What Every Singer Should FearAuthor: Ty Showers

The audience is loud and abuzz with excitement. Lights swirl around the stage and audience. Low volume downtempo music is pumped through the speakers as a prelude to the music about to be heard.

The band is heard behind tall curtains tuning up in preparation for the opening. The audience screams with anticipation of the curtains rising. Then, the band starts. They are playing a popular song and the lead singer and background vocals are right in sync with the band. The audience is stirred and applauding in anticipation to the curtain rising. The curtain rises, and there is the band. The audience screams!

Vocals are in complete sync with the music. Throughout the audience sparse impressions of the vocal arrangement can be heard. Everyone is grooving and happy.

There is no lead singer visible, and there are no background singers visible. However, the stage is covered with dancers gyrating to the beat, band members playing their respective instruments and visibly suspicious is a keyboard player, playing notes that seem to be in concert with the lead and background vocals.

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The above scenario sounds like science fiction - a band and no singers, though singers are heard. We may not be too far off in seeing this scenario unfold. Software manufacturers are busily creating software that sings (not speaks) the words that are typed and played via MIDI.

I for one can’t wait for this day to arrive, especially as one who can’t sing. I fully support jazz, r&b, downtempo, electronic and urban musicians, especially those with talent but can’t sing. I know how difficult it is to find a gifted singer who doesn’t have an ego. If this sounds like I’m bitter because I can’t sing, you’re right! I don’t know if you’ve noticed the past decade how musicians seem to be an extinct species, especially on stage. You usually have singers, dancers but no musicians. Granted, this depends upon genre, but even some genres that you never think this could happen to, it's happening. Often times there is a single person with a keyboard playing full jazz ensembles or full symphonies.

Audio and MIDI loops have just about extinguished talented musicians. Anyone with GarageBand or Sonar can create a pretty nice sounding groove. And worse of all, no one cares how the song is made. If it has a nice groove, the making of it is irrelevant.

This is why the creation of the virtual singer is on my wish list. Because if musicians have to be relegated to the background, and symphonies to pits, so should singers.

This would also be a good way to weed out poor singers, because they would be in competition with software. Poor singers who use software to manipulate their voice to be in tune with the music wouldn’t be needed. The software would sing and there would be no need for tuning thus reducing the production work load.

And most importantly, the egos of singers can be placed in check. Most musicians say, if only I can sing. Well soon they will be saying, if only I could afford singing software.

About the Author:

Ty Showers is the creator of Taliferro Music. A starter label dedicated to supporting talented but under capitalized artists.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - What Every Singer Should Fear

You may already know that I revived my interest in music in May 2008.

Since then, I have had so much fun creating and producing music of all kinds. It's a great hobby. I have taken baby steps, getting my feet wet in the various realms of music.

Some of the baby steps:
- First I needed to practice and re-acquire the dexterity (on the keyboard and bass) I had when I was younger - still in progress.
- Learn which software and hardware tools to use in order to create a finished musical work.
- Learn about copyrighting and registering music.
- Learn how to query radio stations and generate air play.
- Study Music Marketing. (At first, I created compilations with all types of musical genres in the same release. I had jazz, R&B, ambient, electronic on the same album. I don't think people appreciated this mix).

Being on Imeem for almost a year, I have also learned that there are quite a few talented musicians that yearn to be heard. Unfortunately, they all seem to want to fly solo. Well, there's one thing I've learned in the corporate world, you can't do everything yourself.

A thought occurred to me one day, how can I apply what I've learned to help out other artists - and myself?

I came up with this concept called a Starter Label. Just like the notion of a starter home, the starter label is a place where artists can land for awhile, where they can receive maximum exposure to help propel them to a larger label.

The starter label's main focus is to give artists maximum exposure on the Internet but will not charge artists. Plus, select a hand full of artists, that reflect a razor sharp focus.

This may or may not be a good idea. Don't know yet, but I plan to give it a shot. So, I've started with some simple webpages as proof of concept and located a few artists to promote. One page describes the mission of the starter label. Other pages are for all the genres of the label's focus so far: electronic, ambient, r&b, jazz, chillout/downtempo and - to come - urban.

If nothing comes of it, at least it's a good place to stream different types of music.

Musicians have very few resources for getting their music heard on a large stage. Grace Cabezas provided such a stage for musicians and now she's no longer on 88.9 in Miami. What's up with that? For 5 years Grace hosted this show, and now the show is non-existent. Did a shortage of musicians to interview just occur?

If this was a station management decision, it is a very poor decision. What are these Program Directors be thinking?

I also noticed that quite a few of the shows I watch online (I don't have a TV) will no longer be on next season. My favorite show, "Boston Legal" is retiring. "Private Practice" I heard is canceled, and a few of other shows I watch. I'm glad I don't have a TV - especially paying for TV.