3 Secrets to a "Hit" Song.

One of the debates that music lovers of all levels often hold is "what it is good music?"
Its easy to reference Coletrane, Mick Jagger, Tito Puente, or Michael Jackson. The impact their music
had on our culture is felt decades later and they will remain, even if only as obscure samples in the hits of the future (sans Shakira, Pitbull, and Kanye West.)

The question is what exactly makes a song "good?" While this is a somewhat abstract question likened to that of comparing a Monet to a Picasso, we all know a bad song when we hear one.
But if bad songs are so transparent why do tracks like "All Gold Everything," "Baby (Bieber) and "Laffy Taffy" hold a stage at all in our mind?

The fact is that it is very difficult to single out what makes a single stand out. But we can probably agree on these three important traits:

• Catchy

• Simplicity

• Emotion

   Most of the songs we consider memorable, even the ones mentioned above have a catchy element to them. Whether its "popped a molley Im sweatin' wooooo" or "In a gadda-da-vita" certain elements make a song catchy. 
  
  
  Repetition works well in a lot of these cases because if the hook is catchy enough our own mind will repeat it when we are dazing off not even thinking about what we are repeating.
  In a lot of the latest hip hop songs the adlibs on the vocals are mere repetitions of what the main vocal is. This is likely for the same reason. It helps memorization, and we love to recite a song when we know the lyrics. Its a rewarding experience specially when we need to let go and enjoy a song.
  
  
  Simplicity is another piece of the puzzle which is often over looked. If I say Beethoven, then say: "tah-tah-tah-taaaaa!" you can fill in the rest. That's because the simplicity of this cadence when combined with repetition (which this classic masterpiece is a great example of) makes a piece easier to follow and swallow. 
  
  
  Emotion is the reason behind music, it is art, and art is meant to touch or convey emotion. Whether its the angst and anger that results from despair, in an environment of urban crime as evident in Trap Music. The ectasy and challenges of being in a passionate relationship with whom it seems is the only person that could ever fill that void, or the collage of percussion instruments swaying in between velvety horns as they move us on the dance floor. Without emotion music fails completely. 
  
  
  So while we may argue on what is good music and what it not, we can agree that we all experience different emotions, my mother used to say "para los gustos se hicieron los colores" colors were made for different tastes. This is more true in music than in anything else. We can all be glad that everyday we have even more choices on what to listen to, how to listen to it, and what to listen on. 
  
  
  And here some of the Greatest Songs of All Time, Enjoy:
  
  
  
  

   

Why you should hate "Beats by Dre."

Marketing is a powerful tool that is responsible for the success of our favorite products. Sometimes we the consumers can be programmed into thinking that a product is more than it is, simply by how it is presented. I have no quarrels with innovative marketing departments, specially when they are introducing or selling a quality product. While I have seen many fad products come and go Beats by Dre are by far one of those that make my list of misleading and "hype" products.


The marketing used to sell Beats by Dre is a combination of movie, commercial, and music video placements. Dr Dre even wears them in "Three Kings" ft Rick Ross, Drake and Jay-Z.
His line "listen to this beat on my headphones" is a pretty transparent message which he obviously wants us to take seriously.

Let me preface by saying that I am a Dr. Dre fan,
he is one of those producers I still respect and looked up to growing up. However, Beats by Dre are SUB PAR headphones at best. While the love of bass is one that I share with many hip hop heads these headphones go beyond representing pleasing bass response.  The Beats Solo represent the prominent bass frequency (at about 120 Hz)
as almost 3 times as loud. This may seem like a good idea, but something happens to your music and ears when you boost bass like this.

Most bass heavy music (hip hop, dance, dubstep, etc) is mixed to take into consideration the importance of bass in the track. As a matter of fact a lot of money is spent paying mix engineers to balance these songs and make sure the bass sits right in the mix. When you boos t bass this drastically you are going to "mud," or hide the clarity of the mix. This means the shine will be lost (high frequencies are masked by the harmonics of the bass for you engineers) and intelligibility in the vocals will be compromised. At first the bass is fun but after listening to them for any length of time you will experience ear fatigue. This should be the least of your worries. Studies show that prolonged exposure to bass frequencies will result in hearing loss. In order to better hear the highs of the song you will turn up the volume even more, further ruining the little hairs that send the acoustic signals to your brain.

So many teenagers and kids are using these now, it goes without saying that they have an even higher risk of hearing loss as they will be exposed to this ear abuse for more years. The more they lose, the more volume they need, you can imagine the rest.

While Beats by Dre look great, and will also make you fashionably relevant among your peers, not only will you have over spent on headphones (given the quality) but you wont hear those of us that know better, comment on how bad we feel that you do not know any better.

 Here is a a frequency response chart for beats compared to another pair in the same price range. Notice the extreme dip around 8k in the Solo and the missing frequencies around 16k. While this is normal in headphones both Beats models suffer more from this deficiency. In addition when purchasing either model you get very different sound representation.

Needless to say, Beats by Dre are a "hype" product and are overpriced. So what headphones should you listen on? There are a lot of options, but there are few winners.
Monster does not have a history for creating good headphone technology or electronics(ask an audio professional, they may be good on a consumer level, they are often scoffed at by experienced audio engineers). Audio Technica in the other hand, is one of the leaders of the pack. Not only do they create great headphones, but some of the industries favorite microphones as well (At-4040 AT-4033, and AT-4020).

Here is a great set for almost ONE THIRD the price of Beats. In addition they sound at least twice as good. They are the AT-HM50 Professional Studio Monitors:

Check them out on Amazon for yourself, it is no surprise that they have such great reviews on Amazon, I would never buy any other headphones than these. At under 125$ you wont regret trading your beats in for a set of these. You can thank me later, Ill actually be able to hear you.

---Find them here: AT Professional Headphones-----

Why everyone is dumping MP3s and buying CDs.

Before 2001 I used to wear a backpack even when it had no books. I wasnt a backpacker, I just loved to listen to a lot of music. I could never decide  what CDs to take in my Sony walkman CD player so I took as many as my impulsiveness demanded. Those days are now over and the MP3 has taken the forefront in our music listening ventures. Usually, when new technology takes front seat it is because it is significantly better. In this case the better comes in the form of convenience  A small MP3 player could carry our entire CD collection, much more than a backpack ever could. 

The Problem with convenience is that it often comes at a price. Most times when we are trading something of good quality for something of poor quality, but when it comes to sound it was easy for us to be fooled. Sound is by nature an abstract concept to most and subjective to others. In the excitement of storing as many songs as our iPods would allow we did even noticed the trade-off. The truth is that MP3s come with a trade off. If MP3s were cars they would be the Pintos of the lot. Wavs and AIFFs are the Cadillacs are Mercedes, and you shouldnt settle for less. 

When a file is compressed to an MP3 an algorithm calculates which are the least important of the frequencies and removes them. This is the simple way to put it and I have created a file for you to listen to that will help demonstrate the difference.

(This will work best on headphones)

I have separated the Left and Right of this next song from Nas’ Illmatic album. The left side is an MP3 and the Right side is the Wav. See if you can tell the difference specially in the shine or highs of the track.

The MP3 sound significantly different when listened to this way. With devices holding much more information now it is very easy to rip your own library to your device using iTunes or Windows Media Player (in lossless format) and load a few albums at a time to your device.

listen/download the audio file here

5 ways to fail as an Independent Artist

This post will surely ring true to anyone who has worked in the Music industry for any considerable amount of time. As a matter of fact, you might have noticed some of these things just from watching some of your friends (at least on Facebook) do the same.

A few decades ago (the 90s) it was very expensive to record  a song or produce an album. In addition home recording was still in its infancy to many of this generation, even then, gear was expensive and very difficult to use. Things have changed now and we see A LOT of new bands, rappers, and producers have popped up everywhere.

While we may enjoy supporting our friends we may find it hard to when they are constantly barraging us with half completed work and unfinished material. In other instances your friend may be trying to convince you to come to a show, even though youve never heard them even mention they were musicians until recently.

There is nothing wrong with this renewed growth in musicians, bands, and producers, but we all know they cant all be successful, and sometimes those with talent and actual potential get thrown in the pile with those that will almost surely never make it.

So here I present you the "How to Fail as an Independent Artist" list. Feel free to change this to the "Never do the following" list if you take yourself seriously as an artist:

Constantly flood your wall with unprofessional work.

While you may be exited to share your latest track with the rest of the world, no one wants to hear distorted vocals, or muddy mixes. We all listen to a lot of professionally finished music ALL THE TIME. So even though your work may be conceptually and musically appealing our ears will hate it and we wont know why. Its the small things we cant put our fingers on. Atleast have someone professionally mix your track. You want people to take you serious, then be serious and use a professional. If you were SERIOUSLY trying to become a professional boxer, would you trust yourself to train you, or would you seek a good trainer before being thrown in the ring?

Be unprepared for sessions, be late also.

Ive heard many managers, engineers, and producers, complain in the studio about how such and such artist would be great if they had good work ethic. Others show up to a session with a mess of loose leaf lyrics, and worn out from a late night before. If your not prepared to succeed, be prepared to fail.

Its easy right, so dont work hard.

Talented individuals beware, as we are the ones who most often fall into this trap. Talent can blind us into thinking hard work is unnecessary. If you want to be a master at something practice and work hard. Often I hear people say their "hustling" or "grinding." This couldn't be farther from the truth if your not doing something daily to develop your art form. Write, write, then practice, practice and practice some more.

Don't tell your friends, dont even put yourself out there.  

Just as bad as flooding your friends is never letting anyone know what you do. If you play guitar, you should be the first person your friends think about if someone asks if they know a guitar player. Sometimes people are afraid to share what they do because they are afraid to find out they aren't talented enough to be successful. While I don't believe in letting others opinions stop you from doing what you want, wouldn't you want to know if your wasting your time as soon as possible? Well if you have honest friends you will find out quick enough if you put yourself out enough.

Nobody cares about integrity so don't display any.

In the words of Tony Montana "all I have are my words and my balls and I don't break them for nobody." Is your word BOND. Are you there when you say you will? Do you cancel sessions, practices, and projects because you over commit? We've all had this issue at some point. But people will always remember the time you left them hanging, waiting, or disappointed. My advice is always tell people you will check to make sure you have no other commitments and get back to them. Most importantly... GET BACK TO THEM. Were all busy, so its more important even that we do what we say when we say it. On the same note, don't be the person that talks bad about others when their not around. If you do you will be seen as a coward, and untrustworthy. Want to increase your respect 20 fold? Get in the habit of addressing issues with people directly using tact.

Successful people are willing to do what unsuccessful people are not.

So true in every way. Have any stories about dealing with some of these issues? Or do you have any other advice for Indy artists? Please share!

Bonus: I read a great book that studied why people like Michael Jordan and Bill Gates were so amazingly successful. The reason will surprise you. Check it out below. (please note this is not an affiliate link so I have no vested interest in you purchasing this book. However if you do read it let me know what you think!)

The Outliers

Spotify Vs. Pandora

With the arrival of high speed internet mobile devices, and the ability to store information in the cloud we have seen the birth of new ways to listen to music. An aspect of music that was lost with the age of the Vynil record, music sharing with peers, is also making a strong comeback.
I refer ofcourse to music streaming applications, in this instance I would like you to consider Pandora and Spotify.

Pandora is the older of the two and was created as a music discovery platform. I myself subscribed to Pandora's service for a while and enjoyed it for a long time. It simply creates radio stations that stream music based on your favorite songs, genres, or artists. It gives you an easy to use interface and provides you with biographies on the artists, sometimes even the lyrics. It is a good app to use when your not sure what you want to listen to but have a general idea of what mood you might be in.

Spotify is the newcomer to the scene and it took a different approach when it was released. Spotify maintains a library of albums and singles from major artists. It allows the user to search for a track or album and stream it on demand. Spotify does present itself as a free service. In reality there are different tiers to their membership and this allows the user to decide how they could best use the service. For a free subscription you can access all the music you want on your computer. For a small monthly fee you can also access Spotify on your phone. For a slightly larger fee you can sync songs to your phone so that you can listen to them even when you can not connect to the internet or a network.

Initially there was a good distinction in the differences between the two and distinct advantages to both. Recently however, Spotify has added the same radio like features as Pandora, as a result of this and other competitors entering the market Pandora has lost about a fourth of its user base. The truth is that most people will use whichever platform they feel most comfortable with, usually you wont see users streaming from two different platforms simultaneously, specially if they are paying a subscription.

Now there are some gripes that arise with Spotify and for some users these are deal breakers. For one using Spotify requires the installation of its platform software on your computer in order to stream on it. This is in comparison to Pandora which allows the user to listen on their browser. Another is what happens when your subscription lapses for some reason. All of a sudden all of your music files are unplayable on your mobile device (even when they have been synced) and will only play radio channels. While this last issue is seldom seen as long as you continue to pay a subscription it can be annoying to some users.

Music has always been a social medium and Spotify does allow users to create and share playlists and artists with their friends. It even keeps tabs of your friends on Facebook and alerts you when they have joined, allowing you to share your albums and playlists with them as well. Some DJs are even building followers using this service.

The battle of the music streamers has been well under way and we still have yet to see who will reign supreme. For now though if you havent tried these services the links are below, you can decide for yourself which one is best for you.

What are some of your favorite music sites and how do stream your music most of the time?
  

VS