New York Piano Center

FOR MUSIC PRODUCERS: SETTING SMART GOALS

Here are some basic guidelines that you could follow, if you want to improve as a music producer in the online beat market. These guidelines will provide you with the tools you can use to try to obtain a high level of consistency in overall production. So, before you start uploading your music online, and putting them up for sale, take the time to set some personal S.M.A.R.T. goals.

S.M.A.R.T. Goals

The acronym S.M.A.R.T is a tool designed for use in to improve workflow in an organization, but in this case we are going to apply it music production, and how it could be used to improve the quality & workflow.

SMART Goals & Music Production?

?????? Be Specific: Make goals that can be achieved, and attained in a short period of time.?

?????? Measurable: This is pretty self-explanatory; Make goals that you can be reached, quantitatively speaking. Try and make it a habit of keeping records of the desirable

o?? Try and set certain sales quotas that you would like ?to reach before the end of the month.

o?? The amount of beats you would like to make on a weekly basic, and or the amount of posts you post online to build awareness.

?????? Attainable: I would suggest doing this not only for obvious reasons, like it doesn’t make sense to set goals you can’t reach, but mainly for the physiological effects. If you set goals you can reach,

1.???? It serves as a way to boost self esteem

2.???? Forces good organizational behavior to become more habitual

3.???? It will free more time to become more creative because the technical aspect of things will be automatic.

Result orientated: A lot of reasons why firms are successful in the business world is because they are very result orientated. Focus on things like your sales, your feedback (whether negative or positive), The amount of click through a certain beat gets) and create a strategy through that. If there is a beat you think is hot, have advertised for, and still isn’t getting any clicks… move on. Accept the fact that your idea of what is hot and what others think is hot is very different.?

Time Bound: Set goals and stick to them. This kind of characteristic is very favorable from a consumer’s standpoint. Upload your new beats on a specific day every week, and people will come to know when to expect new material, without the need of advertisement. Consistency is very important to reduce advertisement.?

Good Luck & All The Best

Fatai Lawanson?
Thebeatspot.com

“Bridging the gap between Artists & Producers”

In the middle of November, Universal Music filed an extensive copyright lawsuit against YouTube, not long after Google moved to purchase it. So, what does this portend?

As you undoubtedly know, YouTube is a site that allows people to post videos of all sorts. Sometimes the videos are their own and sometimes they are copied from other locations. This second category has raised a number of issues in the cyber law field with most of the questions surrounding copyright. Specifically, many wonder how this situation is anything different than what happened with Napster and similar sites. With Universal’s lawsuit, we are about to find out.

Copyright is often a misunderstood area of the law, particularly when it is applied to the internet. Copyright is simple the right of a party to control the distribution of the work in question. The party is usually the creator of the work, but they can sell it off to another party if they wish. Regardless, the party has the right to license out their work to other parties for distribution in exchange for compensation. When someone uses the piece without the consent of the party, they are infringing upon the copyright.

Unlike Napster, many media companies have entered negotiations with YouTube to try to resolve copyright issues up front. Although every deal is different, copyright infringement issues are usually resolved by paying royalties to the offended party. In this case, Universal and YouTube actually entered such negotiations. With the filing of the lawsuit, it obviously didn’t work out. The reported problem was the fact an unreleased Jay-Z music video appeared on YouTube. Obviously, Universal felt its thunder had been stolen.

One must wonder what Google thinks of all of this. Although a brilliant search engine company, Google has a history of falling on its face when it comes to legal issues ranging from privacy protection to swiping executives from other companies, particularly Microsoft. With YouTube, many wondered if Google was purchasing one giant lawsuit. Apparently, this may have occurred to the powers that be at Google as rumors abound that hundreds of millions of dollars of the purchase price were set aside to cover lawsuits. Time to break out the check book!

Regardless, the dispute between Universal and YouTube/Google looks to be significant in the development of copyright law on the net. This is definitely something worth keeping an eye on.

We all do. Everything we play on the guitar comes out of our scales-just as everything we write comes out of the Roman alphabet. So (and this is no big revelation) soloing or improvisation is simply a matter of disassembling our scales into smaller chunks and reassembling them in an order and a style that creates the mood or effect we wish to hear.

Learn Guitar Scales Youtube

So how do you play solos that don’t sound like scale practice?

The first thing you need is patience. If you are just beginning to learn how to play lead, chances are you are starting out by playing scales. In fact, odds are you are starting learning some sort of pentatonic scale. So, it only makes sense that the first attempts you make at playing lead are going to sound exactly like…scales. That’s right. That’s to be expected. You are simply playing what you know. And that’s alright.

Keep playing scales. Don’t stop studying scales just because your lead-playing sounds like scales. Keep learning new scales. Keep learning your scales in all 12 keys. If not all 12 keys, then at least the five most popular guitar keys-C, A, G, E and D. In other words, don’t ever stop studying your scales-they are the basis for your fundamental musical knowledge.

Pro basketball players practice layups and free throws daily. Martial artists-even masters (especially masters) practice their most basic punches and kicks daily. And you should be practicing your musical basics daily as well.

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The second thing you can do is copy. Learn other people’s leads. Listen to CDs and work out the lead parts. Steal from all styles-not just the genre you are interested in. The more you steal from others-the less your improvisations will continue to sound like pure scales and the more they will begin to sound like your stolen solos. And that puts you one step closer to the final goal.

The third thing you can do is put in your time. That’s all. Keep studying different scales. Keep collecting musical ideas from others. And keep practicing. That’s all. It’s just a matter of time.

And then, one day you will pick up your guitar and lay down a solo that is totally your own. Sure, it will still be based on those scales that you spent hours learning and practicing. It will still have elements of those countless licks, solos and riffs that you copied from others-but you will have put your signature on it. And that’s what makes it your own.

When we first begin learning to play lead guitar, all of our improvisations may sound like scales. That’s okay. We have to start somewhere. And we should not let this discourage us from continuing to practice and study our scales. But, in addition, we must continue to collect musical ideas from others. The goal is not to sound like other accomplished guitar players. The goal is to use what they have given us as a basis for our studies. As we do, we will eventually begin to develop our own style.

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