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Emerging artists used to spend most of their time down at the post office, licking envelopes, sending off cassettes and making further copies of their cassettes. Looking back, it seemed like the dark ages. Today’s indie music scene sees many new bands marketing themselves through the web. The emergence of several top bands over the last few months thanks to the Internet is proof that the cream will always rise to the top, and using the net, they have every chance of doing so.

Almost all artists have band pages nowadays. In fact, it seems to be the first step on the way to internet recognition. A band page will commonly feature a news page, a separate page for downloading music for free, a photos page, and a contact page. These band pages are, in effect, business cards for musicians. The website receives promotion on various music websites and forums, and the band can create their own image through web branding.

The idea is catching on. Many listeners want to listen to one particular genre, and are frustrated at mainstream radio offerings. By finding an internet radio station that fits their needs, they are introduced to new bands. New bands, in return, are being given an audience that has already decided which genre they want to listen to, and internet radio stations like Blue Beam Radio, for example, offer the top-rated bands prizes, such as a concert in New York. The potential to be heard is enormous; it simply requires time in front of the computer!

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With the rise of sites like Myspace.com musicians have never had it better on the internet. These sites give you the ability to do things that once would have cost you tons of money. As a musician, how do online communities benefit you or your band?

1. Hosting music MP3s and music videos
When you sign up for one of these site, most of them give you the ability to post your free mp3 downloads, and music videos on their free web hosting plans. You get a website address where you can post a bio, some band photos, show dates, and mp3s/videos. This allows you to distribute your band’s music for free! All you need to do is create business cards or stickers with your band’s website URL on it, pass them out, and there you go. You can also use message board forums to promote your band’s website, which will get your music MP3s and music videos to even more people.

2. Gaining experience from others
You may not know a lot about music promotion or the whole industry based around it. But there are tons of people out there that do, and a lot of those people are active in online musician communities. Take time and sign up for one of these communities, become active in the discussions held on their message boards. You stand to gain a lot of experience and knowledge by joining and participating in these communities.

3. Networking/Promotion
In addition to being places where you can store / distribute MP3s / download free music, and learn from other people. Musician communities are great places to network and promote your band. Need to find a band to open at your next show? These websites often list their bands by region, making it easy for you to get familiar with local bands. Also, many music industry people hang out looking for the next big band to sign. Yours could be next!

These 3 examples do not fully cover all the different reasons for participating in these musicians communities, but should give you a little bit more insight on how they can benefit your band. From free MP3 music downloads, music video downloads, message board conversations and free web hosting, there’s a lot that online musician communities can do to help you out.

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Everyone that can hear normally has the ability to train their ear. I’ve taught dozens of students that claim they “just did not have an ear”, and yet after few weeks of lessons they are able to start noticing when their guitar is out of tune. It happens relatively quickly once you start hearing how things are supposed to sound.

Training your ear is like training your fingers on the guitar, it takes repetition, and it takes accuracy. Tuning your guitar every time you play is the simplest and most natural way to teach your ear what sounds good and not.

There are some excellent tools you can use in addition to just tuning your guitar regularly. My favorite is the Advanced Ear Training Software for musicians from Jana Software. For more about Jana Software make sure to check out the information on our main website.

Another strategy it to listen to your favorite recorded music. People tend to hear the music, what I am talking about is listening to the music. Focus on the sounds you hear and how they change. How the tones go up and down. Don’t worry about what key the song is in, or what notes is being played, just focus on the tones.

You do not need to be concerned about music theory or music notations to learn about how sounds relate to each other. It truly is a natural instinct, when two notes are played together that sound good, you know it, and when they sound bad, you know it as well. Do not let your inexperience with theory keep you from doing what comes naturally with the experience of just listening to music, and the notes you are playing on your freshly tuned guitar.

With time you’ll notice how sensitive your ears become to sounds that are not “right” and you’ll be able to instinctively reach up and adjust the tuner to make it sound right again. It takes time, accurate repletion and a desire to want to ROCK ON!

Bill McRea is the publisher of The
Guitar Warehouse and Guitar
Playing Techniques. Both sites offer free lesson and product sales.

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Most new guitar players and even some experienced ones have trouble staying and playing in tune. I’ll try listing here some of the common mistakes and there solutions.

When putting new strings on your guitar you must always make sure you stretch them as you tune them to pitch. I always hold them down on the neck around the 24th fret with my left hand while pulling them away from the guitar body with my right hand. You don’t have to use too much muscle, a few firm tugs should do the trick.

Whenever you tune a string down in pitch, be sure to use the string stretching technique described above. Remember ALWAYS TUNE UP! It’s always better when tuning down, to get close to the note, stretch the string and then tune up to the intended pitch.

You should purchase a quality tuner from a music store like zZounds.com . You don’t need to spend your life’s saving. An inexpensive tuner should be fine to start out. Remember, this thing will be traveling to gigs and jam sessions with you. I would recommend a good Boss tuner or Korg tuner. Both brands have low cost tuners that will do the job just fine.

If your guitar has a tremolo bridge, always remember that each string that you tune will go down in pitch as you tune the next string. One solution to this is to over tune the strings. That is to say, you may need to tune your low E string to an F in order to have it be around an E note by the time you finish tuning the other strings. Over time you’ll get a feel for how much you need to over tune each string and it will become second nature.

If you play in a band, it is a good idea to always tune to the same pitch. Standard pitch is 440 but some bands like to tune down to 430 or even 420 for the heavier sound or vocal reasons or both. My point is that if you’re practicing at 430 then you have a gig and your band tunes to 440, everything will suddenly sound different, your singer might not be able hit all the notes he or she did at practice, your solos might even sound wrong. This is because everything is now a half step higher in pitch. Make things easy on yourself, pick a pitch and stick with it, at practice and gigs.

Free online guitar lessons presented by guitarmetal.com

Edward D Cupler is the owner of guitar lessons website guitarmetal.com Offering free guitar lessons to beginners and advanced students.
Visit Eds site for free online guitar lessons at Guitar Metal.

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Well, well, well. I had always thought that the inefficiency of the slow moving bureaucracy that is humankind would have put off hell freezing over for at least 10 or 15 years. But, I am a big enough person to admit when I am wrong. But perhaps finding sufficient market demand to allow consumers to pay for and download TV shows that they simply weren’t capable of rearranging their schedule to accommodate for further pop culture consumption must be one of the signs that such a point is closing in upon us. Welcome to ipod shows.

So, you unfortunately have to go to a funeral that you just can’t get out of, but it happens that the new episode of Monk is on at the same time; and the network has really been touting this week as a blockbuster episode. Well, no problem, all you need to do is log on to the apple website and go into the istore where you’ll find all things ipod. Once you’ve found ipod shows you just need to choose the network and the get to the show and you can purchase it and download it.

Having Monk as an ipod show on your ipod is almost better than having skipped the funeral and watched the show at home, even if you taped it for later viewing. This way, you’ll always have it to watch as many times as you’d like, plus you don’t need to sit on your couch to do so, you can run all over town watching the show if you want. But, its not to say that you couldn’t also still just sit on your couch and indulge. Ipod shows are here so download them while you still can, because I can hear the crackling of forming ice in the living room of Beezelbub’s rec room.

Galadriel Anderson makes it easy and fun to get the most out of your iPod. Read her articles about iPod Nano accessories and iPod TV Shows.

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