Get The Web To Work For You!

Last week, we brought you the first part of this look at how artists and musicians can manage their web presence to be as effective as possible. There are a whole wealth of services out there to use - many of them for free. But once you're signed up, up how can you ensure that they serve your needs as well as possible, without eating into that precious music-making time? There's no point having a strategy for promoting your music if it means you don't get a chance to write any! So read on, as we suggest a few hints for getting maximum results from your web exposure...

The first thing is to make sure that prospective fans can find what they want. If you imagine that you're checking out a new band's website, you don't want to read their biography first - you want to hear some tracks. That's the important thing. So to that end, make sure you have obvious links to where people can hear your tunes, and then where they can buy them. Make sure also that they're your best recent tunes - this sounds obvious but so many artists have just a few tracks on their Soundcloud, all from over a year ago. This just makes you look like you've quit!

This point is key - however many sites and accounts you have, you must make sure they're all up to date. If that means cutting back to just a couple, then do so, otherwise it could just be counterproductive. If someone's looking to buy your latest release, and one of your sites says you haven't released anything in 8 months, then you've just lost a sale. If you don't have time to keep everything up to date, then just cut things down a bit - only keep as many sites as you have time for.

Similarly, although it's possible to upload your tracks to any one of a number of sites - Last FM, Pandora, etc, it's arguably not the best use of your time. You could spend weeks making sure you're on every site possible, but so long as you have a good selection of work available in a few key locations, your time will likely be better spent honing your tracks instead. People will find them if they're good enough!

The whole point of all these sites is to make life easier for you. It is not, as a rule, to generate fans. There is only one thing that will guarantee fans come to your page, and that's good music. It's a cliche, but it's also a liberating one – so long as the basics are there (people can hear your music, get in contact with you, find out how to buy your tracks) then you can spend the rest of your time actually writing and recording tracks!

That said, play to your strengths. If you find social networking difficult and tedious, then just do the essentials - news updates, new tracks etc. If you are a natural chatterbox, then indulge it - the more retweets you can get on Twitter, the more comments on your Facebook posts, the more people will see you on their timelines and the more exposure you'll get.

To this end, smartphones are a revelation. With phone apps for Twitter, Facebook, Soundcloud and more, you can update your networks while you're on the bus to work or away for lunch. Apps like Seesmic Ping can synchronise all your social networks, so one status update can be pushed through all your sites, pages and blogs at once. This means you can get more time to spend on your tracks - the important stuff.

There's a lot of talk about things 'going viral' - and once again, this something that can only be achieved if you have cracking content. Videos, jingles, mashups - whatever it is, the most important factor is that you work hard at it and ensure that it's as good as possible. That sounds obvious, but in all the commotion about how to maximise your crowd engagement, it can often be overlooked! Just as you'll never have a number one hit simply by connecting with your fans on Facebook, so your music and videos will only go viral if they're good enough and if people want to share them. One band who have made their videos viral is American rock band Ok Go!

This doesn't negate the whole process of finding fans online, however. The concept of 'web presence' can also include being an active and useful participant on a forum - the respect you can build up will translate into people taking you more seriously when you have something to promote - for instance the chief engineer at one mastering company is a keen contributor on a certain music forum, constantly offering technical advice to other users. It's won him a lot of friends and a lot of business.

Overall then, getting your web presence right is crucial - it's your method of converting curious visitors into fans, and of keeping existing fans up to date with what you're doing. But it's also something that should facilitate your musical efforts. No-one gets into a band or artist because of their fun and slick internet profile, and as such you shouldn't devote too much effort to acquiring fans through the internet. But you certainly do need to make sure that if someone lands on one of your profiles, the route from there to listening to your tracks, buying them, or booking you for a set is as simple as possible. So make sure your web presence is complete, simple, and manageable, and then get on and make it work for you!

Get Your Music Stuck in The Web!

For some of us, it doesn't seem long since the cutting edge of musician's web promotion consisted largely of starting up a Myspace page, chucking a couple of tracks on there, and then furiously adding friends. It's moved on a lot since those heady days; the options available to the average producer or musician now are dizzying. But what's the best way of keeping on top of things? Which tools are really useful, and how can you use them to your advantage without losing hours each week to the social network sites? Let's take a look in a little more depth...

Facebook has been the undisputed champion of social networking over the last few years. It has the most users, the highest view counts, and carries unarguable weight in marketing your stuff online. Since the relatively recent launch of 'Facebook Pages', it has been even more useful, as you can set up a one-stop shop where fans can find biography, booking information and all the rest of it.

So there's step one - set up your Facebook page. Make sure it's clear, has all the information people want, and has links to places where people can hear, and buy, your music. You can add apps like Bandpage, which is a great tool to enhance your page. On this you can embed tracks from your Soundcloud page, pull in your gig details from a number of sites, and generally collate everything a fan could want. The downside is that as Facebook changes constantly, it can stop apps working so well, and the recent switch to Timeline pages has left many apps consigned to a small icon at the edge of the page.

So think back to the days of Myspace - it was once the biggest music networking site, and now it's nowhere. The same will eventually happen with Facebook too. Already, musicians and marketing people are concerned over the use of 'Edgerank' and 'promoted posts'. It's too deep to go into here, but the upshot is that as Facebook is now so popular for marketing, sometimes your status updates will be crowded out of your fans' busy newsfeeds by other people's updates. In turn, you can pay money to get your status updates onto more newsfeeds - but only people who have already 'liked' your page. It's a tricky problem, but the concept of paying to reach people who are already fans has many industry commentators up in arms. It will be interesting to see how it pans out over the next few months, but in the meantime, just remember that you may need to shift your web-focus elsewhere at some point.

A suitable place would be to your own website. Start one now - it doesn't have to be an all-singing, all-dancing affair - just a simple blog site with a customised template will do. Make sure it has links to your main pages on the web, and is updated with your discography and significant news. Otherwise, it can be a very basic site; for smaller artists most people engage through social networks anyway. All it needs to do is provide a central hub for your other web engagements. Tumblr is handy and easy to use, while Posterous has an ingenious interface where you can add blog posts simply by sending an email. For the non-technical, it's a revelation. Both feature 'auto-post' functions, which will spin your content out through your Facebook and Twitter accounts too.

Soundcloud is still one of the best sites for getting your tracks heard; it has a large community and is easy to use. Make sure your tracks are embeddable; this way, people can put them on their blog sites but you'll still get the play counts.

Bandcamp is increasingly popular as an alternative to Soundcloud, especially among independent and self-releasing artists. It offers embeddable players, tracks to stream and download, or you can sell tracks, albums and physical merchandising direct from the site, taking money into your paypal account. It lacks the graphical waveforms of Soundcloud that so many producers love, and also the strong community so crucial for fans to share and discover new music, but the site is improving constantly and is well worth a look, especially for self-releasing artists. Don't forget to check out Official.fm too though. Recently revamped and re-launched, it's now setting itself up as a serious competitor to Soundcloud. If you're a DJ, Mixcloud is the simplest and best site for hosting mixes.

Songkick has also been making waves recently, and it too is getting more useful all the time. Primarily, it's a site where you can create and manage your events - gig and tour details. So artists can keep fans up to date, and fans can buy tickets to events. What makes it more useful though, is the integration with other platforms. If you have an account with Soundcloud, Bandpage, Spotify or many others, they can automatically pull your tour details from the Songkick page - so you only have to put the shows in once.

We still haven't mentioned Twitter - everyone knows what this is, but it can be a highly useful tool for communicating with your fans, getting information out into the world and even networking with other acts - if you need to get tracks to someone you can often just tweet at them to get an email address. It's surprisingly effective for this!

So, with all these sites, you'll essentially have something that is less of a website, and more of a web eco-system. But what should you do with it? We'll run down the strategies of how to create an efficient, useful, and stress-free online existence next week! So make sure you've got the basics sorted for now, and then join us again for some tips on how to use them.....

How To: Finish Your Tracks!

A skill that is often overlooked by many aspiring producers, and it's a skill that is seriously under-rated by too many, is simply getting tracks finished. So many people end up with a hard drive full of loops, half-tunes, ideas and sketches, but all too few full, finished tracks. Sound familiar? Don't worry if so - it's a stage most people have had to work through at some point in their production lives. So let's go in a bit deeper on this issue, and look at some ways to make sure you get more finished tracks under your belt!

Many producers who start to write beats have a certain idea in mind - that once you get to a certain level of technical proficiency, the rest is easy. Your tunes pretty much write themselves; you get your 8 or 16 bar loop sorted, a couple of sick synth noises going on, and somehow after that, everything basically falls into place.

It's a nice dream, but unfortunately, a dream is all it is. The uncomfortable truth is that, just as with every other aspect of production, finishing a tune takes work and plenty of practise. It's a skill, and needs to be learned just as much as compressing your drum buss or writing a harmony. There's no shortcut!

So how do we go about getting over this hurdle and convert those ideas and sketches into fully formed works of electronic art? Well, first of all you have to change your mindset somewhat - and set as your goal the completion of a full track. It sounds obvious, but many forget that although firing up the 16-bar loop and muting/adding parts is loads of fun to jam with, all you're really doing is admiring the potential that your embryonic tune has. You're not actually writing, and you won't end up with a full track any time soon. At this stage, you're really only a third of the way through the production process. It's time to get on with the hard graft - but don't worry, you'll soon learn to enjoy it!

So you start tracking out the arrangement, and this is where so many people come a cropper. Remember the new mindset - forget the art, what does it need to do? It needs an intro; perhaps a breakdown, a main drop, and so on. Listen to tunes in your genre and count out their structure – how long is a typical intro, how does a drop develop? Don't worry about copying parts of a structure for now; the important part is that you work through the process to completion: anyway, if you listen to enough tracks in your chosen style you'll quickly see that most structures are pretty generic. Just the fact that you're writing your own beats and melodies, and producing in your own style will give it a distinctive signature. If you really want to get arty then later you can start experimenting with crazy intros, tempo changes and whatnot - but get the basics down and get into the habit of finishing tracks first!

Important things to consider are factors such as, when do elements come in or drop out? Fills? FX? Switch-ups? A good track will use plenty of techniques to keep the ear engaged, and let the music progress without becoming boring. It's a good idea to have some production 'tools' to hand here. For instance, a sample pack of risers and whoosh noises to drop into a progressive house track to keep the momentum up. Or a couple of glitch/slicer plugins if you're writing psytrance; maybe a sampler instrument full of bass drops that you can throw into your D&B tune for half a bar here or there. Often these details can make a big difference, and take a simple track from being boring to being just 'stripped back'! As you keep finishing tracks, you'll also start to build up a repertoire of tricks and techniques that can help at this stage - practise is key.

The other crucial part is to distance yourself from what you're writing (it's that mindset thing again). It's only natural that you'll like whatever you happen to come out with; but is it actually good? Be brutal with yourself here. It's often a good idea to get a friend round to check out the tune at this point; it makes you listen to the track from a very different perspective. If you find yourself justifying it, saying things like 'this part really gets going in a second' then you perhaps need to add some extra interest at that point.

The important thing though, is just to get through the process, sign the track off as 'done' and move onto the next thing. Don't spend weeks tweaking and tweaking to get everything perfect - there isn't a producer in the world who doesn't look back at old tracks and see things that couldn't be improved. The more tracks you finish, the easier it becomes to see what a track really needs to do, and the easier the process becomes. So load up that unfinished jam, settle in for the long haul and get finishing!

Score A Hit On A Budget!

Music production has always been a great hobby for those who like their toys and gadgets. So much hardware, so many classic pieces of kit to get your hands on! Every month, the magazines are full of reviews of beautiful new gear and plugins that offer the finest in audio processing - with price tags that offer the finest in wallet-bothering panic. It's easy to get sucked into the idea that if you can just get one of these babies, your production problems will be solved - but that's rarely true, and in these times of recession, finding the cash is harder than ever! So until you win the lottery, here are some tips on how to improve your tunes, get more inspiration and beef up your production on a budget more suited to these straightened times...

Cheap Hardware

The opposite of what you see in the magazines! Get down to the local second-hand music shop and see what they've got. The weirder the better - a random old bass guitar amplifier is great for running your drum track through to get a crunchy lo-fi edge. Guitar pedals offer a wealth of options - distortion and overdrive for those filthy basses, delays for pads and drones, envelope filters for inspiring new sounds. If you find something really strange looking, pounce - it could be the thing that gives your tracks that distinctive sound you've always been looking for! If not, you can always put it on Ebay and make your money back...

Get A Microphone

Great microphones don't come cheap, but decent ones can. Companies like Red5 Audio can supply surprisingly good condenser and dynamic microphones for less than £50, leaving you with enough cash left over to buy a couple of cheap shakers and tambourines. Then you can get busy making your own unique percussion loops, start recording some crazy found sounds, or even get a local singer or MC in to start getting some decent vocals into your tracks. It doesn't need to be a full vocal - just start making some loops and chops!

Digging In The Crates

Go and buy some music. That's what this one is all about - as a music fan you probably do that anyway but by broadening your horizons you can really get some fresh ideas going. If you're a vinyl junkie then get down to the local second hand shop and start digging, especially in genres you generally don't listen to. If you don't do wax then just get on Amazon and buy yourself a couple of those 3-disc compilations - Greatest Motown Hits, Latin Jazz For Beginners, Blaxploitation Soundtrack Classics - anything like that. This way, not only are you exposing yourself to a new genre which may give you some new ideas, but also giving yourself the chance to learn more about how great music works. What makes those Motown records so catchy? How did those soundtrack guys get such an exciting sound out of just a few violins? By learning from the best, you can discover new musical techniques to take into your own productions. And even better, you also get a stack of classic tunes to sample!

Knowledge Is The Key

Speaking of learning, one of the best things you can do to improve your music-making skills is to take some music instrument lessons. Whether it's guitar, piano, or anything else doesn't matter so much (although of course brushing up on your keyboard skills will help no end when jamming out riffs on the MIDI controller keyboard) – just learning more about the nuts and bolts of music will give you an insight into the basics of melody, harmony and how things fit together. Fifty quid won't get you to Carnegie Hall, but it should be enough for a few weeks of 30 minute lessons. Combine that with some daily practise and you'll be surprised how much difference it can make...

Free Plugins

Apparently, there are even some free software plugins for your DAW out there! OK, so this isn't going to be news to many, but there really are some gems to be had out there. From old favourites like the Kjaerhus processing suite and Yohng's W1 Limiter to newer pretenders like Scythe, which is a DAW port of the popular iPad synth Grainbender, you'll always be able to find something that fits neatly with your requirements. Check out our new Plugins site where you can get top plugin Oscillator for FREE! Grab it here.

Hopefully these tips will help even the most cash-strapped producers out there, and remind us that you don't need the best, most expensive kit to write great music!

Get Your Beats Jumpin!

One mixing and production technique that will be present on the vast majority of records you own, especially those recorded in bigger studios with professional engineers, is that of buss compression. It can be hugely useful, both from an artistic and an engineering viewpoint - whether you want to go for that big, pumping, filtered disco sound, or just make sure your track is as fat as possible, buss compression can do wonders for your mix. But can anyone get involved? And how do you get started anyway? Let's look a little deeper....

The pumping disco-house sound, as pioneered by the likes of Daft Punk and their French cohorts, is all about buss compression. A classic example would be 'So Much Love To Give' by Thomas Bangalter and DJ Falcon. You can hear in this track how different everything sounds when the kick comes in. There is life in the the backing samples and loops when the kick drum is not playing - they have headroom and dynamic range. Then the kick thumps in, clobbering a compressor that sits across the whole buss, and the sheer volume of it forces everything else out of the way when the volume reduction kicks in.

To hear this technique really used to its full potential, listen to 'Barbara Streisand' by Duck Sauce. No matter what your opinions on the track itself, the buss compression is something to behold; it uses the compression and release technique outlined above, but also manages to achieve transients on the backbeat to give definition and a crisp top end. This is through a clever combination of a good buss compressor (perhaps the Waves SSL or UAD 4K for instance), and timing – adjust the attack of the compressor very slightly so that it allows some of the transient on your clap or snare through, and consider pulling the note early so that it has slightly more time before the compressor slams the door on it.

Buss compression isn't all about getting a massive house track pumping though. You can use it on any style of music as a central part of your mixdown. Many experienced engineers will put a compressor on their master buss before they even start mixing down. This may sound counter-intuitive, but it is common practise in many studios. It has many advantages - mixing through a compressor means you need much less compression at the channel stage, and thus can bring a mix together much more quickly. It's also often appropriate for dance and rock music in particular (anything with a strong groove and a lot of energy) - as it changes the way you approach a mix, focusing more on drums and bass, then fitting the other elements in around them. For very audible examples, check out some of the late 90's and early '00s techno releases by the likes of Ben Sims and Marco Carola; the intense percussion sounds bounce off each other as they jostle for space, constantly butting up against the threshold of the compressor. It creates an exciting and lively overall sound, less controlled than compressing everything individually.

It needs to be said here that this isn't something you can just try occasionally - it takes time and practise to get used to mixing through a compressor. To get you started, a general rule of thumb for compression settings would be a short attack (less than 10ms), medium-long release (maybe 200ms depending on the tempo of your track, longer if it's a slow track) and a threshold that takes off 3 or 4dB. Put the compressor on before you start mixing, and then don't take it off again!

Your first few mixdowns using this technique may not come off well, but practise makes perfect - it's a little like learning a new set of monitor speakers. Reference your mix often, take plenty of breaks, and persevere to be sure of really getting a handle on it!

Buss compression is a useful tool for all engineers, and you can get on board with it too - it just takes a little time and a good quality compressor. So get yourself a decent plugin, open up that mixdown, and see if you can't make those tracks jump out of the speakers even more!

Stir Some Syncopation Into Your Mix!

Syncopation is one of the basic ingredients of rhythm. It's what makes the difference between a straightforward,stomping beat, and something funky, fluid and interesting.But what is it? Can anyone get in on the act? And can you use it for other things than drums too? Let us shed some light...

Syncopation is, basically, just putting things in the gaps between beats. But not just on 8ths; as this can sound pretty straight too; so use 16th note shuffles to accentuate and emphasise the main beats. The simplest way is to try a quiet snare drum (known as a 'ghost note') just before or after a main kick or snare. See how it leads into, or jerks out of, the beat? It's a technique that most hip-hop or jungle producers will be familiar with already. You can enhance the feel of this even further; for instance if it's a snare preceding a kick, try delaying the kick by half a beat. Now the main beat is displaced by an 8th note too; the listener's attention is grabbed further by the fact that it wasn't where they were expecting. You're creating a 'tension and release' moment.

This technique is common in breakbeat-based music, but that doesn't mean it can't work in house and techno too. A common rhythm heard in Detroit techno, used by the likes of Juan Atkins, is pulling the 4th kick of the bar earlier by a 16th note. This adds a degree of funk to the beat, and sets it apart from the standard 4/4 stomp - but when teamed with the usual hats and claps can still keep the steady groove of house and techno. This kick pattern is also the bedrock of Baltimore Club music, as pushed by Scottie B et al. But it can be switched up - you can pull any one of the kicks off the beat, to add some shuffle to your track while still leaving it straight enough to play in a regular house set.

Ragga and dancehall music is very syncopated; to the point where you could argue it's just a polyrhythm (but that's a discussion for another day). The beat is usually sub-divided into lengths of three 16ths, or if you're looking at it on a grid format, it hits on 1, 4, and 7 (and then repeats on 9, 12 and 15). It makes for a very distinctive groove; team it with a kick on all the fours and you'll have an instant African vibe (or indeed UK Funky).

This isn't all about drums though - you can syncopate anything to make it sound more interesting. To take the dancehall-style rhythm above, a popular groove in dubstep is to have the classic halfstep drumbeat, with a sub-bass hitting on every three 16th notes. Or leads and main riffs - see Redlight's recent hit 'Get Out My Head', where the piano chords switch from being on the beat for the first half of the bar, to a syncopated rhythm in the 2nd half of the bar.

Anything you have that falls on a straight rhythm, you can give consideration to pulling it back and forth off the beat to make it more interesting; as countless jazz and blues masters have said over the years, it's all about the spaces in between the beats. And if you can make these spaces surprising, attention-grabbing, or even just more varied, you'll be half way to making your track a much more interesting listen overall. Whether it's a synth arpeggio, sub bass thump or brass stabs, the rhythm can make all the difference.

So work as hard on the rhythms of your track - from drums and bass to pianos and lead lines - as you do on the melodies and harmonies, and you'll soon find that syncopation can bring life to loops that previously sounded dull and predictable. And you'll be a lot closer to having a groove that's ready to make into a full arrangement!

Fire Up Your Beats!

After the kick drum, in dance music the most important part of your beat is arguably the 'backbeat'. This is what falls on beats two and four of the bar (while beat one is called the 'downbeat') and usually features a snare, clap or similar. Getting the backbeat right can really enhance the character and groove of a good beat, but so many people fail to maximise the potential, opting for a dull, or rigidly quantised sound. So let's consider some of the options you can use to make sure your beat really shines...

First though, there's the issue of what you need your backbeat to do. In general, the bigger your tune sounds, the less room for manoeuvre you have in this area. A raging DnB or dubstep tune will need something correspondingly massive to cut through the mix, and thus often make use of what is known to many as the 'Pendulum Snare'. This is basically a rock-sounding snare with loads of weight, a big EQ boost around 200Hz, next to nothing in the way of transients and perhaps a gated reverb to boot. It's not particularly interesting, or original, but it certainly will dominate a busy mixdown.

If you can afford more space in your mix then you'll have a lot more options. Claps are a lot of fun; get hold of a good sample pack (or even take a mic and record some yourself) and get them into a sampler. Make sure they're not just the standard drum machine jobs - organic, live sounding claps are the way forward here. Now stack up three or four or more to all play at the same time, and start to tweak the timing - pull a couple of them early, before the beat, and have a couple starting a touch later. Combine this with some tight reverb and subtle panning (or a slight stereo-spread plugin effect) and you'll have a clap that really catches the ear, with a fresh live sound, ideal for hip hop, funk, deep house and more. Check some early 2000's era Timbaland beats if you want to hear how this technique can really be used effectively.

Rimshots are another essential tool. The classic Roland 505 rimshot sound is a staple of garage records, but the rimshot has many other uses in dance music. For instance, it can be pitched down and used atop a kick drum, to give a crisp, woody sound that emphasises the beat without jumping out of the mix - as DJ Sneak shows on many of his house tracks. The short duration of a rimshot means it's great for adding dynamics to a lifeless sound - if a snare sounds overly crunchy and flat, try high-passing a rimshot and layering it on top to get a transient on the snare without altering the character too much.

Another way of making the backbeat stand out, especially in a crowded mix, is to layer some finger snaps on top. These can be high-passed at a fairly high frequency so that they don't clash with the main character of the snare or clap, for instance 3kHz, and when combined with some careful reverb can give an impression of space and definition. Layer up two or three such samples to add interest, and again, adjust the timing of each so that they spread out across the beat and give a looser, funkier feel.

Of course, there are plenty of other sounds you can use to make your backbeat distinctive in a busy drumbeat; a vocal sound (just a syllable, like an 'uh' sound for instance), a metallic hit with a slapback delay, the sound of breaking glass - the world is your oyster. The more unusual you can make the sound, the easier it will be to make the mixdown work too - as the texture will stand out naturally, without having to compete for volume.

In all of these examples, playing with the timing and pulling your samples off the quantise grid is essential. It can totally change the feel of a beat, and you'll be surprised how far off the grid you can come before it sounds wrong - pull a sound a long way forwards and it will become what drummers know as a 'flam', while pushing it later will give a lazy, languid feel, ideal for disco and funk. It also helps with maintaining a solid, loud mixdown - something that plays fractionally before the beat will be audible at a much lower level than something that has to compete with the kick and everything else that's playing exactly on that beat. So it makes good engineering sense too!

All in all, the backbeat is an integral part of dance music, and one that can fundamentally influence the feel and groove of your track - so it's worth spending some time and exploring all available options to make sure it's really right. Hopefully these words will have given you a few new ideas, so fire up that beat and make some noise!