Music Production Midi Templates

At www.BeatElite.com we specialise in creating music production midi templates for producers of all skill levels and from many popular and electronic dance (EDM) genres.

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Go the Distance! Tips When You’re on the Road

I’ve created a whole series of articles filed under Tips for Touring, which you can pull up here.

I recently returned from doing a national tour myself. We crammed nearly 10,000 miles worth of driving in about 15 days. Most tours involve intense amounts of driving and they’re often done on older, less reliable vehicles. So before you undertake an ambitious series of out of town gigs of your own, it’s best to know a few things that can save you from disaster.

Here are some basic long distance driving tips when it comes to the road:

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When Running A Record Label, Don’t Forget To Budget For Recoveries

Nothing is more fulfilling than opening your record label, getting your artist in the studio, laying down some tracks and mastering your final project. You’ve gotten investors involved who really believe in your project as much as you do and they’re putting a significant amount of money behind your company for both production and marketing. The only uncomfortable part about the whole process is that they have accountants, business managers and financial gurus working for them behind the scenes and they need you to put together a budget

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Life as a roadie

If you love music, becoming a roadie can be one of the most fun and exciting jobs you can have. In addition to traveling to all sorts of cities around the world and interacting with fans, you get to hear live music for free. These benefits, however, come at something of a cost. Setting up all the equipment is hard work and it can be difficult keeping up with your dental and medical care while traveling every other day.

As a roadie, you take care of all of the heavy lifting that goes into putting on a concert, which can be difficult and dangerous. You move equipment, hang up lights, set up and work from scaffolding, move cables and any other tasks related to a specific concert. Being a roadie requires a lot of physical strength, stamina and care as occupational hazards are more common. Dangers, although extreme, include falling from a platform or being electrocuted when setting up lighting, amps or other high-voltage equipment. The most common hazard is likely related to the weight of the items being moved. Given the rush involved with setting up and breaking down shows, the risk of hurting or overexerting yourself is heightened. Muscle strains and sprains, hernias and even dehydration are common results of overexertion.

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Using a reference track during mixing

If you are a musician who is also doing your own mixing and recording you are likely to need as much help as possible achieving a good mix down. One way of understanding how your mixing is holding up against professionally engineered records is to listen against a reference which you admire the sound of within the genre of music you work with. There are a few pointers which can make this much more successful.

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What is a Booking Agent?

Playing live is one of the most important things you will ever do as an artist, there is no denying it. It’s where your reputation is built as an artist, where you gain new fans, how you can create a buzz – gigging frequently and to a high standard will set you apart from the crowd. There will be a point in your career when you have built a large enough fanbase to start headlining your own shows, begin to start looking further than your local clubs for shows, and maybe even start touring. This is when a booking agent comes in.

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How about Piano-Olympics?

A new free olympic-themed piano app let’s you learn&play national anthem and represent your country playing them against people from all over the world. It’s the world’s first global music competition app - activated also by a real piano! Piano Summer Games by JoyTunes. Free for iPad/iPhone/iPod for the duration of the Olympics.

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Recording Vocals Like A PRO In Your HOME Studio

Anyway, I’ve got a good one for you today. It encapsulates almost a decade of vocal recording and endless experimentation, and shares what few golden nuggets I can deliver to you as a result of my experiences and learning.

The problem with recording vocals in a professional or home studio is… Well, just that… The act of recording vocals.

There is nothing natural about it. The human voice is the most complex and finicky instrument there is, and it takes quite a bit of technical outsmarting and finesse to effectively capture an accurate representation of the audible vibrations emitted from an individuals’ vocal chords.

Unlike recording a guitar, acoustic OR electric, a piano, or almost any other instrument, vocal recording presents a few unique challenges, namely, the critical nuances of the tracking process in regards to the direct effect on the captured performance.

I’ve written lots more technical and procedural articles on Vocal Recording Tips here.

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SoundCloud Powered Résumé for Music Professionals

Music professionals often find traditional résumés inadequately showcase their talents, instead having to link to content across the web to show off their skills. But now with professional networking site Zerply they can connect their SoundCloud audio tracks to their digital profiles to create an audio portfolio alongside their résumé.

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Protecting Your Stage Name

“Why do I need a service mark?” you ask. Well, for many of you, a registered service mark will be one of the most important things you possess as an artist. You want to protect and own your rap name don’t you Parrapa? Of course you do! Then, you need a service mark! Why is it so important that you register your name? Because you don’t want anyone to grab it. You put a lot of work into coming up with you name, and it is your brand and identity. As we’ve mentioned elsewhere on this site, your brand is very important. Don’t just take our word for it. Ask a few famous people in hip-hop how crucial owning the rights to your rap name can be. Platinum star and uber talented artist Soulja Boy can tell ‘em a thing or two about it. The world renowned DJ Drama is also familiar.

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Knowing Your Limits With Social Media Promotion

It is not a profound statement for me to say that trying to promote yourself as a new musician in the quick-to-shudder market of today is frustratingly difficult. You’re exhausting many hours trying to find ways to get out there, and maybe sometimes it works. You’re getting everything online that you think you should: a Facebook fan page, a Twitter, a ReverbNation site - all of the goods. 

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Bob Lefsetz Tuned Into My Wavelength Today

He said ‘…every great artist will testify about frustration and insight, and if you haven’t been tempted to give up, your work is not worth a damn.’ In the article ‘Chance Favors The Prepared’, he talked about Jonah Lehrer’s book, “Imagine: How Creativity Works.”

I will probably never read that book. But I’ve lived it. In 2011, when I wrote songs everyday, I also tried to learn how to navigate the music industry.

I wanted to know how to properly register a song in all the appropriate agencies.

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Zen and the Fine Art of Perpetual Inspiration

The demands on our creative energies is high. The need for our content and ideas has never been greater. We know we need to write more, practice more, paint more, produce more and create more… but for many of us, all we have is a deficit of inspiration.

Where do you come up with all of your ideas? 
Where do you find your inspiration?
How the hell can you be consistently creative?

Embracing the Art of Zen can help.

Zen can be approximately translated as “absorption” or a “meditative state”. 

Once you allow yourself to be in a contemplative and reflective state, you will find inspiration literally everywhere.

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Content vs. Music

I began a little social experiment on June 1 this year to see what would happen if I posted to my website every day.  Random stuff videos, freestyles, thoughts, etc.  I think of the 150 posts I’ve made since then one was a formal release, my traffic is up 1,000% and I’m still investing on avg only 1 hour a day into my website.  What I’ve come to realize is fans don’t neccesarily want music, they really just want content.

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