREEKIN SWEEEEEET !!!!
Love what your doing with the site so far dave and I think The Composition Competition Should be on the best pokerface remix since you already have a starter for most beginers it would be much easier to build to it.. also theres alot of different genres to remix to like dnb , electro etc … so instead of people voteing for the type of genre they want give everyone a chance to show there skills