It’s Guitar Hero 3 online for your time-passing plesure. Sorry, no Explorer guitars with buttons on this version, but you can rock your keyboard pretty hard if you try. Enjoy!
One of the best tools I’ve been introduced to in the last few years turned out to be one of the best self guitar lessons I’ve ever had, and one of the best ways to remember a cool riff as it develops. Teach yourself guitar by learning how to play your favorite songs. And there’s a world of downloads to keep you entertained.
Guitar Pro is essentially a program that will bring a guitar tab to life. It’s powered by a MIDI engine that will read and playback the notes while you follow along with the tab. For those of us who don’t always practice with a metronome, it breaks down the tough runs for us. Although the backup band isn’t that fantastic (come on, it’s a basic MIDI engine), it will still keep you in time and involved in the song. With multiple instruments and tracks playing simultaneously, you can just focus on the leads or solidify the rhythm track. It’s even pretty neat to go see the vocal or keyboard parts transcribed for guitar. Stare in amazement as you see your favorite Dragon Force song being shredded out by a computer.Once you’ve acquired the software, head over to a reputable guitar tab site. I recommend Ultimate-Guitar.com for its accurate tabs, constantly updated tab list and lack of “payment required” access. In other words, the guitar tabs are free as of this posting. Run a search for your favorite song (and don’t be afraid to challenge yourself!) You’ll see Guitar Pro files listed with ratings on song accuracy. Download, rock.
Guitar Pro is also an excellent arrangement tool for songwriters. With a little to no knowledge of written music, you can quickly pick it up and compose that masterpiece that’s been begging to be unleashed upon the masses. Use Guitar Pro to mesh your riffs into songs rather than random thoughts, and add accompanying instruments behind it. You might be surprised at how well a part sounds on piano rather than electric guitar. Or a vocal line played on a trumpet. What ever it is, it’s worth the time spent experimenting and amusing yourself. You can even transpose your songs into different keys to see if down-tuning really is the way to go, or write a song out in an alternate guitar tuning a la Kashmir. It even has guitar tricks like whammy (take it 3 octaves up if you’d like), artificial harmonics, slides, hammer-on’s and even pick scrapes.
So stop making excuses not to practice, or take up that New Year’s resolution before it’s forgotten about. Either way, Guitar Pro is going to be the tool to get you to the next step.
One of the biggest factors that seperates band marketing on the internet and standard SEO/SEM is how the target audience is going to find you. Most sites have to worry about keyword density, relevant content and other factors to help rank in SE’s under their primary key phrases. As discussed in Internet Marketing for Bands Part 2, choosing a good band name can almost eliminate search engine competition for your keyword (band name). However, your biggest online challenge will always be marketing to viewers who aren’t looking exactly for you.
Social networking sites like Myspace, Tagged, Friendster, and Facebook have been a God-send for bands. With so many more sites popping up all over the internet offering free MP3 hosting, photos, profiles and even online merchandise stores everyday, it’s hard not to get your name out there. But so is every other band in existance, so be prepared to put some long hours in at first.
Start your online presense by creating your own website. It may cost a few bucks, but there are many template site builders for the DIY’s out there, or sites like Bandzoogle that will do all the work for you. Regardless where it comes from, having your own dedicated website is much more impressive than having to give out a Myspace address. This will even allow you to create your own landing page within your website dedicated to the traffic you generate from those other sites. Photoshop® up a nice live shot of the band (or have your drummer do it, and hang your head in shame haha) or take your most impressive shot and post it up with a few downloadable tracks and/or samples. Remember, your not going to sell thousands of song downloads when starting, so it doesn’t hurt to give out an entire song or two. Use this page when linking from any of the sites you start listing your band at. The last thing you want a potential fan to go through is the 5 minute loading time for your homepage Flash intro, and decide to go grab a drink instead. Get them where they need to be quick. If they want to find more about you, they’ll click around and find it.
From here out, add your band to any website willing to take it. The only way to ensure your going to be heard is by getting the music out there. Don’t be afraid to make small banners (25kb or less) of your band’s logo to spread out on blog or profile comments to help “piggyback” on someone else’s popularity. Just make sure you do it where it’s warranted. Spamming isn’t cool, so know your boundries.
Promotional websites for band:
Have you ever searched “guitar” on Myspace Videos? I’ll save you the effort by summarizing 99% of the captions.
Me playing guitar
In searching for new additions to my Guitar Videos page, I tried the forementioned search. Twenty five pages later I realized how much anyone with a guitar likes to record themselves playing. Unfortunately, the good videos are not worth finding due to the incredibly crappy ones inbetween. Why do I need to see you playing Green Day on your untuned acoustic guitar in your bedroom on your webcam? Does the world really need to hear you rehash Guns ‘N Roses riffs using the world-famous guitar rig…15 watt Crate practice amp into your built-in uncompressed camera mic? I will admit I was impressed by various clips of teens playing Van Halen’s “Eruption”, but I still snicker at the metalheads who are so “core” that they have to use Myspace to show what they do in their free time.
Where is Zakk Wylde when I need a good poser burn?!
But I did stumble across this old gem :)
After being wowed by Matt Bellamy and his incredible performance at the Muse concert in LA, I began reading up on Matt Bellamy’s guitar setup and continued my new-found fascination with the band. I’ve sometimes wonder if everything that can be done with the electric guitar is already avaliable. What if found was a bit inspiring.
I have to start with his guitars, as they are amazing pieces of work. Matt Bellamy has his guitars custom built by Hugh Manson of Manson Guitars. At first glance, they appear to be a cross breed of a Les Paul and a Telecaster, with some exaggerated looks. But the extra knobs and controls on the guitars serve various purposes depending on the guitar. The guitar I saw the most at the recent show was The Mirror Manson.
The Mirror Manson was a pretty incredible sight to see under the stage lights for it’s obvious reflective properties, because of how hard it is to look away from it. Combine it with their usual amazing light show and it’s going to be a blinding experience. Haha. The guitar is equipped with a pair of Mississippi Queens pickups from Bare Knuckle. But the really incredible part of this guitar is the MXR Phase 90 Roland GK2 MIDI internal pickup and the Fuzz Factory effects built right in, with the control knobs accessable on the guitar. (Check out how this thing is wired!)
He has multiple versions of these guitars with other features like Kaoss pads and MIDI control sliders buit in for contol over his Whammy pedal and other floor effects. Check out the Muse Wiki site for lots more info.
Here’s an overview video I found on youtube to see more…
Your Band Name Is A Keyword
In preparing for this post, I took a second to look for a band that I could be completely unbiased against so as not to offend fans, but to solely use their band name as the focus of the article. In my defense, I’m an average fan of AFI and won’t discuss the music today. But after browsing the Guitar World website, AFI stood out as a great example for 2 good reasons: 1. AFI is a shortened version of the full band name “A Fire Inside”, and the acronym can stand for plenty of other things. 2. As a well established band, I’ve seen countless fan sites, links from record label sites and thousands of backlinks from the most reputable music portals out there. A good band name can really make or break your chances of making it as I mentioned earlier, but for internet marketing’s sake, it can easily bury you. But a deciding factor may be how easily you can rise in search engines under your band name. Try searching AFI in Google, and as of today you will see the following…
Since a newly formed band isn’t going to have a Google music link for quite a while, we’ll have to ignore this for now. But notice the first result in the organic listings. The American Film Institute. Some may argue the domain is an exact match to the search, but we’re dealing with two powerhouse internet entities here. Your still-playing-for-beer band can’t compete. If AFI can’t out rank everyone for their new name, you won’t either. Consider how commonly used the word or words making up your band name are. The more you know about your band name, the more the internet world probably has written about it. Unique combinations of words will help ensure you’re the only credible internet site for that result. For my examples sake, “A Fire Inside” may have been a better choice to promote themselves under, because the direct competition isn’t nearly as strong and has far fewer results. With all of this in mind, remember you are trying to make your music and material as publically accessible as you can. With band marketing today, you can’t afford to be buried in the search engine results when word-of-mouth can be your best ally. If you can’t secure the perfect domain that a screaming fan at a show will remember 100% of the time as mentioned in part one, you’ll need the power of search engines to get them to your site.
Being a part of both of these industries, it’s become very apparent that these two entities (music marketing and internet marketing) are fairly unaware of each other. But it’s very important that up and coming bands out there realize the power of internet marketing. And not the “we have more friends on Myspace than you” kind. Here’s my thoughts on the subject, and hopefully someone finds it useful :) When choosing a band name, consider the domain name. Choosing your band name is one of the most important decisions you and your bandmates will have to endure before hitting the path to stardom. When you’ve narrowed the list down, try a new method to help finalize. Are any of the names available as a .com, without dashes or a ___music or ___rocks at the end? If it is not, has another band or worse yet, a jumbo corporation taken it? Most domains are fine for standard SEO sake, but imagine the teenagers at your first show screaming in amazement before you have to blast over the PA “Check us out at official-megatron-rocks-your-pants8.biz. Whoa Yeah!”. Think anyone will remember that the next day? Or that night when they blog your awesome rock extravaganza? Up next in Pt. 2- Consider your online competition, your band name is a keyword.
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