This is the latest song I have finished recording. In this series of videos I go through how I put this track together in Reason 6, and go through all the parts, including:

– Synths
– Rhythm Section
– Guitars
– Vocals
– Mixdown

As usual, if you have any questions, leave it in the comments on the video you want to know more about and I will do my best to answer them.

Take care

CW

But what have these changes wrought? What are artists, both signed through the traditional channels, and those working in the new independent streams missing? To answer this we need a brief recap on how the music industry worked.

Ye Olde Days

Back in the days before the singer/songwriter, the industry was very much split between artists and composers. Composers would create music, and then the artist would add their talent and record the songs ready for distribution. There had to be aq conduit between the two, and this is where the A & R (Artist and Repertoire) man came in. The A & R man, employed by the record company, was would match the songs from the songwriters, to the best artist to record the track.

As the lines between singer and songwriter started to blur, the A & R reps job changed. No longer were they just matching talent, but they developed the role into one of nurturing. They would find talent, and mold it, make it the best it could be before present material to the record companies.

The Decline of the A & R Role

By the mid 80′s, the role of the A & R rep started to become nothing more than finding talent that sounds like other popular talent, thanks to the corporatisation of the music industry. But without a few notable exceptions that nurtured talent and stood by them, we wouldn’t have had acts like Nirvana, Guns n Roses, Bruce Springsteen, Kiss, Bob Dylan and more. It was their A & R reps that keep supporting them when the record labels did not initially.

So Who Is Nurturing You?

In the world of the independent, online savvy musician, who offers the support, advice and guidance to an artists that was once provided by the A & R rep? Who lets a musician know when their work is really at the level to be successful?

Feedback is one of the key requirements to become better at any subject or art. Practice makes perfect, sure, but criticism can be helpful I opening one’s eyes to other details, other possibilities. So who can do this for you as an independent artist? Why not your target audience?

Use Your Audience to Tailor to Your Audience

The internet is fast. Extremely fast. Think about how fast memes spread, how fast videos can go viral. The same goes for feedback. Feedback can be almost instantaneous. I recently was working on a new track, and posted the song as a work in progress on Soundcloud. I then shared it on my Facebook Page, my personal Facebook profile, and over at the Propellerheads forum.

Almost instantly, I got some great feedback such as:

I made a few tweaks to the song and the mix based off the feedback, and ended up much happier with the final result. I had been focusing on so many different areas of the song, that I needed the outside perspective to find the things I just couldn’t see for looking. It’s the sort of advice that would have been dished out by an A & R rep when the song was to be handed in.

It’s A Different World Now

Musicians need to embrace this new immediacy with fans. There are already well established artists doing it, keeping their fans in the loop. Linkin Park, Trent Reznor, Devin Townsend – these artists keep their fans involved in numerous ways, from sneak peaks, studio footage, offering stems for remixing, and by requesting feedback. For independent artists, keeping your fans involved, feeling like they are part of a movement behind you is extremely important. And keeping them involved will give you the outside perspective you need to become a better musician.

The old A & R is dead. Long live the net aware A & R. You need them more than you think.

Have a listen and let me know what you think.

Now you may be wondering why there are no vocals. Basically I don’t have any lyrics for this yet, and I have backed myself into a corner a bit. It was originally recorded with all the guitars tuned down half a step, then down to dropped D. It didn’t have the grunt I was after, so I used the audio transpose feature of Reason to drop it ANOTHER whole step, which pretty much puts it out of my vocal range. I’ll work something out.

Have a listen and let me know what you think.

Low volume vocals sounded ok, but higher volumes really bounced around the room and back into the mic. Not the desired the result. So what was needed was a way to cut down either the reflections in the room, or stop my voice from bouncing around in the first place.

I don’t have a dedicated “studio” room, so treating the room acoustically was not feasible. That leaves stopping my voice from reflecting in the first place. I looked into the acoustic shields available online but after reading some reviews, it turns out they may not be the best option. So what I needed was a vocal booth.

I don’t have money to burn, so I needed to make something on the cheap. And cheap it is. But the end result works a treat, so I thought I would share how I made it.

Step 1 : Frame

I’m no carpenter, so I need to use components I could just put together. Hello PVC piping! I grabbed a bunch of 1m long, 20mm diameter pipes, and a bunch of elbow and 3-way/90 connectors. The problem occurred when trying to make the corner and vertical connections.

It required the connection of two joins, which was easily done but using a small off-cut to join the connections.

Here is what the frame looked like when I put it together.

Step 2 : Sound Insulation

How do you insulate the booth on a budget? Surprisingly easy. take teh following ingredients:

1 x Old duvet from the spare bed
1 x furniture moving blanket
3 x clamps ( I would have used more, but Bunnings sold out)

To give some extra coverage, I doubled up the duvet at the back and clamped it, so directly behind the mic there is three layers of material deadening the sound.

As you can see, it looks ugly as hell, but it sure works.

What I would like to do is get some more coverage on the bottom half, and some more clamps to secure more tightly. All up, I spent about $60 dollars, and it has been well worth the effort.

I had planned on getting right back into music around this time last year. I had been making time for it, planning, getting ready. But I’m not making a living with music yet, and I have a job I need to pay the bills. I do that job very well, and at the start of the year I got a promotion. A big promotion. I didn’t have much choice but to take it.

And with that, there went all my free time.

I was working 10 to 14 hours a day, on call on weekends and after hours, travelling interstate, music just could not fit in.

About 2 and a half months ago, I was demoted due to policy changes in the company I worked for, however I still had a higher salary. That pretty much made me the number one target for staff to get rid of. I worked through it for a bit and decided, with a little help from a persistant back problem, that it was time to move on.

Fast forward six weeks or so, and here I am, and likely to have a new job in a few weeks. More regular hours, more spare time, same pay, so more money to spend on new music producing equipment.

In my time off, I have been learning how to record with Reason 6, and have nearly completed three tracks. I’ve also got some video editing software so i can do some screen casts of my recording sessions and share my studio experiences with everyone. I’ll also post about trying to break it as an independent artist, and the resources I come across that I find to be useful to anyone trying to accomplish the same as myself.

If anyone reading this has any suggestions or would like to know anything in particular, you can leave a comment or go through the contact page. If this is your first visit, or the first thing you read here, I hope you stick around and join in.

Until later, take care.

CW

Sanyo, who make arguable the best batteries in the world have realised there is a sizable niche for high capacity batteries in the world of musicians, and have released the Eneloop Pedal Juice Rechargeable 9v Power Supply. This is a small, stompbox sized device designed to bridge the gap between battery power and mains power.

The idea is a simple one. Charge up the Pedal Juice, plug your gear into it and have the benefits of mains but with the portability and ground loop free-ness of battery. Sanyo claim that the Pedal Juice can power a single 9v pedal for 50 hours on one charge, and that is quite a feat. So I decided to test it out.

Following the instructions, I charged the device for four hours. This is where I had my first problem with the device. The unit I was shipped only contained a US adapter. I’m sure this is just because of the test unit I received and that retail boxes will have region specific adapters, but it was a little annoying. Thankfully I had a great multi region adapter handy that I could use.

The next problem is not really a fault with the unit itself but a standards issue. The Pedal Juice comes with a nice daisy chain power cable that lets you plug in five devices. However I have a few pedals that require a different jack. Again, I have adapters for this issue, but it would have been nice to seen this taken into account in the boxed unit.

Apart from these issues, things went smoothly. I plugged everything in and hooked up all my pedals. For the record, I connected an MXR Phase 90, Ibanez Digital Delay, Tech 21 XXL, Behringer Tremolo and Behringer Tuner. The first thing you notice is there is no line noise, the ground loop is gone. I also found that even in a loop free environment, my pedals effects sounded a little crisper, which I think is due to the constant nature of the power coming over direct DC power rather than drawing from a 9V battery.

With the five pedals on the entire time I let the unit run out of juice. I was surprised how long I actually got. With Sanyo claiming 50 hours for one 9V device, I got a surprising 12 hours with all five pedals attached. That is quit a good effort.

If there is one thing I wish it did, it would be to support 12V devices. Although it claims to handle multi effects, in reality a lot of those types of devices required more than the 9V supplied by the Pedal Juice. I don’t have any around I can test it with so I can’t be sure if it would be up to the task.

All things considered, I think this is a great product. Once I am playing live again with a full rig, this will definitely be taking a spot on my pedal board.

I would like to thank Sanyo for supplying me with this unit to test.

Welcome to the new, improved and now definitely active Chris Watson Music website. Finally, I have gotten off my arse and will be attempting to do what I really want to do: make music. As soon as I finish writing this post, I will be heading over to my other long term site, GuitarToyBox, to close up shop for the forseeable future. If you want to know why I am going to stop there for the time being feel free to head over, but this post is about this site, and what I want to do with it.

I’m trying something very different here. I’ve been inspired by sites such as SellABand, where artists can gain financial support from their fans to achieve what they want to out of a career in music. But of all those sites I have looked and and investigated, I found too many catches, too many loopholes for the artist to miss out. That is why I have decided to do this myself. I’m hoping I can use this site to help me raise the money I need to do what I really want to do.

I know it’s a novel concept, but what have I got to lose? Nothing! If people come here, and want to help me out, I will be highly appreciative and humbled. If they chose not to, then I’m ok with that too. But I’m hoping there is a small part in everyone, a part that one day had a dream that slipped through their fingers that knows that feeling of lose, and is compelled to do something, even the smallest of things, to try and help someone else avoid that feeling.

So this site will be about music. Making music, performing music, appreciating music. I’ll be trying to post a new video of some description each week (first one will be tomorrow), and that video may be a performance, a tutorial of some kind, or even a product review from any companies that may help me out (already have a few reviews ready to do). I’ve also got some more photos to put up as well, but as it stands now most of this site is complete. It’s good enough to go.

I hope to finally achieve what my heart desires with this site, as well as other outlets in the social media sphere. If you would like to follow my story you can subscribe to the RSS feed here, become a fan on Facebook, check out my profiles on ReverbNation and MySpace, or follow me on Twitter, whatever suits you best.

I hope you enjoy the ride.

This was meant to be a duo gig, with Ian from Sledge as well. But the previous night Ian’s guitar took a tumble, and snapped in two. So the whole show was left to me.

This was taken on an AWFUL cheap digital camera, so I apologies for the quality, or lack there of.