Archive for the "Music" Category

Sort by:

Beats – How to Create an Excellent Album With These Beats.


Regardless of the kind of music you are into, your work can only be distinct if it is refreshingly innovative and clearly reflective of your style. You must make your beats and ensure that each and every one of them counts. But as we all know, that is easier said than done. Countless things can go wrong if you are not adept at making your own beats. Finding the right beats for your work is virtually an art of its own and a lot of up-and-coming artists have failed to make a spectacular debut launching all because of selecting the wrong set of beats.

Read more on Beats – How to Create an Excellent Album With These Beats….

Electric Guitar Clinic: Would you like single coils or humbuckers with that? 


In this article we will take a look at some of the differences between Humbucking pickups and Single Coil pickups, both technically and tonally. Many think, “Isn’t a Humbucker just two Single Coils side by side?” The answer is both yes and no as they both yield quite different tonal and technical characteristics. There have been many attempts to harness both sounds in one guitar or pickup, but the general consensus is that a guitar is either a Humbucking guitar or a Single Coil. Like they say, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

How a Pickup Works
To start out, let’s talk a little about how a pickup works. A guitar pickup is essentially a magnet that creates a magnetic field right above the pickup. The magnet picks up the vibrations of the strings and sends the signal to your amplifier to be amplified. Most pickups in electric guitars are passive which means that they don’t have any kind of pre-amp and it is the amplifiers job to boost the signal. Contrastingly, an active pickup uses weaker magnets than passive pickups but has a pre-amp to boost the signal output to a reasonable level. Active pickups are most common in acoustic guitars but can be found in a few electric guitars as well.

Single Coils: The First Pickups
Single Coils were the first pickups. The first single coil guitar pickups came in the late 1920’s. A single coil pickup, as the name implies, is made up of a single coil of wire wrapped in one direction (either clockwise or counter clockwise) around the pole pieces. The pole pieces are the circular metal pieces under each string. One of the problems in early single coil pickups was that they picked up a lot of electromagnetic interference from other electric machinery or radio waves, which caused a buzz or hum

Why Humbuckers Were Invented
Humbuckers were invented to cancel out the electromagnetic interference. They use two coils, which are wrapped in opposing directions to give each coil opposing polarity. This would cancel out the electromagnetic interference and help get rid of the hum, thus creating a “hum-bucking” pickup. Humbuckers did not start showing up in guitars until the mid 1950’s. When it comes to tonal differences, it gets a little harder to explain and really comes down to personal opinions and preferences.

Common Misconceptions About Humbackers
Many people think humbuckers are for distortion and overdrive, and single coils are for clean patches. This isn’t necessarily the case because many guitarists use single coils for high gain distortion and others use humbuckers exclusively for clean tone. Humbuckers tend to be hotter pickups because they utilize two coils which does make them easier to distort. However, many jazz box guitars have humbuckers and are almost always used for a clean patch. They produce a thicker and darker clean tone than single coils do. The clean from single coils is a more sparkly high type clean that is often associated with country or “Eric Clapton Style” blues. They also are not as quick to overdrive as humbuckers. When single coils are played through a smooth tube overdrive, you can still hear the clean coming through where it gets lost with a humbucker.

Typical Guitars that use Humbuckers
Typical guitars that use humbuckers are the Gibson Les Paul, Gibson SG, most PRS models, most Ibanez guitars, and almost all hollow body Guild’s and Gretch’s. The most common single coil guitars are the Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster.

Increased Versatility of Both
Over the years, each style of pickup has become more versatile. Some humbuckers have the option of coil splitting or tapping. This is the ability to essentially shut off one of the coils in the pickup which can provide a fairly good representation of a single coil pickup. Single coils have gotten much better about electromagnetic interference and there are several “noiseless” single coil pickups available. However, this does not solve the single coil vs. humbucker conundrum because you only get a solid emulation.

The “Fat Strat”
Fender has attempted to solve the problem by creating the “Fat Strat,” which utilizes a humbucking pickup at the bridge and two single coil pickups in the usual Stratocaster location. It does thicken the sound when using the humbucker, but there isn’t the option running two humbuckers together as you can in a Gibson Les Paul or SG for a truly saturated overdrive. The guitar also loses some of the ability to get the really twangy bridge sound you can achieve with the single coil pickup.

Single coils and humbuckers are very different animals, and if you want both sounds, you need two guitars. If you need to choose one guitar, the best way to go about it is to go play several different guitars with different pickups through different amps and choose the one you like best.

Matt Griffith, born and raised in Western Colorado, made the leap to move to Nashville 5 months ago to pursue a career in music along with the thousands of other hopefuls that call Music City home. Matt loves electric guitars and is currently playing lead guitar for the band Brookline. He writes electric guitar reviews for Music Gear Review.

Read more on Electric Guitar Clinic: Would you like single coils or humbuckers with that? …

Electric Guitar Clinic: Would you like single coils or humbuckers with that? 

In this article we will take a look at some of the differences between Humbucking pickups and Single Coil pickups, both technically and tonally. Many think, “Isn’t a Humbucker just two Single Coils side by side?” The answer is both yes and no as they both yield quite different tonal and technical characteristics. There have been many attempts to harness both sounds in one guitar or pickup, but the general consensus is that a guitar is either a Humbucking guitar or a Single Coil. Like they say, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.


How a Pickup Works
To start out, let’s talk a little about how a pickup works. A guitar pickup is essentially a magnet that creates a magnetic field right above the pickup. The magnet picks up the vibrations of the strings and sends the signal to your amplifier to be amplified. Most pickups in electric guitars are passive which means that they don’t have any kind of pre-amp and it is the amplifiers job to boost the signal. Contrastingly, an active pickup uses weaker magnets than passive pickups but has a pre-amp to boost the signal output to a reasonable level. Active pickups are most common in acoustic guitars but can be found in a few electric guitars as well.

Single Coils: The First Pickups
Single Coils were the first pickups. The first single coil guitar pickups came in the late 1920’s. A single coil pickup, as the name implies, is made up of a single coil of wire wrapped in one direction (either clockwise or counter clockwise) around the pole pieces. The pole pieces are the circular metal pieces under each string. One of the problems in early single coil pickups was that they picked up a lot of electromagnetic interference from other electric machinery or radio waves, which caused a buzz or hum

Why Humbuckers Were Invented
Humbuckers were invented to cancel out the electromagnetic interference. They use two coils, which are wrapped in opposing directions to give each coil opposing polarity. This would cancel out the electromagnetic interference and help get rid of the hum, thus creating a “hum-bucking” pickup. Humbuckers did not start showing up in guitars until the mid 1950’s. When it comes to tonal differences, it gets a little harder to explain and really comes down to personal opinions and preferences.

Common Misconceptions About Humbackers
Many people think humbuckers are for distortion and overdrive, and single coils are for clean patches. This isn’t necessarily the case because many guitarists use single coils for high gain distortion and others use humbuckers exclusively for clean tone. Humbuckers tend to be hotter pickups because they utilize two coils which does make them easier to distort. However, many jazz box guitars have humbuckers and are almost always used for a clean patch. They produce a thicker and darker clean tone than single coils do. The clean from single coils is a more sparkly high type clean that is often associated with country or “Eric Clapton Style” blues. They also are not as quick to overdrive as humbuckers. When single coils are played through a smooth tube overdrive, you can still hear the clean coming through where it gets lost with a humbucker.

Typical Guitars that use Humbuckers
Typical guitars that use humbuckers are the Gibson Les Paul, Gibson SG, most PRS models, most Ibanez guitars, and almost all hollow body Guild’s and Gretch’s. The most common single coil guitars are the Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster.

Increased Versatility of Both
Over the years, each style of pickup has become more versatile. Some humbuckers have the option of coil splitting or tapping. This is the ability to essentially shut off one of the coils in the pickup which can provide a fairly good representation of a single coil pickup. Single coils have gotten much better about electromagnetic interference and there are several “noiseless” single coil pickups available. However, this does not solve the single coil vs. humbucker conundrum because you only get a solid emulation.

The “Fat Strat”
Fender has attempted to solve the problem by creating the “Fat Strat,” which utilizes a humbucking pickup at the bridge and two single coil pickups in the usual Stratocaster location. It does thicken the sound when using the humbucker, but there isn’t the option running two humbuckers together as you can in a Gibson Les Paul or SG for a truly saturated overdrive. The guitar also loses some of the ability to get the really twangy bridge sound you can achieve with the single coil pickup.

Single coils and humbuckers are very different animals, and if you want both sounds, you need two guitars. If you need to choose one guitar, the best way to go about it is to go play several different guitars with different pickups through different amps and choose the one you like best.

Matt Griffith, born and raised in Western Colorado, made the leap to move to Nashville 5 months ago to pursue a career in music along with the thousands of other hopefuls that call Music City home. Matt loves electric guitars and is currently playing lead guitar for the band Brookline. He writes electric guitar reviews for Music Gear Review.

Read more on Electric Guitar Clinic: Would you like single coils or humbuckers with that? …

Electric Guitar Clinic: Would you like single coils or humbuckers with that? 

In this article we will take a look at some of the differences between Humbucking pickups and Single Coil pickups, both technically and tonally. Many think, “Isn’t a Humbucker just two Single Coils side by side?” The answer is both yes and no as they both yield quite different tonal and technical characteristics. There have been many attempts to harness both sounds in one guitar or pickup, but the general consensus is that a guitar is either a Humbucking guitar or a Single Coil. Like they say, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

How a Pickup Works
To start out, let’s talk a little about how a pickup works. A guitar pickup is essentially a magnet that creates a magnetic field right above the pickup. The magnet picks up the vibrations of the strings and sends the signal to your amplifier to be amplified. Most pickups in electric guitars are passive which means that they don’t have any kind of pre-amp and it is the amplifiers job to boost the signal. Contrastingly, an active pickup uses weaker magnets than passive pickups but has a pre-amp to boost the signal output to a reasonable level. Active pickups are most common in acoustic guitars but can be found in a few electric guitars as well.

Single Coils: The First Pickups
Single Coils were the first pickups. The first single coil guitar pickups came in the late 1920’s. A single coil pickup, as the name implies, is made up of a single coil of wire wrapped in one direction (either clockwise or counter clockwise) around the pole pieces. The pole pieces are the circular metal pieces under each string. One of the problems in early single coil pickups was that they picked up a lot of electromagnetic interference from other electric machinery or radio waves, which caused a buzz or hum

Why Humbuckers Were Invented
Humbuckers were invented to cancel out the electromagnetic interference. They use two coils, which are wrapped in opposing directions to give each coil opposing polarity. This would cancel out the electromagnetic interference and help get rid of the hum, thus creating a “hum-bucking” pickup. Humbuckers did not start showing up in guitars until the mid 1950’s. When it comes to tonal differences, it gets a little harder to explain and really comes down to personal opinions and preferences.

Common Misconceptions About Humbackers
Many people think humbuckers are for distortion and overdrive, and single coils are for clean patches. This isn’t necessarily the case because many guitarists use single coils for high gain distortion and others use humbuckers exclusively for clean tone. Humbuckers tend to be hotter pickups because they utilize two coils which does make them easier to distort. However, many jazz box guitars have humbuckers and are almost always used for a clean patch. They produce a thicker and darker clean tone than single coils do. The clean from single coils is a more sparkly high type clean that is often associated with country or “Eric Clapton Style” blues. They also are not as quick to overdrive as humbuckers. When single coils are played through a smooth tube overdrive, you can still hear the clean coming through where it gets lost with a humbucker.

Typical Guitars that use Humbuckers
Typical guitars that use humbuckers are the Gibson Les Paul, Gibson SG, most PRS models, most Ibanez guitars, and almost all hollow body Guild’s and Gretch’s. The most common single coil guitars are the Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster.

Increased Versatility of Both
Over the years, each style of pickup has become more versatile. Some humbuckers have the option of coil splitting or tapping. This is the ability to essentially shut off one of the coils in the pickup which can provide a fairly good representation of a single coil pickup. Single coils have gotten much better about electromagnetic interference and there are several “noiseless” single coil pickups available. However, this does not solve the single coil vs. humbucker conundrum because you only get a solid emulation.

The “Fat Strat”
Fender has attempted to solve the problem by creating the “Fat Strat,” which utilizes a humbucking pickup at the bridge and two single coil pickups in the usual Stratocaster location. It does thicken the sound when using the humbucker, but there isn’t the option running two humbuckers together as you can in a Gibson Les Paul or SG for a truly saturated overdrive. The guitar also loses some of the ability to get the really twangy bridge sound you can achieve with the single coil pickup.

Single coils and humbuckers are very different animals, and if you want both sounds, you need two guitars. If you need to choose one guitar, the best way to go about it is to go play several different guitars with different pickups through different amps and choose the one you like best.

Matt Griffith, born and raised in Western Colorado, made the leap to move to Nashville 5 months ago to pursue a career in music along with the thousands of other hopefuls that call Music City home. Matt loves electric guitars and is currently playing lead guitar for the band Brookline. He writes electric guitar reviews for Music Gear Review.

Read more on Electric Guitar Clinic: Would you like single coils or humbuckers with that? …

A Lot Of Separate Techniques To Consider For Composing Lyrics

Want to be a songwriter but don’t know how to start? Here are some thoughts on how to create a good song…

Remember that writing music is a process, and keep the basics in mind: a song consists of 3 elements. First is the melody, the vocal line of the song. Second is harmony, the chords that support the song. Thirdly, the rhythm or the pattern of the song.

Read more on A Lot Of Separate Techniques To Consider For Composing Lyrics…

Compressed Peek at Music Business Growth

In the 1800s, sheet music dominated the music business. The term sheet music originally referred to musical notations written or printed on paper or parchment. It now also refers to music presented on the computer screen. The term is used to differentiate between the written form of music and the audio presentation.

Read more on Compressed Peek at Music Business Growth…

Many Special Steps To Composing A Celebrated Song

Well, well, well, you want to write a Grammy contending song? Got a great coda but the chorus needs some work and the intro is not yet right? All the while, your mom is telling you to get a real job. Well, those are the things worth writing about for a great biography once you won your Grammy for the 18th time, or is the 19th time? Heck, who’s counting anyway. There are plenty of guides out there for writing that killer song with the killer guitar solo, here’s mine. Minus the guitar solo part, sorry dude…but read on still.

Read more on Many Special Steps To Composing A Celebrated Song…

St Louis Underground Music

Helping the st louis underground music arena is a lifestyle not just a part time gig. If individuals would love to aid local bands make it, they need to make specific behaviors second nature. To begin with, if you like a area music group… tell someone. Word of mouth marketing could be the fastest route to get folks to listen. If you love them why wouldn’t you assist them like a national band? Dress yourself in the t-shirts, hear the cd with colleagues, tell many people about the live show! What do you do whenever your most popular music group plays or releases an album? Do exactly the same for the locals! Second, join up street squads! This really is the easiest method to get streamlined data directly from area sources. Normally you’ll discover several similar bands that could also peak your interest! In some instances street squads will give away tickets or additional incentives for promoting the band. In any case, the worst thing that occurs is you get an e-mail telling you about area concerts. Third, The St Louis Underground Music Scene includes a defined advantage that few folks actually find a way to use, selected community radio stations do allocate time for first time and local music. That is excellent, although consumers have to listen, call, and give support directly to the station concerning the music they like. They set this time aside specifically to hear from you about the most innovative stuff they haven’t been aware of yet. CALL THEM! For those who have satilite radio thats good too! Call them and inform them about your favorite new bands. They commonly have more liberty to play new and different stuff… and when they like it, there’s a chance you’re helping a community become a reigonal or countrywide band!We have great concern for the current condition of the StLouis Underground Music Scene. Few businesses jump out among the mayhem, but as awhole we have one of the smallest markets on the national scale. CD, merch, andmp3 sales are low in this reigon, and for reasons similar to this we often get passedup for key tours and lose options for a number of homegrown. The StLouis Underground Music Scene is becoming broken and segregated as well. The lackof good every age group spots to host nearby events at, significantly hinder artist expansionby limiting the audience availability. Unfortunatly individuals that buy musiccan’t drink at these occasions and people that buy drinks typicly dont buy music.Promoters on the community scene usually rely on bands to bring a draw. Other thanbeing mainly wrong there are two problems with this, first your showwill invariably end up getting “pockets” of fans that are at your show only to seetheir friend’s music group, and second this method also cuts into money that souldgo to bands. This all comes from a lack of corporate structure and industryknow-how. Many bands have faired very well for themselves, but ultimately thisdegree of self-managment induces tension within the band and tension betweenbands, venues, and promoters. Our goal as a part of the st louis underground music scene is always to reach the audience that is buying music and convertthem to avid concert goers in order to strengthen our local market.

Read more on St Louis Underground Music…

Free Beats – Essential Music Beats to Create Your First Album

The easiest way to start your music production career is to start making beats for other artists. You can then sell these free beats to different artists and get your ‘foot in the door’ for bigger and better things. Everyone has to start somewhere. This is a simple piece of advice, which is given to all beginners and aspiring musicians. But we all know that making free beats come at a price and a pretty steep one at that. Of course, with online beats’ makers, it gets much cheaper and the process becomes much simpler, but there is a lot to learn about making free beats.

Read more on Free Beats – Essential Music Beats to Create Your First Album…

Why Buy a New Build Home

There is a lot of amazing digital Music Equipment available to buy online but one should check out a couple of industry magazines to get some genuine reviews about different brands offering audio recording equipment. Reading a book such as Sound Recording Advice that covers the whole home studio experience from start to finish is a great place to start. Subscribing to quality magazines such as Electronic Musician, Keyboard, Guitar Player, Bass Player, Recording, Modern Drummer, Mix, Pro Audio Review, Home Recording, Computer Music, Sound on Sound, and EQ is a good way to continually gain up to date information on recording technology. The editors of these magazines cover all of the major tradeshows that exhibit new equipment and they also perform equipment reviews on new equipment as it is released.

Read more on Why Buy a New Build Home…