By Slawek Przytula of Hoboud
Olsztyn, Poland
1. This site is connected with Music Business, Promotion, Marketing etc… where I learned that every modern musician should be an entrepreneur: www.artistshousemusic.org
I got this link from a friend musician I jammed with while I lived in London, and I am utterly grateful to him for this source. This site was tremendous help for me as it has tones of information and advice from professional and prominent people in the music biz, and what is I think very important, is that most of the info you can get from there is in videos, put under different categories. So e.g. in a video on the basics of how to mic and record drums you have a pro engineer who shows you exactly how she/he does it, showing exactly the positions of the mics, so instead of reading or 2D pictures you see it in the video, and you can check it for yourself.
I found videos on Entrepreneurship (under Music Business tab) which felt like an internet course from a pro academy, giving me many hints and ideas.
You can also watch many informative videos about things you probably would not do yourself, like being a manager of a label, but still it broadens your mind, and knowing how things indirectly or even directly connected with your business (music) are done, gives you some idea on how you can cope better with the things you do…
2. For music production I used great articles from the 2 following sites: www.soundonsound.com I record a lot of stuff at home on my laptop, so I both learn how to record and produce my own music, and at the same time I look for my own sound which is for me the most important goal in music… I need to find something by which people will recognize it is me, because it is different, my own sound. Having your own DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), I use Logic Pro Studio on my Macbook) gives you an excellent possibility to also check straight away the licks and riffs or harmonies you come up with, so you record them and then you can mix them and add your own beats, or synths and I mention this obvious fact because I believe it is a great chance for an instrumentalist to know about music production in order to work around the original played ideas and putting them in an often different context by playing around a myriad of effects, sounds, etc.
The site has great tips on how to record, mix and produce your own music. I use this site as a pro reference, so learning production stuff is at the same time playing with music. Incidentally, our Hoboud project’s debut album was produced by the band’s musicians, Maria and Marcin Ruminski, recorded mostly in a home studio, and we are getting good reviews even for production, although we are not really professionally trained engineers.
3. In this one (not only for electronic sounds) I found fantastic tips of tricks, especially for using reverbs – brilliant! http://emusictips.com/ I believe anything that expands your horizons, and here production tips for electronic musicians, helped me experiment with more electronic areas, and incorporate them in my recorded performance.. So I don’t limit to just what I come up with on guitar but play around with the recorded input. I still use it just for experimentation, as in Hoboud I use clean acoustic guitar, although electric distorted guitars are all recorded without amps or effects, using just a DAW software, so we don’t need a pro studio, we record them at home, plugging in to computer. Again this is quite obvious stuff as more and more bands use DAWs. Still, many of my friend musicians don’t know they could gain more through it.
4. Also last week a couple of my friend musicians recommended me the following site:
But I didn’t have time yet to check it, they’re saying it’s very rich too, but it’s still for me to find out…
Greetings,
Slawek Przytula
