Serve The Song

photo from Scumfrog

Today I’m going to discuss a few tips for injecting some reggae-style grooves into your songwriting.  I have yet to find a music lover who dislikes reggae music.  It’s laid-back yet funky nature makes for a universally appreciated style.  There’s something in reggae for everyone:  Meaningful lyrics, interesting drum patterns, soul moving chords, and memorable melodies.

The Reggae Drum Beat

It’s all about the back-beat / up-beat / skank, whatever you want to call it.  It’s that thing that turns the strait-ahead rock beat upside down.  It’s the groove that pulls the listeners head back and forth without intention.  There are a variety of reggae-style drum beats, but they’re generally based around a back-beat groove.

While your basic 4/4 rock drum beat is consists of a kick on beat 1, snare on beat 3, and hats or rides on all 4, the reggae drum beat is usually characterized by a kick on beats 2 and 4.  Sometimes the snare will be accompanied by a simultaneous kick, to give it more of a punch.  These hits on the 2 and 4 set the overall theme of the groove by providing a deep back-beat.  Check out the video at the end of this article for a reggae drum beat demo.

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The music industry can sometimes seem like a battle field of shady business practices, stolen property, copyright infringement, and shattered relationships.  With so many people shooting to make it big, it’s more important than ever to protect yourself and your music.  It all comes down to one golden piece of legal advice:  Get it in writing!

Who Needs Music Business Contracts?

If you’re a songwriter or composer looking to license your music for use in television or film, then you will need to have a music licensing contract in place.  Perhaps you’re working with a music publisher.  Before entering into an agreement, you must make sure all of your goals and rights are protected in a music publishing licensing agreement.

Are you taking the plunge and signing with a major label?  Obviously this involves a record label contract.  You might be involved with a brand new indie label who doesn’t have their legal documents in order.  You better have your own.  Then again, maybe you shouldn’t be involved with such an inexperienced label at all.

Thinking about hiring a manager for your band or songwriting career?  You better put into writing (in the form of a signed contract) the exact percentage of your income this manager is entitled to as well as the roles this manager is expected to perform.

Are you a music producer working with artists?  Then you should have a producer-artist agreement in place, which maps out the goals of your working relationship and the percentage of income from sales or royalties each party is entitled to.

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Sola Rosa on bandcamp

I came across a super-awesome service for bands and recording artists called Bandcamp.  It’s free, and it lets you host your band’s music and discography, sell it or give it away, and it provides a smooth and clean website presence for your band.  It takes music hosting to the next level and can really improve your band’s web presence.  This review from bandcamp user, Mike Ventimiglia of the The Mississippi Kings, covers all of the features in depth.

I won’t re-hash all of features that make this free service great for bands, but there are few gems that really struck me about bandcamp.  From a web guru’s perspective, these are the things that separates the run-of-the-mill website from the innovative and super-useful web 2.0 applications.

Every Flavor of Audio Formats

The first thing that jumped out at me about bandcamp is the ability to post every type of audio format imaginable.  It even makes all of the conversions for you.  Just start by uploading the highest quality version you have – a lossless .wav or .aiff – and bandcamp will convert down to AAC, Ogg (not even sure what that is), and a variety of mp3 qualities.  By the way – here’s a video screencast about converting to mp3s yourself… but with bandcamp, you don’t need to.

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photo by fiskfisk

I admit, I don’t own Guitar Hero or Rock Band so I can’t say I’ve had much practice.  But the few times I picked up the dinky guitar with the colorful buttons, my virtual rock-god skills were less than stellar.  I sucked.  My non-musician friends shredded me off the stage with ease.  Unfair!  I’m the only REAL guitarist of the bunch.  Why do I suck at Guitar Hero?

I have come to the conclusion that having real musical skills actually diminishes your skills on Guitar Hero and Rock Band.  While the concept of these games is genius, it’s pretty far from simulating actual guitar playing or drumming.

Guitar Hero for Real Guitarists

The first thing any guitarist will notice when they fire up the game in beginner mode is that they over-simplify the guitar riffs and rhythms.  As a musician, your inclination is to play along with the song, not a fraction of the song.  It usually takes you up to the second verse to figure out the dumb-downed version of the patterns.

The other obvious hurdle for real guitarists is understanding the fret board (if we can even call it that).  It’s a set of 4 big buttons in the shape of frets.  Nothing like six strings.  They randomly represent different chords and notes, with no sense of high and low notes.

Rock Band for Real Drummers

Rock Band has a drumming component in addition to the guitar.  I found better luck here than on the guitar, but still ran into many of the same challenges.  I also play drums in the real world, so this took some getting used to.

Again, they over-simplify the rhythms on the beginner and medium difficulty levels so it takes some time pick up the drum track for dummies version.

Once you have a handle on that, you have to get used to the latency.  Each physical drum hit must strike a fraction of a second before the beat in the song.  Any type of groove is far gone at this point.  We’re back to just playing a video game.

Monster Fills = Monster Points

My friends show me how they rack up the points by whipping out totally ridiculous fills when the game gives you the “fill” queue.  On the guitar, that means choking the life out of the virtual wammy bar.  Not even the most legendary of hair-band rock stars would over-use the pitch bending effects like we see with top scorers in Guitar Hero.

Drummers get to rack up the points at these “fill” queues as well.  These are more along the lines of a 10 second drum solo with the drummer having both an ego and a coke problem.  Come to think of it, this might be the only real part of the game.

Musicians, am I right?

I’ve said my piece.  I shamefully suck at Guitar Hero.  The game itself is really not bad, and great for hangin with friends.  But real musicians, beware.  It won’t be as easy to master as you think.

Have you experienced the same thing?  Are there any musicians out there who are actually good at Guitar Hero or Rock Band?  Maybe you can give us some tips for representing next time we’re up against the non-musicians.