Boy in a Band

A Sweet Music Marketing Blog

Dave — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 07:12:28 +0000

Hey, my homeslices! A friend of mine has recently started up a music blog called traxx24, which has a sweet collection of posts so far and totally sounds like it could be an awesome arcade racing game. It’s mostly about music marketing if you’re looking to get inspired for methods of promoting your tracks, but with an EDM edge to it.

There’s a really useful one collating a bunch of crowd-funding sites if you’re looking to harness your audience, some insightful interviews and a bunch of production-related tutorials to come.

Take a look and let him know if you have any ideas for posts or tutorials through his contact page, I know I always appreciated people giving ideas especially when I was starting out!

Linkage! - http://www.traxx24.com

Can’t make music? Don’t criticise it.

Dave — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 11:00:52 +0000

Hi! I’m Dave from boyinaband.com and today I’m going to talk about something I see looooads in the comments of musical videos on YouTube. The “Yeah? Well you can’t do it so shut up!” argument.

You know, you’ll find a performance where some weird looking guy is playing away on his MPC and then you’ll see someone post a comment criticising it, saying “That sounds crap, and looks really easy to play, that’s not impressive at all, try harder you gay piece of gay.”

Then someone replies saying “Yeah? Well until you can make a video of yourself performing a better song, your opinion doesn’t matter!”

I know a lot of people have good intentions saying this, often trying to defend the artist from people who think the word “tact” is the past tense of pinning something to a board, but this is a flawed argument.

Let me explain why with a little thought experiment.

So we have two dudes who go to a restaurant. They are celebrating the fact that one of them just reached 90,000 subscribers on YouTube, but that’s irrelevant.

What matters is they order order the special – which this week happens to be vegetable sweet and sour, which is fortunate because dude #2 is a vegetarian and it’s frickin’ awkward to find something for him to eat whenever you go out anywhere not that it frustrates me or anything.

So after we eat the pre-meal bread and the waitress gets the crumbs off the table with the crumb sweeping utensil, we’re all ready to eat our delicious sweet and sour. It arrives and we tuck in and… bleugh. It’s horrible.

Dude #2 gets really angry and starts to complain loudly, saying I DEMAND TO SEE THE CHEF, THIS SWEET AND SOUR IS TOO SWEET AND NOT SOUR ENOUGH AND DOES NOT CONFORM TO MY EXPECTATIONS OF WHAT A SWEET AND SOUR SHOULD BE.

Dude #1 adds that for some reason there’s loads of hair in his meal.

The Chef [quistis with a chef’s hat] then comes out and replies OMGz YOU AREN’T CHEFS YOU CAN’T KNOW WHAT TASTES GOOD, COME BACK WHEN YOU HAVE A RESTAURANT AND THEN MAYBE YOU CAN HAVE AN OPINION.

Regardless of how unnecessarily loudly and offensively dude #2 gets his point across, the Chef is still making a counter-argument that doesn’t make sense.

People know to some extent what they enjoy, even if they have never created it themselves. They know what movies they like even when they haven’t directed one, what pictures look good to them regardless of whether they can draw, and what music they like despite not knowing their Bass from their Bass. [fish from a subwoofer]

Now I’m not saying that everyone’s criticisms are equal – people who have experience with creating and performing music will probably be more knowledgeable with popular opinion on the subject and as such be able to offer more useful suggestions for improvement, for instance.

And I’m not saying you shouldn’t respond to these people; I know from first hand that it’s awesome when someone sticks up for you online, I just suggest that if someone writes a hateful, critical comment, then you reply addressing what they said rather than saying they aren’t entitled to an opinion.

Everyone is entitled to criticise things they don’t like; they only become idiots when they do it in an obnoxious, non-constructive way with no knowledge of the functionality of this [the caps lock key.]

So those are my thoughts, what do you think? Should non-musicians opinions be taken into account when judging music? Share your opinions in the comments. Unless they shouldn’t be taken into account.

Hit like and favourite if this video resonates with you, and hit subscribe to keep up to date with all the new boyinaband videos.

Cheers for watching and have a nice day!

ELECTRONIC MUSIC PUN-ISHMENT

Dave — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 21:12:02 +0000

Czech the second video on Andrew Huang’s channel songstowearpantsto for the rest of the 99 puns!

Video Text:

[David is standing minding his own business]
A: “Boo!”
D: “Eek! You scared me!”
A: “What were you doing yesterday apres-midi?”
D: “I was at a mixer with my stuntman friend”
A: Oh, how is Dynamic Mike?
D: “He attacked me! He set a trap!”
A: “Wow, what happened?”
D: “He punched me and said “You’re a bitch, and I’ll bus’ a cap in your ass.”
A: “I hope you didn’t sustain any injuries.”
D: “They’re minimal – I have a sore tooth, but I can still feel my pulse.
A: “Well at least that’s a sign that you’re ok.”
D: “I think he was on acid, he kept on gabbering on”
A: “What a dick, eh?”
D: “A complete knob. It was almost a homocide.”
A: “Good thing you’ve mastered a few martial arts.”
D: “When he wouldn’t release me I cutoff his arm.”
A: “Now I suppose you have to wave for him”
D: “At least I got my vengeance. He got what he deserved.”
A: “Amen.”
D: “Can I see your new house? I heard it has a garage!”
A: “Shure, have you eaten recently?”
D: “Yes, I ate – oh wait, I just heard my stomach growl – based on that I guess I am.”
A: “Well let’s head over to my pad.”
[we stay in the same position full body, the background changes with a swooshing noise]
D: “Let’s eat a stew, do you want some? Or do you want something else?”
A: “We could have some Fruity Loops if I can find them”
D: “They’re not next to the soup, I saw them near the produce I think…”
A: “How do you prepare triangle sandwiches?”
D: “It’s not very hi-tech – no, just mangle it, chop it and put it on a plate……reverb”
A: “These puns are becoming a bit of a stretch…..time….timestretch.”
D: “Let me just crossfade this broccoli.”
A: “That’s not a pun.”
D: “We need to MPC if we can come up with something really good to beat these.
A: “Well, this is a-”
D: “I gotta go in a bit.”
A: “This is a-”
D: “Would you be able to not do that right now, I have to kick you out soon.”
A: “But this is a-”
D: “…Loaf we can see, I’ll see you later”

Pop singers are Pointless

Dave — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 19:56:56 +0000

Good News for Tutorials!

Dave — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 04:59:02 +0000

Good news, everyone! Today marks the release of a brand new tutorial section on the site where you can submit your own tutorials and categorise them by genre, technique and DAW.

The thinking behind it is that if we all pitch in to make or find tutorials, then categorise them in this part of the site, we’ll have a fantastic resource of tutorials that is really easy to sort. Easier than doing a YouTube or Google search.

You can submit tutorials with the “Submit a tutorial” page, because we don’t mess about when it comes to titling pages. Just paste the youtube URL and any text if you have it, pick the categories it fits and submit it – the mods will then ensure you’re not spamming, and voila! You helped out and the tutorial gets more views, since thousands of people check the tutorial section each day (which is mental!)

We’ll let every tutorial submitted on the site as long as it’s not spam, and to ensure quality in future we’ll make a rating system that removes low-rated tutorials, but that might take a little while to sort out.

Text and video tutorials are welcome – feel free to find video tuts from YouTube and embed them while categorising them properly. Let me know if there are any categories you think need adding – but ideally we want to have only a few, or it’ll get really confusing, and that’s what we’re trying to avoid!

If we keep this simple and fill it with great tutorials, we’ll have a fantastic, easily sortable collection of frickin’ useful stuff.

Let the submitting commence!

Into Your Eyes Remix Composition Competition Winners

Dave — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 18:26:51 +0000

http://www.boyinaband.com/forum – Come hang out on the forum if you’re a musician!

This was a frickin’ nightmare to judge. There were several REALLY good entries that were very close to winning.

Those entries:

Winner: http://www.boyinaband.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=13583
2nd Place: http://www.boyinaband.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=13396
3rd Place: http://www.boyinaband.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=13580

Collab: http://www.boyinaband.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=13381

Special Mentions:

Metal: http://www.boyinaband.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=13002
Funk: http://www.boyinaband.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=13159

Brother Sister Battle Rap

Dave — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 19:06:12 +0000

I felt in a Glitch Hop-y mood and also felt like annoying my Sis, hence this!

Some massive (pun intended) bass going on there!

Into Your Eyes Remix Composition Competition [Closed]

Dave — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 14:19:05 +0000

THIS COMPETITION IS CLOSED NOW! Check out the winners here!

The composition competition is back with the most awesome selection of prizes yet; so dive headfirst into it!

Watch the video:

Listen to the song:

Then here’s how you enter…

To enter:

1. Make your song with the stems (The song is 165bpm) that you can download from here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?8g6ygdo96ge3oup

2. Make a tutorial explaining how you made a part of the remix you’re proud of. If you’re making a video tutorial, try one of the following pieces of free screen capture software:

Camtasia Free Trial: http://www.techsmith.com/download/camtasia/

Other screen capture software:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-screen-capture-utility.htm
http://uk.lifehacker.com/5218155/five-best-screen-capture-tools

3. Upload your song to your Soundcloud account (make one if you don’t already have one)

4. Head over to the boyinaband forum and embed both the song you uploaded to soundcloud and the tutorial (video or text, it’s your choice) into a new topic in the “Into Your Eyes Remix Composition Competition” section.

You can find that forum here:
http://www.boyinaband.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=30

5. Last of all, critique 3 songs in the “Share Your Music” section:
http://www.boyinaband.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=16

Then go have a look at the prizes you could win:

Primeloops Samples
Soundcloud Premium Account
Reason 6
Previous Boyinaband Winner Promo Vid
Korg nanoKontrol 2 and nanoPad 2
Jam: No picture available, but it’s pretty tasty.

Have Fun!

Rules

- The remix must be your own work
- By entering, you allow me to use your song in the promotional video for it
- It must include the vocal stems in a recognisable form
- It must be posted on the forum with the accompanying tutorial.
- Don’t forget to critique 3 other songs after you’ve posted yours
- It can be made with any software or hardware and it can be any genre.
- It must be posted on or before July 12th – that’s the deadline.
- Each song you respond with will count as one entry; you can make as many entries as you want.

Video Text
Hi, I’m Dave from boyinaband.com – and I’m happy to announce the fifth Composition Competition, where you can win frickin’ sweet stuff for producing frickin’ sweet music!

The song we’ll be remixing is “Into Your Eyes” by my band You and What Army. So firstly, listen to the song right here: [insert link to Into Your Eyes] or at the link below, and I’ll link to the vocal stems that you’ll be playing with below.

Any genre of music is fine – Whether you’re into dubstep, hip hop or death metal you’re welcome to enter.

As well as the song, you have to make a tutorial on a part of the production you’re particularly proud of – A cool bass, a sweet lead, how you tricked Kieran into re-recording the chorus and replacing all the lyrics with the word “jawbone” – anything you like.

It can be a text tutorial, a YouTube video tutorial or you can teach a parrot to recite it in a robotic voice. I’ll put links below to screen capture software.

[I recommend the free trial of camtasia if you are doing a video tutorial, or if you’ve already used the trial up and don’t want to buy it just yet, I’ll link to a bunch of other free screen capture programs below:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-screen-capture-utility.htm

http://uk.lifehacker.com/5218155/five-best-screen-capture-tools]

Once you’ve made your song, upload it to soundcloud, then post it on the boyinaband forum under the “Into Your Eyes Remix Composition Competition” section. Include the embedded song and the tutorial in the post. If you went for the parrot tutorial option, squeeze it in through the usb slot, they fit after a while.

And the last thing to do is offer critiques on at least 3 songs in the “Share your music” section. You may want to post one of your songs there too, since the more critiques you post, the more chance you have of getting featured on the front page of that section – everyone on the front page generally gets a crapload of critiques and listens.

And if I do some quick calculations, judging from the average number of responses to the posts, that means the standardised Unit of Measurement a “crapload” is equal to 10.36. We learned something today.

A word of warning about the critiquing part; spammers will be decimated painfully. Don’t be that guy that says “NICE SONG, CHECK OUT MINE.” or we will call upon the mighty banhammer of justice to crush your skull into a thousand pieces.

Judgement

I’ll be judging it with the rest of You And What Army – Do you look forward to doing that Kieran?

I sure do!

It will be judged on:

1. The production quality of the song [How much it sounds like it’s a pro song]
2. The clarity and conciseness of the tutorial [Explain why you do things, but don’t waffle too much]
3. How helpful your critiques were. [specific suggestions for things to try are good]
4. How your track rates on the Frickin’ Sweetometer [somewhere between originality and goodness]

So if you make a frickin’ sweet song but you knock up the tutorial in 2 minutes, you’re probably not going to win.

Prizes

So why should you enter?

My homeslices at Primeloops.com have once again offered some of their awesome packs – The winner gets 3 sample packs of their choice, as well as their new Dubstep Gladiators sample pack, some great drums in there. The two runners up will win a sample pack of their choice each!

Soundcloud.com have offerd a Soundcloud Pro Account for a year to the winner and a lite account for 2nd place. These accounts give you more space, stats and other cool stuff for your soundcloud to help promote your tracks.

And it’s time for the mammoth prize! Queue the epic mammoth soundtrack

Propellerhead have provided a brilliant reason to enter the competition – a copy of the awesome program Reason 6 for the winner. And remember, it gets upgraded for free to Reason 6.5 as soon as they release it, which is frickin’ sweet – they have the whole Rack Extensions feature in that upgrade which looks insanely cool.

Also, the winner will get this jar of homemade plum jam, and to clarify this is not at all a ploy to get rid of it because my Dad made too much.

As well as all that, I want to try something to see what happens – one wildcard entry of my choice, not necessarily the winner, will collaborate with me on a video for my channel. Maybe a song, maybe something else – either way, you will be credited and linked to and it’s a chance for you to expose yourself to quite a lot of people. Well, that sounds a bit dodgy, and I doubt we’ll do anything like that for the video since I want to keep my partnership, but you know what I mean.

Finally, The winner will also be promoted in a video on the boyinaband channel as the competition winner, with a link to their song and (if they have one) their youtube channel. Both runners up will also get mentions and links as well. Check out the last video to get an idea of what it’ll look like

For more info on all those prizes, the rules, the stems and a terrible pun, check the description below.

I’ll be releasing my live performance remix of the track in the next few weeks.

I can’t wait to hear what you come up with. Download those stems, have fun, and if you want to bribe Kieran into recording vocals for you, he’ll do pretty much anything for green tea, which I think is ridiculous because it’s basically water.

Cheers for watching and have a nice day!

It’s all about the music.

Dave — Thu, 24 May 2012 00:16:29 +0000

Video Text

Hi! I’m Dave from boyinaband.com

This week I wanted to address people who claim that “it’s all about the music.”

You know, the kind of guys who, when presented with an artist that has a strong image will immediately discount the music, regardless of how much they enjoy it, purely based on the fact that they’ve put effort into their image, saying something like “They’re trying too hard, they should just focus on their songs; it’s all about the music, man.”

And then will proceed to go to their favourite clothes store to dress up their exterior in an attempt to attract more attention to themselves.

Time for a thought experiment.

I call this one [insert bastardised scientific theory name to do with multiple universes or images]

So we’ve got this cat, who has just released a hip hop album.

Two dudes are watching the cat’s music video on TV and agree “This is a pretty good song, that cat is talented.”

Later on, the dudes are listening to the song on its own and have a pleasant enough experience listening to it.

Now let’s transition to a parallel universe in which everything is the same, except the cat had decided to put a bit more effort into his visuals. Taking note of said visual aspect, dude #1 happens to mention “Wow, that cat is cool, I wish I was as cool as that cat!” but dude #2 gets thoroughly indignant, saying “This is terrible, it’s just some cat trying too hard, it totally ruins the integrity of the music.”

but as dude #1 listens to the song later, he has that cool image mentally associated with that cool beat. As such, he has a stronger emotional response to the song and enjoys it more.

Now in our third and final parallel universe, as dude #1 watches the video, dude #2 picks up a magazine and is shocked to find out that “That cat killed a guy.”

All of a sudden this cat’s music seems much more intense, and as he listens later, Dude #1 is filled with a sense of horrified amazement at the actions of the feline emcee, resulting in an even stronger emotional attachment to the song than in either of the previous two parallel universes.

If by getting into the story and visuals you find more enjoyment from the music, what’s wrong with it? And unlike things like politics and religion, no-one gets hurt if you suspend belief with musical imagery! Well, except the guy that cat murdered.

Think about when a song reminds you of a person because you used to listen to it with them, or when you are reminded of a holiday because you heard that song on the radio during that trip – it’s the same principle of an outside influence giving you a more intense emotional attachment to the song, but people don’t say that “ruins the integrity of the music.” If the artist wants to utilise imagery to enhance their music in that way, why shouldn’t they?

In some cases, image does take precedence. I imagine Marylin Manson wouldn’t be where he is today if he decided to dress in his favourite pair of jeans and novelty T-Shirt – the intense image he has created around his music makes it feel even more exciting, like that music is an insight into his warped style.

Another example that I find fascinating is the air of mystery some artists create – Daft Punk, Deadmau5, those kinds of artists, with their masked image – it inspires people to talk about the artist and again, the music becomes more exciting because if you are willing to suspend belief, you can almost imagine that a pair of robots or a zombie rodent from the internet has created them.

Then there’s the “authenticity” that the “it’s all about the music” crowd advocate – the artist that made the music entirely on their own. Ironically, this is an image itself whether intentional or not; if these people listen to an artist thinking “this is so cool, they did this entirely themselves!” BAM- they’re allowing something other than the music colour their appreciation.

But that’s okay! Our brains naturally associate images and ideas with sounds; we’re psychologically wired for it. This is why you’ll remember the alphabet to the tune of twinkle twinkle little star, why people over the age of 22 will associate this sound with a combination of nostalgia and frustration (modem sound), and why when people hear this *wind chimes/harp* it feels perfectly natural to see this image *fairy* but perhaps not this image *something inappropriate*

One way to think about it, if you hear this *seaside wave sound* you’ll probably end up thinking of something like this *beach* – the sound itself isn’t interesting, but the image it triggers is. Someone who lived at the top of a mountain their whole life who had never seen the sea would wonder why the hell you were enjoying listening to that noise – the mental imagery can play a huge part in your appreciation of sound.

What I’m getting at is that if you’re actively trying to ignore your ability to associate imagery with music, it is a huge wasted opportunity to feel even stronger emotions when you listen to songs.

So try and open yourself up to the over-the-top braggadocio of popular hip hop, the futuristic imagery of a lot of electronic dance music, or the pristine-perfect production values associated with pop. If you don’t immediately discount the culture associated with the music, you might find you enjoy it in an entirely different way.

Those are my thoughts, what do you think when it comes to music and image? Whether you’re pro or anti-image, I’d love to hear what you think in the comments.

Don’t forget to hit like and favourite if this video resonates with you, and subscribe for weekly boyinaband videos.

Cheers for watching, and have a nice day!

MOTHER’S DAY (Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.)

Dave — Sun, 13 May 2012 12:32:07 +0000

It’s Mother’s Day! But don’t worry if you forgot – I’ve got you covered:

http://soundcloud.com/boyinabanddotcom/boyinaband-mum-n-bass - Personalisable version

http://www.facebook.com/boyinabandcom – Share this video on facebook with the little “share” button, post a comment with your name and I’ll record it and send you a link in the comments.

Happy mother’s day!

VIDEO TEXT

Hi! I’m Dave from boyinaband.com

To all my American homeslices, if you’re anything like me you probably totally forgot that it’s mothers day today – in all honesty I forgot this year when it was the English one back in March. But don’t fret! I’ve got you covered.

I was thinking; “What do mothers really like?” and then it hit me – Intense drum and bass! So I’ve made a short track called “Mum n Bass” which you can download and using your audio recording program of choice, overlay your embarassing childhood name just before the drop. So it’ll be like:

[Show the track from mothers day build to “To mom, happy mothers day from, “YOUR NAME HERE”] *DROP DANCE*

In fact, for consistancy, if you go to my facebook page today, share this video on your page and then comment said name on my status, I’ll record myself saying your childhood name so you can have the same voice on both the build and the drop.

If they wonder where you got the voice samples from, say it’s a VST called “British-Voice-o-Matic” or something.

Burn it to a CD and give it to your mom, I guarantee she will be thoroughly appreciative. Warning: this is not a guarantee. Even if you’re not American, you can do what I’m gonna do and say something like “I…uh… thought celebrating it on this day would be more of a surprise! I know how you like surprises.” – she’ll totally buy it.

So free download link in the description, and head over to my facebook if you want me to record your embarassing childhood name for the drop – I’ll be uploading them throughout the day.

Check out the song here

Don’t forget to hit subscribe for weekly boyinaband videos if you haven’t already. If you have, treat yourself to a smoothie today. You earned it.

Cheers for watching and have a nice day!