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.

- - -

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.

When I watch a video on Hulu the advertisements are a minor annoyance, however I realize the ads are allowing me to watch the video.

I've belong to an affiliate program for years and have an affiliate account but have never used it. In an effort to try an produce quality music and at the same time monetize it without turning off a listener or fan, I decided to try and apply some adds to my streaming music, blog and website - taking the Hulu approach.

Not too many that it turns off a reader or listener, but just enough to create a balance with earning and site aesthetics.

Well, in order to monetize the blog and music you have to have traffic. I don't know if the things I'm doing will generate traffic, but I'll keep you in know. What I have noticed though is that when you perform a search on anything, the search results tend to favor keywords in the URL. For example, if I do a search on music, music.com, music.mp3.com, etc. are more apt to be in the top of the results.

I have been scouring the internet for the last few weeks for drumloops. I have become so fascinated with how changing the drums in a song changes the entire character.

I have this one song called "Ice" where I was struggling to make it more funky. I applied Hip-Hop, Custom, and R&B style drums to the track, but I couldn't make it funky. Then I ran across this one drum loop, and magic. The track is now funky. Let me know if the funk is justified, take a listen to the track below.

Anyone know where free drumloops can be obtained let me know.

This is hypothetical, but I can imagine taking any traditional jazz song (acoustic bass, piano, sax, drums, etc.) and replacing them with synthesizer sounds and you'd wind up with electronic jazz.

I love traditional jazz, but I get bored of it quickly. That's why I find creating and listening to electronic jazz so fascinating. I'm not bound by my choice of instruments to listen or use. With Electronic Jazz I have not only have infinite notes to play with, but an infinite combination of instruments at my disposable. Thus, every song could potential sound totally different. Of course you do need some skill as well and a mastery of some techniques to play jazz.

I was talking with a friend of mine and he happened to mention that people don't care how fast you can play. Most people yes - I agree - could care less. However, if I were playing music for most people, I'd probably simplify my style, especially if I made my living in music. I don't know how traditional jazz artist (in America) make a living.

Nobody cares about the painstaking hours it took to master an instrument. Which is kind of sad. People really should appreciate the diligence that went into playing an instrument, especially one that is played well.

I guess that's why "smooth jazz" was created. To give talented musicians a genre where they could actually earn a living.

I received this e-mail from Tom Kiebzak of Beyond Bop on November 9th. I must preface this by saying at the time I did not have any CDs, I was distributing my material digitally. So I thought, get some CDs made.

"Greetings Ty,

To submit your piece for consideration, send your CD(s) to:

Tom Kiebzak

W4885 Valley Heights Drive

Fredonia, WI 53021

Today I received this e-mail:

"Greetings Ty,

Yes I got your CD's. They are produced and recorded very well unfortunaltely the genre doesn't fit the format for our station.

Keep up the chops!

Tom"

I swear, if I ever run into this guy - POW!!!!

What kind of Bullshit is this? First of all, I could have sent that CD to someone who actually listened to my music. It's evident, that this guy must have sent me a spam message, so musicians beware.

Also, the postage cost and time. I could have been creating music instead of sending this jerk a CD.

I've visited some of the jazz music blogs, and for the most part I've been disappointed. Most are out of date or mostly only cover traditional jazz, even though there are various deviations such as electronic, smooth, chill, fusion, jazz rock, etc.

This discovery came on the heels of trying to find bloggers to review and/or recommend my music. If I could write a little better and had a little extra time, writing a jazz blog would definitely be on my priority list.

I'm sure I've not been to every jazz blog, so I can only speak to those I've visited from doing a search. There may be some quality blogs that I just don't know about. I'll continue my search and hope to stumble upon one.

Now that I have all this music, how do I get it heard. Well, my first thought was to find a music aggregate like INgrooves, but since that didn't work out, my next option was to contact radio stations myself.

Doing a search on jazz radio and downtempo radio stations I was able to find sites that provided handy listing, complete with links to the station's website. From there I either searched for music submission guidelines or sent the music director an email.

The good news is that I got responses. The bad news is that for every 10 emails I sent, I only received 1-2 responses (and that was 3 days ago).

The next option is, if they don't respond, find the station address and send a CD to the station's Programming Director.

The emails that I have received were all positive and got me excited about the potential. I have mailed 7 CD samplers so far.

I just knew once I sent a professional looking package to INgrooves, they would jump all over me (sign me up for distribution). I haven't heard anything from them - at least tell me to go fuck off or something. A better response would be no you're not what we're looking for and here's why.

Why do people do that - tell you to send your material with no intention of listening to it or signing you. Very frustrating. In my younger quick tempered days, these people would have been cursed out or fucked up. How time and wisdom mellows you.

I'm also beginning to understand why artist - once they make it big - treat everyone like shit. There is just no downhill courtesy. Perhaps if there was common courtesy, people would be more willing to help each other.