Amplify magazine

AMPLIFY AMPLIFYMAGAZINE.COM | £3.99 | JULY 2015

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SCRA TCH YOUR OWN RECORD LABEL

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SOUNDPROOFING

VOICE OF THE CENTURY

IT’S THAT SIMPLE

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MUTE YOUR BEDROOM IN EASY STEPS

RASPBERRY PI: HOW £20 CAN REVOLUTIONISE YOUR GARAGE

GIBSON GUITARS: THE LEGACY OF AN AGELESS ROCK CLASSIC

FIND OUT HOW INSIDE

HE’S THAT MOVIE VOICEOVER GUY... HE’S

MR REDD PEPPER

GO ON TOUR: DO-IT-YOURSELF GUIDE FROM START TO FINISH

STUDIO MICS: A RUNDOWN OF THE BEST MICS ABOUT TOWN

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If it has no melody, you don’t need to listen.

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9 | IF YOU WANNA ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

Outsource your art with Fiverr

10 | THE CONCEPT OF ARTWORK 11 | VOICE OF THE CENTURY

WHAT’S INSIDE

Exclusive interview with Redd Pepper

16 | HOW TO: KEEP YOUR FANS

Sure-fire tips to make them stay

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18 | GETTING RID OF THOSE PRE-GIG JITTERS 20 | SOUNDPROOF YOUR ROOM

Room acoustics, no science needed

26 | SOUL SHREDDER

Q&A with an up-and-coming band

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30 | RECORDING ROYALTY

Look into the life of an Abbey Road runner

33 | LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION

Make your own music video from scratch

36 | SHACKED UP

Sheffield’s customisable guitar shop

38 | THE PART-TIMER

Musician relies on nothing but an iPad

39 | PRODUCING FROM FRANCE TO ASIA

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The trip-hop duo outsourcing journey

42 | YOUR NEXT GADGET KICKSTARTED 44 | YOUR BRAND: YOUR IMAGE

50 |

Choose a style for every genre

COVER STORY

Launch your own record label for £5

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54 | WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT: GIBSON LES PAUL 57 | CHANNELING YOUR CREATIVITY

Interview with Capital’s breakfast radio producer

58 | DIY: PI

Three more tasty gadgets to make at home

61 | MERCH OR DIE

Design the perfect band shirt

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62 | YOUR FIRST TOUR

All you need to know about getting on the road

70 | AN ORIGIN STORY: PEET THE ‘JAZZ PRODIGY’

From a student to a superhero

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72 | LYRIC OF THE MONTH: Jeff Buckley 74 | HE SHOOTS AND HE SCORES

Mat Hill opens up about homemade filming

78 | THE BEST STUDIO MICS 80 | REVIEWS: BAND ESSENTIALS 83 | VENUE OF THE MONTH

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HELLO FROM THE EDITORS, It’s finally summer! For those of you who have spare time in between your music festivals and bottles of pale ale, we’ve brought you a particularly fantastic issue this month.

As per, we are also happy to announce our winners for this month’s Design a Cover competition. We also continue to accompany you and your band from the very start of recording until that glorious moment on stage you’ve always dreamed of. With all the tricks of the trade we’ve compiled, you’re guaranteed to make it big.

For the visually inclined, we’ll be giving you tips on how to create your cover artwork and how to style your band image.

Your DIY fix will be fully satiated with our six-page guide on how to give your soundproofed bedroom the ideal acoustics.

You’ll also be able to make your own wireless guitar cables to go with your equipment - for less than £40!

Our start-up section is extra special this month, too: you’ll only need a fiver to launch your own record label. The saga doesn’t stop there, though: we’re also bringing you all the secrets behind touring the country. Did you know it’s actually the easiest thing to do?

Our man of the hour this month is Redd Pepper, the voice of the century. He’s the faceless hero behind all those trailers we know and love - and he’s as interesting as you’d imagine.

And finally, this month we put our spotlight on the best budget-friendly microphones and pedals to get your sounds going.

Find us on www.amplifymagazine.com Tweet us @amplifymaguk Like us on Facebook Amplify Magazine Email us info@amplifymagazine.com

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Keep tuned in with us for more,

- THE AMPLIFY TEAM

or, you know, keep it

you paid for it, after all we don’t really care either way

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AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

Lina F Boothby

Luana Salles

Writer: ‘Soundproof Your Room’ Most amazing voice: “I have an absolute girl crush on Selah Sue’s voice. It’s earthy, sexy and perfectly powerful.”

Writer: ‘Your First Tour’ Most amazing voice: “Jeff Mangum, hands down. He showed me that you don’t have to be conventionally talented to sing well, and no other voice has ever brought me to tears this many times!”

Wemmy Ogunyankin

Will Ross

Writer: ‘Your Brand: Your Image’ Most amazing voice: “My favourite voice is Jeff Buckley. Before I heard him singing, I never knew how far a man’s voice could go.”

Writer: ‘Voice of the Century’ Most amazing voice: “Brian Blessed has the most incredible voice. Its uplifting boom sets the room alight, and steals attention from all around. Wonderful.”

OUR WINNERS OF THE MONTH

Design a Cover competition - ‘The Bottlebanks’

Second place Rosie Fossett

The winner Hattie Hofton

Third place Artiste Mysterio

It’s time to announce the winner of our monthly artwork competition - it was close, but we’ve settled on a winner. Congratulations, Hattie Hofton from Sheffield! Enjoy your two tickets to Reading. Next month’s competition prize can be yours if you can top Hattie’s July winner.

For your chance to win two tickets to Bestival in September, all you have to do is send in an album cover for a band named Goats in Pyjamas. That’s all you get, so get going! Good luck!

Special prize Edua Csernus

All entries to be sent via email to info@amplifymagazine.com

LETTERS

TO MAESTRO

Our know-it-all music whizz answers all your questions...

Dear Maestro, How do I build up the confidence to wear make-up on stage for the first time?

It’s about believing in the performance you’re gonna give. Assuming you’re going for something dark and heavy, if your make-up reflects the music, the audience are expecting to see that in your performance. Give ‘em hell.

Maestro, I just can’t get my head around mixing a song without messing up the bass. Any suggestions?

Mixing can be tricky without the right equipment, room and experience. I suggest you come along to our next Mixing Masterclass in August.

Dear Maestro, what moves are allowed on stage, and what moves are banned?

No ‘moves’ are allowed. If it’s pre-planned, it should be banned. The genuine ‘moves’ you see on stage are natural, so if you’re in the moment and end up throwing your body about, so be it.

Maestro, I’m recording a demo and I can’t figure out what microphone to record my guitar with.

Acoustic guitars are best if you record them in a silent room.

Use a pair of Samson CO2s.

They are fairly cheap, create a natural sound and you can record stereo sound with them.

Hi Maestro, I really liked your last issue, especially the feature on drum reviews.

I am about to invest in a new set. Any recommendations?

Dear Maestro, I am not a musician, but I love this magazine. Are you planning on expanding internationally?

Go for a Pearl set. It is a nice beginner drum kit, with a great sound and with plenty of elements to expand with. You can also check it on eBay to see if anybody sells it cheap.

Currently we are only UK based, but we involve a lot of international people in both writing and through exclusive interviews. But who knows what the future holds?

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T R O H S A P IT’S O T E TH O T Y WA

IF YOU WANNA ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

By Luana Salles

W

e all used to dream about paying classmates to do work for us. Hell, some of us might have even done it (we won’t tell if you don’t). Those essays you never wanted to write, or that maths project you absolutely couldn’t do, even if you tried…

Wouldn’t it be so much easier and quicker if someone with experience could do it for you? Without costing you fifty quid, that is!

Making music isn’t all too different from that college nightmare. Yes, it’s way more enjoyable, but before you disagree, hear us out: some of us aren’t too skilled at mixing. Some of us can’t afford a mastering house or are just completely inept lyricists.

It happens - we can’t expect to be talented at everything, especially in such a multifaceted and dynamically complex industry.

That’s where Fiverr comes in.

Established in 2010, Fiverr is an online marketplace bustling with creative freelancers from around the globe. People who sign up to the website can sell an unbelievable amount of things based around their personal talents and passions. You can buy over three million services from designers, programmers, animators, businesspeople, advertisers, artists, and everything in between - all for the starting price of five dollars. It’s like an eBay for the brain.

Musically, Fiverr can be an invaluable outsourcing option when you’re on a very tight schedule or budget. Say you want a demo you’ve recorded to be mixed and mastered within a week - done. All you need to do is find the relevant category on the website, choose how long the delivery time can take, what seller rating you’re after, and even what language the seller should speak.

Luckily for you, sellers are rated by those who purchase from them to guarantee that you can always choose the best professional for each job.

It doesn’t stop there, either. You can also hire services from songwriters, composers,

WITH YOUR PHONE AND SOME POCKET MONEY

producers, sound effect and voice-over experts, and session musicians. Yes, all for that same incredible bargain. If you don’t have enough time or money to invest in doing the job yourself - or if you feel like you’re not the best person for the job at all - Fiverr’s got your back.

In fact, it’s actually possible to record and master an entire song with the help of Fiverr sellers, all professionally done. Imagine you have a terribly rough version of a song you want to produce already recorded on your phone.

“It’s actually possible to record and master an entire song with the help of professional Fiverr sellers” You can upload this so-called demo online and send it to a variety of lyricists and musicians, one at a time, who can then add layers and layers of instrumentation and vocals to it, as per your request. To assure they’ll produce something as close as possible to what you’d initially imagined, send them songs you want yours to sound like.

Whenever possible, give them directions to make sure they remain faithful to your personal tastes. Evidently, what someone else produces will never be exactly what you had in mind - but who knows? You might even prefer the ideas they have to offer and enjoy the cooking pot of different flavours coming together harmoniously.

After you have all instrumental parts ready and layered, you can send it to a producer so they can mix and master your precious Frankenstein’s monster. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can even hire a

video maker or animator to make you a music or lyric video, a graphic designer or artist to make you some personalised album art, and a marketing specialist to run a PR campaign to get your song out there. All of that starting at a fiver apiece.

Of course, outsourcing your songs from start to finish isn’t necessarily ideal. Music is about expressing yourself, unloading your innermost feelings and thoughts into song. Art, in general, is about catharsis. And catharsis could not possibly be achieved if your entire artistic process has been handled by other people.

Yet that doesn’t make Fiverr a shameful tool to explore. There’s still so much you can individually craft while still outsourcing a few components of your music! We can’t all afford the time to soundproof our rooms or the cash for a mastering house or publicity campaign - and, similarly, not all Fiverr professionals can afford to buy their own studios or run their own businesses.

Helping each other out can be mutually beneficial, render fantastic results, spark a durable professional relationship, and get you that much closer to achieving stardom.

So go ahead and try it for yourself - get your phone out and start searching for your next Brian Eno today.

CONNECT TO FIVERR ONLINE FIVERR is easy to use.

Download their app for both Apple and Android or scan our QR code to access their website directly.

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THE CONCEPT

BRANDING

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For a lot of musicians, the artwork for their upcoming album or EP will be the last thing on their minds. Recording, production, promotion and live shows are taking up so much time and effort that the cover is always pushed to the end.

By Wemmy Ogunyankin

F

or others, you know, the more artistically driven and the more visually inclined, the album artwork always comes first. Every song you write and every hook that sticks is guided by the concept of your album and therefore by your cover. Not all albums are concept pieces, but every album cover should have a concept and there are an endless number of concepts your album or EP covers could have.

It is probably the only thing about your music that has no conventions, there is no obvious wrong way to design an album like there is a wrong way to play a riff. Apart from the artist spelling your band’s name wrong, but that can’t be helped by you guys as artists. And just because it’s hard to mess up doesn’t mean that no thought should go into it.

The album is what you hand to potential listeners, it’s the design that is likely to go on your merchandise, it’s the design that will go on your Facebook, Bandcamp, Soundcloud and whatever else you’re using as a promotion vehicle so it has to grab and it has to stick. Whether you’re commissioning a stranger, getting a friend to do it or

10 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

designing it yourself, coming up with an album cover is proof that being a musician makes you an artist of more than one kind.

So visualise… what are you trying to say with this album and how much can your cover do that for you?

We’ve picked out six albums covers that do different things in genius ways.

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Christina Aguilera: Bionic Two-faced Christina channels her Terminator persona on the cover of her sixth album ‘Bionic.’ This album cover was designed by multimedia street artist D*Face. He was asked by Christina and her then-husband to listen to the album to “see what came to mind.”

D*Face admitted he had never listened to Aguilera before, but listening to the album informed this dangerously beautiful cover. He said: “The album had a futuristic feel, but at the same time had a nostalgia to it.” Hence the glamorous 50’s looking Christina on the left.

This cover acts as an extension of her music and is very telling of the kind of music you can expect to hear. In listening to it as a stranger, and then creating the album,

D*Face created exactly what any listener would envision, he just made it awesome.

If you can find an artist to be as inspired by your music as D*Face was, you’ve got a money-maker.

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Mastodon: Crack The Skye This album was designed by fine artist and designer Paul Romano, who typically, but not always, illustrates and designs Mastodon’s artwork.

Romano knows Mastodon very well, so he sits in contrast with D*Face who only listened to Aguilera for that specific purpose.

Romano knows so much Mastodon that this album cover says exactly about their sound what it needs to.

Groovy, progressive, psychedelic sludge.

This is evident with the bold blues and oranges, as well as the seemingly mythical hippy Asian feel to the piece. Mastodon’s concept is their genre and they clearly send a message of their sound. They take a well established ideology: the association of this kind of art with their genre and use it to create masterpieces. The Hunter, the subsequent Mastodon album was designed by a different artist and it can be said that

OF

Album artwork 4

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it lacked Mastodon’s usual aesthetic- and we missed it.

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Nirvana: Nevermind This cover probably wasn’t a stranger to you. Nirvana went so left with this cover, it’s iconic.

This cover is an example of any kind of political statement in your music. The cover shows a circumcised baby boy underwater with a dollar bill on a fishhook just out of his reach. Kurt Cobain said he conceived the idea while watching a television program on water births with drummer Dave Grohl. Geffen, their record label, decided water births were far too graphic.

They eventually sent a photographer to a pool to take a photo of his friend’s son.

Geffen were concerned about obvious genitalia and the offence it could cause. Cobain made it clear that the only compromise he would accept was a sticker covering the penis that would say, “If you’re offended by this, you must be a closeted paedophile.”

There. If that isn’t grunge in a nutshell, we don’t know what is. Nevermind was a middle finger to the music industry and to the capitalist structure of America. If your

lyrics motivate you to do so, you have a winner with a politically motivated album cover.

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Sia: 10,000 Forms of Fear Sia makes very clear that she’s opened up her darker side with her faceless album cover. Sia, well known for appreciating her privacy to an extent far deeper than many celebrities often claim, sticks her trademark blonde wig on a backdrop of darkness. What does this album say? It screams electropop, but it also screams power ballad. It screams femininity but it screams feline. It screams Sia, who loves creating visual art through her videos, has created somewhat of a masterpiece on her album.

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Ramones: Ramones The self titled debut album cover is probably the obvious choice for a self titled debut album. The classic chic band photo that tells every potential buyer who you are and what you are about.

Roberta Bayley, a photographer for Punk magazine took the photo and it was reported to be like “pulling teeth” to get them to

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pose. The final product is a monochrome photo of the lads wearing ripped jeans, leather jackets and looking generally disinterested on a brick wall in New York, and went to become a genre defining photo.

This kind of cover art promotes genuinity, and is entirely “what you see is what you get” kind of thing. Do you expect anything other than classic American punk when you look at that album cover?

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Evanescence: Fallen Evanescence did a clever thing for one of the most recognisable album covers in the gothic world. They plastered the face of their face, Amy Lee, on their cover. Instantly recognisable with her pale skin, black hair, eyeliner and deep eyes, she is an obvious archetype of gothic metal and Evanescence felt she, along with the deep mystical blue was enough to tell listeners everything about therir sound.

This was their debut album, and they knew Amy Lee’s face would be enough to sell their brand. Do you have a face within your band? Someone who says so much about your brand that all you need is a look? It worked for Evanescence.

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INTERVIEW

VOICE of the Century

In a world...

Where talent is audible...

One man stands above the rest...

He’s the man behind the movies, that legendary movie voiceover guy...

Hot as Hell, he’s Mr Redd Pepper

By Will Ross

A

s the 04:28 Bakerloo line service slowed to a stop at Baker Street station, the now multi-million pound voice boomed over the tannoy.

“This is your driver speaking… or is it? Do mind the closing doors.”

Barbados-born Redd Pepper had been driving trains on the London underground for 20 years, previously having worked stints at McDonald’s and as a firefighter. But he was finding his “safe little job” more and more soul-destroying as he carefully navigated the capital’s underground labyrinth.

Now credited with voicing blockbuster Hollywood movie trailers, including Men in Black, Independence Day and Chicken Run, Redd didn’t want to go to work that cold morning in the depths of winter.

“It wasn’t a happy morning,” the famous silky voice, now 54, explained. “But, if I hadn’t gone to work that day, things wouldn’t have unfolded the way they did.”

A peppy young talent agent “accosted” Redd, and after hearing his deep, booming voice over the tannoy, one which makes Barry White sound like a castrato, offered him the opportunity to try his luck at voice acting.

“I assumed this was an emergency, something’s gone wrong - so I basically undo my window, wait for the guy to get to the cab, and he just blurted out the offer. So 12 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

we exchanged numbers.

“It was a cool little safe job, driving trains.

But it was quite depressing, quite souldestroying, going up and down a goddamn track, let’s be honest. But it’s a job, and it’s safe, and as a grown man that’s what you do.

You provide for your family.”

The following day, Redd was called into London’s Molinare Studios for a test run.

Dressed in his tube driver’s uniform for a shift later that day, he gave his first voiceover gig everything he had. Apparently, it was enough.

“I’d never been anywhere like it before, but I’m Mr Cool personified, I don’t get rattled by anybody. So I strolled in there, did as I was told, and voiced a practice run over Kevin Costner’s Waterworld. I can’t hear them, I can just see them through the glass - and they’re like, very animated, big smiles.

And I’m thinking, ‘Is that cool? You happy with that?’

“I didn’t realise the kind of money you could get doing this sort of stuff. Anyway, he called me up and said he’d offer my £600 for one hour a week. ‘Ok, I’ll get back to you, I’ll talk to my people,’ I said - I’m trying to be cool, but in reality I’m thinking ‘Wha?! £600?! Damn!’ Did he say one hour? One hour?”

After a few weeks playing hookie from his driving job, Redd gave up the effort and decided to focus on his

new-found talent. But once his voice started getting onto our TV screens, and indeed on cinema trailer runs, Molinare began to discuss the prospect of ‘copyrighting’ his voice entirely - something Redd couldn’t bear to allow.

“They said I couldn’t be used anywhere else. But they couldn’t pay me a proper wage, so I got myself an agent. And I started working, and working, and working…

“When you’ve got it like that, they’ve got to buy you out and totally renew your life. They have to pay you silly amounts of money because if you can earn £500,000 a year, you’ve gotta make sure they pay you £500,000, plus whatever you’re doing for them at the time. But only very, very talented individuals get stuff like that thrown at them.”

When it comes to raw talent, Redd’s your man. But despite his gods-given gift, he’s incredibly p ro ud of

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INTERVIEW

the work he does. This comes across in swathes from his outright persona, one which immediately crushes any uncertainty and puts his audience at friendly ease. So what’s the secret, how does he do it?

“I have no more talent than anyone else, but I know I have a great voice. I know how to orate, how to intonate; I know about levels of emotion in your voice; I know how to deliver and how to listen.

“That’s the main thing - I’ve always said to people when they ask me the great secret behind being a voice artist, and I say ‘Your ears’. Using your ears, listening. But you’ve also got to have a certain amount of empathy in your voice, or clarity, or emotion, excitement, sadness… And it’s not easily done if you haven’t got a clue how to express emotions.”

“This is your driver speaking… or is it?”

In his spare time, Redd utilises his voice in other ways. Straightaway, I get an old fashioned vibe from him, and as you can imagine, he doesn’t tolerate any funny business in his household. With six sisters, three brothers and however many grandchildren running about the place, he likes to play the role of ‘Wise Old Grampa Pepper’. But it’s his love of music that gets Redd up in the morning.

“I’m crazy about funk and soul music, and I had the privilege of broadcasting on a radio station called WNK back in ‘91 or ’92. It was the first black soul music station legally in this country. I did that for a couple of years and it gave me the bug.

“I do have a studio at home, it’s not a broadcast suite in like, a regular, proper studio, though. I’ve got 64,000 records I’m passionate about music, absolutely passionate about playing flamenco guitar, so I’m interested in other things apart from 14 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

being me.

“So the set-up indoors is good for radio, because you can always have music in the background while you’re speaking, but if I had to record a clean piece, you’d probably hear a slight hiss. The fan from my turntables and all that is not set up for that kind of broadcasting.

“Plus, if I had a studio I would still refuse to do ISDN (Integrated Services for Digital Network). I like to meet people, I like to be in the mix. When you’re talking to somebody and trying to get something out of that person, or you need to deliver something for that person, you need to physically see them.

“In my books, I need to physically see you, to meet you, to look at your eye movement, your hand gestures. Your vibe engineers a whole set-up. You get to know someone and what they want. You can’t do that sat in your garden shed.

“Then the internet came up, and I started up on an internet radio station called JFSR (Jazz, Funk and Soul Radio) and I do a show every Saturday called ‘50 Shades of Redd’, and it’s cool. I used to do another one called ‘The Soulercoaster’.

So it was soulful, funky and upbeat, every Saturday afternoon. I do that from my home, and all this not for money, but for love. I broadcast for love nowadays.”

But it’s advice from his father that gives Redd the uncompromised love for his work.

He tells me that it’s important to be tolerant - “Shut up and listen. That’s the truth.” He lets me in on his little family secret, which seems more like a crest or motto more than anything else - ASA: Appearance, Speech and Attitude.

“These are the three things that get me through. Always carry two of them in your locker at any one time. Whatever the combination of two, you must have them.

“If you want to walk around town with dreadlocks, Nike pumps, tracksuit bottoms and a swagger in your walk, be prepared to impress them with your speech and your attitude, because your appearance ain’t cutting it.

“My son asked me, ‘Why do I wear a suit to work? Nobody’s gonna see you.’

But he doesn’t understand that I’m doing it for him. I’m teaching him pride and to understand how people will assess you just because of your appearance.

“Basically, be the person you wanna be.

Act like the person you wanna be. We’ve got lots of money, right? But my wife goes into Primark, she won’t go into the Bond Street shops. She will look a million dollars dressed in Primark clothes, and she’s probably only spent £12. You can walk into anywhere and feel 10 feet tall if you really want to. Act the part. Feel the part. Be the part. Be that person you want everyone to look up to.

“And that includes when you deliver your lines. When someone says your name, feel the same way they feel. They’re looking for a performance, and at the end of the day they’re paying you for it, so deliver it to them.

“But above all, do not take anything for granted. Because there’s always a new boy waiting to do what you do.”

It’s all very well having a talent for speech, and even having the attitude and

appearance to back up your work. But what about the mechanics themselves? You may be asking, as I did when I first met him, ‘How the bloody hell does he sound so sexy?’ I put this to Redd, much to his amusement, but his modest response was not what I expected.

“Here’s the joke - I do absolutely nothing.

I don’t walk around in the winter with a scarf around my neck, I don’t gargle on sand and whiskey, I don’t do nothing. I can be up ‘til two o’clock in the morning sitting in my house watching a decent television programme, still get up at six, still sound fine. Not a problem.

“I don’t prepare, the only thing I do is prepare my mind - I’ve got a job to do, and I’ll be there, giving my best. No gargling, no voice exercises, no shouting, nothing.

“I used to literally live across the road from the beach, so every morning for two months I’d go out, go down the steps and onto the sand and do what Richard Burton used to do, and shout. Shout to France.

‘Good morning, France!’ Really belt it out. But I soon realised it wasn’t doing anything.”

“I don’t gargle sand and whiskey like some people...”

Ultimately, the art of the epic movie trailer is dwindling. More and more we’re being shown longer and longer segments of upcoming films, less in summary but more a shortened version of the film entirely.

This in turn ruins any sense of surprise or plot, as every single shock, explosion or pun is exposed in a bout of oxymoronic irony.

But Redd, undoubtedly the movie and TV industries’ closest friend and saviour, is here to fix that problem. In an advert for Vision Direct contact lenses, his subtle comic side comes to the forefront and immediately makes me question my own eyesight.

“I say, ‘You forgot to grab your contact lenses… Tomorrow, you’ll have to wear… the plastic monsters!’ I do so many, I’m ashamed to say that I’ve gotten to that age where I just forget about them. Then all of a sudden, I’ll see one and think, ‘Oh, yeah, I did that.’”

At the end of the day, Redd comes across as a real person. There’s no level of falsity about him - he’s genuine, and I like that about him. Perhaps it truly is his attitude that has gotten him so far in his career, but I suspect it’s something more, something personal, something homely.

“My wife, Kiran… she taught me to look inside myself. We practice a lot of peace and harmony, and we go to the temple a lot.

We’re just off to India in the summer to go to the Golden Temple.

“There are a lot of facets to me, I’m not just a big black guy who looks like he can knock you out. I’m a real nice guy. But I’ll always remember that bleak morning at Baker Street, where I was approached by that strange man who changed my life forever. I really should go and take a selfie of myself at that station… Haha!”

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HOW TO

KEEP YOUR FANS It’s one thing to have a great vocalist, fantastic instrumentalists and a newlyreleased EP. One problem musicians do find is keeping fans excited, engaged and loyal. Here are some sure-fire tips.

By Wemmy Ogunyankin

HAVE AN ONLINE PRESENCE The rise of Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, Wordpress, YouTube, Tumblr, and the list inevitably goes on, means that it’s not enough to just hand out your EPs by the train station anymore. Having designated members of your band to focus on social media means you can communicate with current fans and also reach out to new ones. It’s not enough to post three photos of the gig you did last week. Be online with them, reply to comments and invite them to gigs. It’s imperative to be on

top of social media all over the country as it broaden the landscape of where you music can take you. Post videos and make connections so that if you’re ever gigging in a different city, you have people who just might turn up because you’ve connected with them on the world wide web. It can also put you in contact with people who organise events, record labels and promoters.

Your online accounts act as a portfolio, use them to say anything you need to.

MAKE EVERY RELEASE DIFFERENT Let’s face it, people don’t like change.

Your fanbase want to see evidence of growth and are excited to see you evolve.

Just don’t overhaul your sound without any warning. It’s good to evolve, because it means you’re keeping an eye on what’s happening within your genre and that

you’re keeping your fans on their toes.

You also are potentially broadening your demographic, picking up fans along the way as you grow and move on with the times. Just don’t forget all your old songs and try to keep your initial influences reminiscent in everything you write.

BE INTERESTING

Now this doesn’t have to be gimmicky - unless you want it to be, of course. But you’ve got to entice your fans. This can be on social media, too. But especially on stage, in between songs and after your set. You can define your version of interesting. It can be the way you dress, your attitude at the bar, the way you walk.

It just has to be representative of your music and it has to be a version of you that you want to be anytime someone approach-

ADVERTISE WELL

Being a social media expert helps with getting your name and your gigs out there. The obvious hashtags and local online trends are a great way to advertise.

You can also advertise away from a computer screen or a mobile phone. People will forever be drawn to the visiual pleas-

16 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

You want to be recognisable, no matter which song or which EP you’re playing.

Your fans will want to be familiar with your sound. So although you can have many sounds, you can only really have one. ... Get it?

es you looking for a musician. Read books, keep up with current affairs, watch YouTube videos, be an avid gamer. Have anything that makes you someone people want to get to know, or be around. Unless you’re a typical bassist, of course. You can be as aloof as the day is long, but to be honest, that’s enticing enough for a lot of people.

ure of posters, on a wall, in a pub and on a window. If you can, in any way get proficient with any kind of software like Photoshop. Work on your ability to create posters, cards, t-shirts, artwork, stickers.

This way, you can some kind of memorabilia you can give to your fans that they

will notice and return for. This is a great way to create a loyal fanbase, to get them to acknowledge and love your brand.

Create a logo, that evokes a pride in your fans that they would happliy and quite literally wear like a badge. And badges are making a comeback, by the way.

17

GETTING RID OF THOSE

PRE-GIG JITTERS There’s something various musicians all have in common: the love of adrenaline. That incomparable feeling when the nerves finally drip away with the sweat and you just enjoy it. If you’re reading this as a veteran of live performances, you know the drill.

With time every performer becomes a pro at whatever it is they do to keep them going onstage. With that comes your Caribbean Sea of serenity.

The I’m So Excited and I Just Can’t Hide It Sarah Charles: Oh I remember - I was petrified. But only just before I went on. I was so relaxed until about 5 minutes before… then I started shaking. But when I got on stage, after the first minute of nervousness and me playing the first couple riffs, my nerves were turned into excitement and I was

jumping around the stage and stuff. I think it helped that the venue was kinda packed with about 150 people.

Sarah is formerly of math rock band Box The Sky and is currently solo writing an album about her experience of being transgender.

The ‘Always Look on the Bright Side’ Richard Spencer, Bleating Apocalypse: I don't really get nervous any more, but I certainly do remember my first few gigs and it was a nerve-wracking experience for sure. My main idea was to try and stop thinking about what could go wrong or any of the actual scary things, and just focus on how fun it was going to be.

Playing live is always an exhilarating and really enjoyable experience, and as soon

as you start playing you realise that and forget all the nerves, so the best plan beforehand for me was to try and skip ahead to that part in my head before I went onstage.

Richard is the lead guitarist for black metal Sheepcore band Bleating Apocalypse. They are currently re-recording their first album, the surprisingly titled ‘Sheepcore.’

The Keep Cool, Calm, Collected and Sober Liam Banks, Lacrota.

I have a cup of tea, sometimes I may have a pint or two but that’s rare these days. My first gig? I wasn’t that bad in fairness. I tolerate nerves pretty well. It was back when I didn’t drink alcohol so I just jumped on stage and played.

The adrenaline kicked in after The ‘Get Up and Go’ Katrusha Buniak, Melanchondria: I just had my final gig for university yesterday so this is all fresh in my mind!

I tend to get a little snappy beforehand, but I've found that other people in my band have a really big impact on my nerves. Their attitude is really important, I can't be around pessimism, I need people to be like 'LETS DO THIS' in the build-up.

Being well-rehearsed is really big too. I'm not a natural speaker, so if I don't want The ‘Pedal to the Metal’ Luke Jennings, Regulus: I've been playing live shows for so long I don't try to ease them any more but rather use them to get all energetic, especially as our shows now are so active.

My first gig was almost 10 years ago playing covers with a band I was part of in school.

I barely remember the show because of the adrenaline, but there's video of it on 17 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

the first song so I just powered through it.

Liam, bassist of death metal band Lacrota, formerly known as Xerxes is practising songs old and new for Lacrota and looking for people for a new musical project too. He is currently skipping band practices to focus on exams.

to sound awkward on stage in between songs I have to practice the things I'm going to say. In the morning, I put on Muse’s 'Falling Down', it's like my core track, and I think being on my own for a while singing along to it allows me to put everything in perspective and calms me down.

Kat is the front woman of dark wave three-piece Melanchondria. Kat has just finished her degree in Commercial Musical Performance.

YouTube so I know what happened. I eased the nerves there by sneaking beer backstage and getting drunk.

Luke is front man of stoner metal band Regulus who have recently released their well-received album Smoke and are already working on a following EP and a launch show.

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HOW TO

SOUND PROOF YOUR ROOM

YOUR ULTIMATE GUIDE TO DIY ACOUSTICS

BY LINA F BOOTHBY & LUANA SALLES 20 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

Physics are boring. Period. I mean we are musicians for a reason, right? We are creative souls in touch with our emotions, not calculating velocity and mass. Music is freedom and selfexpression for us, not sound waves bouncing off walls. Wait. Actually, 60 per cent of that loud music you’re listening to are those very sound waves reflecting back from the walls, ceiling, floor and your wardrobe. As a matter of fact, all the angles, corners and materials in your room are a major contributing factor to the quality of sound you hear, record and mix.

LOVE IT? NEED IT? MAKE A LIVING OUT OF IT!

T

his is terrifying territory.

Most of us would just leave it to the professionals, if we didn’t need to save some cash to pay the rent.

But we do, so our bedrooms are transformed into recording booths and we frantically read specialist forums asking questions about tonal balance and excess sound when the production process reaches the dreadful mixing stage.

Secretly, we still hope that we can get away with no soundproofing in our bedroom studio, but no. We really can’t.

So let’s talk about physics, shall we?

When it comes to music production, bedroom acoustics can be our biggest enemy or our most reliable ally.

A room that has undergone some acoustic treatment adds good sound to a final mix, whereas a badly treated space amplifies the irritating low and mid-range sounds, often called bass and subbass. These distort the music you hear and give you an unrealistic picture of what the music actually sounds like.

Beginner sound producers often make the mistake of trimming down the lower-bass range of a track, because they think it sounds too heavy in their room.

Listening to the same track in the car, it won’t have bass at all. They didn’t realise that the excess bass wasn’t coming from the speakers. It came from the room.

The purpose of the acoustic treatment of floors, windows, doors and walls is firstly to silence and soften

background sounds leaking in from outside, such as traffic noise, or a washing machine spin cycle in the flat below.

Secondly, it creates acoustic surfaces which reflect the sound in the right direction, while silencing the bass frequencies. For the actual geeks amongst us, the sound range we are dealing with is between 40Hz and 150Hz. The 150Hz range is often used in trance music, whereas the lowest 40Hz range creates the humming noise under rap songs.

These are the deepest range of sounds in tonality, therefore the hardest to silence. Getting rid of these frequencies is the most challenging but also the most rewarding territory of sound recording.

One more thing you should know: the louder you listen to music, the more extra noise your room adds to it. With the loudness, grows the number of invisible frequencies bouncing around.

The more tangled the sound palette gets, the duller everything sounds.

This is why it isn’t recommended to listen to music above a certain level in a small room. Turning the speakers down will also make you a hit with the next door neighbours.

Soundproofing doesn’t need to be something complicated and expensive. You don`t have to be a lumberjack or a DIY queen to sort those bass frequencies out.

With these crafty solutions you can turn your bedroom into a micro-studio in no time. Let us know how it goes on amplifymagazine.com

If you’re just as interested in recording music as you are in playing it, you might want to take the next available step in home recording: making a profession out of it and then basing your whole life around it.

Right, maybe not as much of a step as it is a giant leap, but what’s holding you back? You’ve got the equipment, you have the room, and you live in the birthplace of musical

producers, I started out as a musician in bands, writing and playing in tiny little pubs, lugging gear in and out of venue for twenty-minute sets, and driving for hours on end to play a show to one or two people,” he says, the nostalgia an evident glimmer in his eyes. “Through writing in bands, I’d always record songs on a little handheld recorder so I could take it to practice. Eventually, I saved up

“I started out as a musician in bands, writing and playing in tiny little pubs, lugging gear in and out of venue.” counterculture.

There’s nothing holding you back.

In fact, some years ago, studio magnate David Leighton was in the exact place you are now. All he had were a few cheap instruments and a thirst to record. Today, he owns

enough money to buy an 8-track recorder to demo some band material. That was really my first proper experience with multi-track recording, albeit my limited knowledge led to it sounding pretty awful!”

DAVID LEIGHTON WITH HIS GUITAR

RiverRun Studios, a highend recording facility in Bedfordshire where bands from all over the country flock to when they’re ready to record.

“Like all engineers and

David was your typical music aficionado working towards a University degree in that area out of sheer love for composing.

“I think this passion for writing music 21

HOW TO

1. SHUT THE WORLD OUT

First of all, you need to deal with the outside noise coming through your windows and doors. Professional studios either don’t have any glass windows or they pay a fortune for custom made, angled glass windows.

Parallel surfaces, such as double glazed windows, act as a membrane, so when they vibrate, sound endlessly ricochets between the panels. If the windows are slightly angled, the sound dissipates instead.

For us, the less fortunate renter generation, there are thankfully temporary and budget solutions. Measure your window frame and use a thin (2-3cm) wooden panel cut to the same size. Cover it with the thickest fiberglass material you can find.

Fiberglass is an inexpensive building material, widely used for attic insulation so you can find it in any hardware store. Because of its density fibreglass absorbs a lot of sound, making it ideal for soundproofing.

F i b e r-

glass is extremely dusty so make sure to cover it with thick textile, to protect that expensive gear you saved up for.

This wooden panel cushions the window, blocking out as much noise as possible. The only downside is that you are also blocking out the light with it. If you feel like DIY is a no-go zone for you, invest in some very heavy, thick curtains to muffle some of the unwanted sound.

Second of all, cover the cracks and holes of the door, by sticking a rubber strip around it. The more airtight the door is, the better it keeps noise out, plus your flatmates won`t complain about loud music at night anymore. If you have enough fibreglass material, attach it to your door’s full length too. The same finish goes here as for the window panel, cover it with a thick textile or a piece of carpet to keep the dust at bay.

2. SLAYING THE CORNER DRAGONS

Now you have dealt with two potential noise sources, it is time to fight the dragon of soundproofing. The dragon being the four corners of your bedroom. The silencing of corners is essential for a good mix, because they basically act as bass sound collectors.

The smaller the room is, the more significant the corner problem gets, because the sound waves don’t have to go far to bounce back again. It creates a disturbing, deep droning noise on your recording and completely falsifies the music you listen to when mixing. Most professional recording studios simply don’t have corners. They are blocked off with diagonal dry walls and filled up behind with sound absorbing material.

If you aren’t at the stage of building your own home-studio, you can also block off the corners with paper boxes. You will need strong boxes, used for shipping parcels, so unfortunately cereal boxes won’t do. You will need to create 2ft tall pillars by stacking them, and then place the pillars in the corners of the room. The boxes will need to be densely filled with textiles and rags to absorb sound. This is where your old T-shirts might come 22 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

handy. Once the pillars are ready, you can customise them with spray paint or cover them with some funky textile.

As a cheaper option, books can also be used as corner pillars pieces, so just head out to a car boot sale and buy some heavy dictionaries for 20p each and you might even impress your next date with your intellectual looking room.

You don’t have to do this for every corner of your room if you can barely move in it to start with, but the more corners you can silence the better sound quality you will get. However, the most important two corners are the ones next to your speakers, the so called ‘monitors’. The smaller your room is, the more important it is to block as many of the corners off as possible because, as mentioned earlier, sound adds up.

If you have some extra cash, spend it on the corners. For a little more money, you can get professional, foam sound absorbing elements, called ‘sound traps’ for your room. These are a lot more aesthetic and specially made in a triangular shape to perfectly fit in your corners.

3. FROM TOP TO BOTTOM

The floor is probably the easiest to deal with.

Professional studios usually have custom made floors lifted off the ground with a wooden structure, filled up with a glue-like, runny rubber material that is specially moulded to the shape of the room to keep noises outside.

However, for most of us who don’t want to buy endless supplies of PVA glue, it is down to our budget, as to how well we can keep noises from creeping through the floorboards. Invest in a thick rubber mat and throw it on the floor, then cover it with a trendy rug.

Another option is to just stick with a very thick rug on top of a carpeted or wooden floor. Grandma’s Persian would be an excellent choice, but laminate flooring will do as well.

When dealing with the ceiling, we run into physics

again.

It is the parallel surfaces that cruelly tangle sound waves, making them crash into the floor opposite them and then alternate travelling from floor to ceiling.

Ceilings also have the same corner bass-collector effect mentioned before.

If the surface opposite isn’t completely parallel, then most of the bass-sounds are absorbed. If you have the choice of picking where to set up your home-studio, choose an attic room, where the ceilings aren’t straight.

Professional studios have custom made false ceilings and sound traps hanging from the top corners of the room to stop deep frequencies from collecting. Dictionaries can’t be used here, so you might have no other choice but to buy the foam sound traps and hang them from the ceiling.

4.MAKE THE WALLS FOAM This is the point when you should get your Facebook community to start saving egg cartons f o r y o u r home studio walls.

No, seriously.

Treating the walls of your bedroom can make or break the quality of your final mix. Unlike the corners, the walls are reflecting higher and mid-range frequencies, which create a clanging-bonging noise on your recording.

Geeks, these are the frequencies between 500Hz and 4kHz. The wall opposite your monitor speakers reflects the most sound back into your ears and as you turn up the levels this effect gets stronger and stronger.

Before we get into further detail, let me clarify. No, you can’t avoid listening to music without headphones when you

are mixing. It is very important not to plug in, in order to hear the full depth of sound within a room’s acoustics. The more texture your bedroom walls have, the better everything will sound.

To create an ideal acoustic background on the back wall, you will need to make a random surface that diffuses sound.

Professionals have custom made panels installed behind them. These are wooden cubes, cut into different lengths and glued onto a wooden panel.

Some use large foam panels that reflect sound waves from a number of different angles.

Thanks to Amazon, it is possible to get specially made acoustic foam mats, for a decent price. They come in a ridged or pyramid patterned form and they can be stuck to the walls behind and in front of you. You can also texturize your wardrobe doors with them Good news for booklovers; using bookshelves for the same purpose does an excellent job.

Books are very dense in material and they all come in different width and length. Your Game of Thrones book collection might just come handy for sound recording as well.

is what really led me into home production at first, along with a bit of an obsession with tones and equipment. When I started out, though, it was all trial and error – something that it still apparently in my recording sessions today, really. Not every microphone will suit a certain sound, and trying new stuff out is when you stumble upon some cool and unconventional ways of working.”

Since he knows that

lucky to learn from some renowned and successful producers in the industry, and I’ve always been very grateful for all the help and guidance I’ve received along the way!

Though there’s a great deal you can learn by doing it yourself, I stand by the belief that I really wouldn’t be where I am today without this help.”

Yet dreamers, beware: landing your first job in a studio doesn’t mean all the sacrifices are over just

“I started out as a musician in bands, writing and playing in tiny little pubs, lugging gear in and out of venue.” building a career in a competitive industry takes time and some luck, David recommends that aspiring producers try to find as much work experience in local studios as possible. Fitting that in with a schedule of home recording sessions may be tricky, and menial tea boy work may be off-putting at first – but it’ll be worth it. At least that’s what David tells us while he drinks his

yet. David warns us of a session he worked on in west London that ended up lasting six days rather than just one. “I didn’t have a change of clothes with me and I didn’t live nearby, so I had to buy new clothes and spend four night sleeping on the floor next to the drum kit we were tracking,” he recounts. No pain, no gain.

The steep hill up the industry ladder may not be

DAVID LEIGHTON IN HIS STUDIO

coffee in one of the many soundproofed rooms of his countryside studio.

“I would happily work seven days a week for free in the hope that I would get the change to learn or assist on a session. Through persistent emailing and a bit of luck, I managed to land a few assistant roles in various places. I was

as glamorous and smooth as it once sounded, but good things do come to those who wait.

It will all pay off when you see your name printed on hundreds of records through the country, and next to it, right there at its side, the pompous title you’ve only ever dreamed of: sound engineer.

23

THE WALLS The walls are notorious when it comes to reflecting sound. Make sure you stick some self-adhesive foam pads to them to diffuse the frequencies coming from the monitor speakers. We recommend Pro Acoustic Foam 12” Wedge Tiles for £23.

SOUND THE

THE CARPET If your bedroom studio is upstairs, you will need to block noise out from downstairs as much as possible. Have a look around for a vintage carpet at a car boot sale or invest in our favourite Ribbed Rubber Matting from floormat.co.uk starting at £36.

THE CEILING If you are adventurous stick some foam padding on the ceiling. But even if you like to play it safe, we recommend you to get some handy foam sound traps and place them in the corners above you. You can get a couple of Pro Acoustic Foam Bass Traps from Amazon for £40.

THE DOOR Sealing your door with an expanding rubber or foam strip is a cheap, yet effective solution to keep unwanted noises out while you are recording your jam. Our recommended brand is Maplin’s Double Sided 10m Foam Tape for £2.99.

24 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

OUT DETAILS

THE MASCOT Ask any professional sound engineer and they will tell you how they have something that they couldn’t do without. It’s a distinctive and treasured part of their studio. Our favourite is this cat, just because we loved it.

THE WINDOW To block as much sound out as possible, we strongly suggest going the DIY fiberglass padding route. However, blackout thermal curtains can do the job in a pinch. Check out Dunhelm Mill’s Thermal Curtain Linings, from £7.99, to add to your existing curtains.

THE CORNERS Buying a few cheap dictionaries will make you look more intelligent. Put the piles in the two corners next to your monitors to silence bass frequencies. If you have space for a bookshelf, stand it behind you to create a random surface that diffuses sound.

THE MONITORS It really matters how you place these babies. For the best quality of sound turn them towards your ears, so they create an equilateral triangle. If you can afford some speaker stands we recommend you to invest in a couple.

25

Q&A

Q&A Who are Soul Shredder and how do their influences affect their sound?

Stu: We’re a melodic metal band. Female fronted. We’re just get our influences from all over, don’t we?

Rix: Every member of the band’s got a fairly varied type of music, I’d say if you drew a ven diagram of our musical tastes. there wouldn’t be a massive circle in the middle where everyone crosses, but, probably your [Stu] main influences are the main ones because you write a majority of the material, so…

S: Yeah, but everyone’s bit come into it, don’t they? So it’s probably like a funnel in the middle of everyone’s stuff that they listen to. It comes out in the end.

90s metal, which is what I grew up with, and then veering further into the heavier end of the spectrum.

W: What’s your front woman like? Because it’s quite interesting listening to her voice, like there’s quite a few influences.

What would you say her favourite things are?

S: She’s into her 80’s stuff, isn’t she? She’s into like, Mercyful Fate, Queensrÿche…

R: Yeah, very much into the sort of the 80’s, sort of grazing the edge of progressive.

S: Iron Maiden and stuff like that. That’s her sort of thing.

R: Yeah, I like drum music!

Soul Shredder are nearing the end of the recording process for their new EP. It’s been an interesting journey here...

S: Well we did an EP a few years ago before Rix joined and we paid for a studio at the time to do it. And the outcome from the studio, as much as it came out sounding alright, I think we realised we could probably do as good a job ourselves. Just with putting the time into it ourselves, really. So that’s what’s led us to doing this one on our own. So this is our second one, and I think we said 13 or 14 songs it is at the moment, isn’t it?

W: Is that like tech-death and all that like progressive-y, scary stuff?

R: I’m quite into my prog-rock, and I’m quite heavily into more

W:That’s pretty long for a homemade one.

S: We’re re-recording some of the older ones.

R: It’s okay. Some of them are

W: I often hear a lot of bands say that we have different interests, but there’s usually a big common denominator. Do you guys feel like having such different interests works for you guys? Do you think it helps you any way?

S: It does because we meet in the middle with a lot of stuff aswell, and there’s common things that we all like. But then, you know like Ed (bassist) is more into his 70s sort of rock and you [Rix] like your drummer things.

26 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

really short songs though, I mean maybe only as much as seven or eight minutes.

W: Tell me about the recording process, because you Richard, said you’d never been here [Stu’s house] before. So you record your stuff at home?

R: I record my stuff at my house.

I’ve done home recordings, I’ve been in previous bands and I’ve always done home recording, so I’ve literally never done recording in a studio or in any kind of studio environment.

W: And when they did were you not with them yet?

R: No. I only joined about two and a half years ago. But I have an electric drum kit at home, playing an acoustic kit live for practical reasons more than anything else. So I have an electric drum kit at home which allows me to just plug it straight into a computer and then play the MIDI parts and then substitute in recordings of real drum kits.

So essentially, you are recording in the studio because the people who made the software. But I just see it as the best of both worlds, really, because they’ve recorded drums I can’t afford with mics I can’t afford in studios that wouldn’t let me through the front door. And I get access to all of that by buying a software.

W: What software is this?

R: It’s made by a company called Toontrack. It’s called Superior

Drummer and they do a more basic one called Easy Drummer which Stu uses for writing contemporary drum parts until I’ve written, recorded and sent parts. But it’s brilliant, it’s just big sample libraries of recorded acoustic drums done by professionals who you would pay a lot of money if you wanted them to do your drums. and then you just do it with an electric drum kit, which has the added extra bonus of meaning you can live in a semi-detached house and not have your neighbours routinely murder you for playing the drums. So… W: That’s one thing we know lot worry about, being a drummer in particular, it’s always incredibly hard to have to be the one to record the drum part because some people think electric ones don’t sound as good…

R: Electronic drums on their own don’t sound as good like, I prefer some of the old recordings I did, I used the sound in the electronic drum kit themselves and you do end up sounding like… it’s very mich that electronic drum sound you think of.

Sort of the new romantics 80s music, big gated reverb and all of that. But the advent of sample libraries that you can trigger over MIDI has really meant that electronic drums - I mean, I got introduced to MeshuggahW: Nice.

R: Catch Thirty-Three, I think was the first album they did

Wemmy Ogunyankin talks to Stu and Rix, guitarist and drummer of the melodic death metal band, about why they decided to record their latest EP independently - and what got them through the gruelling process. it on. They programmed the drums, used the software that I use to make the drums and then the drummer learnt the drum parts afterwards and to take them on tour. Because they just said the cost of recording an album is all tied up in the drums.

Nobody else needs a big room with good acoustics, and loads microphones. Most of the guitars are done straight into the desk and re-amped. Vocals need a tiny booth, so you’re mainly paying for the live room, just to do the drums.

S: I’d say you’d be very hard pressed to tell the difference as well.

R: Usually the way that people can tell that you’ve used sampled drums is because they sound professional and they know full well that you can’t afford how well those sound, so they assume that you must have quote unquote cheated. Which I fully have. So that’s how I record. It’s at home using that, and then all I have to do is send audio files to Stu and then he can drop them into projects.

W: Is everything else done here at Stu’s house? Like the vocals.

R: The vocals are actually done at mine aswell.

W: Is that because you have the microphone, is that a regular thing?

R: I’ve got a sound treated room.

Partially to help with the neighbours and partially for mixing and listening to music. There’s no echo in there so it’s good for recording vocals. And we can, the way it’s set up, I’ve got my drum kit and my audio stuff in it and then, my bedroom/office is next to that room, so we can set up all the audio recording equipment in the bedroom and run the cables into the music

room so we don’t have to be in the room when Cookie is recording so we can actually have a vocal room and a control room in the house.

W: Stuart, you said you’re about eight months in now?

S: Sort of. We’ve been doing it on and off, I’d say that’s probably ones of the downsides of doing it on your own is you have not got a deadline to do it in. So the problem with not having a deadline is you take your time with it. But we’re at that point now where there’s a light at the end of the tunnel with it, because all the instrumentation is all finished. It’s just finishing recording the vocals and then mixing it all. So, that depends on Cookie’s schedule, but once they’re recorded- we’re probably looking at early summer for a release. That’s the mental deadline I’ve given myself.

R: As if we’ve got any control over it!

Frontwoman Cookie is a doctor, and the rest of the band have full time jobs. How are they doing it?

S: We’ve got a calendar, haven’t we?

R: We’ve got a shared calendar where everyone puts dates when they’re unavailable. For Ed and I, we both work pretty standard 9-5 Monday to Friday jobs. So our weekends are always pretty free. I work from home so my evenings are always free as well. I mean that’s one of the great things about recording and writing from home is, I’d say regardless of the cost, regardless of the travel or the quality that you can achieve, the biggest plus side is just freedom. It’s just freedom and control. Stu will send me a track and I need to record some

drums. If you’re paying for a studio, it’s like, right okay, gotta be on point, ready to record that track between two and three next Saturday. Turn up at 2. And you think I’m just not feeling it today, I’m not playing well. I’ve injured myself, anything that’s putting you off performing your best.

S: Working around Cookie’s schedule is hard. But, at the same time, it’s something that we knew about for a long time, because she joined the band before, when she was still at University. So we always knew this was coming up, that, we’d be at that point and now it’s just a case of us working around her.

R: Not that saving lives isn’t as important, we just have to make an exception and let her get away with it.

Press? Promotion? The band have quickly realised the importance of these things and have released an Electronic Press Kit. S: That [the EPK] happened because we got a gig offer a while ago and they wanted one. It was just something that I thought was a good promotional tool, it was something I’d never come across before, but I looked it up to see what it was and it’s basically just like a PDF description of, sort of what you would get on the website, but something you can send to someone where it’s like this is us, this is everything you need to know, this is what we do. Here’s a link to some songs, here’s a link to some photos if you need it. And that’s it really, it’s just a good promotional tool. And I think that’s one of the things that we were always a bit lax with.

W: Promotion?

S: Yeah. I think with work and

stuff like that sometimes you didn’t have time to get back and jump on Facebook and send out loads of invites for gigs and stuff like that. So it was just another means of getting information out about us. If someone wants to know anything about us, it’s all on this two or three page file.

They can print it off if they need to, if not, there’s links on it that will take you to different parts, videos, music and the website and stuff like that.

W: Would you advise any other band to get an EPK? Would you say that’s a good thing to do?

S: Yeah, I would do. Because that thing now, especially with the way things are now, everyone looks at everything on the internet.

R: I was going to say, one of the things that leads into being a bit lax about the promotion sides of things and about putting yourself out there is, ha, I’m old enough to remember when you didn’t have to do that.

When I was first in bands when I was younger, it was like word of mouth was still the way that bands got known in your local area.

I grew up in a much smaller town so everyone knew the local music scene. It was much smaller. And there wasn’t the online presence for bands.

These days, people are more interested in knowing who you are. It’s not enough to listen to music. There’s a need now for more information to be available.

The EPK is a really good idea, especially if you haven’t got recordings to put out there., it is something that you can throw together that looks fairly professional quite quickly, and then if the links inside it link to music that isn’t of a professional

27

standard yet, the EPK is your first port of call. It’s a good foot in the door.

W: There are a lot of bands who are interested in their Facebook cover photos, because that’s good for them, that sells.

S: Yeah, it’s the first thing someone will see. Someone might decide to listen to a band purely faced on the photograph in the first place. It’s the first thing that’s going to catch someone’s attention. I do that myself, you see a photograph and you do “they look interesting” or “they don’t look like my cup of tea.” So that can make the difference, S: Images have always been important for bands anyway, but I think it’s especially important now and that’s why people are so interested in having an arty side as well as a music side. I still only buy CDs, I don’t download music because I like to have the artwork and stuff like that, tthe imagery side is important.

W: Are you making yours a physically available CD? R: I think it will definitely be available physically, I think the discussion at the moment has very much been how far do we go with the physical element of it. I couldn’t believe how cheaply making an EP can be done now. I mean I remember, again back in the midsts of time, doing CDs with bands and two or three of you would stay up all night, physically burning each CD and one in every four would end up as a beer mat because it wouldn’t work. And you know, printing covers on an Inkjet and you would cut them out with scissors. Now you just go online, upload artwork, upload your CD and two days later, 100 printed CDs arrive on your doorstep and they work out just over £1 each, we just couldn’t believe that and they were really good quality.

It’s nice to get people enjoying the fruits of a lot of labour. The next step up is obviously a full CD, that’s gonna cost the band enough to be a serious financial commitment and then it’s a case of ‘ok, do you recoup that cost by asking for £2 or £3 for a CD?’ Is that going to be the breaking point of people like you enough, they’ll take some free music, that’s great. The difference between 50p and free is massive.

W: Would you tell other bands to be brave and charge people for their art or not?

S: Personally, I’m not interested in making money off it particularly. It’s always a nice bonus but…

28 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

W: Even if it costs you? You’re willing to foot that bill?

S & R: Yeah. It is, yeah.

S: For me, what I get out of that is people enjoying it. Off the back of that, it gets other people interested in the band or it gets us a gig somewhere. And that for me makes it worth the money. When we’re at a gig and we offer them for free, people look astounded that you’re giving it for free.

R: The other thing with the CDs point is that it’s such a drop in the ocean by that point aswell.

That’s the main thing to point out. When we were putting those CDs together, we were talking about chucking £20 each to get them done. That’s 20 quid. Two pairs of drumsticks, or half of one drum skin. Or a set of guitar strings. All of which we go through like the disposable things they are. So the cost of playing an instrument is pretty astronomical, the cost of then setting up the ability to record yourself that is very astronomical. So by the time it comes to printing the CDs, I’ll be honest, I don’t care anymore.

Why are they recording it alone this time?

S: The first EP, that was voided a bit by the fact that just after we

W: That’s a really good point, like how it might sound good to everybody else, but you as the artist, you feel that something’s not missing and something’s not right.

S: Yeah, it’s a lot of things. The mix isn’t bad or anything like that, it was just little thing. I think we got quite hung up on how we wanted it sounding and it not sounding the way we wanted it to which is why they were sat around for a good couple of years before we did something with them.

The guys offer some words of experience and advice...

S: I think it’s worth recording it yourself. I originally got into recording for writing for purposes. And I’m one of those people when I come up with something, I forget what it was ten minutes later. So for me, initially getting into recording, it was a case of I’d quickly chuck whatever I’d come up with on a recording.

But in the end, it got to the point where the more you record, the better you get at it.

R: I remember when I first started several years ago looking into setting up the ability to record myself that to build a computer capable of it, to buy off-board

“Your EP is a business card. It’s your musical CV” finished recording that, the old drummer left. So off the back of that, we weren’t too happy about getting them out because, straight away, it wasn’t us. Rix can play the songs exactly the same if he needed to but he’s a different style of drummer so him being in, it changed how we sounded. Enough for me to think that the EP is not that relevant. And also we weren’t 100% happy with how they came out.

I think my biggest problem is I’m quite a control freak. So, I’d have an image of how I’d want it to sound, and it didn’t come out exactly how I imagined it. Not worse necessarily, just different to how I saw it myself. Other people listen to it and they think it’s absolutely fine, but in my head, I had an image of how it would come out and it didn’t do so. So we weren’t that happy with the recording, but it was just sat going to waste. And that was when we thought, why don’t we just chuck them together on a disc and give them away for free. We put the money into recording it in the first place, so we may aswell get some benefit from it.

sound gear, the numbers were pretty big, it involved a lot of money. Thing have just gotten so ridiculous now that you can buy a laptop for £3/350 that will allow you to do studio level recording work. You can spend a lot of money on software, but you don’t need to.

S: I started on a free Windows download software called Audacity. It’s like a budget Cakewalk, it was just a simple multitrack recording thing. But now we’re on Pro Tools. The thing that I use is still a relatively cheap setup. It’s an M box with Pro Tools on it, plugged into a fairly decent computer, that’s it. And then everything else is extra, you can get the little remotes and the keyboards and monitors and stuff like that, but the bare basics you need is just something to get your guitar from you to the computer and something to mix it on.

R: If you want to record yourself physically playing drums, you’re either going to need to do that in a studio if you’re using an acoustic drum kit or you need to buy an electric drum kit and that is expensive. If you’re not too

proud about it definitely being you actually wielding sticks on a recording, a piece of software like ToonTrack EzDrummer is what Stu uses when he’s writing.

It’s not expensive, EzDrummer with a decent plug in, you’re probably talking £70 or £80.

You’ll get good quality sound out of it which you can individualise so you don’t always end up like you used EzDrummer Setting 3, there’s customisation available.

So if you’re willing to do that and then play what you’ve recorded live, then no need to get proud about it, Meshuggah do it.

He’s one of the best drummers I’ve ever heard. It’s not a cheat as long as you can turn up live and play what you’ve recorded.

That’s the practical way of doing it for me.

S: Just practice everything. For me, it was always just a case of your ears getting trained over a space of time, especially when you get into mixing and stuff like that. Things like how to use the EQs, how to use the compressors, it comes from experience.

R: Play around with it and enjoy it. Don’t worry about the fact that the first few things you churn out are not going to sound like the albums on your CD rack.

It will get there and when you’re a starter band, I think the most important thing is to give a representation of your musical ability and the music you’re writing. So, it’s more important for something to sound clear and concise. Your EP is a business card. It’s your musical CV. The important thing is to give an accurate representation of you.

W: What is the one thing you couldn’t have done this without?

R: An espresso machine. Or the electronic drum kit, I could have gone down the ‘programming and learning later’ route, but like Stu said, it’s the recording feeding into the writing. So for me, the biggest secret is using the recording to aid the writing and doing it as if it’s one process. It is not separate.

S: For me, it’s the guitar preamp I’ve been using, a DigiTech GSP1101. It’s the one I use live aswell. But it works fantastic just lead straight into the computer. This is just that little bit better sounding for someone who is not going to mic up a cab and put it on full blast in a terraced house and not going to go and pay a studio to do it for me either. Doing it for free, that’s probably the best thing.

Soul Shredder’s new EP will be released in the early summer.

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INTRIGUE

RECORDING

ROYALTY

When you think about the industrial world of professional sound recording, it’s easy to forget that it’s all run by real people. That’s right, real humans with names and families work at world famous studios. People like Jonny Alexander, who’s been working at Abbey Road studios for the past two years.

N.B. Google went and made Inside Abbey Road - an interactive Google Earth inside Abbey Road studios. For a false real-time experience, go to: insideabbeyroad.withgoogle.com/en

By Will Ross

30 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

J

onny, 23, lives in a modest shared flat in South London.

He’s worked on hundreds of projects, such as the soundtracks for Interstellar and Exodus, as well as the production of Kanye’s latest album, Yeezus. And yet, he’s still just a normal guy.

In between 18-hour shifts and the occasional power nap, Jonny spends his time mucking about with vinyl turntables and his own eclectic collection of mixing decks, microphones and instruments.

“Since I’ve been like 14, I’ve been recording stuff, either my own music or other band things. So I’ve slowly been building up my own collection of kit, so I guess I’ve been doing this for about eight years now.

“From my degree in music engineering, I’ve got my own set of mics. I spent a year working for a research company that makes mics, and the benefit of working there was that I ended up with a large amount of equipment from them, mics and things.

“I have quite a collection of bits of kit that I’ve acquired for very little money. I probably have enough to start a studio of my own - a very small one - if I wanted to.”

After two years working around celebrities and renowned producers, Jonny’s become accustomed to that initial ‘fangirl’ feeling.

It’s an inevitability that comes with the territory. Once you’ve worked on the same level and in the same room as Hans Zimmer, you begin to outgrow that sense of awe at a known name.

“It’s really great to meet them. It sounds quite odd, but it’s just normal to meet famous people. I couldn’t do my job at all if I was at all star-struck. They come in every day, and you don’t have time to mess around, so you just have to get over it and get on with the job. They come there for the privacy, to record, and the last thing they want is for people to disturb them.

“So, I’ve met Paul McCartney, loads of

famous people come through the doors and just seeing people who you’ve been inspired by when you were younger, and seeing them creating music, is quite a great thing.”

While Abbey Road is a brand known around the world, it’s certainly not got the same budget as the likes of Hollywood studios. But don’t let that fool you, some of the individual microphones, used by the Beatles, are worth as much as a small house.

“There are probably studios out there that have more of a budget, run by people who have a lot of money, and therefore have ridiculous set-ups… We have the best facilities and equipment to produce work at the quality that we do. It’s the best quality that can be achieved.

“Loads of people come through the doors, and seeing them create music is a great thing” “To put things into perspective, we have three recording studios and a digital mix studio, then there are loads of other recording facilities, but the main recording studio, Studio One, as it were, is a huge acoustic space which can accommodate a full orchestra or choir, in some orientations.

“The main mixing console is worth about a million, and we have a custom panel made by the company that make it, which is the only one of its kind in the world. The total sum of the equipment there is an astronomical figure, it’s huge.

“But we basically have the highest quality of everything, because what we’re doing requires so much. The demand is so high for the technology that we have to have the best technology to achieve what we do.”

Abbey Road has the largest collection of microphones in the world. While their kit may not be the most pricey on the market, the studios’ collective worth is absolutely

enormous. And yet as anyone who’s recorded their own music will know, it doesn’t take much to fix poor audio with a decent set of equalisers. That said, not many people can say that they’re recorded a philharmonic orchestra in their spare room.

“The studio’s been around since 1931, so we have the largest collection of microphones in the world, many of which are vintage, so to put things into perspective, for every soft of recording with things like strings we use a technique called a ‘deca tree’, using three microphones called Neumann M50s, and each one of those is worth £10-15,000. We have about 15 of those in total, but they’re worth more because they’re ours. And then other valve mics that the Beatles would have used are worth about the same.

“Say you’re recording a standard orchestra with strings. So you’d have a section laid out, music playing and microphones placed all around, with a host of microphones, maybe like 20-30. Then for a big film session as many as 70-80, so it’s pretty big. Then that all comes through to the recording console, everything then gets sent through to our recording rig, which is a high-end, highquality system.

“Then we run it on a very kind of Mac Pro, which has ridiculous specifications with regards to how powerful it is. And it’s all recorded to harddrives. That’s kind of the same for every session, really. We have a lot of high-quality mics and sound systems everything sounds good, basically.”

Getting a job at a world famous studio isn’t a simple affair. But once you’re in with any large crowd, all you have to do is get your name out there, make a few contacts and drop a few demos around every now and then.

But fear not, not everybody can get in with the likes of Abbey Road at the age of 21. Just bear in mind that these are all real people, and with the right personable approach, you too could find yourself working among the stars.

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LIGHTS, CAMERA,

ACT ION! Do you remember the first music video you ever watched? What about your favourite one?

They’re the most memorable part of a band’s image and online presence. Making your own music video can kickstart your career and show people what your art is all about.

By Luana Salles

I

t has never been this easy to build your band’s image online. There is a multitude of free platforms you can choose from, all accessed by billions of people every day and each serving a different purpose.

Best of all, the equipment you need to sell yourself is now both widely available and affordable: you can take professional pictures with your mobile phone and you can buy a high-quality definition DSLR for as little as £95.

Yet with great power comes great responsibility. Now that everything’s readily available to everyone, artists are under a higher pressure to produce.

There is an unspoken expectation for a basic standard of quality and quantity of output. If a band doesn’t have a Bandcamp account, it can reflect poorly on them; likewise, if they have EP releases but absolutely no other media to accompany at least one of their songs, they might be easily forgotten – or even overlooked.

That’s where music videos come in. They’re a band’s chance to express themselves uniquely yet in a fresh, innovative way: an aesthetically interesting video can go viral online in the blink of an eye. At the same time, though, a remarkably bad video can go viral even faster and could possibly blemish your reputation as an artist. Because of this, making your first music video can seem like a daunting challenge, a plunge into an unknown that could ultimately help you make it or break it. But it doesn’t have to be this scary.

To help you out, we’ve spoken to David Ciaramella, the guitarist in Manchester-based alternative rock band The Summer War, about their experience. They’re known for making their own videos from start to finish, right from the initial ideas right down to post-production. With David’s proficient guidance, we’ve compiled a condensed music video handbook for you so you can stand out from the crowd – even if it’s your first attempt.

THE CONCEPT Coming up with an idea might be easier than it sounds. Every band worries about falling into clichés, and that’s understandable – but even clichés can be resourceful if they have a plot twist of some kind.

To start off, it is essential that the whole band is present. It seems obvious, but a lot of bands struggle to think of video concepts by themselves instead of putting their minds together in one single cooperative brainstorm session. An idea behind a music video is essentially all about creativity and what lines up well with your song; to get your juices flowing, then, it’s important that you listen to it over and over again while you’re brainstorming. Try to assess how it makes you feel, how it can make other people feel, and how you were feeling when you wrote and composed it: what are the emotions hidden behind it? What ultimately powered the song and made it stand out?

What themes are present throughout it?

Whatever it is, you have to try to link these emotions to tangible visuals.

“Our single was called You Will Find Us in the Dark, so we decided to shoot something in the basement, where it was pretty much pitch black. We wanted to backlight the room rather than use normal lights, so the atmosphere would be as a gloomy and intense as the one in the song,” David tells us about the music video they filmed last year. Of course, your song title might not be as suggestive as theirs, but looking into the general atmosphere of the melodies and depth of the themes is an excellent starting point – regardless of how abstract your work is.

David also says that storyline videos are quite popular amongst alternative genres, because it’s usually easier to portray the themes in a song when actors are directly expressing them. Unfortunately, that’s also exactly where they can fall apart: you might not find actors – or, for a low budget option, drama school students – who can play out the emotions in your

song as accurately as you pictured it. The more people you rely on, the higher the odds of something going wrong. Due to this, several bands decide to star in the video themselves, whether acting or just playing the song, and depend solely on the aesthetic qualities of the video to get the result they envisioned. This can range from extremely artsy, concept videos to specific visual techniques, like employing a first person angle throughout the whole song.

Regardless of what you go for, it’s important that you always put the idea first. A video can never work if its visual treatment isn’t meticulously planned before shooting begins. For inspiration, David recommends looking at music videos from other bands that you might like, and then researching the techniques they used to see how easy they are to reproduce – in your own style, of course. Don’t try to plan the same shots before you research how you go about shooting it in the first place; if you don’t have enough experience to replicate it, the shot might not turn out the way you want it to. Start with basic ideas and build from there.

Don’t be afraid to explore new territories, either. If you have an idea that you’ve never seen a band use before, research the techniques behind it and go for it!

“Music videos are cooler now, because you can do anything with them.

You should endeavour to make them visually and artistically interesting. They should be shot in interesting ways, and you should use interesting editing techniques. If people watch it on a just purely aesthetic level, you want them to think it’s attractive to look at. You want it to inspire a question in your viewers, make them wonder how certain things were done, how you shot this or that, or how the rooms were lit to look the way they do,” our mentor recommends. With so many platforms, apps and new equipment available to inspire and help you, the possibilities are endless.

33

INSPIRATION WATCHLIST D.A.N.C.E. by Justice SMACK MY BITCH UP by The Prodigy SALMON DANCE by The Chemical Brothers NEVER MEANT by American Football

check it out

COME TO DADDY by Aphex Twin MY KIND OF WOMAN by Mac DeMarco

here

JUST by Radiohead JUULAR by The Devin Townsend Project

THE EQUIPMENT From the lighting to the sound system, here’s everything you need to get.

This is pretty straightforward: if you don’t have access to free equipment, you need to be ready to invest. Though everything is much cheaper nowadays, costs can build up significantly when you add everything up.

Good news for University students, though – you might be able to get access to equipment if you’re Film or Journalism student, or if you collaborate with someone who is. If a Film student records your video for a University project, for example, they can usually borrow equipment from their department. Luckily for you, these tend to be high-end professional equipment, ranging from TV cameras and tripods to microphones and dollies.

If you can’t get access to it for free, investing in basic equipment isn’t the end of the world; after all, you’ll need to use them again when you record your next video. Affordable handheld cameras with HD capability can cost anything between £95 and £600 – it’s up to you how much you’re willing to invest.

In terms of lighting, you shouldn’t have to buy anything professional unless it’s absolutely vital for your shot. It’s expensive and easily substitutable. Besides natural light, which is always a convenient solution, you can use flashlights for hard lighting, cold LED lights for softer lighting, buy a cheap photography umbrella for less than a fiver, or get a 5 in 1 reflector for less than a tenner. Reflectors are a worthwhile investment because of their versatility: it includes a diffuser to soften light, three different-coloured reflectors to fill shadows, and a black reflector to block out light.

Speakers are an essential part of filming a music vid34 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

eo. “On professional videos, you’d have playback, where you have an enormous PA system through which they play your song. This allows the band or the artist to act however they want without being nervous about looking or sounding stupid. That’s always a big thing when you can hear yourself sing or if you’re nervous about how you look – and if you are, it’ll show in the video,” David says. To prevent that, they play the song so loudly that nobody can hear anybody else, and the artists can completely immerse themselves in the performative aspects of the video. The playback system is also essential to help musicians keep in time so footage isn’t out of time when it’s edited.

If you can’t afford professional PA speakers, loud amps can often do the trick. In addition to that, drummers need to use gaffer tape underneath all their cymbals to stop the resonance, so it cuts down on the sound. They should also loosen the skins on the drums so other members can’t hear them when they’re playing along. Yet since drummers tend to hit hard, it’s crucial that the song is played loudly in the background so they can hear it enough to keep in time. “If they have to play quieter in order to hear the song, it shows in the video, because they’re not giving it any energy. It can be difficult to play along in time and energetically if the song isn’t loud enough. Invariably, one of them will suffer – and it’s usually the energy,” David warns.

The bottom line: if you have a limited budget and need to choose something to invest in, go for the speakers. Even iPhones can replace DSLRs nowadays, but nothing can replace a good PA system. Since songs are recorded to a certain BPM all throughout, they demand consistency, usually to the millisecond; thus, if the actions in your video aren’t recorded in time, if the snare hits and the vocal parts aren’t played or sung in the correct BPM, it will look unprofessional. Sound is key.

THE "TOO LONG DIDN'T READ" STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE

THE EDITING The most important step of the process.

David says the most important component of a video is editing. “If you’ve got a badly edited video, it just looks terrible! We shot our first video on an HD film camera worth thousands of pounds, but it wasn’t edited very well – and that came across. The second video was shot on a smaller DSLR, still film quality, yet nowhere near as good – but it was edited so much better. Aesthetically interesting shots with unique lighting techniques are always cool, because they stand out, but these efforts can go to waste if they’re not properly put together in post-production,” he says.

If you don’t feel confident enough to edit your own video, outsourcing it is always an option. While video production companies usually charge more than what most of us can afford, Film students can – once again – come into play. Though they’re not professionals, they might have enough experience and innate talent to make your video look really good. They’ll usually do it for cheap, too, or even for free if they’re looking to expand their portfolio. Find these students in your local University or search for recommendations online.

In case you want to give it a go yourself, programmes like Final Cut Pro, After Effects and Adobe Premiere are amongst the best in the market. “They all cost huge amounts of money though, but there are questionably legal ways of getting them,” David says, but he’ll let you figure that one out for yourself. We recommend Windows Movie Maker and Lightworks for two free alternatives.

Keep in mind that no sound from the actual filming should be used unless you’re using an additional script with dialogue or sound effects. Most music videos just place the recorded song directly on top of muted footage.

1

Come up with an idea for it.

2

Research how your idea can be technically developed.

3

Write a short treatment for it (think novel blurbs). Depending on your video, write a script or storyboard.

4

Define a budget and filming dates, but keep both flexible and open to possible changes. Remember videos can take from a full day to a whole week to be filmed.

5

Make sure you’ve got all your equipment. This includes essential backups, like spare batteries.

6

Set a schedule for the day, including individual itineraries outlining where each person needs to be and when. Planning everything avoids nightmares.

7

Write a list of props and costumes you might need if you’re shooting a storyline video. Make sure you’ll have everything available on the day.

8

Shoot it. Edit it. Release it!

35

INTRIGUE

SHACKED UP

The Steel City’s independent scene is booming like never before, but it’s still not easy to get a solid, reliable repair. So we paid a visit to one of Sheffield’s most up-and-coming repair shop, Guitar Shack, to find out why they’re so unique.

S

heffield is known as a great city for budding musicians, and rightly so. From the Crookes to the Arctic Monkeys, Polkadodge to While She Sleeps, it’s fair to say that the Steel City’s a rightful parent to a huge array of musical talent.

But one shop in the student-filled region of Broomhill stand out as a calling point for anyone who thinks they know anything about guitars. Father and son, Ross and Sam Jackson, have been business partners in guitar mechanics for seven years. Both self-taught musicians, they started up shop to take on repair jobs that other shops may not have done.

“I taught myself how to put guitars back together, how they work, all the insides and stuff. We both did. Both from books and the internet. It’s surprising what you can find out if you just sit down and read. But ultimately it’s a collection of our own combined knowledge - what we do isn’t summed up in one book or web page yet. Maybe we should write a book...

“Often, people will pay us a little extra for a custom, unique design” “Taking them apart, putting back together, it’s not an easy process, but we’re both skilled enough that we know what we’re doing with most types of guitars. You’ve got to be good at carpentry, acoustics, electrics and all the various allied skills that go with that. And cosmetics, painting, decoration, that kind of stuff.

“If you have a basic knowledge of all the basic components of a guitar, be it acoustic, electric of a combo, all it takes to move up is the right equipment. I actually have a few self-designed tools in my box, some which I had to create because they simply didn’t exist for the job, or would have cost an arm and a leg to buy.

“That’s pretty much how it is in guitar maintenance, too - we don’t charge mad prices, we charge a fair price for the amount of work involved. As I said, it’s not easy, but it’s fun, and it’s logical.

What more could you want? We’ll not mess around, Sam and I will crack on with a repair as soon as we realistically can. Obviously one of us has to mind the shop, but we work out in the back yard, we have a shed and a workstation, so it’s not so bad.”

36 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

By Will Ross Anybody can pay a visit to Guitar Shack at the centre of Sheffield’s student community, for repairs, late night lessons or just a perouse. With an eclectic mixture of oddly shaped guitars and custom parts.

It’s quite a sight to behold even when just passing by, with its whole-wall displays a colourful abundance of the weird and wonderful.

“There’s always been a big music community this end of town. Partly because of students, but there are quite a lot of serious musicians as well. We’ve not had anyone particularly famous come in, I mean nobody famous buys guitars from a second-hand shop in Broomhill like this. But working musicians, yeah, we’ve had a few. We tend to do the repairs that nobody else will attempt.

“Then again, it’s fairly possible that people have bought kit from us, or had a guitar mended here, who’s then gone on to become someone huge. Sam here went to school with Matt Helders from the Arctic Monkeys. They were a few years apart but I’m pretty sure Matt would have crossed our path at some point before they made it big.

“The odd-shaped ones are all fairly standard guitars, none of them are unusual in any way, shape or form, they’re just different shaped models.

They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.

Particularly in sizes, we get a lot of welltravelled guitars, weird shaped guitars, there’s an abundance of styles of guitars.

No two guitars either look the same or sound the same.

“Then again we help with that, because of Sam’s talent with a file and chisel - his thing is body carving and the likes, so often people will pay us a little extra for a repair in return for a custom, unique design on the body. It obviously takes longer to complete but people seem to like having a truly unique guitar, that’s not just chipped in strange places and covered in stickers.”

But sadly, for anyone interested in learning their art, the Jackson gents do not take on apprentices. It would surely be a bun fight for aspiring repairmen and musicians for a place, but Ross isn’t interested.

“There’s the two of us, and we do alright. If we were ever to expand and get a bigger shop, then possibly… we may consider teaching more than just how to play guitar. But at the moment we can’t afford the competition. We’ve been in Broomhill for two years now, here at Guitar Shack, and we’ve pretty much got the monopoly up here. Sure there are other shops around Sheffield, but we’re happy where we are for the time being.”

GUITAR SHACK ON FACEBOOK

THE PART-TIMER THINK YOU NEED EXPENSIVE GEAR AND FANCY CABS TO SOUND AMAZING THROUGH HEADPHONES? THINK AGAIN...

By Will Ross

S

ometimes it’s ok to be in a band just for the fun of it. Not everyone wants to make it big and tour the world, they just want to jam with their best friends and make some casual music.

Jesse Armstrong is one such man. He’s 32, married with a child, and works fulltime as a uni department techie. But in his spare time, Jesse records his own music and plays in a modest, rented warehouse apartment space.

Occasionally he and his two bands, Opinicus and Stentorian, will play local gigs in their hometown of Sheffield. But most of the time it’s for their own personal pleasure.

“I started playing gigs when I was about 13, in my first band NoEyeDear. Years later a few friends and I started up Opinicus, which has been on and off for a while now.

“We gigged heavily, got featured on a Terrorizor promo CD, voted best unsigned band of the month in Rock Sound and released a couple of demos over the seven years we were together. We were hard to describe, but tended to be summed up as melodic death metal. Basically, double kick drums, guttural vocals and epic dual guitar harmonies punctuated with plenty of guitar solos and one hell of an energetic live act!

“After listening to Steve Harris’s awesome galloping bass lines, I found myself playing bass guitar more and more and finally switched to playing more bass than guitar in my 20s.”

Jesse and his bands record their own music, mainly

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through iPad software that he’s collected. Every one of his bandmates has background tech knowledge, so editing songs together comes second nature to them - but they still keep it simple, preferring to use free software, or apps that cost just a few quid.

“I use a variety of apps when recording on the iPad. I use Audiobus to string together apps, then I use Bias Amp to create or customise amp sims, Bias FX to build effects chains then

Xewton MusicStudio to record. Compared to PC software, they’re an absolute bargain.

“All of the apps are pretty easy to use at their most basic level but from altering the mic position on the cab to changing the positions of valves inside the preamp, power amp or transformer, you can really customise your amp sound. For those users who are a little shy with dabbling with amps at that level, there are hundreds of user-built rigs available to download for free from ToneCloud which you can access through the Bias Amp app.

“Basically you have hundreds of customisable amps at your fingertips for almost nothing. Although, I don’t think the guitar sounds on the iPad are quite at the level where they will replace the old fashioned method of mics in front of a real cab in a real room sound just yet. So we will be recorded all instruments in a studio for that. The iPad comes in very handy as a writer’s tool.”

But it’s the convenience of the iPad that brings music to life for Jesse. With the simplest pieces of equipment, there’s almost no need for casual bands to get too heavily involved with expensive, unnecessary kit.

“The beauty of recording on the iPad is the speed and convenience. Since using

“The beauty of recording on the iPad is the speed and convenience.” the iPad to write and record ideas on, my productivity has increased on the writing front, even though I have less time on my hands.

“You can certainly make do without thousands of pounds worth of equipment.

I’ve heard plenty of black metal and thrash produced to a much lower quality than what I can do on my iPad! If I wasn’t so particular about tone, I would probably record everything on the iPad.”

GET INSPIRED

PRODUCING FROM FRANCE TO ASIA

By Lina F Boothby

Our T-shirts come from Bangladesh, our Shure mics from Mexico and most likely our guitar strings from China. We don’t have to look far to see that we are now going global with music production. And I’m not even talking about touring. I’m talking about the outsourcing of your music to foreign, professional and significantly cheaper musicians and mastering engineers. Let’s see what two exploring musicians managed to do through the tangled cables of the internet.

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GET INSPIRED

...AND FROM METAL TO TRIP

S

omewhere between recording and mastering, the French trip-hop electro duo In Motion ran into a wall. The wall was a combination of many factors. Firstly, the pair needed to find singers to complement their music, which according to Max and Aze is almost impossible in France. Secondly, they needed a place and time when said singers were available to record. And finally, however enthusiastic and willing to learn the duo was, mastering a quality album can be a job too much without a suitable room and equipment. The two could have given up at this point, but they hadn’t come all this way through thick and thin, just to give in at the first hurdle.

As good children of our generation, they turned to the internet for help.

The two friends already had a rich musical history at this point. They met 16 years

“The way we compose music is like a journey, travelling through different moods” ago in Metz, France, through an advert in a music shop window. Aze, a pianist was looking for a drummer for his metal band and as it happens, Max, a drummer was looking for a band. After a brief phone call they agreed to collaborate. The two have been inseparable since. Although they played in several different bands and different genres, including progressive rock, salsa and jazz, they settled on the electronic genre after discovering the uniqueness of Scandinavian music during a trip to Sweden. “Aze was al-

ready a big fan of Björk and all of a sudden we started to think ‘wow the sound is amazing, but how do they achieve it?’ I bought an iMac and tried to use the computer as a musical instrument itself, experimenting with rap and combining traditional instruments with electronic elements. We soon quit our metal band and never looked back,” explains Max. It didn’t take long until In Motion was ready to record their first EP in their home studio. However, they soon had to face the unfortunate shortage of French singers.

“We tried out a few local singers, but none of them would fit our music, so we had to let them go,” says Max. This is when the moment came and the pair placed an ad on Gumtree looking for singers in London.

They received an overwhelming amount of responses from great, and not so great singers. Applicants were asked to improvise to one of their new tracks. “We were really blessed, because the feedback was amazing. We talked to a lot of creative musicians with nice voices. This is how we came across Miranda, the Indonesian singer of ‘Geisha’, a song on our first EP ‘Crossing Lines’. She sent us a demo and we said ‘Yes, this is the song.”

On another occasion they recorded two singers during an afternoon improvisation session in the heat of the moment. They fell in love with the voice of two Chinese girls so they turned their central London Airbnb apartment into a recording studio not to waste any time with travelling from China to France. “Obviously, you have to be organised and you have to work really fast and efficiently to achieve great results like this.

MAX AND AZE FROM IN MOTION

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Most of the recording itself comes down to how well you prepare for the recording session and how confident and comfortable artists feel in your studio. You need that so you can work fast.”

Max and Aze are all for collaboration.

“When you start to think like this there is no more ‘maybe’ or ‘it would be great if’, you can do it” They write most of their music together in a ‘creative ping pong game’. These sessions aren’t always successful, but every so often something interesting comes to life. “In a lot of our songs the starting point can be not the music but an image, a picture, a film and then we try to create a musical concept around the idea with different moods, textures, rhythms, harmonies, and samples. So the way we compose music is like a journey, travelling through different moods. Our name, In Motion reflects the way we think of music,” explains Max. The In Motion repertoire couldn’t be more international. They have a wide spreading web of connections around the globe and they always know who to message when they need a helping hand. On their latest EP, infused with dark and airy, oriental rhythms and textures, they worked with singers from both China and India.

“We wanted to involve people from different countries, because we needed it and the music needed it. Since we have the internet and travelling is a lot easier, it is possible to create another network, another form of collaboration instead of being only local orientated. When you start to think like this there is no more ‘maybe’ or ‘it would be great if’, you can do it. You have to be brave to ask somebody to help you from another country. It was very interesting to meet with people from different countries who share the same passion with us. We feel really blessed each time someone says ‘Yeah I’d like to sing to this song’. This is something that we really enjoy,” says Max. The duo’s decision to work internationally wasn’t only motivated by musical multi-culturalism. In order to produce music and survive as a band, they needed to save money to invest in gear and promotion.

Thankfully foreign professionals often offer quality work for significantly less money.

“It can be very frustrating when you want to share your music. You write your songs, you have creative ideas, but you still need

-HOP somebody who is willing to put money, time and effort into improving your music. You can be a great singer, instrumentalist, and mixer but if you only want to work alone, it doesn’t work,” says Max. The pair has collaborated with foreign sound engineers for years before In Motion.

They originally decided to outsource their music to a professional mastering engineer in Hungary for both financial and technical reasons. “We wanted to release our last metal album with Aze in 2008, but it was very badly mastered. This was around the time when I started my journey with DAWs and tried to master a song. I thought if I buy the right tools I will be able to achieve great results. I bought extensive mastering gear and learnt everything that is possible to learn about tonal balance, compressing, acoustics and dynamics. But after six months of really hard work, I had to come to the conclusion that maybe I had the tools, but I didn’t have the knowledge to do a good job.”

Desperately looking for advice, Max

“You can be great, but if you only want to work alone, it doesn’t work” eventually stumbled upon Ivan Folk, the chief sound engineer of Zafir Studios in Budapest, who offered to help him. Max decided to give it a go and trust Ivan with his music. Two days later he got a mastered song back. “It was really good. I couldn’t believe it. It was just what we’d been looking for. I didn’t understand how he could do such a great work and why couldn’t I do the same. As an artist you have to know your limitations no matter how talented you are. The internet makes it possible to meet people who have the knowledge, tools and experience to make something better than you can. For us, outsourcing was a creative move. Ivan is one of us now.”

According to the duo, outsourcing your music to a complete stranger somewhere across the globe is mostly dependant on trust. It is also a big commitment. A good mastering engineer, like Ivan, will treat your music like their own and can give you constructive feedback and offer you help on fixing and improving it. They don’t try to rip you off because they genuinely care about your music. Basically, to successfully work internationally, you need to find somebody who loves music more than money and you are sorted.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATH SAKURA

41

NEWS

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YOUR NEXT GADGET

By Lina F Boothby

Have you ever dreamt of mixing for a crowd?

This new gadget, the Mixfader, might just bring your dreams within reach.

Since the first digital DJ apps the quest remains ongoing to reproduce the analogue feel of the turntable for the digital sphere. Although there are several apps for iPads for professional DJs and wannabes out there, something was still missing.

The lack of a physical crossfader control made the digital experience feel, well…somewhat amateur for turntablists. Many have voiced their frustration with the difficulty to add intricate scratch elements into a mix on a touchscreen.

A French team of turntable enthusiasts seem to change the status quo and write digital DJ-history with the Mixfader, the first connected crossfader.

It combines all the essentials for mixing your music and can completely replace the analogue turntable elements. It is powerful and completely portable allowing you to mix and scratch anywhere, any time and it is pocket friendly both by size and price.

The Mixfader allows a physical control over creating perfect sound cutting and original compositions through returning movements. It also comes with a handy DJ app that dematerializes the classic turntables on any smartphone and tablet.

The project became a success overnight with almost 900 backers on the crowdfunding website, Kickstarter.

The company reached its €50,000 goal in only 48 hours and is now preparing for production in September and aim to ship the first Mixfaders in November. For those of you who would like to pre-order one, it is available for the early bird price of €69 (£50).

QUICK DETAILS Mixfader is completely wireless and, according to the company, connects to any iPad or smartphone via Bluetooth. It comes in a silver aluminium casing and with a short USB cable for charging.

The accompanying app is compatible with both Android and iOS and can access SoundCloud, Spotify, Deezer and mp3.

Both the product and the app were designed in mind with amateurs and professionals by sound engineers and champion turntablists.

“The Mixfader has been designed to suit everyone, not just professional DJs. Our designers focused particularly on making sure that Mixfader and its related applications are unbelievably intuitive and easy to use,” the team writes on their Kickstarter page.

The application also comes with coaching videos for those who want to perfect their skills.

43

BRANDING

YOUR

BRAND Have you ever wondered what to wear on stage? There’s a method behind the madness of wearing sunglasses in an arena, did you know? Our stylist Wemmy gives you some hints and tips on how your brand and image can best inform your growing fanbase.

YOUR

IMAGE

By Wemmy Ogunyankin

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WHAT DOES YOUR STYLE SAY ABOUT YOUR MUSIC?

G

etting your branding and image right is a substantial part of a band’s success.

Your branding and your image creates a unique quality about you and your music. In a world where people are bored by genres and influences, it can be argued that nothing will grab a listener’s attention like a band’s image and a band’s brand.

Music is what you do to a listener, your branding and your image is what you are and will be what influences someone’s first listen of your EP. Last month, we focused on ‘Your Spending.’

This month, however, we’re going to look at image and how your style can contribute to your brand. Let’s face it, you can’t have one without the other.

All we really want to do is play our music. It doesn’t matter where, it doesn’t matter who toas long as they’re loving it and it doesn’t matter how much we’ve had to drink or how little we’ve slept, damn it.

But every band has to wear something, every artist says something about themselves with the way they dress, how often they wear sunglasses and whether they prefer button up shirts or t-shirts.

Luckily for us, history exists to guide us. All our favourite musicians will have influenced our style. In both music, and everyday fashion.

They’ve made the rules, but you get to adapt them as you please.

The best thing about this unwritten constitution is that your image can be anything you want it to be, to share whatever it is about yourself that you want to share. The Temptations wore sharp suits and bow-ties, the perfect compliment to their vocal caressing and smooth tones. Kurt Cobain always looked as disinterested as possible in his thrifty looking shirts, his eyeliner and the occasional summer dress. Despite being a grunge hero, Kurt Cobain made very clear that the angst, rage and passion that fuelled his music was not a reason to clothe his body in typical masculinity, chains and leather.

Cobain is the perfect example of shattering perceptions when it comes to image. He was proof that your image can be whatever you want it to be as long your music has legs of its own.

So what about us? Fashion trends are moving faster than our songs can carry us, does your image have to reflect whatever is cool right now?

Definitely not. It just has to say enough about you to evoke either of these reactions: “Eh, this is the kind of thing I might like.” The Temptations “What on earth is this? I am so intrigued.” Kurt Cobain Amanda Palmer is one of those artists that manages to evoke both these feelings.

There are a lot of crossover molds too. Being in a rock or metal band may mean you were a lot of black, denim and band shirts. Being a part of any alternative culture gives you a certain degree of freedom. It allows you to ignore society’s conventions and gender norms and essentially do whatever you want.

That’s why our model for Your Brand this issue is Sophie Maxwell, because the aesthetic of being a musician, particularly a rock or metal musician and even genres like rap, hip hop and jazz mean you can wear whatever you please, as long as it fits your brand. Jazz musicians, regardless of gender, can wear a waistcoat, and probably have some sparkles, but usually just any kind of smart attire. Hip hop musicians of all genders will showcase a preference for blue denim, tracksuits or designer clothing. Being in a rock band has exactly the same wide breadth of possibilities. But do your research. Take note of your influences and of any way their image might influence their sound and vice versa. We value originality as much as anyone, so having influences does not mean you should have rules.

Your image is a promise to your customer.

It’s a promise of one of these two feelings and maybe even a promise of both.

When doing a photoshoot and when on stage, it’s vital to consider the commercial possibilities of your music/image. It is also important to strike the important balance in rock and alternative music: pleasing your fans but being yourself and being successful, but not selling out.

How you dress as a band is a personal choice.

However, being in a band means your choice has to be an informed one. The best thing about being in a rock or metal band is that there is no status quo and doing things differently is doing things right.

In a typical rock band, there are four or five members. A frontman or woman, one (or two) guitarists, one bassist and a sweaty and shirtless drummer. That’s a number of opportunities to incite audience member with each individual attire. Your band should stand out from the rest, but also stand out from each other. No four people are the same and no member should have to compromise their individuality. If you are cohesive as a band, you are cohesive enough.

Some bands prefer a gimmicky, stereotypical Steel Panther style attempt at defining their sound through their shocking attire, others for example Rolo Tomassi’s Eva Spence prefers a more natural look. Her plain and simple outfits on stage evoke absolute surprise when combined with her powerful growl.

This isn’t like a catwalk in New York, but whoever is watching you is taking note of what’s on your shirt, how you move and what shoes you’re wearing. Ensure you have a degree of control over how you are perceived. It could be the one reason someone hangs around for your set, the shirt you’re wearing.

There’s no wrong way to dress, it’s just a matter of knowing what we all want to say with our attire.

The message? Have a little fun and explore. There’s nothing you can’t do.

45

BRANDING

NATURAL

Nothing quite epitomises the au naturel look like the song title: ‘Come As You Are.’ For many of us, it will be in our favourite band’s shirt and will act as a communicative tool to your audience. A band shirt tells them what you like, and maybe a bit of what they should expect to hear.

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DARING

Daring attire can come in many styles, shapes and sizes. The only surety is that it evokes surprise, excitement and intrigue in whoever is watching you. Corsets, lace, and leather clad ensembles are just a few contributions to being daring with your appearance. So is defying gender stereotypes.

LEATHER

Of course leather gets it’s own moment.

Leather says just enough about you to prove that you mean business. It’s an archetypal signpost for any kind of alternative music Leather doesn’t have to stop at the jacket, trousers, dresses and shoes all contribute to the image of “I Just Love My Heavy Music.”

SMART

Smart attire for a rock band is mysterious. It gives your band an extra element of surprise outside your chord progressions and riffs.

It can also make you seem more accessible than most other styles. Never wear smart attire without wearing something you can take off with ease. You will sweat.

47

BRANDING

Nothing says “Here I Am” like a band photoshoot. On set with Sophie Maxwell, I asked her to dress ‘Natural,’ ‘Daring,’ ‘Smart’ and to bring some ‘Leather,’ while keeping rock music in mind. Her choices were informed by her personal dress sense, her taste in music and what she already had in her wardrobe.

Everything influences your image. The hair on your head, the hair on your face.

The amount of jewellery you wear and most certainly your shoes. Think about your image, not just because it’s fashion, but because it says enough about you to garner the interest of a potential listener, before you have even gone on stage.

Sophie crosses the spectrum and has hopefully provided you with a bit of insight into just what you can do with your image in relation to your music. So which are you? Smart? Do you love your Denim and Leather as much as Saxon do? Are you au naturel... or are you daring?

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START-UPS

LAUNCH YOUR OWN

RECORD LABEL

FOR JUST

£5

From your brand to your bands, we’ve got everything you need to know.

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WHY START A RECORD LABEL?

If you have a fiver lying around, you might want to consider starting your own record label.

S

even years ago, that’s all music aficionado Elson Barbosa had - that, a computer, a few bands he liked, and an ardent passion for music to glue it all together.

“I really liked talking about music. I’d observe everything. I listened to music all the time,” he says, as he scrolls through the extensive collection in his label’s website.

“I started noticing that there was a vast quantity of bands that emerged all over the country, each with their own MySpace page, each with their own virtual thing going on, and there was nothing helping signalise that

By Luana Salles somehow. It was all very spread out. I started having ideas about what I could do to centralise that.”

For Elson, starting a virtual label was the obvious next step.

It would offer bands a free platform through which to release their music, while giving fans of the national experimental music scene a distinctive place where they could go for new sounds.

In the beginning Elson looked into online domains and potential bands. And the domains were cheap, and the bands were all interested. And Elson said, let there be Sinewave: and there was Sinewave.

And Elson saw the label, and it was good; and Elson united the bands with a purpose.

Today, a l o n g with

bandmate and friend Lucas Lippaus, 40-year-old Elson has released 142 albums through Sinewave, with a 143rd record release currently in the works all for five pounds. Their secret?

“We’ve created a concept. A tag. We created a face for the bands, so people would access the website and they’d know that, if it was released by Sinewave, then there’s something there that they would identify with somehow,” he says. “And most importantly, we only work with bands whose sounds bleed somehow. It’s hard to define it, but the band’s music needs to bleed, needs to be cathartic.

In return, we offer this label through which bands can find hundreds of other bands wh bleed just like them.”

It’s precisely this essence, this cathartic glue, that makes Sinewave’s releases all work together. The label has made a name for itself in the noisy music niche, building the gears of its foundation with similar instrumental bands and greasing it up with experimental variations within the genre. It’s harmonious, it’s effective, and, most importantly, it’s easily done.

Record labels can be an exciting and profitable medium through which to release music.

Think of it as a shiny, yellow umbrella: it brings people together underneath it while still standing out from the general crowd. It’s much easier to locate it amidst a mass of regular grey umbrellas, isn’t it?

Now imagine that yellow umbrella is hanging over the heads of artists who all produce your favourite genre of music.

Amazing. All you need to do is approach them in order to discover bands you’ll enjoy. The musicians themselves also have an opportunity to network with each other and expand their artistic horizons. The more you listen to their bands, the greater the demand for them will be; smaller bands will get a chance to rise to the surface and come together under the same umbrella. It guarantees that their music scene is kept alive.

Callum Browne, founder of successful Irish record label Little L Records, also emphasises the responsibility a label itself holds in this scenario, stressing that its main aim should be to support artists with whatever they need to grow. “Labels can and should do this by releasing their music and ensuring it benefits the musicians in some way, be that promotionally, monetarily or otherwise. They can help by booking bands and putting people in contact with them. They also give bands a peer group that they can be in with other bands, often leading to joined tours and split releases.”

If you know unsigned musicians who produce music akin to yours, you might want to centralise them under one unique umbrella. The terms of how you go about it are up to you: whether or not to monetise your releases, attract investors, or enable free downloads.

Callum thinks there’s no wrong way to do things, as long as you’re respecting people within the scene.

“I feel like DIY labels have no set rules or handbook. The main thing is to look at what you like to do and what you feel you should be doing, and work from there,” he says. At the end of the day, if you’ve planned your initial strategy out, both the musicians and listeners will benefit from your initiative.

51

OWNING A LABEL HAS NEVER BEEN THIS EASY Starting a record label can be an arduous task if you’re looking to profit significantly. It usually requires looking for investors, establishing a three-year plan, and generating immediate income. In theory, we all dream of launching the next Universal Music. Realistically, time is money, and most of us have neither.

Thankfully, it’s much easier and just as exciting to start your own independent label.

You can still plan to profit over merchandise and physical releases, but that shouldn’t be your main concern. The foundations of your label should always be built on genuine passion for the music you’re releasing. Everything else will fall into place.

1

TALK TO FRIENDS

You could try to develop everything yourself, but you might stumble and fall in the process. Everything becomes a lot more manageable when people come together. The more people you have, the bigger your network will become. You’ll benefit from it immensely too: choosing the right partners can open the right doors to important contacts.

2

Planning certain aspects of your label in advance can prevent obstacles as you go along. You don’t need to draft a massive business plan like companies do, but you could do with a short one.

Even if you’re not looking to invest a large sum of money in your brand, a business plan can help narrow down the scope of your label’s goals. You’ll get a chance to define your focus, refine your visual and sonic identity, and ask for feedback. It’s less scary than it sounds: it’s just a document with a few points specific to the brand you want to create. You can write about anything in it, from the website design details to the audience you want to target - whatever floats your boat. However, we’ve compiled a handy checklist of essential details you might want to include. But first...

DEFINE YOUR BRAND

3

Think about what you have at hand. Do you know any bands that would be interested in releasing their music through a label? It shouldn’t be difficult to convince them: getting signed tends to be instantly appealing to artists. All professional bands want a quality stamp that will set them apart and increase their visibility.

Contact these bands - but only the ones with high quality releases. You don’t want to launch your label with demos and rushed recordings that haven’t been mixed yet.

“That doesn’t spark anyone’s interest. Especially when you’re dealing with the Internet, something that spits out new material every second. That kind of thing simply won’t cut it, it’ll go by unnoticed. You need to have a professional posture,” Lippaus says.

CHOOSE BANDS

BUSINESS PLAN CHECKLIST

✓ DETERMINE WHAT YOUR LABEL WILL REPRESENT. ✓ DEFINE WHO YOUR AUDIENCE WILL BE. You need to know what genres you’ll be taking on and How high is the demand for the genres you’ll be workwhether or not they realistically work together. Ideally, you’ll have such a distinctive identity that listeners will know exactly what they’re going to get when they visit your website - not in terms of originality, but in terms of style. If you release just any style of music, you’ll be left with a faceless brand that doesn’t centralise similar genres and fails to grab the attention of specific music scenes. People need to identify with what you stand for and know that your releases are a safe bet.

✓ DEFINE A UNIQUE SELLING POINT.

What makes you stand out? Why should bands aspire to work with you? Being original and fulfilling a gap in the market is the quickest way to draw an audience.

Research other labels and see what you have that they don’t have. Look at labels that cover genres similar to yours and see what they’re missing. You have to make your brand as innovative as you possibly can.

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ing with? Where are their fans located? How do they think and behave? Are they interested in going to gigs and buying albums? How loyal are they to their music scene? This can help delineate the terms of your label. If fans of your specific scene are incredibly loyal and love to buy merchandise, why not consider selling it?

✓ THINK OF A COLOUR PALETTE.

Colours are an efficient way of visually translating the feel of a brand, so make sure your design is as airtight as your concept. It’s a no-brainer, really – if your label has an exclusive sonic identity, then you’ll naturally need a unique face through which to advertise it. To make sure your fans will remember you both musically and visually, create a shade personal to your brand.

✓ PICK A NAME.

Make it impacting.

4

Think about your online platform. Websites are a crucial part of your visual identity - a simple, pretty and intuitive page can go a long way. If you know how to code, designing your own template is an excellent opportunity to personalise your online presence and reel people in. If not, there are thousands of layouts available online that are both easy on the eyes and on the pocket.

Make sure your web design is consistent with your brand values. It wouldn’t usually make sense to have a black website for dream pop bands, just like it wouldn’t usually fit to present doom metal records against a pastel backdrop.

Though several website platforms offer free services, having your own domain name can make your label seem more professional. They’re cheap as chips, too - it’ll only cost you a few pounds a year.

Upload music! We recommend starting off with five or so bands: less than that wouldn’t make an impact, but too many bands wouldn’t give people an intimate enough first impression. Decide on the digital formats you’re going to offer and whether or not you’re going to charge for albums.

The most flexible option would be to let fans name their own price, even if just zero pound – but speak to the bands first. Some musicians might not feel comfortable with providing free music after having spent a lot of money in sound mixing and mastering.

GO DIGITAL

domains we recommend: GODADDY 123-REG HOSTPRESTO 5QUIDHOST

6

If you’ve already attracted some fans and online interest, it’s time to start looking at your next releases. Bands should hopefully be contacting you about the possibility of joining your network, but it might not be that easy depending on your niche. It could be time to pick up a shovel and dig for musical treasures yourself.

“After I released a few albums from friends, I started emailing small artists I’d find online and talking to them about releases. They’d usually receive it well.

Then the artists became bigger from there, but I still generally work like this,” Callum says, reminiscing about the early days of Little L Records.

It’s impossible to say how long you’ll be artist scouting for, or how challenging it will be: it varies from genre to genre. After a few weeks, though, it’s likely that you will have a handful of new artists under your umbrella.

EXPAND YOUR NETWORK

5

It’s time to start exploring how far your label can take you. Begin by showing people your catalogue, explaining your label’s goals, and introducing a few of your debut artists.

Take advantage of as many social media platforms as you can. Search through Facebook for music groups specific to your genres where you can share your new releases, or use relevant Twitter hashtags to draw public attention.

Reddit users are very active and supportive of fresh content, so starting thread could significantly boost your reach. Consider posting catchy pictures on Tumblr and Instagram and interacting with other users to increase your exposure.

Though it’s usually in the interest of the bands themselves to advertise their release through a label, make sure your debut bands are cooperating. Publicity carried out by bands themselves is of paramount importance to the initial success of your label. Unlike you, they should already have a fan base, however big or small, from previous releases. Take advantage of that. Create a small logo that bands can stamp their album covers with and ask them to promote your website through their own social media posts.

GET KNOWN

THE NEXT BIG STEP

If your label has begun to make a name for itself within If a month’s test-drive renders successful results, your scene, you might want to consider identifying and it might be time to monetise your brand. If you don’t redefining your boundaries. It’s absolutely vital, howev- have the time to manage these new additions yourself, er, that you first understand just how far you can go. outsourcing them to promoters and PR experts is alThe quickest and most ways a safe invesment. viable way to determine “A portion of labels pay “A portion of labels pay for press and for press and promotion, what your consumers want is by creating an promotion, but a lot of things can be myself included as I’m at online focus group. Sestage where I can’t didone in house with enough practice!” the lect a socially and culvide my workload, but a turally diverse handful of lot of things can be done your most loyal fans and clients and run them through in house with enough practice,” Callum tells uf Little R possible business expansions. Would they be willing to Records. His DIY label, which started out as a personal buy merchandise online or are the label’s bands not big project, now features more than 40 independent artists. enough yet to justify it? How popular would physical reNew additions to your brand - even though that aren’t cords be, and how much would they be willing to spend monetised - will guarantee that your label continues to on them? What about monetising digital releases? With- be fresh and relevant, while remaining attentive to what in an hour of intense briefing, you’ll be able to establish fans really want. A positive reputation like this within the what new concepts your fans are most interested in and industry is difficult to achieve and not be taken for grantwork towards test-driving them. ed. You’ll be on the fast track to success in no time.

53

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT

In light of what would have been Les Paul’s 100th birthday on June 9th, we talk about what makes the Gibson Les Paul one of the most adored guitars on the planet, it’s controversies and why they don’t seem to matter to countless guitar lovers across the world.

By Wemmy Ogunyankin

54 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

B

eing serenaded by a Gibson Les Paul for the first time is a life-changing experience for everybody. Regardless of your musical preference, you’re sure to have heard one. The 6-stringed favourite is used in many genres, including rock, soul, jazz, punk and metal. Everyone and their grandma has fallen in love, danced and cried their eyes out to a Gibson melody.

Likely to Jimmy Page’s emotional bending of the G string, but let’s not talk about that.

Versatile and distinguishable, a Gibson Les Paul is a solid body any musician is proud to wear. The guitar continues to evolve but the design remains largely the same. It acts as a badge of honour for those who wear it who can emulate the sounds of Les Paul heroes like Jimmy Page, Slash and Mastodon’s Bill Kelliher. Even Jimi Hendrix, who needs no introduction and was a Fender Stratocaster lover through and through often used Gibson Les Pauls and Flying V’s.

An American Les Paul is definitely a guitar to aspire to as the costs are so high, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with starting out on the more affordable Les Paul Epiphone that has a similar, yet unique sound. The Epiphone is a loyal companion for home practices as its sound and weight is less dense and heavy. Epiphones have a cult of die-hard lovers, many of whom prefer it to an actual Gibson Les Paul. Both are pretty effective at tugging on our heart strings.

Some people don’t get it, some people will tell you the worthy competitor in the name of the Fender Stratocaster is better, more distinctive, provides a better range of sounds, that the fretboard on the Les Paul has strings a little too close together for their big fingers. There’s a reason why all our favourite guitarists used more than one guitar, because each guitar gave every different song a distinctive quality. You don’t have to choose. Sometimes people are proud to hate Les Pauls, because everybody loves them, because they’re expensive

Known Les Paul Lovers:

- Jimmy Page - Led Zeppelin - Slash - Guns N Roses - Randy Rhoads - Ozzy Osbourne - Bob Marley, who’s buried with his Les Paul - Jeff Beck: “The Les Paul has a deep powerful sound and you could use it to imitate just about anything - violin, sax, cello, even a sitar” - Eric Clapton and because they are self-righteous.

Guitarists are a passionate bunch, eh?

Listening to Guns ’n’ Roses Sweet Child o’ Mine is a ton of mixed emotions. It almost always comes on the jukebox at that bar you play in on Wednesday nights, and that Rock Bar you go to on Saturdays, but Slash’s virtuosic final solo could give anyone as many thrills as when they’re on stage. If you listen too long, ‘you might break down and cry’ as Axl Rose himself put it. Aided by the trusty Les Paul, Slash was able to create a song that often puts him second on a list of the greatest Les Paul players aside from Les Paul himself. Second only to Jimmy Page, one of the most beloved Les Paul guitarists along with his Yardbirds compadres Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. It was Page’s work with Led Zeppelin that puts his name on the tip of any tongue that speaks of the famous Les Paul guitar.

For the recording of most of Led Zeppelin material from Led Zeppelin’s second album onwards, he used a Gibson Les Paul. Whole Lotta Love, Black Dog and Ten Years Gone are a few of Led Zeppelin’s iconic songs made all the more special by the use of one of Jimmy Page’s Gibson Les Pauls. One of particular note for us, is the sensual serenade that is Since I’ve Been Loving You on Led Zeppelin III. While Robert Plant was working seven till eleven every night, Jimmy Page kept us sweet company with his Gibson Les Paul. The songs shows the sheer versatility of the Les Paul and Jimmy Page’s prowess as a guitarist, and really, as a sex icon.

“It’s all about the wood” Does Jimmy Page answer the question of why the Les Paul is so expensive? Likely not. Aside from the iconic status of users, its unique sound and its durability, it’s all about the wood.

The body is made from Mahogony, a dense wood that is less prone to bending and warping than number of woods. It is highly versatile, and resistant to rotting.

Mahogany, however, is a fine and rare type of wood and as a result, the beauty comes with its controversies. Since 2003, many types of mahogany wood is now commercially extinct, meaning the wood is no longer economically feasible to harvest. This is with with the exception of some limited supply and the Gibson Guitar Corporation have come under fire for their use of the coveted wood.

- Brett Hinds and Bill Kelliher - Mastodon - Zak Wylde - Black Label Society - Sheryl Crow - The Edge - U2 - Scott Gorham - Thin Lizzy - James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett - Metallica - Paul Kossoff - Free - John Lennon - Paul McCartney - Carlos Santana

The corporation also ran into some trouble with the law when a shipment of rosewood and ebony, used for the fingerboards of Les Pauls, arrived in Dallas, Texas from India in June of 2011. According to a federal affidavit, the wood was brought into the US under a tariff code that made it illegal to export from India - and so violating the rather obscure century old law known as the Lacey Act, an American environmental conservation law.

Henry Juszkiewicz, Chairman and CEO of Gibson, insisted the wood was from a sustainable source. On 28 August 2011,

American federal agents raided Gibson’s Nashville and Memphis premises, seizing shipments of Indian rosewood. Gibson strongly fought this accusation and on an American talk show, Juszkiewicz said: “Virtually every other guitar company uses this wood and this wood is used prominently by furniture and architectural industries, and to my knowledge none of them have been shut down or treated in this fashion.” There were discrepancies over the politics behind the federal raid. Many supporters of the corporation claimed that Juszkiewicz’ conservative politics were reason for the ‘attack’ from Obama’s government.

In 2012, the corporation paid $350,000 in

“They are still reported to be making around 700 guitars a day” penalties to settle the charges against them.

They paid a $300,000 fine and donated $50,000 to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to promote the protection of endangered hardwood trees, like ebony and rosewood.

The corporation suffered, but fans were loyal and they are still reported to be making around 700 guitars a day.

It’s tough deciding between your love for the rainforest and your love for trying to replicate Jimmy Page’s sound as much as possible. It’s also tough deciding between having money in your bank account and owning one of the best guitars in the world. As musicians, our job is to create.

And for many of us starting out, that will be on the first cheap guitar you can find.

That’s the real way to do it.

If a Les Paul is a guitar you aspire to, there’s no shame in that. It’s popular for a reason.

Love or hate the Gibson name, they will forever be cemented in as one of the best guitar makers in the world. Look at that list, they can’t all be wrong.

55

CHANNELING YOUR CREATIVITY

Having a creative mind can often kick up problems when looking into the world of work.

But Joshua Harris, producer of Birmingham’s Capital FM breakfast show with Rob & Katy, has found ways to channel that creativity into the medium of radio.

By Will Ross

PHOTO COURTESY OF WEARMONO

AMPLIFY MAG: So Joshua, tell us a bit about yourself.

JOSHUA HARRIS: Radio is 20 per cent of who I am, I love what I do but I’d like to feel as though it doesn’t define me. I’m a husband, son, friend and aspiring cook. I often take risks I probably shouldn’t, but am also a sensitive soul. I’ve been working in

the radio industry for 14 years now, in some shape or form. To be honest, I got into it because I always knew I wanted to use my creativity and if I could avoid wearing a suit to work everyday, then happy days.

AM: What does it take to be a breakfast producer?

JH: In a kitchen, quite often

the head chef doesn’t cook, but they bring everything together and manage each element of the dish. Radio producing, in my instance, is very much like this. I’m the breakfast producer, which is a term covered in glamour, but really I’m the workhorse of a show. I’m responsible for everything you hear on the station between 6-10am. It involves managing the presenters’ content, delivery and well-being, while ensuring we stick to the brand criteria. Radio presenters are an interesting breed of people. Rob is up and coming, I can afford to be more direct with him. He takes criticism well but is also quite forthcoming with his own views. Katy is much more unpredictable, she’s experienced in terms of years in the industry but has also undergone a big transition as the Capital brand has established itself.

AM: What’re the perks of your role?

JH: The ability to be affect someone’s day is a blessing I make sure I appreciate often.

You become part of the listener’s lives and so being able to frame their day and influence it for the good is something that keeps me ticking over. ‘Creatives’, as a breed, are quite often more sensitive, vulnerable and emotional than they’d ever let on, and so they need to be handled with care. But being able to express my creativity and have it validated is also a perk, I love watching an idea form, develop, evolve and be executed in a short period of time. I’ve got a pretty short attention span and so the immediacy of radio really appeals. The bosses understand the importance of being able to live life - how else are you meant to remain a relatable and a social commentator if you’re forced to be antisocial and chained to a desk?

AM: And the downfalls?

JH: Most radio creatives are highly emotionally invested in their job, which means it can be very tiring. If an idea or piece of content bombs, it can hit hard, but the best way to overcome it is to learn from the challenges and make the next day better.

The producer’s job is to try and maintain stability with commonly unstable personalities.

But the worst thing is the early morning wake-ups. Imagine

getting an early flight every day… that’s what it’s like. You can try to convince your body that it’s ok, but I know very few breakfast show staff who enjoy getting up at 4am.

“I’m the workhorse of a show.

I’m responsible for everything you hear live on air” AM: How do you keep your job fresh and interesting?

JH: As I mentioned I have a short attention span, as do a lot of the presenters I’ve produced. The key is to provide routine and structure, but also to be flexible. ome days the creative well is running dry and so to force them to create and innovate would be like banging heads against a wall at the end of a very dark alley. We change the environment of ‘meetings’ often. It’s a perk of the show being able to do so, to sometimes be in the board room, on the sofas in the communal areas or heading out of a coffee shop. Some of our best ideas have come when we’ve had a flat white in our hands.

AM:What advice do you have for aspiring radio talent?

JH: Be persistent. The amount of people who follow up an email after I’ve let it drop off my radar is minimal. That email is probably number 137 of the emails I have to deal with that day. Also, there is no place for arrogance early in a radio career. Listen, follow instructions and add your own aspect to an idea. Your idea might be the best one in the room, so communicate it. But the different side of the same coin is understanding that very few ideas are complete and someone can always add to and develop it.

Otherwise, network your ass off, organise coffees, get them talking about themselves and most importantly do your research.

The first thing a PD (Production Director) will ask is, ‘What did you like about the breakfast show that morning’ - if you try and blag it because you haven’t listened, expect the meeting to be pretty short.

57

DIY

DIY

W

anna move up in the world, but can’t afford a pile of fancy tech?

Well afford away my little droogies, for we are about to teach you how to do it yourself.

That’s right, a DIY section actually involving basic electronics and a soldering iron.

With a little help from Wilkos’ DIY department, a pair of safety gloves and a last minute Google here and there, you’ll be ready for gig season in no time. Trust.

We recently discovered the wondrous Raspberry Pi, a supercheap, super-powerful and supereasy computer that costs around £25 and requires programming upon arrival. It’s run by a computing charity with the same name, whose

1

aim is to help youngsters access programming from an early age.

So we’ve come up with two fantastic ways to use these cool, yet actually rather old little computers.

Oh, and another project that doesn’t. All three require a brain, two require some programming, and our expert-level project at the end may take some prior computing knowledge - or, you know, just blag it.

The first project involves out new friend the Pi, and will be a grand way to kick off your DIY journey.

It’s a wireless home-stereo system for comparatively no money. What more could you want?

The second is an easy job that you can do with your eyes shut though we’re not accepting law

suits for soldering your fingers together. We’ve worked out how to make guitar cables without the cables, or the cost. Genius, right?

And the third... well our expert project is more of an honourable mention than a useful project. It’s a Raspbian CCTV system that costs peanuts, but allows for live HD streaming on the go. Then again, if you have expensive equipment to guard, just get your security done professionally, ok?

Most of these projects are cheap and easy. Some will cost you less than just buying the object outright.

A few may turn out to be at least good. All of them will be immense fun.

Probably.

Wireless Raspberry Pi Multi-room Player

This little project will set you back a little, but not as much as by buying a full Sonos home kit, oh no. You can realistically get all the kit for this set-up for less than £100, if you shop wisely. So do that.

If you happen to have prior computer programming knowledge, then you’ll find this a lot easier - if not, don’t sigh and sadly throw this

magazine down in frustration, for this awesome system is easy to make, we promise.

This little project introduces the wondrous Raspberry Pi to our little magazine. What’s a Raspberry Pi? It’s a small £20 computer that has incredible power for its size, and is completely fresh for your programme writing prowess.

You’ll need to grab yourself a few wireless receivers and a streamer, which may set you back a fair few quid. But hey, this is DIY, right? You

You’ll need: - A Raspberry Pi. Any one will do, there a a few models on the market. The cheapest model will see you through, trooper. We used a B+ model, just ‘cause.

- Musicbox software. This is a free download, from pretty much anywhere on the internet. Raspberry Pi is a charity, so all their affiliated software should be free to download.

- A Pi Hut Micro USB power cable. Yup, pretty witty. Oh, and grab a Micro SD card, too.

- A wireless streamer, plus as many receivers as you have rooms.

- Cables. You’ll need to be one of these people with a handy kitchen drawer full of spare ethernet cables and random old phone chargers. Otherwise, get someone to look at the holes, and tell you what wires fill them. Grab yourself a bunch of two-way audio jacks, they look like the end of your headphones. No, not the listening end.

58 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

By Will Ross

‘Easy’

can enjoy reading about it instead!

In total, if you buy smart, this project can be done with less than 100 English pounds, depending on the number of rooms you want to include.

That third downstairs cloakroom on the east wing might need some poo tunes, after all.

The steps:

Step 1 - Open up your brand spanking new Raspberry Pi (and case if you decided to swank out, open up your new Pi case. If not, fret not, for lego works just as well, and adds a nice retro feel) and connect it up to your wifi router. It only needs a simple ethernet cable, most households have around 17 lying about someplace. Don’t forget to whap in your power supply, ‘else it probably won’t turn on.

Step 2 - Install your wireless receivers

around the house, connecting them up to speakers, amplifiers, docking trays and cats’ rear ends. Just kidding. They’re not too chunky, so realistically they shouldn’t

2

look out of place. Use the necessary audio connector for each speaker to connect it up to the receiver.

Step 3 - Download and install Pi Musicbox,

free software which works as an operating system for your Pi. If you choose to install a different operating system, we won’t judge, but bear in mind that each site will have its own installation instructions. Stick it on a micro SD card and transfer to your Pi. It’s a really cool piece of kit, because it doesn’t muck around with all the unnecessary nonsense that comes with today’s operating systems. What you see is what you get. Or, more accurately, what you download is what

you get. Yay for simplicity.

Step 4 - Pretty much all that’s left to do is to load up your new OS and crack on.

The software sites will give you much more concise instructions, but what you’ll want to do is connect up your Pi with the wireless transmitter. This then speaks to the receivers around your house, which have speakers attached. Woohoo! Pi Musicbox needs access to a Spotify, SoundCloud or Google Music account to actually play music, unless you dig that binaural feedback fuzz. Welcome.

Wireless Guitar Audio Transmitter/Receiver

Fed up of wires tangling about the place like overdone spaghetti when you swing your golden axe about your person in the middle of a finger-bleeding riff? No, us neither.

But wires can certainly cause problems during band practice, either by tangling about or simply not being long enough (teehee [grow up, damn it]).

Hold on, aren’t wireless guitar transmitters super expensive?

Ha, fooled you! You can make your own, and with the right set of tools already at your disposal, at very little cost.

See here, with no shyness about our use of electrical tape, how we’ve transformed two cheap walkie talkies into respective transmitter and receiver. Behold, for our

‘Medium’

absolute lack of technical grace will stun the untrained eye. Unless, of course, we appear graceful, in whice case you should probably seek medical help.

In truth, we’ve basically sledgehammered a few walkie talkies apart and shoved half a guitar lead in each.

But do read on, dear reader, for this is easy and fun and will probably work out.

You’ll need: - Two walkie talkies. Nothing too exciting, but they mustn’t have a timeout function, and will work better with noise cancellation. You’re looking for the sort of thing you got in your stocking when you turned 14, and were too polite to be

ungrateful. Or weren’t, who knows.

- A guitar cord. Decent length - no threefooters, it’d just be pointless. Also, don’t bother with an expensive one, you’re gonna be chopping it up shortly.

- A soldering iron. Nothing with frills and bells on, just the cheap £10 one you can get from Wilkos. Oh, and some actual solder (the stuff you iron). if you’ve never seen or used a soldering iron before, it’s what 3D printing pens are based on. You point the iron at some solder, which in turn melts and cools, making a solid

metal connection for the components you’re trying to glue. It’s pretty nifty, really, just wear some gloves and rest it all on a heat-proof surface.

- A knife. Nice and sharp, but no machetes, please. Use your head, this is just a beginner-level DIY project. Plus, our lawyers are boss.

- A screwdriver. Best to have one of those universal ones with the interchangeable heads.

- A roll of tape. Preferably electrical tape, but duct tape will do too. Much tape.

The steps: Step 1 - Open up your radios. Most gadgets

nowadays have been designed with durability in mind, meaning you’ll likely need Herculean strength, a sledgehammer or just a nifty flick of the wrist with a solid knife. Your choice, but either way you’ll need to get at the techy innards of your walkie talkies. Remove the casing as carefully as you can and put to one side, before disconnecting the microphones from the radio parts.

Step 2 - Slice open your guitar cord. It’s

probably best if you have a spare just incase this all goes terribly wrong and you’re left without a cord. Cut your cord either in half, or at a decent length from either end, then strip back the rubber on both new cables about an inch.

Step 3 - Make the transmitter. This part

transmits the sound to its respected receiver which, surprisingly, receives the sound. Make

sure your soldering iron is heated up before ironing the wires in your first cable to where the microphone part of the walkie talkie is. If it doesn’t want to stay soldered, either kick it down a flight of stairs or grab some tape to hold it in place.

Step 4 - Keep it on. You’ll need to keep the

microphone part in the affirmative position, so again either solder it in place or use a wodge of tape. This is where it’s important to have a walkie talkie that doesn’t shut off automatically.

Step 5 - Make the receiver. Essentially, repeat Step 3, but instead of the microphone part, connect your stripped cable to the speaker end. Make sure you reinforce this with tape, just incase. Then hey, presto, you’re done. In theory, this should all work and do music things with your guitar. Do enjoy this wonderful little piece of art.

59

DIY

3

Raspberry Pi Home CCTV System

You may be picking up on a bit of a theme across these DIY set-ups… and you’d be right.

We love wireless, we love low-cost, and we love Raspberry Pi. It’s really a pretty cool little device. You can do almost anything with it, so long as you know how to work the programming.

This camera kit can be bought somewhat

‘Expert’

pre-built, or you can create the camera casing itself out of lego, plastic, wool... you get the picture (haha).

We’d love to see some of your DIY projects in motion, so get in touch if you get round to this one.

So here it is, our third DIY project, the wireless Raspberry Pi surveillance system.

This project takes a little more tweaking on

the computing side of things, so consider it our ‘expert’ level item for the day.

All in all it will cost around £80, not bad when you consider the cost of an actual CCTV system. So, before ado is in any way furthered, let’s crack on with les instructions.

giving it a camera, they don’t come built-in you see. Check out the 1080p HD modules, too, they’re pretty cool.

standard Pi set-up, you’ll need to give it sweet, sweet electricity and a place to remember stuff.

- The case. You want your CCTV camera to look the part, don’t you? Plus, the Pi itself is incredibly not-water-proof. You can either smash together a cheap and simple encasement for your camera, or pick one up online. Amazon do one that looks like the real deal, that fits the Pi in nice and snugly.

- Wifi USB adaptor. We could show you how to use a Raspberry Pi to extend your wifi signal outside, to connect it up to your Raspberry Pi camera, but for less than eight quid we figured this nifty little piece of kit would do just as well. It looks like the Iron Giant’s pre-molar, but is essentially just a tiny USB adaptor, much like the name implies.

You’ll need: - Raspberry Pi. Yeah, we know, that bit’s in the intro. But you’d forget otherwise, and you know you would. Again, go for the model B, it won’t need much more than that. We actually recycled the same Pi from our wireless speaker set-up, because we at Amplify enjoy saving the planet. And money.

- The Pi Camera modlue. Since the Pi is essentially just a lifeless hulk of simple mechanics, it takes a bit of attention and love to breathe life into it. This includes

- Pi power supply and memory card. Pretty

The steps: Step 1 - Install Raspbian. Pretty much the same as before, it’s a simple operating system that allows you to do stuff. Follow instructions online, they’re straight-forward.

adaptor. Otherwise, obviously, it will have no signal. Ask an adult to supervise you as you drill, hammer or blu-tack your camera to the wall.

Step 2 - Link up the camera module. This will

Step 8 - Access Live Stream (optional).

You can set up your Raspbian software to link directly to a live stream, which can be accessed via your mobile telephonic device. Pretty cool, eh?

need an extra piece of software called PuTTY, which you can also get for free online. Again, this explains the installation, so you can follow to your heart’s content. It essentially allows your Pi to do stuff without being connected directly to your computer, it makes your pi its own little computer.

Step 3 - Enable Wifi. Using your nifty little USB wifi dongle, log your Pi in to your home wifi. You can do this via the PuTTY console, nice and easy.

Step 4 - Shove it all together. If you bought a camera case kit, it should be fairly simple to put together. Make sure you leave space for your power cable to lead out of the case, and make sure it’s sealed nice and tight, or will be in a sheltered location. If in doubt, duct tape.

Step 5 - Install Motion (optional). This is a

really cool addition to the HD camera module we installed earlier. It allows the camera to detect motion, saving your energy bills too much strain. Motion software is available online, so check it out. Check out Code Project for some project-specific code to set up the motion-sensing stuff.

Step 6 - Save space (optional). A 16GB memory card will hold around eight hours of HD footage, so it may be better to set up a shared space online, such as Windows Shared or Google Drive. This can all be done through the Raspbian software and your neat USB wifi adaptor.

Step 7 - Mount your

camera. Make sure that wherever you’re putting this bad boy, you have wifi signal for the

60 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

DIY Projects Shopping List: Easy Raspberry Pi B+ (£20.50) Micro USB Power Cable (£5) Male - Male Audio Jack (£1.97) Sound Blaster Transmitter + 2 Receivers(£59.96)

Medium Walkie Talkies (£21.31) Guitar Cable (£3.75) Soldering Iron + Solder (£11.98) Duct Tape (£2.24)

Expert Raspberry Pi B+ (£20.50) Raspbian Camera Module (£24.44) USB WIFI ADAPTOR (£7.10)

DIY

MERCH

or die

By Luana Salles

A

n interesting shirt design can go a long way in promoting the band’s image and reputation in the industry. Some people even buy shirts from small bands they don’t really know or listen to just because the design is so attractive (it can’t just be us!). Depending on your music scene, band merch is even considered an essential - pop punk fans, for example, wear it like uniform. It’s an excellent way to garner both financial and artistic support from fans.

If you’re not a graphic designer, you can outsource it to a friend or professional. If you can’t afford the latter, student designers should charge you next to noth-

“Don’t try to wing it if you have no experience yourself: a good design makes all the difference” ing because they need the experience for their own portfolios.

Don’t try to wing it if you have no experience yourself: a good design makes all the difference, and most people only ever buy band shirts when they’re particularly eye-catching and unique.

Tell your designer what you’re after and the style you’re going for. They’ll most likely make it into a mock-up for you, with a few tweaks here and there based on what they know works best. Listen to their suggestions and be open to alterations, because they tend to know what they’re doing.

Unless you’re in a massive band whose name everybody knows, you probably won’t get away with having just your band name stamped on a shirt. We all want something as memorable as the Ramones logo or the Joy Division radio waves from pulsar CP 1919, but that can only come later.

For now, focus on designing an image that, while still suiting your genre’s style, is as impressive and distinctive as possible. Keep your audience in mind and research what fans of your genre like to

wear, making sure you’re catering to their general style.

A good rule of thumb is to make it look like a fashion line rather than merch: if people think it’s a brand rather than an ordinary band shirt, that’s almost always a good sign.

In fact, you don’t need to have your band name on the shirt at all if you don’t want to. It’s not particularly necessary if you’re a small band, since not that many people know you yet.

If you have a snappier EP name or song title, you can put that instead. If you have a particularly remarkable album cover, you can put that too: one of my favourite shirts is just a drawing of a house from the self-titled American Football album.

It all boils down to how you want people to remember you and what looks good with your design. If you’d even prefer to go abstract, hell, go abstract! If it becomes a conversation topic wherever people go, then bonus points to you, because they’ll be talking about your band - even if your name isn’t on the shirt.

Lastly, pick a general colour scheme or palette for your merch, making sure it matches the image or logo you’ve created. You want it to represent your sound and scene while still looking attractive.

Once all these basics are decided, ask your designer to put it over a shirt on Photoshop so you can determine where everything will be placed. Logos don’t necessarily have to be bang in the middle. The more you customise it, the more unique it’ll look - and the extra effort you put into thinking of the details will shine through.

When getting your design printed, don’t forget to order all sizes - don’t assume your fans will prefer smaller or larger shirts. Keep your female fans in mind, too: not all of them buy baby look shirts, but if you only sell regular, baggy shirts, you might be segregating a large portion of them who do.

If your design is transferable, you should also look into implementing it on different types of merch. Tote bags, hoodies, buttons, caps and phone covers can all work wonderfully depending on your scene - as long as you do your research, we’re sure you’ll be selling out.

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DIY

YOUR

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FIRST

OUR You look around the dim-light pub as you finish tuning your guitar in preparation for your opening song. It’s not too empty this time – about thirty or forty people, from what you can see. A few faces immediately stand out from the crowd: your partner has once again come to show their support and, embarrassingly, so has your mother. A few of your childhood friends have found time in their busy schedules to come and

see you play. The bartender serving your mother her first gin and tonic of the night is the same familiar face as last time.

Sure, it’s a good atmosphere overall – but as you introduce yourself to a crowd who already know you by heart, you wish you could be playing somewhere new.

Well pack your bags, then, because you absolutely can.

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DIY

GET ON THE ROAD

N

o one needs to have broken into the industry or attracted a thousands of fans to go on their first tour. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: several bands only come to light after touring a few times and bagging some great opening spots for famous headliners. We’re not making this up to give you false hopes, either. We even know some guys who opened for Chunk! No, Captain Chunk!, one of the biggest pop punk bands in the world, before they even got two thousand likes on Facebook. Besides being an exhilarating experience, touring can be a genuinely useful opportunity to get your name out there at the beginning of your career.

So whose soul do you have to sell to do this? For the time being, none. Tom Farr, founder of the Artist Umbrella Agency – a booking agency for independent bands who want to tour the country –, was kind enough to let us in on the ultimate know-hows of the market. And when we say kind, we mean it: you’ll be an expert on DIY touring by the end of this, and he’ll probably be jobless for making that happen.

WHEN TO START TOURING You have to identify the right moment to go on your first tour – that is, when it would artistically benefit you rather than just leaving you penniless. Tom says this moment can only come about when bands have the experience of actually being a band. “There’s no point in going out and playing shows in other towns if your songs aren’t very good.

Bands need to have a lot more self-censorship and need to be self-critical. They need to be able to sit around and ask themselves if they’re good enough to play their songs in front of an audience,” he says. Try playing

By Luana Salles

bley, and toured with giants like 30 Seconds to Mars and Paramore. “If a band is good enough and want to tour, then they should take the plunge,” Tom tells us. We say have faith in your talent and go for it.

CONTACTING PROMOTERS To start off, it’s essential that you find venues. Tom says the most important step is determining where you want to play and then take it step by step. If you want to play in Leeds, for example, you have to look at what venues there are in the city centre, research what shows they’re putting on, listen to a few of the bands to see if they’re similar to yours, and then, finally, check out who’s promoting the show. Approaching a promoter can be a hit and miss, however, and most of them are very busy professionals.

To maximise your chance of success and to slowly build a relationship with them, start by sending them a great song of yours. Ultimately, you have to prove that you have a strong online presence and will be a good addition to their shows. If they don’t know you, they won’t instantly take a leap of faith; they’ll need to get to know you and see if you’re actually the whole package.

Places like Manchester and Liverpool have incredible venues and are relatively easy to play in at first, but London has a very difficult scene to break into. It’s a capital city and every single band wants to play there, as they expect a higher turnout.

There are also more agents and managers based in London, so to get their attention, you’d be competing with a wider array of bands - and you’d necessarily have to play down there first so they could check you out. It’s a saturated market with a lot of pay to play schemes, which most bands can’t af-

“Look at it like it’s a holiday. You’re going away to do what you love, and investing in something you’ll want to do in the long term” your tracks to your harshest critic: if they have a list of complaints by the end of it or, even worse, get the urge to leave the room, then your songs might still need some work.

Don’t worry if you haven’t recorded any EPs or albums yet, though. Some bands have it – but our beloved booking agent tells us that there’s another group touring at the moment that have only just released a single. “Nobody’s going to listen to you if you’ve got a bunch of terrible songs, but if you have one great song, that’ll work.”

There’s no ideal age to start touring either. Some bands have been doing it since they were 15. When Surrey alt-rock kings You Me at Six started out, they got coaches around the country to play shows wherever they could, just because they just wanted to do it. A few years later and they’ve become Warped Tour regulars, sold out Wem64 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

ford. If you really want to play London from the very start, make sure you’re a somewhat established band - with recorded songs and a local fan base - and talk to London-based bands of similar genres. Try to build a lineup yourself with bands that would work well together, and then take it to the in-house promotions team. These promoters usually work directly for the venue - or even own it sometimes - so they don’t incur high costs.

You can show them the lineup you’ve drafted, with several local bands and your touring band. If you can guarantee that the local bands have a reputation of sorts and can pull at least 40 people each, you’ll likely be able to sell your idea to the promoter. It’s unlikely you’ll get a guaranteed pay in London otherwise; sometimes you do, but it’s really all about networking and playing for your strength.

GETTING YOUR OWN VAN A big part of touring is getting your own tour van. There are basically three options when it comes to this: you can either buy a van, rent one from a van hire company, or hire a driver. Buying a van is a long-term investment and gives you the chance to customise it so band members can sleep in it if they want to. Drivers usually have a van specific for touring and they take care of everything for you; you don’t have to worry about getting from one place to another after a tiring show. However, drivers can charge between £80 to £150 a day, petrol excluded. Unless you’re making upwards of £60 a day per band member, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to cover all these costs. Tom says renting a van is, in his experience, the cheapest option, as they usually have weekly rates of £150 to £200, including insurance and breakdown cover. Rented vans are all mechanically up to date, which is often not the case with purchased vans.

A lot of venues have loading areas for vans, so you can park outside, unload your equipment, and then find a parking space elsewhere. Once you have all your equipment back in the van, however, it’s wiser to find a safe location, like a multi-story car park or private car parking in a hotel.

TAKING EQUIPMENT When you’re touring, most venues expect you to provide the backline. This includes a drum kit, guitar and bass caps (speakers, essentially), and all other equipment you need, such as guitars, bass guitars, and synthesisers. Both touring and local bands are also expected to bring drum cymbals, snare drums, cymbal stands, guitar and bass heads, and combi amps. This is why bands have to plan ahead as much as possible: if you only have access to a car, you won’t be able to take your drum kit. That would require talking to agents and promoters to sort something out; more often than not, if you can’t bring a drum kit but can provide something else they need, they’re happy to ask other bands to help you out.

Evidently, communication is key. “Miscommunications are rife within this industry. Promoters and venues can be notoriously difficult to get a hold of, and bands are often very disorganised, so it’s not a good combination. A lot of venues will say they can provide this or that if a band needs it, though. You’ll usually get that information in a show advance, or essentially an email or message sent around 4 weeks before the show. It’s all about maintaining good communication,” our booking agent says.

BOOKING SOME HOTELS Similarly to getting a van, booking hotels is entirely up to you and what your budget is. Some bands start out by buying a van and customising it into a movable home,

with carpets and everything; yet purchased vans can break down quickly, especially if they were sold for cheap. The second cheapest option is couchsurfing: finding friends, fans or concertgoers who are willing to offer you a bed. As you get older, however, it’s likely that you’ll be working outside the band and will have more money saved up for tour. Splurging in a hotel and spending a bit more on comfort should be a priority, since touring is incredibly tiring and a good night’s sleep can really make a difference on your performance the following day. Tom tells us that there’s a widespread misconception about there being a lot of free time during a tour when, in fact, you’re always doing something. You’re either driving to a new city, loading into venues, waiting to do soundcheck… You’re either waiting to do something, or already doing something. Because of this, rest is essential. If you go on websites like Booking or Trivago, you can usually book cheap rooms in advance. It costs around £12 to £15 per band member each night, which is relatively cheap considering how much you’ll be spending on beer! Remember to book rooms with a free cancellation option, too. Plans can change and a lot of things can go wrong, so if you can’t cancel your reservation, that’s £40 down the drain that you won’t get back.

ADVERTISING YOUR SHOWS Advertising shows and tours is primarily a band and promoter deal, and it’s up to you how much you want to spend. You can get fliers printed, you can flier other shows, design tour posters, give out free CDs in shows of bands similar to yours, and, best of all, post on social media. There are several avenues to do it depending on the effort you’re willing to put in. You can even go to the lengths of finding out on Twitter and Tumblr in which cities people live and, if you find big bands playing in your city, you can find the hashtags related to their show. Search for these hashtags and follow whoever is using them so you can introduce yourself and send them links to your music.

The sky’s the limit, really.

MAXIMISING THE TURNOUT To maximise the turnout in each show during your tour, you can hire PR managers - or do PR yourself. Cheaper options, however, include the good ol’ word of mouth, as well as selling merch, having a strong online presence, and making sure the promoters of the shows you’re playing are doing their job properly. Make sure there’s a relevant scene where you’re playing and that you’re in a line-up with similar bands, so their fans will be interested in your music too. It’s all about everybody working harmoniously! Both promoters and bands need to be doing their jobs. “As an agent, I’ve had to speak to promoters because they’ve not done their job, not promoted it at all.

You have to balance professional relation-

THE SUMMER WAR ON TOUR

ships, though. Instead of calling someone out, you’d usually just make a note of what their mistakes were and remember not to work with them again,” Tom says. Bands usually talk amongst themselves anyway, so if someone had a bad experience with a promoter, information usually gets around.

However, everybody has off-nights sometimes, and you have to be willing to see both sides of the situation.

GETTING PAID (SORT OF) “Profit is the holy grail of going on tour,” Tom assures us. “It’s rare that a band will break even unless you’ve built a fan base and know exactly how to refine. For example, your expenditure isn’t limited to the initial outlay of getting a van. You obviously have your equipment that you have to make sure is up to date, and you have to make sure your amps are working. You have to get accommodation, petrol, food, drink… Each time you go on tour, you learn how to deal with those expenses better and how to cut them down.”

Basically, on your first tour, don’t have high expectations about making money. It’ll most likely be a case of investing in the experience and learning how to deal with certain aspects of it better next time. “Look at it like it’s a holiday. You’re going away and

“If a band is good enough and want to tour, they should take the plunge” you’re doing what you love, and it’s costing you money like a holiday would. Yet at the end of the day, you’re getting a return from it, because you’re investing in something you’ll hopefully want to do in the long term,” he says. If you look at it that way, it comes across as a bit easier to swallow, as opposed to just a necessary loss.

If you build relationships with venues and promoters, however, you can start negotiating a bigger fee. If you’ve previously

asked for £40, but then really impressed them, developed a reputation, and solidified your fan base since, you could ask for £65 the second time. It’s even possible to throw a rider in there, too. It’s often a case of balancing it with what the promoters are able to do, because you don’t want to burn them out. “You’ve got to make sure that what you’re asking for is in line with what you deserve,” Tom says, reinforcing that this kind of sensibility comes with experience.

In terms of investment and how much you can expect to spend, it depends on how many people are in the band. If you have a three-piece and you’re going away for seven days, for example, you should take £150 to £200 each. That’s not including the guarantees you get every night - meaning the fees that promoters pay you - but you’ll end up spending that anyway once the petrol, food, drink and accommodation are taken out.

The bottom line is: save as much as you can, because it’ll never be too much.

REMEMBER TO KEEP CALM Finally, keep in mind that things can go wrong, and a few of them probably will.

Planning can avoid most of them, but some are beyond your control. “There’s a band that went out a few months back where the promoter lied and hadn’t booked the show before. The venue simply wasn’t booked out. There are always bad things that are going to happen,” the booking agent reminds us. You can’t predict anything, but you can learn from experience which people are the most reliable.

Make sure you’ve reserved plenty of time to get from city to city. Remember to keep your instruments safe so your van won’t get broken into. Don’t drink and drive, either, guys. Please.

Have fun in your tour but remember to watch other bands’ shows in nights where there’s a longer line-up. Talk to them backstage, network with concertgoers, and grow your contact book. Trust us, it’ll come in handy in the future.

We hope you make the most of your time on the road!

65

TOURING Here’s a handy guide to remind you of everything you need to do before you go on tour. Follow these steps and you’ll be on the road in no time.

2

Build an online fan base on several platforms. There’s no point in touring when you can’t advertise it. You can share a tour poster, photos and tour videos with your fans later on.

1

Start by writing and practicing your music. You need to be self-critical with what you produce and have significant experience within your band before touring.

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3

Get your backline: a drum kit, guitars, bass guitars and cabs. Bands also need to take their drum snares, cymbals with stands, and guitar and bass heads.

4 Approach promoters who put on shows in venues appropriate to your scene. Look into major cities like Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Cardiff.

CHECKLIST up as much as you can.

5 Save You’re looking at around £200 per band member, but it can vary.

6

7

Rent or buy a van.

Weekly rates are around £150-200, including insurance. Remember to book hotels (or couches) for all cities you’re visiting.

Design and print your merch. Shirts, buttons, hoodies and tote bags are all popular.If you have a record out, take copies to either sell or distribute.

8

You made it! Finish by

playing your best setlist in front of hundreds of people in all of your favourite venues.

67

We book tours for emerging artists and bands all across the

GET INSPIRED

AN ORIGIN STORY Peet the ‘Jazz Prodigy’

By Lina F Boothby

F

our-year-old Peet Ferencz never dreamt of becoming a musician.

As a matter of fact, he never wanted to be anything special. He was supposed to follow his surgeon father’s footsteps to the bleach smelling hospital corridors. He only started to play the violin, because his mum thought it looked cute in his hands. But he got the hang of it and went on to win every possible national classical violinist competition in the country. All of a sudden, there weren’t enough shelves in his room to hold his trophies, and he started to dive into the deep seas of musical creativity.

At this point he was six.

He was still in primary school, when he came across a basic sound editing software at his cousin’s house. It could create all sorts of pre-made loops and musical elements and arrange them in any particular order.

This new world of creativity captivated him so much, that he sometimes forgot to pour milk on his morning cereal. His aspirations grew every day and soon he couldn’t think of anything else but music production.

One week a family friend came around for a Sunday roast and brought Sony’s ACID with him. This was the first software that Peet could do whatever he liked with. He started turning all the levels up and down, pushing all the buttons, playing around with sound effects on their family PC, driving his parents absolutely crazy. His mother says: “It was a madhouse. The same beat on repeat for days.” His father says: “He strived for excellence.” Peet says: “I felt intoxicated from the endless options.”

It didn’t take long until he grew frustrated with not being able to record. Seeing his

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agony, his father surprised him with a small studio microphone and a two-channel mixer for his 12th birthday. “It was like getting wings. I could record whatever, whenever I wanted and use my own music to make my own tracks.” Peet went absolutely crazy with musical experiments for a while. He spent all his waking hours piling up sheet music, humming tunes, jotting down lyrics.

He finished his first official studio album ‘Go’ when he was 13 and he started to give his CDs out to people for feedback. “I think you really need feedback to keep you going. I always tell beginner producers to send their music to people they respect. Mum and dad are great, but you need professional advice and constructive feedback. You get some responses from your fans as well, but you can’t start experimenting on them straight away.”

Releasing his first album was a massive milestone in Peet’s career as a produc-

“Hearing the nuances in music is still my superpower” er. “I think it is important to always learn, and experiment as a musician. Most of my knowledge comes from being thrown into the deep end in my studio, solving problems that I have never encountered before. I had to analyse everything. What did I do right?

What did I do wrong? Eventually I learnt my lessons and didn’t make the same mistake twice.”

Spending all his saved up pocket money, he bought some studio monitor speakers and suddenly he could hear things that he

THE PEET PROJECT

could never before. “Hearing the nuances in music is still my superpower,” he says.

While working on his bedroom studio, he started looking into soundproofing. It was in a Monday maths class, when a classmate mentioned a soundproofing mat sale in town. The local radio station underwent some refurbishment and they sold all the mats and sound trap elements for peanuts.

Peet sneaked out of school during first period, bought half of their stock and packed his room with them. “It was a revelation for to have a silent bedroom during both recording and mixing.” While other teenagers were enjoying ‘seven minutes in heaven’, fifteenyear-old Peet entered his song to a national remix competition, remixing a Sub Bass Monster track. It was around that time that he fell in love with funk-jazz, so he packed his remix with a lot of rhodes, bass slaps and acoustic claps. The stakes were high; the winners got onto the maxi album of Sub Bass Monster and their music was played on several radio stations. The first two winners were the two biggest music bosses in the country, and third came high-school freshman Peet, an absolute nobody.

Out of nowhere, industry big dogs started asking questions about him. He received countless emails complementing his crisp and fresh style, praising him for bringing some acoustic funkiness to the industry palette. People called offering him mixing jobs, and suddenly Peet was on the top of the electronic music producer lists. Artists looking for a break asked him for advice.

He describes this as a season of enlightenment: “This was when the lightbulb flicked on in my head and I felt like I have arrived.”

He thinks his break was due to his jazz piano theory lessons. “I had the good basics of music before, but I was trained as a classical violinist for over ten years and I knew little about pop or jazz music.

It was during those lessons, when I finally understood why music never sounds like how I want it to. It was all down to harmonics.”

He was eighteen and fresh out of highschool when he started his own band, the Peet Project, with his pianist friend, Adam.

The Peet Project is a smooth jazz band, but

“The key to becoming a great producer is to have a very wide perspective of the world of music” they decided to be audacious and add violin to the instrumental palette, which is almost alien from this genre. With this project, Peet conquered the stages of Budapest and started performing professionally.

Peet says the key to becoming a great producer, you must have musical intelligence. You either need to be an active musician, or have a very wide perspective of the world of music. A producer needs to have an extensive knowledge about the use and role of musical instruments, the different musical trends, h o w

everything should sound together and be willing to constantly learn and experiment with music. You don`t have to orchestrate as a sound engineer, it is enough to be able to work with sampling and have a wide spectrum of insight into the music industry.

However, if the sound engineer is a musician themselves and have a harmonics background they have the advantage of being able to help musicians in tweaking their music during the recording process. They can say: the guitar needs to move up an octave, that the singer’s harmonies don’t work well together.

“You don’t have to be regularly on stage, but a basic knowledge of keys or guitar can be that plus that makes a good producer,” he explains.

Peet has released ten albums so far with the Peet Project and he is nowhere near finished. Three years ago, he bought his own recording studio where he works as a fulltime sound producer. His back wall is covered with framed articles and photographs.

In one of them, Peet is shaking hands with Oasis chief engineer Gene ‘The Machine’ Grimaldi, the overlord of sound engineering in Los Angeles. “I sent him ‘Night is Falling’, one of our singles, for mastering and he asked me if I wanted to work with him regularly. He looked at a map to find Hungary, only because he liked how my music sounded. These are moments that are like mini Christmases for me.”

The Peet Project’s latest album ‘Love’, officially out this summer, is already on the Smooth Jazz lists. ‘Love’ was born during our tour in the US. T h e band was doing shows

in front of 10 thousand people at the LA Jazz Festival in 2013, when they started thinking of releasing a new album.

However, the band soon faced some serious difficulties. “Touring for weeks was an enormous change for all of us, because we weren’t used to the scale of crowds, or being away from home so long. It was different food, constant interviews and cameras in our faces.

It was such an emotional and physical strain on most of the band members that three out of five of us left straight after arriving home. They weren’t prepared going big.”

It took Peet a few months to get over the break and look for new musicians. This time he was a lot more conscious in choosing the right people, who had certain qualities in them, like durability, willingness to sacrifice, readiness for touring.

“Some people are amazing musicians but they aren’t made for touring and success and you can’t plan long term with them,” he explains.

“Some people are amazing musicians but they aren’t made for touring and success” The new Peet Project spent most of their time together, first doing gigs and practicing the repertoire, and not working on anything new. “’Love’ was always in the back of my mind, but first we needed to focus on becoming a team.” This time Peet was a lot more conscious about planning forward, taking PR seriously, building their relationships with touring offices. The project is about to go on another US tour with ‘Love’.

Now, 23-year-old Peet is freshly married to his high-school sweetheart. When I ask him about his future plans, he sighs.

He still takes too much on as a producer. He barely sleeps when a project deadline hits.

“Sometimes I think, I can finish something on time, not realising that I depend on other people keeping deadlines too. It happened before, when I had four songs due in a day and three of them I haven’t even started yet, because I didn’t the tracks didn’t arrive to work with.”

He says, finding the balance between work and private life is essential for a sound producer, because they have to deal with a lot of stressed people, who are also pushed by deadlines. “You don’t have to be a superhero, but it is very important to be able to properly plan a work-diary so you don’t accept jobs that you can’t finish,” he shares his advice.

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LYRICS

LYRIC OF THE MONTH:

Jeff Buckley: Grace

J

eff Buckley’s Grace beautifully guides you through one night’s journey of love and loss. Grace reads like a poem about love, about death and about acceptance. It’s hard to determine what exactly it is that makes this song so captivating. It’s emotional without being cheesy and as depressing as it is empowering.

And the beauty of this song lies with its lyrics and how passion influences way he sings every word.

Lyrics can be what makes a good song a great song. It’s knowing the message you are trying to send with your song that will affect your lyrical content and your singing style.

Jeff Buckley once said: “Grace is what matters. In anything. Especially life, especially growth, tragedy, pain, love, death.

About people, that’s what matters. That’s a quality I admire very greatly. It keeps you from reaching for the gun too quickly; it keeps you from destroying things too foolishly; it sort of keeps you alive and

“Grace is what matters. It keeps you from reaching for the gun too quickly” keeps you open for more understanding.”

You’ll be surprised how having a clear, distinct and meaningful paragraph about the message you are trying to send can influence the clarity of your lyrics.

The lyrics sit gently on his soft electric guitar and they both work in gently moving the listener towards this graceful acceptance of whatever our fate might be. The lyrics do not work alone, his voice soothes, as does the ever so slight picking of his guitar strings. The song is not at all riff-heavy, which only empowers his vocals and the lyrics all the more as they take centre stage.

Buckley wrote from experience. This song was written about an emotional goodbye at an airport. Buckley was an emotional soul and so in tune with his feelings was he that he wrote a ballad of magnificent power. He boldly sings that he is not afraid to die. Literally.

“There’s the moon asking to stay, long enough for the clouds to fly me away/Though it’s my time coming, I’m not afraid to die.”

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Buckley’s lyrics are as bold as they are endearing.

He does the trick of incorporating everything we will ever experience into his lyrics: uncertainty about death, loss and a journey towards acceptance. Nothing of what is he singing is strange or untrue for any of his listeners. Jeff Buckley had a knack for writing his lyrics as much for himself as for any conscientious listener.

When he sings: “And she weeps on my arm/Walking to the bright lights in sorrow/ Drink a bit of wine, we both might go tomorrow/Oh my love.” Did anybody prepare themselves for this kind of emotion?

There’s an unnamed she. He has included a love interest and is making her a part of this journey. Buckley is using arguably the most popular tool in music- love.

Romance, grief, and particularly the end of a relationship will forever be an interest to most consumers of music.

Songwriters, scriptwriters, authors and poets tend to find success in writing about the ups and downs of romance because it is something everybody can relate to. It is something everybody wants to experience.

“People are comforted by similar experiences of others, everybody knows heartbreak. “It is better to have loft and lost than to never have loft at all.” Despite the pun, listeners seem to hold a similar view as is proven by the popularity of songs about loss.

The final verse of the song creates a strength in the listener and even though his voice has gotten louder and more powerful, and his lyrics have gotten more aggressive, you’re moved as a listener to turn the volume up even louder.

This verse is Jeff Buckley’s final and powerful acceptance. The tone of his lyrics changes. He becomes decidedly human when he seemingly loses control as he “feels them drowning my name/ So easy to know and forget with this kiss” What do we feel? Sympathy?

Rage?

Fear?

Buckley says we should feel ‘Grace.’

By Wemmy Ogunyankin

THE WORDS There’s the moon asking to stay Long enough for the clouds to fly me away Though it’s my time coming, i’m not afraid to die My fading voice sings of love, But she cries to the clicking of time Of time Wait in the fire...

And she weeps on my arm Walking to the bright lights in sorrow Oh drink a bit of wine we both might go tomorrow Oh my love And the rain is falling and i believe My time has come It reminds me of the pain I might leave Leave behind Wait in the fire...

And I feel them drown my name So easy to know and forget with this kiss I’m not afraid to go but it goes so slow

Ash

Maple

Walnut

GET INSPIRED

HE

SHOOTS M

Filmmaker, director and musician Mat Hill meets up with Wemmy Ogunyankin in East London to talk about his passion for music, and how it influences his homemade films.

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at Hill satisfies two hobbies at once by making films for his own movies.

Mat, who spent a lot of his teenage years in jam bands and learning a variety of instruments, went on to do Astrophysics at Queen Mary University in London. His music suffered as a result of University, but he soon found his love for film and left. He realised he could combine these two passions.

“I missed music, so I worked out a way to do it on my own. I play drums, bass and a synthesiser and I have learnt loads of production stuff so I can make whatever genre I need.”

He uses YouTube and Bandcamp to showcase his artwork though believes, despite his many talents, that he hasn’t got much to show for it and says it is slow but sure progress. He smirks when he’s asked what’s taking so long, is he just simply choosing to take his time?

Seeing as he gave up a degree in Astrophysics to pursue this passion in writing and making films, it’s easy to think he should be speeding ahead. Well, hang on a minute.

Hill says: “I guess with any song there’s the desire to sound a bit novel. A lot of time for me is taken up working out chords and time signatures that invoke a recognisable emotion whilst not being too generic. Modern cinematic music these days is often pretty minimalist, any more than ‘just enough’ quickly sounds tacky.

The danger is that there’s a pretty high chance that your beautiful four chord composition is actually just Hans Zimmer’s ‘Time’. There’s only so many chords, and even fewer that work together, but it’s obviously worth doing something that’s as subtly unpredictable as possible.”

Every musician, produc-

AND HE er, film-maker or director will have a vast knowledge of what already exists out there in their field. To write something unique and special, according to Mat Hill, is a process that takes time.

Yet the beauty lies in its simplicity and finding what seems to be missing in the field you love. “The other main factor that slows me down is my choice in style.

Most directors have trouble thinking outside of the neo-classical box, so plenty of freelance scoring work seems to be all horns and string arpeggios. It’s totally fair to rely on instruments that have been honed by the history of civilisation, but there are more options out there.

Lots of electronic, IDM, postrock and so on is built around very serious and emotional minor progressions that are just as cinematic, and often more appropriate for certain film genres.” Just as with writing music for our own EPs, albums and demos, an understanding of what is appropriate for each purpose is essential Mat Hill originally started making VFX comedy films, but he is now shifting his focus to creating sci-fi dramas and is excited about the ability to write scores without limits. “Comedy music is a pretty vague term, but I’ve used stock music before that has a light bouncy feel to it.

Usually that kinda stuff goes along with the picture, to try and enhance the pacing of the gags.

Otherwise, the juxtaposition of a comedy piece with super serious music can work great.

Personally though, I probably would have gone with a Malcolm In The Middle style score. They used electric bass guitar and drum machines to give the show a huge amount polish.” Is there anyone who thinks of Malcolm In The Middle and doesn’t think of the iconic theme tune?

We think not. Hill’s switch of focus is something he feels has broadened his landscape musi-

cally. Just like when recording EP after EP, Mat as an a musician undergoes a very similar journey as he moves from film to film.

Learning a little bit about what different genres need, the types of music say and how he can use different songs, styles and genres to compliment his visual productions. Focusing on sci-fi has led the usual alt-rock fan down an electronic path, strenghthening the importance of taking your time.

“Electronic music production is very intensive and often

SCORES with novel and effective ideas.”

Being a director and score writer does mean you have to have a wider scope of interests than when writing for your own band. Of course, anyone who is in a band will have countless influences. The person who made you pick up a guitar for the first time, the songs your parents listened to, the songs that accompanied you on your teenage angst years.

Mat Hill adds being a film director to his own list. “It certainly does expand your genre capabilities. I’ve had to learn

“I missed music, so I worked out a way to do it on my own” starts in a very oblique way, designing sounds/drones e.t.c and finding musicality within the chaos. The instrument patches are built from scratch, and most of the mixing is done there and then.

I guess in that sense a lot more time is taken. With electronic music, I would say the more time taken, the more interesting and subtle the textures. For me, it’s heavily reliant on experimentation and accidents, so there’s often a hesitation to settle with the quick results.”

Mat wants to accomplish both great film and great music, and that’s tough focus to have.

“Hopefully they [the music and film] can all compliment each other. Everyone you meet in film will tell you that there’s a lot of waiting around.

That’s definitely true on set, but post production is an opportunity to fill your time with various disciplines and collaborations. Obviously hiring people better than you is important, but knowing your way round each component medium will definitely improve your ability to design a cohesive piece. After all, a director’s main internal asset is their ability to come up

a whole lot about using MIDI. Mainly how it can be bent and broken to achieve the feel of a Squarepusher track, rather than something from Monkey Island.

It’s also forced me to appreciate the textural/sound design aspects of music. There are no rules as long as you induce the right mood. I must say, I can listen to some pretty weird stuff now too, there’s a huge amount of depth to be found in some of the more abstract stuff.”

There’s more to music than just what we think sounds nice today. All musicians, whether for scoring or for the title track of an album takes some thinking and an extensive to-do list.

What’s now on Mat’s? Scriptwriting.

“I’ve got a 13 minute short film written and slowly starting to polish that script. And I’m writing the story for a short narrative heavy videogame which is very sci-fi, and hopefully has a lot of creepy existential problems in.”

“The pinnacle for me is something Black Mirror or Ex Machina-esque. Sci-fi definitely changed the mood of my musical requirements, as it did with the visuals. I think everything I’ve tried so far has either been

really dark and serious or completely experimental. Lots of modern sci-fi, like Portal 2 and Channel 4’s Utopia actually mashes those two genres together beautifully.”

He announces Portal 2 with a big grin on his face and a boisterous pretend cough and begins to play Portal 2 OST Volume 3 - Reconstructing More Science. What about this game, but even more unusually, the music drives him so crazy? “Arpeggios and s*** man,” he said.

It’s just way more creative than most hollywood sci-fis. It does a great job of combining huge natural ambient textures, (you can hear the pads come in gently just after the intro melody, and when the intensity cuts off in the middle break) and aggressive, cut up, bitcrushed abstract noises and it does so in a way that makes it unclear exactly whats a melody and what’s percussion.

All while sounding like it was never touched by a human. Obviously this wouldn’t work for all things, and the auto-tuned vocal samples are a very ‘Portal’ hallmark.”

When asked if he would use this kind of style for his sci-fi films, he said it depends on the film, but he has an interest in knowing how it’s done. Being a director means he just might need it one day as each new project, much like each new EP, is a new experiment.

Writing music to suit a particular sequence of images is not too different from writing music to suit a conceptual album or choosing songs to play to suit certain gigs, it just takes a keen ear and a persistent eye.

Right now, Mat Hills ear is set on electronica. “Hopefully I can inspire people a bit, electronic music is hard to get into as the rules are unclear. mainly because there aren’t any. Don’t be afraid to go into production.

There’s a wealth of things you can do with computers and FX pedals.

75

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THE BEST

Microphones are everything. They are the single most important part of a studio. A good mic can’t replace a vocal coach, but it can make your bad voice day better. Without a good mic, well music pretty much sucks. Unless of course you’re around a camp fire playing Wonderwall. For bedroom producers and musicians who need to stick to a tight budget, finding a good mic can seem impossible. But don’t fret, we’ve rounded up a few basic recording mics that you can afford and still have enough cash to pay for petrol afterwards.

By Lina F Boothby

The Legend Shure SM58

When you need microphone comfort, you need a legendary 58. This handheld, dynamic mic was named the most popular mic of all times for a reason and you have probably seen it in the hands of all your favourite singers including Lenny Kravitz and Billie Idol. It is reliable, durable and perfect in both a studio setting and during a live stage concert. It is every singer’s dream, as you can turn its gain to eleven and still not get feedback. It is suitable for all types of vocals and is capable of recording both strings and lower-range frequencies as well. You can get one for £95 including a bag and mic-stand adaptor.

The Power Duo Samson C02

With this condenser mic, you can get a stereo pair for the price of one. These twins are small diaphragm and very affordable for the work they can do. If you often record acoustic guitars or drum percussions, this pair should be an essential part of your studio. Just place them next to your guitar to record close up acoustics without making them sound edgy, or use it overhead your drums to record the cymbals while keeping the sound smooth. Don’t let the brand fool you, these babies are great to have for instrumental recordings. This duo of power comes with a handy box and two shockmounts for £62.

The Classic Beauty Rode Classic II

Before you say it, I know. This beauty can hardly be classed as a budget mic, however if you can afford it, it is worth every penny of your budget. Praised by artists like Adele and Snoop Dogg it offers a vintage warmth and richness on vocals. Its use is as versatile as it gets so you can use it to record acoustic instruments, drums, rap vocals or as an on stage mic. This durable tube mic is truly a labour of love and is suitable for screaming down rock vocals and distorted guitars as well as intimate singing. Although it might seem like a strain on the budget, cashing out £1640 gives you a legendary mic with perfectly balanced tonality and a hint of sweetness in sound.

78 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

STUDIO MICS The Screamer Shure SM57

When it comes to mics, this little legend is the first one you need. Originally made for broadcasters, this dynamic, all-purpose mic records at a professional standard and is popular with male rock singers who like to scream. It is also perfectly shaped to record guitar amps and percussion drums, basically everything except bass. With its large diaphragm it is useful for recording vocals because it rejects room noise and is great for singers who like to get closer to the mic. Plus it was John Lennon’s favourite. This versatile mic is available to buy for £95.

BU ON D A G ET

The Old Friend

Audio-Technica AT2020

This standard condenser mic is the vocalists’ old and reliable friend. Designed to be versatile enough for home recording, this lightweight mic can record everything from drums to instruments. It also comes very handy when recording rap vocals because it records sound clear and natural. This old fashioned beast is full of power and has an excellent audio quality for its price. Although you can get it for £82, you will need to invest in some extras like an XLR cable and a proper mic stand.

The Womanizer Rode NT3

This small yet powerful Aussie is a great mid-range condenser mic for recording vocals, especially higher pitch female singers. As it works best with higher frequencies, it is ideal as an overhead cymbal mic or to record acoustic guitars while still creating sound with both air and body. Designed to be shock resistant and durable, it is suitable for handheld usage during live performances as well as studio recording. This pencil mic is lightweight, easily portable and can be either battery or phantom powered. This small screamer comes for £140 complete with a leather gig bag and a couple of microphone clips.

The Bass Beast Sennheiser e602 II

A tricky part in sound recording is capturing bass frequencies without making them sound muddy. This mic can do the job. And will do it well. Designed to be lightweight and durable, it is ideal for home and project recordings. Just stick it inside any kick drum, close to the head, or use it to record bass guitars or tubas.

It will make both pop and rock music punchy and you won’t need any EQ to create a powerful, yet natural tone. This booming bass essential goes for £110 including a protective bag.

79

REVIEWS

BAND ESSENTIALS TC ELECTRONIC DARK MATTERS DISTORTION GUITAR EFFECTS PEDAL Get it for: £36.00

What we love about it: If you are ever looking for a sweet blend of overdrive and distortion, this guitar pedal is certainly on to look for. This doesn’t mean to say it is not an eclectic pedal. The pedal would be just as suited to blues as it would be to heavy rock or metal. The pedal allows has very minimal loss of tone, and allows guitar players to get loud and dirty and gives you full control of the gain, level, bass and treble. It is highly likely to become your go-to pedal due to it’s adaptability. We’d

recommend keeping it heavy to truly appreciate it’s beauty though. Perfect for gig set lists with some variety, this pedal will accompany you through a number of songs, simply because you’ll love the sound.

RATING: 5/5

DIGITECH ISTOMP STOMPBOX

Get it for: £34.99 (from Gears4Music.com) What we love about it: Perfect for adding some real variety to your pedalboard, the iStomp allows you to reconfigure it with any of the 43- and counting- e-pedals available in the Stomp shop App. You are able to copy these effects, many for free, and including many that are of interest to acoustic players, from your iOS device to a rugged stomp-box style floor pedal. DigiTech is not the first to come up with a device that hosts sounds from iOS devices, but the iStomp has quickly been deemed the most versatile and gig-friendly. Not only can it run one of over two dozen high-quality effects, it can be re-

configured in less than a minute, and once an effect is downloaded, it works without being plugged into the iOS unit. Couldn’t get any more handy, though it is only compatible with iOS Devices that use a 30-pin connector (so the wide power connector) Sorry Android users. To all iPhone users with a Lightning dock connector (the tiny port), you can buy adaptors for under £20.

RATING: 4/5

ELECTRO HARMONIX NANO LPB 1 Get it for: £24.00

What we love about it: It’s the throwbacks of throwbacks being a reissue of the original LPB-1 circuit that introduced overdrive in 1968. It also doesn’t take up much space on your pedalboard. Put this little powerhouse in line before any effect to truly provide boost and definition. Improves the gain and

saturation of your amp. The Nano LPB-1 Power Booster gives your sound presence and is as versatile as you would hope. If you need a clean boost for solos or parts that need to cut through the mix, this little box will do it.

RATING: 4/5

PAISTE 101 UNIVERSAL CYMBAL SET

Includes 14” Hi-Hats, 16” Crash & 20” Ride Get it for: £125.00 What we love about it: Life is never cheap for any musician, but it’s often forgotten how hard drummers have it. Any expenditure over £100 will always feel excessive, but for a full set of cymbals as a beginner, Paiste are true good value for money. You’d be pressed to find a drummer who didn’t start off on a Paiste, it’s value means it’s perfect for beginners but it’s power and vast dynamics make it a worthy purchase for small gigs and if you get a chance at a loud practice at home.

80 AMP MAG | amplifymagazine.com

The hi-hats are our favourite of the package, possessing a mellow and defined sound, but the crash cymbal has the deep dark quality all drummers want in a crash.

RATING: 4/5

STAGG SH SERIES CYMBALS

Get it for: 26.99 for a Medium Splash 10” What we love about it: Stagg’s cheapest series come with a pleasant surprise as the budget price does not come with a compromise on quality. We’ve spoken of how expensive life can be for a proficient drummer and if you are willing to part with £299 for a full set, it would certainly not be a mistake. The 10” Splash is our money

maker for this set. It packs a punch far greater than its price and the rest of the set follows suit. Stage’s world renowned focus on quality is evident in the set’s refined, defined tone.

RATING: 4.5/5

ZILDJIAN PACK PLANET Z CYMBAL SET 14” 16” 20” Get it for: £160.00 What we love about it: Everybody wants a Zildjian. And as you can expect with a Zildjian set, sound from these cymbals is sharp, powerful and clear. This set of cymbals is perfect for a drummer who wants to write and practice and holds up pretty good in a band jam session. This set includes a pair of 14” Hi Hat Cymbals, a 16” Crash Cymbal and a 20” Ride. This set is the best introduction into a well-establised Zildjian family

and it’s likely that if buying this set, you’ll never convert. Crafted in the United States from a new nickel-silver alloy, the new Planet Z is a sonically superior cymbal set with a recognisable sound any drummer would be proud of.

RATING: 4/5

MARSHALL MS2 MICRO AMP Get it for: £25.00

What we love about it: This is a seriously powerful amp. Marshall live up to their name of being kind of heavy metal and you wouldn’t get this amp if you were intending to play some Alanis Morrisette.

Don’t let that put you off though, the TONE channel can be manipulated along with the volume to ensure you can get a clean, quiet sound but the heart of this amp is when you can turn it up past half-

way and really enjoy yourself with it. This Marshall Micro Amp brings the stage right into your bedroom and is very likely to be your go-to (I am going to take it everywhere) amplifier. Small and perfect for beginners.

RATING: 4.5/5

ORANGE CR3 MICRO CRUSH AMP Get it for: £38.00

What we love about it: Despite it’s obvious, beautiful distinct look, this one is one of our favourite practice amps with superior sound quality at a very fair price.

It’s perfect for writing your own riffs and practicing on your own, but as the size will make clear, don’t take it to band practice. The overdrive control on this amp is what makes it a fan favourite. It possesses superb distortion but sounds just as beautiful when clean due to it’s sweet tone. So sweet it’s even brilliant with a ukulele. Take this amp everywhere, because why not?

Take it to practice with before you go on stage, take it to work or University for your lunch breaks.

It’s the kind of amplifier that due it’s size and ability to both stay clean but also loud and powerful can be used for any solo purpose.

It’s also really cute.

RATING: 5/5

FENDER FRONTMAN 10G Get it for: £39.99

What we love about it: It’s all in the name, isn’t it? The frontman amp. This is the amp that provides beautiful tone enough for you to solo until you can’t go anymore. Though not as portable as many home amps, it’s small enough to be a go-to amp for a lot of bands because it features a 6” Special Design speaker and an adjustable gain control that rocks guitar tones from tube-emulated overdrive to full-strength ultra-saturated

distortion. It’s great for blues and it’s great for metal. It’s a standard amp, with no frills and no FX, but it’s reliable, versatile and sounds absolutely brilliant.

The low cost of this classic means it is a great price for any amp, let alone a Fender one.

RATING: 5/5 81

MASTERINGSEVEN

YOUR VOICE. YOUR SOUND. PERFECTLY MASTERED.

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REVIEWS

VENUE OF THE M NTH:

THE NIGHT AND DAY CAFÉ LOCATION: MANCHESTER, UNITED KINGDOM ESTABLISHED: 1991 CAPACITY: 250 TO 300 PEOPLE ATMOSPHERE: OLD SCHOOL ROCK & ROLL AND INDIE

O

riginally established as a chippy, The Night and Day Café is a renowned live music venue in Manchester’s bustling Northern Quarter. The fish and chip shop used to be located in a rough part of town, but that didn’t stand in the way of it becoming one of the pioneering indie and alternative music venues in the country.

One could say it’s even a good luck charm - successful bands have started out playing in it, including Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian, MGMT, Mumford and Sons, and Manic Street Preachers. It was even used at the filming location for Johnny Marr’s Dynamo music video.

Because of it, it’s become a symbol of the ever-expanding and historically important Manchester music scene.

Alternative rock band Elbow, locals to the city, played an early gig at the venue before it even had a proper stage. In an interview with XFM’s Jo Good, their frontman, Guy Garvey, said that Night and Day had “been there all the way through Elbow.” He also said he used to give out the venue’s phone number as their own because they were in there more than they weren’t. Speaking of the venue’s owner, he said, “Yann didn’t get into what he’s doing in Night and Day to make money. He did it because he wanted to give Manchester’s young artists and musicians somewhere to hang out and a bit of self-respect. It’s not just important for music, it’s important for all areas of culture.” The band’s members even agreed that the venue needed a blue plaque protected status.

Surprisingly, the venue has retained its intimate nature until today, with a rich lineup of indie bands playing every day for less than £10 a pop.

By Luana Salles

Yet the venue’s history hasn’t all been smooth sailing. In January of last year, they were threatened with permanent closure after a local moved into an apartment adjacent to the venue and filed a noise complaint. Manchester Council issued a notice and the venue nearly had its license revoked, yet Night and Day’s manager still told local papers that turning the volume down would discourage bands and ruin the atmosphere. Old time locals Johnny Marr, Frank Turner and Tim Burgess, as well as a multitude of ardent fans, stepped in to the venue’s defense and drafted a petition with thousands of signatures. In May, the Music Venue Trust supported Night and Day’s campaign, creating a national petition calling for a review of noise abatement legislation for bars in the country; in September, the venue was allowed to keep its licence.

If you’re ever in Manchester, stop by Oldham Street - just across from Piccadilly Records and next to Dry Bar - and give this historic little venue a visit. Indie club nights and weekly acts will cost you around a fiver, but the afternoons shouldn’t go amiss either: after all, it’s still a café. The venue has affordable hamburgers, wraps and even breakfast food. It’s not as revolutionary as its artistic history, but it’s always a safe bet - and definitely better than your regular Spoons!

Are you a local to Manchester or a touring band? Want to play in this venue but don’t have a band yet?

Download our Amplify Magazine app for £1.50 and get access to the exclusive Amp Mag community where you can find your significant other - a bandmate to play the venue with you.

You can get a load of other features and tips that can help you along the way, too.

83

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