Friday, March 6, 2009

Sleep City Crisis Blog Is Moving....

Just real quick announcement...

I'm moving this blog elsewhere.....

That's pretty much it... 

I heard Word Press was better and I did some research for proof and yeah... Word Press beats the living shit out of Blogger therefore I won't be posting here anymore, but I will announce when the new blog is up along with some new shit and some of these old posts.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Sleep City Crisis First Video! Malfunction Symphony Is on YOUTube!

After all this time of showing other artist's music video I have finally took time to make my very own. Well, actually, it's not completely my own. Yeah it represents the song but I only edited the video pretty much to have footage of other videos I got. It's thanks to the Creative Commons I was able to find videos to use without getting sued. You should learn about the organization. As long as you give the artists their credit you're good to go.

Anyways, enough of that, check out the video below! (See the ending for credits!)





Join Sleep City Crisis On The Following Networking Sites!

Well, just in case you guys didn't know I have spread Sleep City Crisis across a few more networking sites like if it were the AIDS virus in San Francisco in the 1980s.


Below you can find Sleep City Crisis on the following:

MySpace

Twitter

YouTUBE

iLike

FaceBook

SoundClick

Monday, January 26, 2009

Top 5 Downtempo Songs Of The Day

The same way I went to look for ambient tracks on YouTube, I also went and looked for some Downtempo songs. The next album by Sleep City Crisis will be featuring some downtempo stuff also, but with a big of a grittier edge. Kinda like what I did with the track Misery under my composer name/stage name. Here, however, I was looking for just really laid back chill downtempo stuff. So check it out below.

Zero 7 - Destiny



When it comes to downtempo, Zero 7 is one of the masters at it in my honest opinion. It's so soulful, beautiful, and pleasant to the ears. I wouldn't ever turn my ears to the easy listening genre because I guess to me this is as easy listening as it gets. This song Destiny is from their album, Simple Things

Air - All I Need



Air is one of the greatest pleasant songwriters in the face of the planet I can't till they release more stuff. This is one of my favorite songs from them. It's from the album, Moon Safari

Morcheeba - Undress Me Now



Morcheeba one of the best downtempo groups out there. Their sound just about says more than the actual lyrics a lot of times. This song for me has a great deal of wonderful memories. This is from their album, Charango, which is excellent by the way.

Esthero - Country Livin'



Esthero's first album is probably one of the best introductions to downtempo and trip-hop for me. I wasn't too crazy about their second album and I saw them live and they were great. I just think they went down a more live and minus electronics direction. I don't think it's not a bad thing at all, but my preference was their sound within their first album, Breath from Another

Hooverphonic - One

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9ehaxni9bY

Just click on the site they didn't allow this video to be posted other than the link above. This is a great song just click it and pretty amazing video too.







Top 5 Ambient Tracks Of The Day

I was in the YouTubing Mood today so I was scouting around looking for some really cool ambient tracks to make my day at my soul crushing day job a lot better and I ran into some videos I had to share with you all. In fact, I would like to thank these artists for making this great music. The videos are pretty cool too, but I had to share the entire video with the music because it's something about instrumental  music with visuals that needs to connected to each other in one form of art itself. Sometimes, I think it's cool but sometimes when YouTube users get a song and make their own videos around it, I tend it really annoying. I'm sure some of you agree with that. 

The Top 5 Ambient Tracks Of The Day




Gas - Microscopic


Gas is an awesome ambient music project by Mat Jarvis. You can buy his album Gas 0095 right here.


Digital Dream Society - Plastic Box



Digital Dream Society is a mix of more than just ambient. They also have a downtempo Portishead kind of sound on some of their other tracks. Although, it's real unfair for me to go ahead and just label their music. Which is why I recommend you go to their site, http://www.digitaldreamsociety.com/ and find out for yourself.

Equinox - Colonies



I think these days there's more than one electronic music project called Equinox including Bill Leeb from Front Line Assembly's old side project. I liked the video and the track so I had to put this one in there.

Equinox - Space Music



Another one from Equinox. Pretty cool video, excellent track.

Gulan - Space Music



I don't even know if this is the real name of the track, but it's a damn great video and I just had to share this. In fact, a track like this would be great for sleep.

Brian Eno - Thursday Afternoon



I love Brian Eno! I'm not sure if this is the official video to his track, but I was paying more attention to the track itself.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Music Business Tips: Introduction To Music Publishing

Music publishing is the way to make your continuos income revenue in the music industry. PERIOD. Of course there's other creative ways but since we're on the topic of music publishing, we're going to talk about why music publishing is one of the most effective ways to make money in the music business. First of all, the explanation will come from George Howard which is a teacher at the Berklee Music . He was my teacher at the Music Industry Entrepreneurship class and learned a lot from him. He's a major figure in the educational system of the music and he's also a musician and producer which founded his own independent label called Slow River Records. I actually have his blog listed in the bottom left of this page under "Friends Of Sleep City Crisis". Music Publishing can be confusing to a lot of people, but I really didn't get much of a confusion on it. I'm actually learning my stuff in Music Publishing 101 as we speak. So far I've learned as many of us will learn that Music Publishing will make you a ass load of money if you're songs are selling good of course.

I want to pretty much just share one vital piece of information I learn very quickly in my learnings of the first week of this class and that's the writer/publisher relationship and it's different agreements.


The Full-Publishing Agreement

The income is collected by a publisher for a particular song and it's split equally between writer and publisher.

Example:

For every dollar received, 50 cents is deemed the “writer’s share,” and 50 cents is the “publisher's share.” It is very unusual for the publisher to ever keep more than half of the income collected.

Full-publishing agreements is usually the most common agreement of the three and they are most appropriate for writers who are not well established, or who generate relatively small amounts of income.

The Co-Publishing Agreement

The writer gets to receive half of the entire income as the “writer’s share,” but the writer also receives half of the “publisher’s share.”


Example:

For every dollar the publisher receives, the writer receives 50 cents (writer’s share) and another 25 cents (co-publisher’s share). The publisher keeps the remaining 25 cents, as the other half of the “publisher’s share.”

Co-publishing agreements are becoming the industry's most standard now and most experienced writers will be fighting to keep at least some of the publisher’s share of the money.


The Administration Agreement

In an administration agreement, the writer does not grant the copyrights to the publisher. Instead, the writer continues to own the copyrights, and simply employs the publisher to administer the licenses and collect the money. In exchange, the publisher receives an administration fee, usually around 10 percent of the income collected.

Example:

For every dollar of income, the writer gets 90 cents, and the publisher keeps 10 cents.

Administration deals are usually done only with extremely successful writers. Keeping only 10 or 15 percent of the income is not a worthwhile venture for most publishers.


I think I can appreciate for the rest of my life knowing just that piece of information. Now below I will have George Howard talk to you about the introduction of Music Publishing. This video was taken from
The Artist House Music site and you will find a lot of information other than Music Publishing and other stuff related. Also please visit George Howard's Blog.


Music Business Tips: How To Copyright A Song In 3 Easy Steps

I wanted to get into the topic of the music business in this issue. I was going around to find a youtube video that would assist me on this and I found the perfect video to attach to this entry. Considering the fact that the music business these days is a lot easier to break into I have to say a lot of people have a lot of misconceptions about copyrighting your music. In the music business as well as any business you want to make sure you're protecting your stuff well. Although thanks to the Creative Commons we have many different alterations of copyrights these days, some of us still want to know how it is that we copyright our music. I want to start off by saying to everyone to forget about the "Poor Man's Copyright" if you feel your songs are worth the amount of money it is to copyright your music I would like to advise to put what you think is worth into your music. Copyrighting your music is essential these days in the music business in order to receive the other benefits which include publishing sales. Below I have posted a video which will clearly explain to you how to copyright your music.

How to Copyright a Song in 3 Easy Steps
by LittleWingMarketing

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Music Production Tips: Logic Pro 8

I posted below the Music Production Tip Videos from YouTube for Reason which used to be my primary music production software and music composition software. However, after going through many phases afterwards, my primary and number music production and music composition software is now Logic Pro 8. It's sucha easy software to make music and so for those of you that don't own a Mac, it's unfortunate to inform you that you will be having Logic Pro 8 on your PC. Logic Pro 8 is only for Apple and if you've used Garageband at any point of your life just think of it as a Garageband on massive amounts of steroids. So just for some of you that are new to Logic Pro 8 or want to see some awesome tutorials, I have posted them below some of them including the link to the YouTube Playlist for this series.


Playlist Logic Pro 8 Lesson

by The SFLogicNinja





Music Production Tips: Reason's YouTube Playlist Tutorial

I used to use this in the past like all the time. I moved to using other things. However, there's a lot of people out there that really still love to use Reason and do a great job using Reason for composing electronic music and for music production. I warn a lot of those as my personal opinion not to use Reason as your only sole music production software. There a lot of limitations and if whatever reason you just like to use Reason anyways make sure you're also using a accompanying software that will allow you to rewire to Reason.

As today's subject I thought I'd get into the music production stuff to share with you all. For those of you that love using Reason, then this is the post for you. Below I will post a few samples of tips provided by this playlist I found on YouTube. So please enjoy this music production tip for Reason.

Playlist : Music Production : Reason





Monday, January 19, 2009

Monstrum Sepsis - A Great Instrumental Electronic Music Project

Monstrum Sepsis is a great musical project that I've been enjoying for the past 6 years now. I bought pretty much all the alpha versions of their albums and own two of their shirts. Since we've been on the topic of instrumental music and all, I decided to post this video and mention Monstrum Sepsis as well. Monstrum Sepsis is in the genre of intelligent industrial or ambient industrial. It started off with both members Rob Wentz and Paul and they met as animation majors in school and together they did a combination of music and animations. (HINT: remember the prior blog about Marketing Instrumental Music). Now it's just Rob Wentz in the project and he plays shows with his visuals and everything and has had a lot of his tracks remixed by major remixers that have done work for other artists from Industrial Music's mega label Metropolis. Below I posted from Monstrum Sepsis's YouTube Channel a visual test Rob Wentz did along with one of their tracks from their album Deep Sea Creatures
Check It out and also c heck out their latest album Artifacts


Marketing Instrumental Music - The Visual Show by TalkMusicBiz.com

TalkMusicBiz.com is an amazing website that contains music career tips for indie artists & labels. It's hosted by a great guy and a great musician that calls himself Geebz. I've been watching his videos and they are all very informative. I highly suggest you indie artists and labels out there to pay attention to this guy and watch his videos.

Today, I wanted to go ahead and post a video containing something related to what I mentioned in the last entry and that's Marketing Instrumental Music. Below I posted the video in order for you guys to watch, but be sure to click on his actual YouTube channel and the page itself that contains this because it has links to examples of what he's talking about in this video. It might take awhile to stream, but with patience as a virtue you will reap a very rewarding lesson in marketing your instrumental music.

Sleep City Crisis's First Album: "The Akashic Records Vol. 1"

Not many people might know but I recently just finished pre-production on my first album. I got inspired by Nine Inch NailsGhosts I - IV.It's a electronic instrumental album. I was skeptical about doing something like this before, but I quickly changed my mind due to the fact that many other artists have done similar stuff like this (Example M83'sDigital Shades, Vol. 1)It gives a sense of freedom to do what you want as a musician. You can always pull that card to give your fans a different taste of you normally do, with a disclaimer of course. You always want to inform your fans of what you're about to release. Not everyone likes instrumental music especially if you're a fan that's used to the songs released by the artist that has great lyrics and all.

I decided to start this basically because of the mood I was in to just composing music without words. It became an awesome experience because it's also easy to release instrumental music on your own as well. So I took the time to complete this hour long instrumental album which has a lot of ambient type music work which I love. Some of the stuff sounds pretty harsh as well. I put up a few of the new tracks on the Sleep City Crisis Music MySpace just so you get an idea of what the album contains. Regardless there is still a lot of work to be done like post-production, but at least the real essence of the creative side is done.

Remember, I'm going to be needing people that do graphic designs and know how to do computer art in order to form the website and all. You will be credited upon the album's release. I need a electronic .pdf file art package as well to release with the album which will def. give you room to have your art exposed and perhaps build an amazing portfolio.

So keep your eyes peeled!

Friday, January 16, 2009

Welcome To The Sleep City Crisis Blog!

This is the blog of Sleep City Crisis where I will post anything related to the project. Just in case no one knows, Sleep City Crisis is my solo multi genre music project. I compose and write songs in different genres mostly electronic and rock as well as a blend of both. Before, I wasn't sure I wanted to make Sleep City Crisis a single genre of rock music or just electronic while I make another alias for the other genre. I thought it was ridiculous to do so. As long as I'm making music I love I shouldn't have to split myself in other multiple musical personalities. While I will be dedicating this blog to this musical project I will still share things with others on here relating to the genre of music or so on.

My goal is to make Sleep City Crisis a DIY musical project as well, meaning I will do everything instead of trying to go out there and slave myself to a record label. So therefore I would like to let others know that I also support very heavily on the DIY music movement and therefore anyone on the same boat as well, please feel free to follow this blog on your DIY Artist Blog or site as I will do the very same for you. Also, any artists out there that is related to the kind of music Sleep City Crisis writes and composes, please feel free to follow this blog as well. Drop me an email with your video, website, etc I will more than glad to come up here and help support your music as well.

Anyways, this is my introduction entry and everything will continue to grow slowly, but surely. I want to thank everyone that came and showed interest in this blog as well as Sleep City Crisis itself.
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The Art of Mixing: A Visual Guide to Recording, Engineering, and Production by David Gibson

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