How to Promote Your CD

By: Rashi Singh

Congratulations! Your debut CD is now recorded, replicated, packaged, and ready for market. It’s an amazing feeling to see the fruit of your labor in front of you, nicely packaged as a CD that’s ready to be sold alongside the big wigs in the industry. One small problem: you don’t have the backing and capital that the big wigs do to promote your CD… and you just know your CD can be a huge success in the market.

Promoting a CD can seem like a daunting task at first, especially if you haven’t done anything like this before. Here are a few tips and ideas on how you can get started promoting, and selling your music CD.

1. First, you should plan a launch party. Read more »

Songwriting – How to Write Songs – My Three Rules of Thumb

By GK Eckert

Songwriting is most definitely a skill. In time, you will come up with many of your own tricks, tools and guidelines. My “three rules of thumb” have proven to be my most valuable tools when it comes to the art of writing songs. Here they are!

Before I explain my three rules of thumb, I’d like to say that these were developed over time, after much trial and error on my part. They have saved me much time and frustration. It has transformed my songwriting into an easy process that works well for me.

Rule number one – Write it down Read more »

Schmoozing for Gigs

By: Ty Cohen

If you want to get gigs, then you are going to have to do some schmoozing with club owners, bar owners and people of that nature. This means you are going to have to appear as professional and convincing as possible. You are going to have to come prepared with all the gear you need to successfully market yourself so you can book gigs and get paid.

First impressions are the most important thing in this biz. If you want to book gigs then you need to bring the following things with you to a meeting: a resume, a demo, a business card (with a link to your site), a poster or flyer, price and a confidant attitude. And most importantly, dress for success. You don’t have to wear a tux, just look presentable. You might even want to bring your instruments in case they want a short live audition, you never know.

Hopefully you will get the gig and it will end right there but you may not get hired right away. If this is you then you need to have a little persistence. Stop in every week or so and see if they have anything for you. Ask them if anyone has canceled and if there is a spot that needs to be filled. But beware, there is a fine line between persistence and stalking so be careful you are not doing the latter. Remember, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Read more »

How to Have Stage Presence For Groups

By Terrence Harper

1. Prepare and rehearse. Know everybody else’s lyrics, so that you can fill in and define parts of the song to get or keep the crowd hyped. Rehearsal is important in order to show that your a professional or on the brink of becoming a pro, you’d got to know where the other person should be onstage.

2. The lead vocalist should almost always take center stage, then move from right to left interacting with the crowd. Always, go center stage when your verse starts this brings the attention to you, especially if you have multiple people on stage. Read more »

Master and Learn Guitar – Revealed: Introduction To 4 Kinds of Guitar Harmonics

by: Jeremiah La Follette

Let’s take a look at 4 basic kinds of harmonics that will help you to master and learn guitar.

1. Open string harmonics
2. Pick harmonics
3. Tap harmonics
4. Thumb pick harmonics

1. Open string harmonics Read more »