The Best Ways A Local Band Can Seem More Professional (On The Cheap)

If you’re in a local band, you know how hard it can be to get people to care about your band. You pound the pavement putting up flyers. You send event invites to all of your Facebook friends and spam them with Soundcloud links. You tell all of your coworkers that you’re in a band. 

And after all of this, you might get a few people to actually check out your page or go to a show. And if your band looks amateurish or sloppy, there’s a good chance that they’ll go right back to ignoring you.

It’s not necessarily your fault. Most people are used to their music being highly produced. Local music can be a little rough around the edges for their tastes.

But there are ways you can make your band seem more professional—even without a big studio budget behind you.

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Why I Quit The Music Industry To Join My Local Music Scene

In the spring of 2009, I was a college senior staring down the barrel of graduation, and I was clueless.

I knew just one thing: I wanted to make music. 

So I did the best thing I knew. I moved to Chicago, where I knew a few other musicians who had been making a living. I moved in with some friends in Wicker Park, built a home studio, and got to work.

I spent my days rushing across town to get the best busking spots, making phone calls to label reps, promoters, and distributors, and playing shows. In what little free time I had, I worked on my album. After a while, I had to get a day job to afford to live in the city, which made my music routine almost unmanageable. 

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Top Ten Metal Records For People Who Don't Think They Like Metal

Heavy metal is a rich genre, but to the casual listener, it often just sounds like a bunch of noise. The blistering riffs, machine-gun drums, and screaming vocals can send many people running as far away as they can. And for a long while, that included me. But, through a fortuitous string of events, I discovered that I love metal, with all of its raw power and crushing beauty. But there are many metal records that offer all of the same heaviness with a healthy dose of conventional beauty. If you’ve been curious about metal, here are ten albums that offer all the power of heavy metal without all the chaos.

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