Figuring out the subs

by Dan Willis

Back in college at Penn State, we had a band called Wits End. If you’ve ever been to central PA before, you know that it’s pretty rural and not the best indie music scene around. With strict as hell liquor laws and having to be 21 in order to get a gig at the bars (as the baby of the band I was only 18) we had to suck it up and do 3 hour sets of covers at the frats, and then work in our originals here and there, which usually was the time everyone went to get another beer…don’t get me started. Anyway, we wanted to be self-sufficient rather than give away half our take to some guy from the local music store with all the live sound gear. So we threw all our money back into the band and got speakers, mics, a mixer, and all the right stuff to blow out your ear drums. The only problem was that the learning curve sucked and we ran into a ridiculous amount of problems, but none was more annoying than trying to get the subwoofers to work right. They would always clip and even though they were biggest and heaviest speakers we had, we could never turn them up very much. I mean, we wanted full body vibrators at just the right time. You know what it’s like looking at gigantic speaker cabs and not being able to rev those babies up? Well, we never figured it out and then the band broke up after we all graduated and moved away.

The Fix

What a crappy story that would have been if that was the end. Well, flash forward to a couple years later and I’m letting one of my friends borrow our old main speakers for a DJ-ing gig. Once the mains were setup and active, we realized that not all of the low end was coming out of the subwoofers when we hooked them up…same old problem. Now I’m not a technical guy, but my friend the DJ has been building speaker cabinets for close to a decade, so he explained to me that the speakers were out of phase. This essentially means the positive and negatives are switched compared to the other speakers, so that when the main speaker cone pushes out, the subwoofers were pulling in and vice versa. And then the weird thing was, almost that same day the old guitarist from the band emails me and says that he randomly found an article talking about the Peavy Kosmos (the piece of gear we used to split the mix to mains and subs). He said how if the “Quake” knob is turned up, most subs will clip because this knob is actually an EQ knob for a very low frequency that most speakers can’t handle.

So in the end, after putting the subs back in phase by switching the positive and negative wires on the cable insert and turning down the quake knob all the way to fix the other problem, those suckers just about kicked me in the nuts.

#2 - Music Marketing Tip TWO

by Dan Willis

Set up a merchandise table at your shows!

Come on, this is just a straight up no-brainer, and if you don’t have any merch to sell, then make some. There are tons of ways to not only make the stuff, but even different ways to sell it… In fact, you can now scan credit cards into your handy iPhone or iPad with Squareup (https://squareup.com/).

All right, I think I’m done yelling at my computer screen, so now down to business.

I was hanging out with some friends the other day and noticed two things, the music on my buddy’s speakers was freaking awesome and the stack of bumper stickers strewn on his floor made for some tricky walking. The cool thing is, the music and bumper stickers were both from a show he’d seen the night before; the stickers he got for free after buying the bands EP. So even though I’d never seen the band, I still ended up on their MySpace page and with a sticker on my guitar case within the next 24 hours. I ended up going to a few of their shows and buying an album over the next couple months, definitely adding to their revenue stream. 

The point of merchandise is to spread the word of your band subliminally with the “soft sell.” The soft sell meaning getting your name out there and selling your wares without shoving it down someone’s throat. So go make some t-shirts, coffee mugs, pint glasses, etc… and start selling the crap out of them.

Now that you have all this… “crap” …with your name on it, don’t bring it all to every show. In fact only bring t-shirts, CDs, and maybe one other smaller item (I suggest bumper stickers). The rest you can sell on your website (please tell me you have a website). Also, a lot of companies that print your logo on stuff can print as it gets ordered and you don’t even have to deal with any of the shipping. Hurray!

P.S. - Don’t be stingy for your merch rep. You need someone who can and will sell whether the people want it or not. Either find a charismatic person who’s psyched about your band or at least get a good looking extroverted person (sex does sell). Lastly, you can usually find someone who’s so psyched about your music that they’ll do it for free when you’re just getting started out, but when you start getting a crowd you’ll probably have to start cutting them a percentage of the sales.

Beta Launch to Bands and Musicians

Merge.fm went into private beta to music artists the other week, and we wanted to give more artists a chance to get a sneak peek before our public launch.

Who we’re looking for
We’re working with a dozen artists local to us, and this early in the beta we can’t take on a whole lot more. So we really need people who are going to be active and really use the app.

There are some rough edges since we’re a small team, so you’ll have to understand that this is very much a work in progress.

To apply
Email us at info@merge.fm and include some links to your music or myspace or similar.

#1 - That’s One Music Marketing Tip in the Bank…Next Tip

huh?

by Dan Willis

Give away your music for… FREE! WHAT?!?!?

So you’ve been playing around town for a while and you’ve saved up enough money to drop it all on a studio session. You spend the next couple of weeks in and out of the studio recording your standard 13 song album. So now, after months of playing shows to save up for studio time and spending all that money and time recording your album… you’re broke. In this same-old destitute situation, some of your fans have the balls to say to you, “hook me up with a free copy of the album.”

You might be tempted to say, “eff no!” But hold on, you don’t have to give the whole album away to get something out of it. So choose 4 of your best songs from your album. These are going to be your free preview to the world.

EPs:

One way to approach it is to put out an EP, which stands for Extended Play, and is essentially a 3 to 5 song album, one step up from single, but a step down from a full length album (LP: Long Play). Take your 4 song preview and get them pressed for as cheap as you can with a cardboard sleeve packaging. Now brace yourself, give them away…give away the heck out of them. You don’t have to give them away to just anyone though. In fact, using them as an incentive can be the best option: give them to the first 5 people that sign up for your email list; give them away for free with purchase of a t-shirt; or buy a full length album and get an EP free to pass on to friends… get creative. The idea was explained really well by John Perry Barlow (lyricist for The Grateful Dead): “the best way to raise demand for your product is to give it away …we couldn’t regulate [taping at] our shows, and you can’t online. The Internet doesn’t behave that way. But here’s the thing: if I give my song away to 20 people, and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as a creator is dramatically enhanced. That was the value proposition with the Dead.”

The bottom line is, give some of your music away for free to build demand for your music, and use that momentum to sell music, show tickets, and other merchandise afterward.

Merge.fm Sponsoring Pygmalion Music Festival

The Pygmalion Music Festival has to be one of the best local music events in Champaign-Urbana and we’re fired up to be one of the sponsors this year. We’ll be at all the pre-festival events and obviously we’ll be there for the big one Sept 22-25. If you’re in the area and love indie music, it can’t be missed.

Hacking Moo’s Mini Cards for the Whole Team

will leinweber

I’ve been a big fan of moo and their mini cards for some time, and use them for my personal contact card. So when it was time to get cards for merge.fm, I wanted more mini cards.

They let you print a different design on the front of each card, if you want to. If you upload less pictures for the front, they’ll just start repeating designs until you hit however many cards you’re ordering. The backs are always the same, though.

Knowing this, we were able to get cards for everyone in a single order. The logo is actually the “back” of the card, since that doesn’t change. Everyone’s information is the “front”, and we could just upload a different picture for each person.

They turned out fantastic!

first look at our new logo

will leinweber

We just got a new logo designed for us over at 99designs.com. I must say I was blown away at the quality of all the submissions. It was tough settling on just one logo!

The designer also included desktop version, and you should probably use it as your computer’s background right now. I am!

Quick guide to big sound — multi mic it

by Adam Steele

Forget expensive recording microphones and fancy studios; anyone can get a huge sounding instrument recording. With the same setup as I described in the last post for a few hundred bucks, here’s how to get that huge professional sound. In this example, I’ll use an acoustic guitar, but the same applies to any acoustic instrument (violins, drums, horns, etc).

Setup

With an electric-acoustic guitar, we can record one track from the direct input and the other with the vocal mic described in the last post. If you have more microphones and more inputs, all the better. Where you place each microphone depends on the instrument. Each instrument has a sweet spot to put the mic. Just experiment with it. Have someone else play while you put on headphones move the mic around until it sounds the best. If you’re using two microphones with no direct input, try putting one closer to the instrument, and the other farther away. Or for a guitar, point one at the sound hole and the other at the neck. The point is, you want each mic to record the sound from a different perspective, so you can blend the sound afterward and make it sound bigger, more accurate, or at least give you options to make it sound however you want.

What to do in the recording software

Let’s say you want a huge sound. In your recording software, pan one track a little to the left and the other a little to the right. You’ll notice that when you change the volume of each mic, it’ll change the sound of the recording a lot. So just play with the volume of each until it sounds the way you like it. Then to make it sound even bigger, add a sample delay to each track. This delays either the left or right side which tricks your ear into perceiving a more stereo sound (a bigger sound). If you think about it, this makes perfect sense. When you listen to that instrument live, the sound gets to one of your ears at a slightly different time than the other.

Example

You can hear the difference in the example recording below, especially if you listen on headphones. The first time through the guitar riff is using one microphone, and the second and third time through is using 2 microphones, one panned a little to the left, the other a little to the right, and sample delay applied to both. It’s really easy, takes just a little experimenting, and sounds awesome.