Músicos - Controlando As Expectativas

Musicians - Managing Expectations

I want to help everyone clearly define their music career goals and compare these goals honestly with their career efforts for the purposes of managing expectations.

Are you serious about making a living making your music or are you a hobbyist?

Managing expectations honestly is a crucial component to a positive attitude and general sense of accomplishment in your artistic endeavors.

If you don’t manage expectations intelligently, it’s very easy to get depressed, discouraged, and even disillusioned (in a positive or negative sense) in your career. Often artists get disheartened and dejected because they are improperly processing data.

It’s easy to misdiagnose a minor, predictable, speedbump or pothole in your career as a catastrophic negative outcome. This misdiagnosis, of course, can cause tons of undo stress and add another “brick in the wall” of defeat we are all trying so hard to avoid.

My dad always calls this “making a mountain out of a mole hill”.

Here is a good metaphor outside of the music business to illustrate my point.

When you purchase a minivan for the family, you expect that vehicle to seat 5 or 6 people comfortably plus groceries, soccer gear, golf clubs, maybe keep the kids entertained, etc.

You DON’T expect that vehicle to take a 90º right turn at 80 mph and stay on the road.

If you mismanage the expectations of a minivan you are sure to be disappointed and quite possibly dead.

Conversely, when you purchase a Ferrari, you expect that vehicle to outperform every sports car on the road. I mean, it BETTER for the price, right?  0-60 mph in less than 4 seconds, superior handling, killer sound system, and you presume that people will look at you while you’re driving it, right?

You DON’T expect to get good gas mileage, pay tolerable auto insurance rates, fit 3 kids and a baby seat, soccer gear, golf clubs, and a few bags of groceries.

If you mismanage the expectations of a Ferrari you are sure to be disappointed and quite possibly divorced.

This example seems a bit silly because it’s so completely obvious, right?

Understanding what your needs are, purchasing the appropriate tools, and executing properly within the constraints of the tool system creates forward predictable momentum and therefore leads to a more positive day to day attitude.

This comes from managing expectations.

FYI, there’s no right or wrong answer to the question I asked at the beginning. I ask because all too often I see people confuse a lighthearted, naïve, or poorly executed work effort with astronomical expectations from their music career.

They put forth the effort as if it was a hobby only to get super upset when things aren’t happening as if it was how they made their living.

So which is it?

I mean getting fired or laid off from a job that you make a living at is painful, I don’t care who you are.  You spend 40 hours of your life at that job every week and when you lose it there is a tremendous sense of defeat.

The defeat comes from 2 places, I suppose. The first is the most obvious, no more money! How will you pay your bills, right? The second is most certainly a prideful reaction. You spent all that time doing all that work and

now you have nothing to show for it.

I’ll bet you are quite serious about that day job, aren’t you?

I don’t mean serious with your attitude because maybe the job blows, you’re bored, you hate everyone you work with, and you really don’t care, but you consistently show up, don’t you?

If you don’t show up you don’t get paid, right?

Even the biggest slackers seem to be masterful at doing the least amount of work required to keep the job.

Maybe you’re really lucky and/or smart and you have a day job that you love and excel at. Still, it’s a day job where you bide your time, albeit more productively, until your artist ship comes in.

So why do so many of you get equally upset in your music careers when the ONE opportunity you created for yourself, which was met with inferior preparation, fails miserably?

We all make little mistakes at our day jobs and yet we don’t quit, because we can’t, right?

In fact, we’re often scared of losing that job after we make a larger-than-usual mistake if for nothing more than the facing the inconvenience of finding another job.

For some reason with artists and their careers, they don’t seem to be fearful of losing that gig as much as they are looking for a satisfactory reason to call it quits.

Is this secretly you?

Why is a little speed bump or detour so damn devastating to us sensitive artist types?

I submit to you that if we all worked as hard, as efficiently, and as intelligently at our music careers as we do at our day jobs, you’d all be making a living doing what you LOVE to do and were BORN to do.

But there’s that damn conflict going on in your head, isn’t there?

Secretly.

You are afraid to put that much effort into it lest you be denied and rejected.

Yeah, we all grapple with that one, she’s a doozy…but here’s the deal.

If the equation of “Preparation + Opportunity = Luck” is true (and I wholeheartedly believe in this concept), then the opposite must also be true, Opportunity – Preparation = NO LUCK.

Why, why, why are we just as upset over the lack of music business opportunities as we are when we’re laid off or fired from a job that we put so much effort into.

I mean if we don’t invest much time and ZERO dollars into our music careers we should expect a proportionate return, right?

Now, some of you are saying, “I bust my butt at my music career, Johnny, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I believe many of you work very hard, but it’s not enough.

It’s not enough because you’re not working hard enough, or not working smart enough, or both.

Here’s the self-test to discover the truth.

If you aspire to make a living at it are you making a living?

If you aspire to make a better living at it are you making a better living?

Painfully simple, right?

If you’re a hobbyist and you make music purely for the joy of the process, then you are getting an instantaneous return on your investment and you should be happy with that.

Mission accomplished.

Don’t expect to gain serious momentum with your project when you only put forth the random, irregular effort of a hobbyist; be happy with your happy.

If you aspire to be a professional artist, then you are going to have to spend a TON of time (on top of your day job), and invest some money to get this dream of yours to gain some traction.

If you don’t make enough money at your day job to support your music habit, then you are going to have to find a way to win with someone else’s money, time, or support.

What has to happen to make that a reality?

The instant ROI lemonade-stand-business-approach where you invest in a product, resell it for a profit one-at-a-time doesn’t really work in the music business.

You’re going to have to create songs.

You’re going to have to pay to record them at a professional level because most of you can’t, and if you can, you don’t have access to all the necessary musicianship and/or tools to get it done right.

You’re going to have to pay for a producer because most of you think you can produce, and some of you eventually will, but you need to learn more right now.

You’re going to have to pay someone to market you music effectively. This helps with a quicker ROI by the way…just sayin.

If you choose to, and have the will power and work ethic to consistently market yourself, which is TOTALLY DOABLE, then you’re going to have to pay someone to teach you the most efficient and effective ways to get it done.

Otherwise you will continue to do what you have always done and you will continue to get the exact same results.

Managing expectations in the music BUSINESS is about constant, non-stop preparation for the purposes of capitalizing on all the different opportunities that will INEVITABLY arise in the future.

There is no Tit for Tat.

No Quid Pro Quo

No immediate return on your investment.

The more you work, the bigger your body of work becomes, the more professional you look.

If you knew already then you’d be making a living.

Stay

In

Tune

Como Se Tornar Um Sound Designer

How To Become A Sound Designer: 3 Ways You Can Accomplish This Goal & How I Learned

Being a Sound Designer is most rewarding because it opens up a lot of opportunity.

Whenever I consult musicians, and mention sound design as an alternative way to make money, I get hit with tons of questions.

How do you become a sound designer
How much does that cost
How do you get into that

My answers are very simple, so simple I think it discourages the people I’m consulting.

There are three ways to become a sound designer.

1. Go to school
2. Find a mentor
3. Teach yourself

All three methods work, it’s your job to figure out which works best for you.

Should I Go To School For Sound Design?

Going to school can be expensive, but I feel that schooling gives you the tools you need to become a great sound designer. One thing I want to point out is schools don’t typically offer this course unless they specialize in it.

For an example: Berklee, FullSail or Point Blank etc.

Most of the time Sound design is merged with a recording arts, film or multimedia degree (BA). Rarely do they offer sound design alone.

As an alternative, you can find some tech schools or companies that specialize in this skill set.

Finding A Local Mentor

This is a great way to learn. If you look around in your own city you’ll find people who do this line of work for a living (like me). I’ve found that most are more than willing to share what they know.

Good places to look are recording studios and your local news station. The guys holding the microphones over the reporters are called sound mixers and or boom operators, and chances are, they record more than dialogue.

They’re working in film, they’re doing whatever they can to make money in their field, they know what they’re doing.

Teach Yourself: Diy Recording & Sound Design

This is primarily how I learned. I had the tools, I had books, there was no YouTube. I sat there, and I experimented. I learned my gear, I learned what it did, and I put it to use.

If you have a recording set up … experiment! You can use your microphone to record sounds around you, bring them into your DAW and tweak them. Make them sound the way you want them the sound.

If you have synthesizers, learn how to use them. They come with manuals. To lazy to read? Go on YouTube. Learn about gain staging, the recording chain etc.

These are the core elements you need, the rest is how you use your knowledge and your imagination.

Not to mention, if you’ve been creating music for a while chances are you’ll be okay as it’s the same stuff just for a different “type” of client.

'La La Land' Trilha Sonora No. 2 Na Billboard 200

'La La Land' Soundtrack Dances to No. 2 on Billboard 200 Chart, Weekend Spends Third Week at No. 1

The Weeknd’s Starboy stays steady at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, collecting a third nonconsecutive week on top. Meanwhile, following La La Land’s big night at the Golden Globe Awards, the film’s soundtrack flies from No. 15 to No. 2. Starboy earned 63,000 equivalent album units (down 10 percent) in the week ending Jan. 12, according to Nielsen Music, while La La Land jumps to the runner-up slot with 42,000 units (up 83 percent).

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The new Jan. 28, 2017-dated chart (where the Weeknd captures a third week at No. 1) will be posted in full to Billboard’s websites on Wednesday, Jan. 18 (one day later due to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday on Jan. 16).

Of Starboy’s units earned for the week, traditional album sales comprised 14,000 of that sum. The bulk of the set’s units were generated by streams -- as streaming equivalent units totaled 38,000 of its total.

As for La La Land, most of its units were powered by traditional album sales, as 30,000 copies of the album were sold (up 88 percent). It was the top-selling album of the week, and climbs to No. 1 on the Top Album Sales chart.

The Moana soundtrack slips from No. 2 to No. 3 with 39,000 units (down 40 percent); thus, the chart has two soundtracks within the top three for the first time in more than a year-and-a-half. It last occurred on the chart dated May 30, 2015, when the Pitch Perfect 2 soundtrack debuted at No. 1, while the Fifty Shades of Greysoundtrack rose from No. 6 to No. 3.

Bruno Mars’ 24K Magic descends one spot to No. 4 on the new Billboard 200 (36,000 units; down 20 percent); J. Cole’s 4 Your Eyez Only holds at No. 5 (30,000 units; down 22 percent); the original Broadway cast recording of Hamilton: American Musical is stationary at No. 6 (29,000 units; down 10 percent); and Drake’s Viewsfalls 4-7 (28,000 units; down 32 percent).

Rock band Dropkick Murphys scores its third straight top 10 album, as 11 Short Stories of Pain & Glory debuts at No. 8 with 26,000 units (mostly from album sales, as 24,000 copies of the album were sold during the week). The set follows their first two top 10s: Signed and Sealed in Blood (it bowed and peaked at No. 9 in 2013 with 33,000 sold), and the act’s highest charting album, Going Out in Style (it debuted and peaked at No. 6 in 2011 with 43,000 sold -- their best sales week ever).

Post Malone's Stoney returns to the top 10, stepping 14-9 with 23,000 units — though down 3 percent.

Closing out the top 10 is Chris Stapleton’s surging Traveller album, which vaults from No. 22 to No. 10 with 22,000 units (up 21 percent). The former No. 1 set gain in album sales (12,000 sold; up 11 percent), track equivalent album units (5,000; up 63 percent) and streaming equivalent album units (5,000; up 15 percent). One of the album’s songs, Stapleton’s cover of “Tennessee Whiskey,” reenters the Digital Song Sales chart at No. 24 with 26,000 downloads sold (up 208 percent).

The rise of both the album and the song follows the success of a viral video on Facebook, where a father sings along to Stapleton’s version of “Tennessee Whiskey” in his car, while his daughter records the performance (and sweetly reacts to her dad’s singing). The original Facebook video was uploaded on Jan. 1 and has collected more than 20 million views. It’s likely that interest in the viral video encouraged fans to buy Stapleton’s version of the song, as well as his Travelleralbum.

CODA Todos Acham Que É O Pior Album Do Led Zeppelin, Mas Existem Algumas Surpresas Boas

Everyone thinks 'Coda' is Led Zeppelin's worst album — but it's really surprisingly great

The 1980s are not generally regarded as a great time for the band that was at that point formerly known as Led Zeppelin.

In truth, they weren't a band during the Reagan era — they were the three surviving members of a band, following the death of drummer John Bonham in 1980 and the group's decision to call it quits.

The conventional story of what happened to Zep at this juncture goes like this. The band was already slipping into irrelevance, as its signature brand of heavy, heavy, heavy blues rock and Celtic folk thunder had been displaced by punk, with its raw energy and distinct lack of respect for its elders.

The rebooting effort of "In Through the Out Door" in 1978 divided the group, with singer Robert Plant and bassist/keyboard player John Paul Jones pushing toward a different sound — less hard, less "animal" as Plant once put it.

Guitarist and producer Jimmy Page and the ill-fated Bonham, their struggles with the rock-n-roll lifestyle not withstanding, were reportedly considering a return to form with Zep's next record, although Page was in my view wrestling with his own devotion to the blues while not ignoring the punk onslaught. 

Bonham's passing ended what was in retrospect an overblown civil war in the band: Page dropped out of sight for a year, Jones continued on working with a variety of different musicians, and Plant launched a reluctant but wildly successful solo career (as a teenager in the early 1980s, Led Zeppelin often seemed like a distant legend from the pre-MTV era, while Plant was a lively if confusing presence in the video age).

Plant, Page, and Jones in 2007. YouTube

Page would resurface and collaborate with Plant and Page's old Yardbirds mate, Jeff Beck, forming the Honeydrippers; later, Page would team up with Paul Rodgers and create the Firm, and also undertake what critics have generally regarded as a meandering post-Zep existence, but what in retrospect now looks like an individualistic an actually creatively worthwhile episode of mourning for the end of Led Zeppelin, Bonham's death, and in a sense the demise of the Very Big Rock Sound of the 1970s, which Page was instrumental in developing.

The 1980s low point for Zep was the 1985 Live Aid concert, a ragged and largely unrehearsed reunion that wasn't corrected until 2007, when the band reunited in London and turned in an astonishing performance that for Zep fans has the power of a religious event.

In the midst of all this messiness in the 1980s, the band's most unloved album appeared, "Coda," a collection of unreleased studio material. 

For a teen of the 1980s who had experienced the British invasion and Zep's subsequent 1970s dominance secondhand, "Coda" presented the opportunity to actually buy a new Led Zeppelin record in 1982, rather than slap a copy of "Led Zeppelin IV" from 1971 on the turntable to spin it backwards and see if there were any secret demonic messages on "Stairway to Heaven."

The back of the album jacket. Amazon.com

I don't remember liking the record all that much, but that was due to both its shambolic absence of cohesiveness — and my own haphazard exposure to the Zep timeline.

The band was in it origins an aggressive proponent of the blues — specifically, the Chicago blues or city blues, distinct from the un-electrified country blues. You needed to have started with Led Zeppelin I, released in 1969, and not had your ears saturated with a million spins of "Stairway" on the radio in the '70s to understand that.

Luckily, as a part of a massive remastering and re-issuing of the entire Zep catalog, Page has added some context and credibility to "Coda," integrating it with the larger musical Zeppelin narrative that's been his life's work for the past ten years (Page just turned 73).

There are really three Led Zeppelins: the live band, the studio ensemble, and the entity that appears on the albums. Of these, the studio ensemble is arguably the most interesting. Live, the band was ferocious early on, but over time it morphed into a huge and dramatic arena group that sacrificed a vibe that made it perhaps the finest blues-rock garage band every assembled. 

The album Zep embodies Page's many ideas about recording and production and is accordingly an artificial construct, by design — a musical vehicle for listening to entire vinyl records, both sides, on good stereos. In fact, the first four Zep albums are a long suite of music, the expression of a synthesis of major strands in Western music, from blues to folks to classical. They can stand up to the the most important Beatles records and are challenged only by the 1968-1973 run of the Rolling Stones, starting with "Beggars Banquet" and ending with "Goats Head Soup."

The studio ensemble was the foursome that worked all of this out. By remastering the Zep catalog and including a huge amount of the studio material, Page has illuminated this aspect of the band's existence and certainly redeemed even "Coda, which now serves a useful purpose and gracefully presages the magnificent final remastered release, the Deluxe Edition of the "Complete BBC Sessions," perhaps my personal favorite Zep album.

There's a looseness to the Deluxe Edition "Coda" that's more obvious than in the 1982 release. Yes, there are some real gems, such as the Page and Plant collaborations with the Bombay Orchestra. But the recordings also convey the disciplined joy that the group explored in the studio.

The delicious groove that Bonham and Jones set up, punctuated with Bonzo's explosive fills, establishes an hypnotic, surging background for the interplay between Plant and Page. And the remastered "Coda" is crammed with cool guitar sounds and textures.

As a player, Page has been captured by his mid-1970s image: the dragon-suited rock god swaggering in front tens of thousands of fans, wielding his Les Paul or his Gibson doubleneck, giving birth to everybody from Eddie Van Halen to Slash. But the man was really a thoroughgoing studio geek whose adventurousness as a producer is, to my mind, ultimately more significant than his skills with the six-strings. As Zepland asks itself year after year, "Where's Jimmy?" in response to his infrequent appearances and lack of any new music, it might be worth thinking of his master vision as a producer and composer, rather than as a guitarist.

So we get, for example, the funky growl of "St. Tristan's Sword," an instrumental mix that shows just how delightfully locked in Page and Jones could be. Led Zeppelin had an embarrassment of musicianship in the group, and with cuts like this, it's vividly on display.

A rough mix of "Bring It On Home" has a feral, sweaty vitality that showcases Zep's filthy, post-Stones sex appeal and reminds us of just how indebted Jack White is to the more lo-fi aspects of Zep's sound. The spacey, elegiac "Everybody Makes It Through (In The Light)" rough mix is one of the few examples in popular music of what a hard blues synth New Wave band would sound like as it was working out the details (the tune appears on 1975's epic "Physical Graffiti" double-album). 

When the band was young. YouTube/Jean Bonini

All this extra stuff provides a freshness to the re-released original tracks on "Coda," especially the blistering bluesers, such as "I Can't Quit You Baby," the Willie Dixon standard from Led Zeppelin's debut album and on "Coda" taken from a live recording when the band was just tearing it up (for the record, Dixon and Zep tangled over copyright issues before his death as a result of Zep's liberal borrowings from the blues legacy).

And the group's eulogy for Bonham, the drum solo "Bonzo's Montreux," now sounds properly like a true coda for the force of nature behind the skins. "Baby Come On Home" is a luscious soul number that suggests an alternate-universe version of soundtrack from "The Big Chill" and reminds us of Page and Jones' chameleon talents as onetime session guys. "Sugar Mama," another old blue tune, is just a flat-out hoot.

Zep was a great big gigantic band, an impression that anyone could form based on the group's records. But the remasterings and Deluxe Editions showcase a group that was even bigger than we previously thought. I realize that statement comes off like the raving of a fan, but the sheer scale of Zep's musical contribution is the revelation of the sequence of re-releases. They were accused of being dinosaurs when "Coda" came out. They were dinosaurs. 

But don't forget: the dinosaurs were big.

And as "Coda" proves, big dinosaurs who could have a lot of fun.

Black Sabbath - Shows De Despedida Durante A Tour Na América Latina

Black Sabbath Scores During Farewell Tour's Latin American Run

Black Sabbath’s The End Tour, billed as the band’s farewell trek, wrapped its 2016 run through four continents in early December 2016 with a final stadium performance in São Paulo, Brazil, which leads the latest roundup of Hot Tours (see list, below).

The tour stopped in eight Latin American cities during November and December to cap a busy year on the road that began in mid-January with an opening North American leg. An Oceania trek in April and summer runs through Europe and the U.S. and Canada preceded the tour’s final stretch of the year that included Mexico, Chile, Argentina and, finally, Brazil.

The São Paulo concert held at Estádio do Morumbi was the last of four Brazilian dates on the itinerary. The Dec. 4 show was attended by 64,744 fans and racked up box office sales topping $5.5 million to rank as the tour’s highest-grossing engagement, based on reported Boxscores. Two nights earlier the band played in Rio de Janeiro at Praça da Apoteose, a square in the city that is often the site for major outdoor concerts. The Rio performance drew a crowd of 26,764, earning $2.1 million in ticket sales. Both events were produced by Brazilian concert promoter T4F-Time For Fun.

Read more: Ozzy Osbourne Happy to 'End on a High Note' With Black Sabbath Tour

Black Sabbath also played in Mexico City during the fall run through Latin American cities, grossing $2.7 million from an outdoor performance at Foro Sol stadium. Attendance was logged at 60,506 for the Nov. 16 event that was produced by Latin promoter OCESA. The band played at the same Mexico City venue in 2013 during its Reunion Tour and drew an even larger crowd that reached 61,433. Ticket sales for that performance totaled $3.7 million.

The End Tour is set to resume on Jan. 17 with a final sweep through seven European cities before ending next month. The tour finale is booked in England at Birmingham’s Genting Arena. The venue will host the band for a two-show stint on Feb. 2 and 4.