EDIROL/SONAR: The 'Ultimate Combination' Tour

Roland Canada presents EDIROL Product Specialist Jeffery Lyon showcasing the latest EDIROL interfaces, keyboard controllers and digital mixers plus Cakewalk’s acclaimed SONAR audio production software featuring SONAR 7 Producer Edition.

Experience the ultimate combination of workflow flexibility and sonic excellence with EDIROL and SONAR. Whether you're new to computer audio production or interested in upgrading (or crossgrading) to SONAR 7, this interactive clinic is for you. Special 'incentive' pricing will be available on select EDIROL and Cakewalk products for this event only.

Where: Long & McQuade Bloor - 925 Bloor St. West, Toronto ON
When: November 1, 2007 from 7 to 9 p.m. (Registration in advance required at Roland's website - here)

I'm going to try and go and see what's different between Sonar 6 and Sonar 7...

Ci vedimes...

SOCAN Tariff 22.A (Copyright Board of Canada)

This new Tariff was petitioned by the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), successfully, before the Copyright Board of Canada. The Board recently released its decision on October 18, 2007. The decision dealing with Online Music Services can be found here in PDF format and is rather long, but here's the gist:

• Online music retailers will now be subject to the new tariff on downloaded music files.
  The new tariff allows SOCAN to collect 3.1 per cent on the sale of each song downloaded from online commercial music sites like Apple's iTunes Music Store or the Canadian service Puretracks.

Personally, I use Zunior...

Now, if I could only get published and sell a song, then maybe these downloads would translate into some cash in my pocket... Dare to dream...

Upcoming Contest Deadlines (More)

The Song Door 2007 International Songwriting Competition is set to close November 15, 2007, so get your songs in quickly there... Enter online if you'd like directly from their website... $10USD per song entry...

There's the Canadian RadioStar 2008 National Songwriting Competition. That contest is closing on November 23, 2007. There's no online entry for this competition so you'd have to make your CD and get it into a participating radio station fairly soon... There's no fee for this competition.

Best of luck to you entrants (I submitted to both, but I never win anything...)

5 Ways Non-Musicians Can Start Making Music

At Musician's Notebook, Joel Falconer has posted an article entitled "5 Ways Non-Musicians Can Start Making Music". The 5 ways are:

1. Melodyne
2. Drum loops
3. A good rhyming dictionary
4. A blog or frequently updated website
5. Digital audio input

I'd add that you should know how to write a song too :), but it's a nice article for a beginning non-musician who thinks they have some ditties in their head that they need to get down and recorded...

Ci vedimes...

TDSB Songwriting Course

Well, I've completed 3 of the 9 classes in the songwriting course I'm taking through the local school board... the classes are interesting with a very wide range of people in the class. That's what makes it even more interesting as week after week we've been thrown in with others to collaborate on songs or even just snippets of songs (song titles in week 1 for example).

The instructor, Mary Ellen Gillespie, is a composer (not sure if she's been published in the pop song sort of area, but she has scored a film as a credited pro, so...). The others, I'm still meeting, though I've already made "friends" in MySpace with a couple of young songwriters who are very good guitar players and burgeoning writers with bands even... maybe they'll want to play one of my songs one day when they make it big...

In any event, you should check out these guys: Adriel (whom I'm currently paired with while writing some music/lyrics in class) is a member of Analog, while Matt is a member of Metacom (although he appears to be a member of many bands as well as running his own studio!).



May the Muse be with us all!

More Regional Songwriters Group

My SAC Regional Songwriter's Group met on October 6, 2007, for the first meeting back since the Spring... It was nice to get back into it and the meeting location was my favourite home recording gear store: Revolution Audio.

The special guest was Eve Goldberg, and she played and related some wonderful songs, songwriting tips and stories. Here is Eve's bio (shortest version) from her website:

Known for her watercolour voice and solid guitar style, Eve Goldberg is a
compelling writer and interpreter whose music spans folk, blues, country, swing, bluegrass, and gospel. A favourite at festivals, folk clubs and concert series across Canada and the U.S, she has released three albums to widespread acclaim.

As always, Liana led the group and I thanked her for quoting me in the latest edition of SAC's 'zine, Songwriter's Magazine. There's no link to the magazine yet on SAC's website but I just related how the group led me to see songwriting as a "craft" over my past treatment of it as a "hobby"... Now, I NEED to get PUBLISHED!

May the Muse be with you...

Turntabling... A Lot Has Happened...

Since my last post... Just been super-busy, songwriting-wise and otherwise...

Personally, I celebrated a milestone birthday surrounded by family... which was great... My lovely wife gave me an Ion USB Turntable that I was hinting at (my old turntable had died, but now with the new one hooked up to my stereo and/or my laptop, I'll be able to enjoy the old LPs and digitize them!). You can read a ThinkGeek review about this product here.

More posts to follow shortly...

Free (almost) Music Critiques

Music Connection magazine is offering music critques for free, except for the $2.50 Sonicbids submission price (to cover Sonicbids' admin costs). Anyway, find out more about it here, but the gist of it is:

"Demo Critiques" is one of the many opportunities Music Connection Magazine provides for emerging artists to get worldwide attention. All genres are encouraged to submit and you must identify
which THREE songs you want reviewed. Lyrics for each song must also be provided. A "demo" is defined as any recording (even a full-length CD) that is NOT professionally distributed to brick & mortar stores through a major distributor. Online distribution does not apply. If your EPK is chosen for review, you will be contacted to verify all information as current and accurate before publication. If you don't hear from us during this submission period, it just means you weren't chosen at random, so feel free to submit again next quarter. PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT US ABOUT THE STATUS OF YOUR EPK.

Good luck to you if you submit this quarter... Deadline is October 7/07... and may the Muse be with you...

Songwriters' Musings

I like to hear what other songwriters (unpublished and pros alike) have to say about the craft that confronts me with a blank page at times... Here's a couple of internet items to follow that...

First, the Matthew Bennett Band has a Vox blog where Mr. Bennett waxed on as follows:

I am currently in the middle of writing new songs for the band, new songs which in time will hopefully become our first album. Songwriting can be the most frustrating and fulfilling jobs you can think of, something that can take minutes or days to complete, something that can seem impossible or come as naturally as dreaming. A strange job but one of a very few jobs in which you can hopefully create something that no-one ever in the history of mankind has made before, a job that allows you to interact with people all round the world even if it is indirectly and a job that lets you express what you need to express whenever you need to express it.
So to everyone who reads this please take the time to listen to our songs because being a songwriter whose songs are not heard is like being the world’s foremost scientific genius, who has been made to live inside the body of a cat and forced to live with the worlds second most scientific genius whose work is quite immature.

Second, is Steve Earle in yesterday's Globe and Mail (read the article here). He talks about Canadian Singer/Songwriters and his recent move from Nashville to New York (and recent marriage to a girl who has a job).

But what if I did have a heart attack or a stroke? I wanna be in a place, when I get older, where I feel at home. I'm totally okay with being one of these old commies with a walker that I run into between here and the deli in my neighbourhood. I think this place will keep me younger, longer, but I'm totally okay with growing old like that. Washington Square Serenade is a very folky record. I'm living in a neighbourhood that my job was invented in. The only place I can think of that had more to do with the development of the modern singer-songwriter than this four-block area I live in is probably Canada. The idea of the singer-songwriter as mainstream acts stuck, in Canada, in a way that it didn't in the United States. Joni and Neil and people like that. And Lightfoot. There's also Murray McLauchlan, and Ian Tyson, who I have nothing in common with politically, but I still think is one of the greatest songwriters that ever lived.

May the Muse be with us all...

Free Plug-ins

Found a great site that has numberous free plug-ins (VST's that can be used in your DAW software - I use Sonar 6 although Sonar 7 just came out). The plug-ins are both instruments and effects... Makes me want to download them all and check them out with a new recording...



Visit the Free Plugin List...