How Musicians Can Save Money When Buying Instruments

In tighter financial times everyone would like to save some money on their musical purchases. This guide can help you save some money when shopping for musical equipment. So lets say you are about to buy some new instruments or some studio equipment, that can cost serious money when you opt for the best quality items. We are currently in a recession and it seems that there is some positive economic news of late on both sides of the big pond and that’s great. However most of us still need to watch the pennies and cents and there are ways that you can ensure you are getting the best possible deals on your equipment purchases. We can use the current situation to our advantage, as both musicians and retailers are experiencing the same economic conditions.

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Cures for writer's block

Curing writer’s block is a common theme for musicians, authors, artists and creative people in general. I am going to provide some unusual means of getting some inspiration back for musicians specifically.

 
As a creative individual from time to time there will be difficulties in keeping the creative juices flowing from a music perspective. In many instances, music is inspired from feelings and the conveyance of that emotion. This is not just restricted to vocal music as instrumental pieces are also often born of a musicians’ head space with the intended goal of evoking similar sensations in the listener.

It makes sense to ensure you have means of refreshing your existential experience in order to have a ground for the expression of new ideas, sounds, arrangements and melody which are capable of proliferating your feelings through the music you compose.

Here are some ideas on how to refresh your musical head space.

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Track names in iTunes

Once I deliver a master disk to a client I often receive a call or email asking a common question. I am often asked how to get the track titles and artist details to be listed in the iTunes application. Contrary to popular belief iTunes does not retrieve track names from the CD itself. Red Book CD’s do have the capability to contain sub code data such as CD TEXT for track names, artist etc. These are pre defined fields within the specification that will accept alpha numeric data for the track names and artist, amongst other details. However, iTunes does not get this information from the disk itself. Instead it accesses an online internet database (Gracenote Media Database) from which it retrieves that information. here follows a quick guide to inputting that data. The following information is relevant as of iTunes version 10.6.1.7

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Music mixing tips

Mixing is where it all comes together whether you are a band or electronic musician it is an important stage. As a band you you might mix during a separate session with some other band members or as an electronic musician you may well mix as you produce a track. In any event some useful tips follow for getting an improved mix down.

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