Save Internet Radio!
The future of Internet radio is in immediate danger. Royalty rates for webcasters have been drastically increased by a recent ruling and are due to go into effect on July 15 (retroactive to Jan 1, 2006!).
Follow this link and call your representatives in Washington. It'll only take a few minutes. We CAN drown out the corporate lobbyists if we all work together. Help save Internet Radio!
http://www.savenetradio.org/index.html
Support Low Power FM Radio - Power to the People
Help democratize the airwaves! Support low power FM radio!
http://www.freepress.net/lpfm/
How to Soundproof an Apartment
Having a sound proof room has always been and still is a dream of mine. Here's a great article from Wired about soundproofing a room.
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2007/06/soundproofingYou'll need, among other things, this stuff called green glue. From their FAQ:
1. What is Green Glue and how does it work?
Sound travels as a wave through the air. It’s an airborne vibration. The waves hit a wall or ceiling and the energy becomes structure-borne. Unless the wall or ceiling material is damped, the vibration will travel through the building framing and exit somewhere else as sound again.
2. How does Green Glue Work?
In a constrained layer damping system, sometimes referred to as CLD, a damping material is sandwiched between two other (usually stiff/center of the "sandwich" is sheared rigid) materials. For example, Green Glue sandwiched between two layers of drywall. Damping occurs when the viscoelastic center of the "sandwich" is sheared (see left).
When bent, shear forces pull and stretch on the damping material. Under these conditions, the unique polymeric construction of Green Glue very efficiently converts this mechanical energy to heat. The vibration energy is not isolated, it's dissipated and gone.
http://www.greengluecompany.com/
Album Art
One challenge of the DIY musician is creating album art. Unless you're graphic designer or other type of visual artist, making album art is one of those necessary evils we all have to deal with. You could wait for that million dollar record deal and let the label take care of all that, or you could do it yourself. Here's some tips on that:
- Take your own pictures. Get your camera or borrow one from a friend and get off your lazy ass. Take high res pictures of your pretty face, your cool guitar, tress, flowers, of anything, take lots and lots of pictures. It costs you nothing but time.
- Tweak your public domain pictures and the photos you took with Picasa. Picasa is a superb photo editing program provided for free by Google. It allows you to make fast changes to pictures. I recommend cropping, straightening and definitely look into focal blur and focal black and white. Picasa can be downloaded here: http://picasa.google.com/
- Get Photoshop. If you can't afford it, or aren't morally flexible enough to 'borrow' it, get GIMP. GIMP is a FREE photoshop-like program. It may not be as good as Photoshop but it does enough for what we need to do here. Take the photos you edited with Picasa and layer them on top of one another. Mess with how the photos sit on top of one another. Add your clever band name here too, and your songs titles.
Well, that's all I got for now. Add your own tips and image editing glory stories in the comments below.
kunaki.com
KunakiThis website is the best I have found so far for Indie and DIY muscians to publish their own CDs. $1.60 per CD and NO MINIMUM! If you just want to order 5 CDs and have them available for when you play open mic night or whatever, go for it. Kunaki understands and wants to be integrated into other websites, such as
CDBaby. I plan on using this site then writing a review once I have a self published CD out there. But for now, check out the site yourself, especially if you have some songs already recorded.
