If you’re into music you’re probably a little frustrated by how hard it is to break into the field, especially the pop music field. You know, getting a hit record and all that stuff. And while that’s all glamorous and everything, it’s probably the toughest way to make a living. So if the fame isn’t all that important to you, there are other things you can do that are music related that you might find enjoyable and even somewhat profitable. I’m just going to toss some ideas out there in this article and hopefully, you’ll find one to be to your liking. Let’s begin.

One business model that I actually just discovered is quite fascinating and people do make money from it.

As you may or may not be aware of, a lot of today’s music is created by synthesizers. You may or may not like them but they are a fact of life and they are here to stay. I personally own quite a few of these soft synths for my DAW. I have several of the top ones including Massive, Zebra 2 and Synthmaster 2.6. I have to admit that they are excellent sounding but a little difficult to program unless you’re experienced with programming synthesizers. I’ve been doing that since the late 70s so these weren’t too hard for me to catch onto.

But some people have a heck of a time trying to program these things and depend on presets for making their sounds. Unfortunately, the synths usually comes with very few presets or the ones they do have aren’t all that great. I have found this to be true a lot. I have my theories as to why this is. I think they’re in cahoots with the folks who program these sounds to make it so that users have to buy third party sounds. I myself have done that, not so much because I can’t program these things but because it’s so much quicker than doing it yourself. This way, I get immediate sounds for not that much money.

And that’s where the business comes in. A bank of 128 sounds for the Zebra 2 from one particular company costs $35. That’s a nice chunk of change if you’re on the business end of it. If you created just 4 or 5 patches a day, you could create a bank in about a month.

I actually intend to branch out into this business model. I figured why not? I have the synths. I have the skills. I might as well make use of them. You might want to consider this as an alternative to making hit records as well.

Moving on, there’s another market that you might want to consider that has to do with marketing itself. I used to be heavily into Internet marketing between 2003 and 2012. The last couple of years, not so much as I started so see that my business model was taking a big hit from all the Google slaps. That’s why I went into music full time in the first place.

Internet marketers use a variety of methods to get their message out to the public. One of those methods is through the use of video.

Just recently, a new piece of software was released called Easy Sketch Pro. Essentially what it is, is a video maker that draws the images on the screen right before your eyes. I personally bought the software myself and it’s pretty cool. And that’s when I came up with a great idea.

I create videos for marketers and add my music to the background. Easy Sketch Pro makes this easy to do. I’m not sure what kind of pricing I’d use for this model because I don’t quite know just how much work is involved in creating a video. I guess it would depend on the video length. But this is certainly a business model that you might want to consider.

Moving on to pure music, there is what this site is all about…royalty free music. Now I’m going to be completely honest with you. This isn’t a cakewalk. I’ve had this site up for almost 8 whole months and haven’t seen much in the way of income. It’s a very competitive field. You will be going up against some very big sites with 10s of thousands of tracks submitted by hundreds if not thousands of musicians. But you still have a bigger chance of making it in this industry than in having a hit record. So you might want to consider it as an option.

Where you will make the most of your money from is not in the downloaded music but in the custom scores that you do for people. The going rate is $100 per minute of music. So if you do a 10 minute score for somebody, that’s an easy grand in your pocket.

If the royalty free music biz scares the crap out of you, there is always teaching. I am currently taking two course online from Berklee School Of Music. The one is great. The other, not so great. The one is really just a teaser for their main course where you spend big bucks to take it. Now, I realize you’re not Berklee School Of Music, but if you have the skills, there is no reason why you can’t set up a little site that offers some kind of instruction. It doesn’t even have to be live instruction. You could set up a series of videos. In fact, I’ve seen a number of video based instruction sites in a variety of field including music. This is something else that you might want to consider.

Music is a wonderful thing. It’s not just confined to writing hit records or symphonies. There are countless areas in our lives where we can find music. Meditation CDs comes to mind. Yeah, people actually buy those things.

So don’t rule out anything. You may not achieve your ultimate dream of being a pop superstar, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make a living with your music in some other way.

That’s what I’m gonna do.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

Well, today just plain sucks. Last night I find out that a celebrity who I grew up with (Robin was only 6 years older than myself) has taken his life. Another tragic waste. Depression is such a terrible thing and it can strike any of us at any time.

This isn’t an easy article for me to write because I used to suffer from depression. Somehow I have managed to beat it. But it wasn’t easy. But I don’t want to focus on that because it’s not the point of this article.

So what is?

I’m going to make some assumptions if you’ve been reading my articles on a regular basis. I’m going to assume that you’re into music and you want to make it in some area of the music business. I’m not suggesting that you want to be a superstar or anything like that. But you want to be successful. Maybe even make this your living.

Take some time to think about how important that is to you. Is it the be all and end all or is it something that you can take or leave? In my case, it’s what I need just to keep paying the bills. I’m not in it for any fame, though that would be nice. I’m in it so I can keep a roof over my head and food on the table. That keeps it in perspective.

But some people have a hard time doing that. For them, it’s life and death. That’s when things become dangerous. Believe me, I know what it’s like to want something so bad that you think the world is going to end if you don’t get it.

Did I mention how bad that is?

Perspective is a wonderful thing. We have perspective in music. In fact, we create some amazing illusions with recorded music that I am going to get into in another article on perspective. It’s amazing what you can do with a little reverb, delay and volume control.

But I digress.

Like I was saying, perspective is a wonderful thing. But some people have a hard time putting things into perspective, especially when they’re young. See, this is what I find so puzzling about Robin Williams’ apparent suicide. The man was 63 years old. He had been through the worst of it already. I would have thought that by now he would have conquered his demons or at least learned to live with them. If this had happened when he was just becoming a superstar, I would have understood it. Look what happened to Freddie Prinze. That I would have understood. This I don’t. Not at this stage of his life.

And maybe in his case perspective had little if anything to do with it. Maybe it was something beyond anyone’s control. I guess we’ll never know.

But I do know this much. When you start blowing things out of proportion (if he doesn’t return my call I’ll just die) that’s when you get into trouble. And for young people in general, this is so easy to do.

So what follows is just some common sense advice from somebody who has lived through it all. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.

First of all, nothing is so bad that you need to take your own life. I have gone through some pretty intense stuff. And there were days when I didn’t think I would survive it. But I did. And everything that ever happened that I “thought” would be the end of the world turned out not to be the case. The sun still rose the next day. Funny how that works.

Take a look at your problem. Ask yourself this question. “What’s the worst that could happen?” When you do that, you realize that the very worst thing that could happen, which is pretty unlikely, isn’t so horrible.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.

I used to be terrified to speak in front of people. I was afraid of saying something stupid and having everybody laugh at me. I thought I would die of embarrassment. Trust me, nobody has ever died from embarrassment.

Well, this coming Sunday I am going to be preaching what I think is at least my 6th, maybe 7th sermon our church as a replacement minister because our regular minister is on Military leave that Sunday. Not only am I no longer afraid of talking in front of people but I actually enjoy it. Do I still get nervous? Sure. Everybody gets a little nervous before performing. As a musician you surely know what that’s like. But you still perform, right?

If we let fear paralyze our lives, what good are our lives? I do everything like it doesn’t matter. Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. If I crap out, I crap out. I can always try again tomorrow.

Do you wanna know how many songwriting contests I’ve entered just trying to make it as something in the business? Know how many I was successful with? Doesn’t stop me from trying every now and then. When you fall off that horse what do you do? You get back on it, that’s what. But you put getting back on it in perspective. It’s not life and death if you fall off it again. You can always get back on.

Look, you only get one life. That’s it. There are no do-overs when you’re gone. I’m leaving this planet kicking and screaming. I have a lot I want to do before that time comes. I know I’m going to have my bad days, but that doesn’t make me want to chuck it all now. I’ll meet those bad days, one day at a time.

Keeping things in perspective will help do that.

So please, take a lesson from Robin Williams. In spite of all his fame and money and everything he had, this is how it ended for him. It’s sad, it’s tragic and it’s avoidable.

If you can’t keep things in perspective and need help, get help.

Like I said, you only have one life.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

Today marks a big day for me. Today, I go back to being the confident person I was not too long ago. What about you? Is this going to be a new day for you? Are you going to take the bull by the horns and do what needs to be done in order to achieve your goals?

Let me tell you a little story about myself and how I went from rags to riches to rags just like that.

Back in the year 2000, I was working for a software development company as a QA tech and programmer. Yeah, double duty there.

Anyway, that was the last year of working there. I lost my job for a variety of reasons that I won’t get into here. Let’s just say the economy was the main culprit.

At my age at the time (42) I didn’t think it was going to be so easy for me to find another job and it wasn’t. Finally, after 3 years of working dead end jobs, I gave up looking and turned to the Internet. That was in 2003.

It took me a few years, but by 2006 I was making really good money online selling information products. Now during this time I was still working at my music but more as a hobby than seriously. I never really intended to end up doing what I’m doing now.

Anyway, by 2009 things were really going very well. I was making more money than I had ever dreamed of making. In short, I was on the top of the world.

Then we had the economic collapse and some Internet changes and things started to slowly go downhill. It didn’t happen all at once, but I noticed that my income was decreasing quite a bit each year. I’d say it was a good 30% decrease each year.

Finally, the bottom fell out completely (this year) and my business collapsed altogether.

However, I saw the writing on the wall last year and starting in July decided to make music my main focus. So I started to make plans for my royalty free music site which went live this January.

But it didn’t end there.

I realized that I couldn’t count on this as my only source of income so I started mapping out other strategies that were also music related. Right now I’d say I have at least a half dozen projects in the works. I only need one of them to catch fire.

Now, I could have wallowed in self pity and hated the world for my bad breaks. And I guess for a time I was pretty upset. But I realized that this was unproductive energy. I couldn’t change what was. All I could do was move forward.

Today, I made a checklist of all the things I need to do today, this article being just one of the many items. After I am finished with it, I will move onto the next item on my list. I fully intend to work a 14 hour day today (7 AM to 9 PM) if I can.

I will continue to do this until I am back on top of the mountain.

This will be the first day of the rest of my life. It will be the first day of my getting back to the life I used to have.

What about you? Is this going to be the first day of the rest of YOUR life?

If it is, before you begin, there are a few things I want to leave you with because there are pitfalls along the way.

One of those pitfalls is not having a plan. You can’t just get up and start doing things. You need to have some direction. What is it that you want to achieve? Whatever it is, you only work on things that bring you closer to achieving it. That means no wasting time on Facebook or Twitter or wherever you go to kill time. That’s not going to bring you closer to your goal. It will only kill yet another day of your life. You can’t get those days back.

I have found that making a schedule and actually sticking to it is a wonderful thing. This takes a lot of discipline. It’s so easy to look at an item on your schedule and say to yourself “I don’t want to do this. This is boring.” Or it’s too hard or it takes too long or whatever the excuse is. If you have something that needs to be done, you need to do it…period. Find a way to make it happen.

You want to ideally create that schedule so that the most important things get done first or the things that take the least amount of time get done first. This frees up the rest of the day to do the more time consuming things.

Another pitfall is doing things that you could hire somebody else to do. For example, I am working on a project that required me to write a sales letter. Now, I could have written that sales letter myself but I realized that my time was better spent working on my music. So I hired a copywriter to write my sales letter for me. I’m sure she did a better job on it than I would have done.

Don’t waste time on activities that aren’t your strong suit. Get an expert to do it. Otherwise, you end up with a substandard product. And you certainly don’t want that.

I’ve seen both the top and the bottom of the mountain. Looking down it looks great. But it can also be a little scary. What if you fall? You can kill yourself. Conversely, looking up from the bottom, it looks like you’ll never make it to the top. But you can, one step at a time. Unless you’re Superman, nobody makes one giant leap and gets from the bottom to the top overnight. It takes time. It may not be as easy to climb to the top as it is to fall from it, but it can be done. I did it once. I can do it again.

So can you.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

In this article, I’m going to go over some things you can do to protect your music from thieves. The truth is, and I guess you can stop reading here, there’s no sure fire way to prevent theft. In the digital age, where everything is so easy to make and upload, it’s just as easy to take. With this technology, you have to take the good with the bad. Having said that, you don’t leave the front door locked so that anybody and their grandmother can just walk in and take the family silverware. At least try to ward off would be thieves by taking some kind of action. What kind? Well, that’s where this article comes in.

At the top of the list, especially if you are selling royalty free music like I do, is to watermark the tracks that are actually on your site. What I mean by watermark is to have some kind of voiceover playing while the track is playing. You could use the name of your site like some other sites are doing. This way, if they want to take your music as is, they’re going to get it with the voiceover and it’s not going to sound very good. In order to get the clean track, they have to download it from your site.

Now, you’re probably wondering why I don’t do this. If you go to my site and play my tracks, there are no watermarks of any kind. The reason I don’t do this is strategical. Yes, there is a method to my madness. I actually want my music stolen. Why? Because the more it’s taken, the more it gets around and is heard by other people. The more it’s heard, the more traffic I get to my site. The more traffic I get to my site, the more people share my music and bring other people to my site. In turn, the higher up the SERPs my site goes. Increased traffic means more ad revenue. My friend Kevin McCleod makes 6K a month just off of ad revenue and he pretty much does the same thing. But if you really want to keep your stuff from being stolen, watermarks are the way to go.

What about people actually hacking into your downloads? It’s not hard for people to find out what your URL links are. Once those links get around, the watermarks no longer matter. They’ll just directly download the real files. Well, the way you get around this is by using something like DLGuard. How does DLGuard work? I’m glad you asked that.

DLGuard is a download protection piece of software that runs on your server. I’ve been personally using it for years. The way it works is simple. You install it. Installation is very easy. Then, you go into the software and create a download record for each of your songs. In the record itself you tell DLGuard where the download file is. After you create the record, DLGuard will encrypt this link and create a link on the fly that the purchaser will get access to.

So let’s say your real download link is www.mysite.com/mylink.mp3. DLGuard will encrypt it so something like sdl3962vda97.mp3 so that the buyer never really knows what the real link is. That way they can’t pass it around.

Okay, you’re probably thinking that all they have to do is pass around the encrypted link. Well, they can. But what you do inside the DLGuard program is tell DLGuard to have the link expire after so many hours. This way, anybody who tries to access the link after the expired time won’t be able to download the file.

No, this doesn’t completely eliminate theft but it does cut it down significantly.

Of course you can always go through the legal process of copyright. I know it’s a royal pain, especially if you’re creating a lot of music like I have. Imagine copyrighting 5,000 pieces of music. That can get quite expensive. Of course you can do the old mail a package of the copyrighted material to yourself and leave it unopened until the time comes when you have to sue somebody. If it’s all digital music, all you have to do is zip it all up, put it on an external drive like Passport and stick it in an envelope. Make sure you pad the envelope as we are talking about hardware and not pieces of paper.

So why do people steal things? If I had the answer to that I’d run for mayor. I’m not an expert on human psychology. Some people just do it to see if they can get away with it. Others do it because they know they can get away with it. Then there are those who are really bad off and can’t afford to buy things. So they download torrents of everything that they can get their hands on, especially if it’s creative software. Me? My conscience won’t let me go that route. All my software, from Adobe Photoshop all the way down to every VST that wasn’t free to begin with (thanks to the creators who do make free stuff) is paid for. I sunk over 10 grand into my current business. I don’t think I’ve made $10 yet.

But I recognize that there are thieves in the world. You can ignore them. You can fight them. You can accept what they do and move on. You can’t stop them, not completely. They will always find a way to take your stuff, especially the ones who are that determined.

I have therefore chosen not to bother wit them. I have a new product coming out that’s targeting a market that isn’t infested with thieves. These people, for the most part, actually buy the things that they need. I know it’s a novel concept in today’s world but it does happen. Those are the people I’m concentrating on and building my business around.

Anyway, there you have it. Those are a few of the things you can do to keep thieves from taking your stuff.

Good luck with it.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

This might sound like an odd title for a piece on songwriting but hear me out. It’s more relevant than you think.

I’m going to kick this one off with a story. Please bare with me for a while.

A long time ago, back in the early 80s, a friend and mine went into business together. We were both into music and we thought this was a good idea. No, it ended up not lasting very long and I’d say it was a failure even though we did make some money (don’t remember how much) but that’s not the point of this story.

This wonderful business idea of ours was similar to those “We will put your lyrics to music” type deals. Except what we did with this business was we put your wedding, or anniversary or whatever you were celebrating, to music. If you wanted your life story set to music, we did that too.

Clients would submit their “story” to us. We’d then take all this info, write some lyrics, compose some music, and record it for them. We’d then give it to them on cassette. Yes, it was a long time ago. There was no burning to CD at the time. I didn’t even own a computer.

Now, because these were custom made to order, we had to follow the client’s instructions to the letter. Whatever they wanted in these songs, we had to give them. There was really little room for creativity. I mean if they wanted all the songs to be in a minor key because they were miserably depressed human beings, that’s what we had to do. Lyrics had to be built around their story.

If you think this is easy, try it sometime and try to come up with something that also pleases the client.

Needless to say, we saw that this was a difficult business and very time consuming, especially if you were putting together a half hour tape on somebody’s life story or how they met and married their childhood sweetheart.

Okay, let’s put this in the context of writing music to make a living in the world today. I know composers think that they are independent contractors, that they can write anything that they want. Guess what? They can’t. Well, okay, if they don’t care about making money they can. But if they want to make it in the music business, they better know how to follow instructions.

You’re probably wondering what these “instructions” are. Well, let me give you examples of some of them.

One “instruction” is the trend that music has taken. Every decade has its own little sound depending on the genre of music. Going against that sound is risky. There is a greater chance of succeeding if you “sell out” as a lot of people want to call it. Hey, I’m just delivering the news. Don’t shoot the mailman.

All kidding aside, in a sense, you are being told what to do if you want to succeed in the music business. The tastes of the general public will dictate what you’re going to write if you want a chance of being successful. That is a form of following instructions, albeit a very general form.

Want something more specific? No problem. Trust me, this business can get very specific to the point of minutia. If you haven’t been in it, you just don’t know.

Let’s say you happen to land a staff writing job in Nashville. Staff writers essentially write all this music that ends up going on albums along with all the “hits” if there even are any. Not every recording artist writes their own music. Some are just great singers who need music written for them.

So here you are, a staff writer in Nashville. That’s not a bad gig to get. It pays pretty well though you’ll never get rich off of doing it.

But hold on. It’s not like you can just sit down and write anything you want. While each staff writing position is going to be slightly different, there are some fairly basic set of instructions that you’re most likely going to have to follow. The best way to explain this is with an example.

You’re a staff writer in Nashville and you’re writing music for an up and coming female country singer. She’s 18 years old. So she hasn’t really lived much yet. So her songs aren’t going to be about all the pain and suffering and growing up she’s done in her long, hard life. Most likely she’s going to sing about partying and having fun and falling in love. Got it?

So, your boss comes to you with all this information about this up and coming artist and he tells you that he wants three songs. One is going to be about partying, one about falling in love and the last one about that first broken heart. He says he wants each song to be between three and four minutes long. One uptempo and two ballads. The lyrics have to sound like they’re coming from the point of view of an 18 year old. Got it?

That’s a typical assignment in the real world if you’re a staff writer. No, you can’t just sit down and write anything you want. If only it were that easy.

And that’s just one example of what it’s like to be a songwriter and have to follow instructions.

Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a film scorer? Imagine having to view a scene and come up with just the right music for that scene. You are being controlled by what you’re seeing on screen. You can’t just write any old thing. You have to write music that actually fits what you’re watching.

We so want to think that we have independent thought when we’re in the music business, but we really don’t. We’re always at the mercy of the people we work for, whether it be a staff manager, the producer of a movie or our adoring fans.

So, can YOU follow instructions?

It’s not as easy as you think.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

This article is going to require you to do a little soul searching. For some people, that’s not easy. The reason is simple. When you take a good, hard, long look at yourself, sometimes you don’t like what you see. It’s a lot easier to just ignore the problem and hope it’ll go away. The problem is, the problem never does go away. So we’re going to be asking the question, “What’s holding you back?”

I figure there is no better way to get my point across and maybe get you to take an honest look at yourself than to use myself as a self study. Yeah, I’m going to be putting it all out there. I may not like what I ultimately have to admit to myself, but it just might be what I need to make it over the hump.

So let’s begin.

On a technical level, what holds me back is that I hate technology. That might sound weird coming from somebody whose first job was as a computer programmer but hear me out and you’ll understand why I hate it.

First off, there is the learning curve. For example, the other day I got Optimize Press in order to create a sales page for my new music product. It took me forever just to figure out how to launch the darn application from my blog menu. I won’t even get into what a nightmare it was to figure out how to edit and add things. Actions that, to me, would seem to be intuitive are not so intuitive because of the funky way a particular application decides to handle things that’s completely different from another application.

Certainly you have to understand what I’m saying. I can’t be the only person in the world frustrated with the learning curve of some products. But you see, and this is what’s really holding me back in this area, the frustration comes not so much from the learning curve but from my impatience. I need to be able to sit down in front of a piece of software, especially if it’s music software, and figure it out right away WITHOUT reading the manual. No, I did not read the Optimize Press manual at all. I just dove in. So my underlying problem is that I have no patience. It’s not that I hate the technology. It’s that I don’t want to take the time to learn it properly.

Ah, but why? Why do I have no patience? See, now we’re getting down to the real underlying problem. See, the reason I have no patience is because my life, right now, is very uncertain. My business has been in the toilet for a couple of years now. I know a lot of musicians struggle but this is ridiculous. So my financial situation has dictated that I need to have things happen quickly. When you need to have things happen quickly you lose your patience.

Really, do you think that if I were independently wealthy I would care how long it took me to learn a piece of software or how to program a new VST synth or how to use a new notation program? I would welcome the diversion. I’d spend as much time as I had to on that stupid manual just to give me something to do so that I wouldn’t go crazy. See, I love learning new things. I just don’t love learning them when I’m under time pressure. And right now, I am under time pressure the likes of which I haven’t known since the early days of my marriage when I lost my first job. At age 56 after almost 30 years of marriage (this come August 25) I’m not used to this feeling anymore. It sucks and I don’t like it.

So ironically, because of my lack of patience, due to my situation, I am being held back because I’m not taking the time to do things properly. When you don’t do things properly, you don’t succeed. So it becomes a self fulfilling prophesy.

But technology and my patience level aren’t the only things holding me back. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s more.

Next we have something called confidence. When my business was super successful, I had confidence in spades. In fact, when something didn’t work out quite right I was actually stunned. How could this fail? Granted, I didn’t have many failures, but when I did, I was genuinely stunned.

Today, my confidence is shot. I have the opposite feeling about things. I’m convinced that nothing I’m going to do is ever going to be truly successful again, that I’ve had my day in the sun and it’s over.

What a load of nonsense.

I’m certainly no stupider now than I was in 2009 when my business peaked. If anything, I have learned so much over the last 11 years that I’ve been running my own business, I should be able to turn things around with little trouble if any at all.

But having things crash and burn around you can really shake your confidence. And as a result, you become paralyzed with fear. What if I do this and it’s wrong? What if I make the wrong choice? What if I choose the wrong affiliate program? What if?

This project I’m working on? I am sweating bullets over every aspect of it. I am literally scared to death of making the wrong decision about something. I keep forgetting that if I do make the wrong decision about something, I can always correct it. Failure is never permanent until you’re dead. I have to keep reminding myself of that.

So if the sales page I put together isn’t right, I can always redo it. Nothing says I have to keep this one forever.

Essentially, these are the things that are holding me back. Notice I said nothing about my actual talent. I may not be John Williams, but I know my music is good enough for certain markets. I have to hang onto that. Otherwise, if I truly believe I have no talent at all, then I might as well just pack it in now.

I’m not ready to do that.

Are you?

Take an honest look at yourself in the mirror. What’s holding you back?

Once you can admit what it is to yourself, you’re half way to being able to conquer it.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

What I am about to tell you is probably going to come as quite shocking. In fact, it may totally blow your mind. Are you ready? Here goes. Not every song that’s ever been commercially successful was a great piece of music.

Did I just blow your mind? Did your world come to an end? If so, I’m sorry for starting your day off with such a horrible revelation but somebody had to tell you the truth.

Some songs just aren’t that great.

If that’s the case, what made them a hit. What was the secret sauce that the composer put into them that turned a dull piece of music and a lame lyric into a monster smash?

Well, there is a lot that goes into a musical production and many things that can account for a song’s success. We’re going to discuss one of those things today…arrangement.

Ah yes, the arrangement. That cherry on the banana split. That eye shadow, lip gloss and mascara that turns a plain girl into a raving beauty. That frosting on the cake.

If you listen to a lot of songs, especially in the pop/rock genre, you will notice something about a lot of these songs. They don’t have much movement in them outside of the arrangement. It’s really the same thing over and over with more stuff thrown on top of it.

Now there are exceptions. Listen to Uriah Heep’s “Easy Living.” That song comes at you right out of the starting gate and never lets up until the last note. There is literally no change in dynamic or anything through the entire song. Granted, it’s a short song and quite uptempo, so you can get away with it. But make no mistake about it. That song had nothing to do with arrangement. It was just brute force club you over the head and leave you bleeding.

If you want to hear songs that really depend on arrangement, listen to some ballads. These are the classic tunes when it comes to a piece of music starting out as plain Jane and finishing as Angelina Joli. Just how do they do that? Well, here’s an example of how they’d go about beefing up a ballad as the song progressed.

Typical song might start with an intro. This intro will usually just be a solo piano with a little reverb on it. Actually, maybe a lot of reverb on it. You know how those ballad pianos sound.

When we hit the first verse, nothing changes. We continue with that ballad piano. Now, if the first verse goes into a second verse then maybe the drums will quietly come in on the second verse. If there’s no second verse and it goes right into the chorus then we’ll probably have some laid back drums and quiet strings.

Okay, the song is still kind of dull. So when the next verse starts we begin adding some instruments to the song. Maybe a bass comes in with some French horns softly in the background. Then when we get to the next chorus the violins join in.

Then we get to the bridge or instrumental break and the power ballad lead guitar joins the mix. Finally, on the last chorus, the whole orchestra joins and it’s wall to wall sound until finally we get to the last line of the chorus, the tag, and everything drops out except the piano. At the end, we might hear some soft strings conclude the piece.

That’s what we call building an arrangement. We’ve taken a song that, if played just on the piano, would have sounded dull and lifeless and turned it into a raving beauty.

Now don’t get me wrong. Not all ballads are dull and lifeless. Some are quite beautiful and would even sound good played just on the piano. But there is no question how much an arrangement adds to a song. In many cases, it can make or break a song.

So, when you go about writing a song, any song, do you do it with the arrangement in mind? Well, you can, but it’s not a requirement. Sometimes an arrangement will just come to you. Other times, as you’re writing, you’ll hear the strings coming in there or the timpani and cymbals charging their way into that last chorus.

And then there are those times when you just don’t have a clue what to do with a song. You’ve recorded the basic piano and vocal and can’t even begin to imagine where to go with it.

When that happens, go to the video tape. Read a book on arranging. Listen to some other songs in the genre you’re writing for. See what other arrangers have done.

Contrary to what a lot of people believe, arranging is not composing. You can be a great writer but a lousy arranger or you can be a lousy composer but a great arranger. You have the ability to hear a great song and know just what to do to make it better. You know just when to bring in each instrument.

However you go about arranging your songs, the only real rule is that you want the arrangement to build over time. Imagine you start your song off with the orchestra in full force and then suddenly after the first chorus you have the rest of the song with just a piano and vocal. Your audience is going to not only be let down, they’re going to be scratching their heads wondering what just happened.

Granted, that’s an exaggerated example. But you would be surprised how many beginning arrangers drop the ball in this area. They box themselves into a corner where there is just no place left to go after the previous chorus. They’ve already brought in every instrument known to man so the final chorus of the piece won’t be any more dramatic than the one before it. That’s bad, very bad.

Think of your arrangement in terms of a line graph where the graph begins at zero and then goes up to whatever number it reaches at the end. You want that line to be always on the rise even if it’s slowly on the rise. In fact, the slower your arrangement progresses, the more dramatic the effect. Of course if it’s too slow, your audience might not stick around for the finish. That’s the tricky part.

So think about your arrangement when you’re writing your songs.

A good one just might make or break that song.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

You’ve managed to come up with a melody. Now you’re looking for just the right harmony, or chords, to go with it. You’re kind of lost for ideas. You seem to be going back to the same old C – Am – F and G and you’re tired of it. You want something fresh. Well, this article is going to give you some different methods for coming up with harmonies to your melodies. I hope you will find these tips helpful.

Let me start off by saying that harmony can have a dramatic effect on the feel of your song. The same melody can sound totally different when you switch from a major to minor key. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that harmony is the most powerful influence on the song itself next to maybe the lyrics. For instrumental music, harmony can literally make or break a song.

So how do we come up with interesting harmonies and avoid the usual C – Am – F and G or C – G and F? Well, there are a few ways to get away from this mundane harmonic trap that we keep finding ourselves falling into.

One way is to pick a different key. A melody will sound different depending on what key it’s played in. Don’t ask me why, it just does. In fact, if you play certain songs in a different key than what you’re used to hearing them in, they just don’t sound right. Again, don’t ask me why. They just don’t. So pick a key like A or B or F sharp. Anything but C. That’ll be a great start right off the bat.

Another thing you can do is go through each chord within the key you’re in. Let’s say you decide to stick with C. You can still come up with some interesting harmonies in the key of C.

What are all the chords in the key of C? Let’s go from the first all the way to the 7th chord.

I chord – C
II chord – D minor
III chord – E minor
IV chord – F
V chord – G
VI chord – A minor
VII chord – B diminished

There you go, the 7 chords in the key of C.

What can we do with them?

If we follow the strict rules, we still have many chord progressions that we can get out of this. Starting with the tonic, the I chord as our first chord, we can go to any of the other six chords in the key of C naturally and it will sound “correct”, for lack of a better term.

So we can go from C to A minor or D minor or E minor or F of G or even B diminished and we’re okay. And from the chord we go to, we can then go to any other chord in the key of C and that will be okay as well.

In doing so, we can come up with any of the following chord progressions.

C – Dm – Em – F
C – Am – Em – G
C – G – F – Em
C – Em – G – Am

And so on and so on. I think there are something like 128 chord progressions that you can get out of those 7 chords. I haven’t actually done the math but it’s a lot of chords.

But let’s say you still want to stay away from just using all the chords that are in the key of C. You want to get a little daring and really think outside the box. This little trick will get you there and it will bring you chord progressions that you probably would have never thought about.

Let’s start with the key of C and the I chord, which is the C chord. That chord is made up of these three notes.

C, E, G.

Okay, another “rule” of harmony is that we can go from any chord to any other chord “naturally” as long as both chords have at least one note in common.

So taking the C chord above, let’s take the C itself. What chords can you think of that have a C in them?

Here are just a few off the top of my head.

F minor, A minor, A flat, C minor, C diminished, C 7, C major 7 and F major.

That’s a lot of chords that we can go to starting off with the C chord in our key of C.

But wait, we have two other notes in our C chord that we can use as launching points. Let’s take the E note. What chords can you think of that have an E in them?

Here are just a few off the top of my head.

E minor, E major, A, A minor, C# minor, F Major 7 and E diminished.

But wait, what about the G note in that C chord? How many chords contain a G in them?

Here are just a few off the top of my head.

G, G minor, E flat, G Major 7, G minor 7, G diminished and A minor 7.

So we can go to any of those chords and more from that single C chord.

But there’s more. See, depending on what chord we go to from the C chord, we can then use the same principle to choose our next chord.

So let’s say we decided to go from C to E flat. We can do that because each chord has a G in in. Well, what chords can we go to from E flat?

To answer that question, we have to look at the notes that make up the E flat chord. They are E flat, G and B flat. So, we can then go to any chord that contains any of those notes. Let’s choose the B flat. What chords have a B flat in them? Off the top of my head…

B flat, B flat minor, G flat, E flat minor, C 7, G minor and so on.

And we can continue this process throughout the entire song. So, we can end up with a most unusual chord progression, in the key of C, that looks something like this.

C – E flat – G minor – D minor – A minor – C

There you have it. Some simple ways to get away from that mundane C – Am – F and G progression that was worn out back in the 50s.

Happy harmony hunting.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

If the title of title of this article has you a little puzzled, don’t worry. By the time you’re done reading it, you’ll have a very clear picture of what I’m talking about and how to handle the problems I’m going to cover. So let’s begin.

There is a reason why many recording engineers say to keep it simple when making an arrangement. See, the more stuff you throw into the mix, the harder it is to get everything to come out just right. Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about.

We’re going to piece a song together one instrument at a time. As we progress through this process you’re going to see how and why we start to have problems.

Our song begins with our main instrument, the grand piano. We lay down the track and it sounds really good out there by itself. It better. It’s the only thing playing at this point.

Next we lay down the vocals. When we play the song back, we notice that the vocals are a little bit too soft. Not a problem. We just raise the volume slider of the vocal so we can hear it over the piano. Now everything is great two tracks in.

After that, we decide to lay down the drum tracks. We keep this simple by pulling up a drum kit and programming a rhythm track simply keeping a steady beat. Nothing fancy here. On playback the drums are a little soft but that’s okay as we want them in the background but audible, so we leave them as they are, for now.

Next, we lay down the bass. Upon play back we notice that the bass is drowning out the kick drum. We don’t hear the kick beating anymore. The snare is fine because it’s a higher frequency, but the kick is gone. So we raise the kick up slightly. Fortunately, we put the kick, snare, high hat, and cymbal on separate tracks so we can raise the kick up without touching the other parts of our drum set. So here we are 7 tracks in and so far so good. Of course we don’t really have a lot going on at this point either.

We move on to track 8, the rhythm guitar and lay that track down. We notice that the guitar is getting in the way of the piano and the vocals so we turn it down a bit. We can still hear it slightly, but it’s not as pronounced as we would have liked it to be. So we decide to pan it hard left so that it sticks out a little bit more in the mix. That problem is solved.

Up next we have a low synth pad to kind of lay a foundation for the song. We don’t want this too loud but we do want it noticeable. We use a saw tooth wave with resonance around C1 so that it really cuts through the mix even at low volume. We also play single notes and not chords so it supports the bass. Sounds good. Track 9 was easy. Everything sounds good so far.

After the pad, we lay down a violins line to kind of support the vocals. We turn it down just enough so that the vocals are still over the top but the violins can be heard. Except we find we can’t get the right balance. The piano is too loud. So we turn it down. Except now it’s not cutting through the pad, so we turn that down, except now the pad can’t be heard over the bass so we turn that down. Now the violins can be heard but they’re too prominent with everything else having been buried. So we start raising things back up again.

Stop the madness. And so it begins. And mind you, we’re only 10 tracks into this mix. What kind of a nightmare do you think we’re going to have once we’re 24 tracks in and we’ve got synth leads, horns, sequencer riffs and on and on. Something is going to get buried. Not every instrument can be heard. If you continue to duke it out like this, somebody is going to die. That somebody is ultimately going to be the whole mix. So what’s the answer?

There are essentially two answers to this question. The one has to do with priority and the other has to do with frequency range. Let’s take priority first.

I don’t care what kind of song you’re doing. In that song, there is going to be one or maybe two tracks that are more important than all the others. I think it’s safe to say that the vocals are probably your first priority. If the vocals aren’t heard over everything else, then your mix is a failure. It’s that simple. After the vocals comes your main lead instrument, whether that be the piano comp, the guitar or whatever. You then go down the list of items and mix them in according to priority. Therefore, and as much as it kills me to say this, the high hat on your drums is just not important enough to worry about if it’s a little buried in the mix. Not every instrument is going to be a star. Set your priorities and stick to them. Otherwise you end up with a mess.

Next we have frequency range. The biggest problem that mixers have with frequency range is the vocals. The important frequencies of your vocals are your upper frequencies. The lower frequencies are the ones that muddy up the vocals because they clash other instruments taking up that same frequency range. Remove the lower frequencies of the vocals and you’ll find they fit better in the mix. Also by removing the frequencies that are in the other instruments that occupy the same range as the vocals, that will also make the vocals sit better in the mix. To do this, we use EQ. That’s a topic we’ll get into in another article.

If you do these two simple things, set priority and remove clashing frequencies, you’ll find that your mixes are a lot cleaner.

Because if you try to duke it out, your mix WILL die.

Count on it.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim

It has gotten to the point where I don’t want to turn on the TV or even open a newspaper. The Internet is no longer a safe haven. Every little thing that goes wrong in the world, as well as the not so little things, gets splashed all over whatever site you may happen to hang out at. Facebook is no longer just a fun place. In short, it’s depressing.

So what’s a guy or gal to do? I mean you can’t escape it. And it wouldn’t be so bad if it was just one thing going on that was so bad. But right now, it feels like the end times.

Think about it.

We’ve got the fighting going on between Israel and Hamas. We’ve got the fighting in Afghanistan. We’ve got this ebola thing that could very well wipe out our planet. We’ve got this solar super storm due any day now (last one was 1859 and they happen every 150 years) that could totally destroy our electrical power grid and send us back to the stone ages, and if all that isn’t bad enough, Jack Bower has been banished to Siberia.

Okay, that last one was an attempt at humor. So sue me.

Truth is, things are bad. They’re worse than bad. It reminds me of that classic scene from Network that ultimately won Peter Finch is Oscar. And the poor guy never even lived to receive it.

Well, I don’t feel like sticking my head out a window and yelling “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” I have to conserve my voice for Sunday church service.

So what’s a guy or gal to do?

Music, that’s what. Music is the best therapy for what ails you. In fact, it was a bad experience that got me writing songs in the first place. But I won’t get into that here. It was 35 years ago and I thank God every single day that I went through that hell. Otherwise, I might not even be writing this today.

Therapy works wonders. And the beauty part of it is that therapy can take many different forms related to music. I’m going to go over just a few of the things that I do that are great therapy for me.

Probably at the top of the list is composing music. There’s just nothing like it. The feeling of creating something from nothing is one that is hard to describe. And what’s great about it is if you want to create something really special, you have to really put your mind into it. That means you’re not thinking about all the crap that’s going on in the world.

But every once in a while the well runs dry and you just can’t think of anything to write. Or maybe you’re a little burnt out from writing. What do you do then? Well, I still have other things musically related that I can throw myself into.

One of the best is synth programming. I love diving into complex synths. I have a collection of VSTs that could choke a horse. I have to have well over a hundred. And some of them are rather complex like my Synthmaster 2.6, Massive, Zebra2 and Reaktor 5 just to name a few. You could get lost in any one of them for hours and hours tweaking patches and learning new programming techniques.

Now, I have to admit that I have become pretty good at programming these things because of all the hours of study I’ve put into them, so every once in a while I’m just not in the mood to tinker with these beasts. So what do I do then if the songwriting well has also run dry?

Have you ever been to Soundcloud?

Talk about being able to get lost at a place. I have no idea how many people have Soundcloud accounts. I just opened up one maybe a week or so ago and put up close to 40 tracks just to get started. But what I have the most fun doing is just searching for original music that others have done. There is everything on Soundcloud from acoustic to world music. There’s even demos of synths if you want to listen to that sort of stuff.

In short, you could get lost at this site for hours on end and not even put a dent into all the music that is up there. I’m following like 14 people and haven’t even come close to hearing all of their music yet. Some of them have thousands of tracks on their account.

But what do I do when I’m tired of Soundcloud and hearing new stuff, I’m done tinkering with synths and the composing well has still run dry?

Well, there is always old established music. You know, the stuff that you grew up with. In my case, that’s over 50 years of music. My first exposure was to the Beatles in 1964. I have lived through everything from the British invasion to bubble gum, to disco to new wave to, well, you name it. I’ve lived through it. Do you have any idea how much music that is to choose from if you just want to sit back and listen to some hit tunes? Heck, pick just one year and that could kill a whole a day.

And if all of that isn’t enough as far as therapy goes, you can always take an online class. I’m taking two right now. One of them is on music production and the other one is on songwriting. I’m probably not going to learn a heck of a lot that’s new, but I’ve met some nice people and the instructors are interesting to listen to and I am getting something out of the courses. If nothing else, it’s keeping my mind off of all the crap that’s going on in the world.

So things might be bad around you. Maybe even scary bad. But if you lose yourself in your music, in your art, in your reason for being, you can get through just about anything.

I learned that 35 years ago when a girl broke my heart and I wrote my first song.

Someday, maybe I’ll put it up on Soundcloud.

If I can remember how it goes.

For The Love Of Music,

Steven “Wags” Wagenheim