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ALL
YOU
NEED... |
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BY BOB DENNIS
& TOM GELARDI
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| Finally |
| Touring the
www.tonos.com
site was like a breath of fresh air. If you haven't read it, read
the article called My
Travels Through Tonos.com. Finally there is an
affordable service that uses available technology instead of the slow
and cumbersome snail mail and submitting product with lo-fi cassettes.
We go into this in more detail later in this article. |
| All You
Need... |
| In the travels
article we posed the question
"Is it true that, to survive as a developing
artist, "All You Need Is Love, and Tonus???"
In Tom Gelardi's
"The
Right Steps On The Road To A Hit" Tonos could be a
valuable asset starting with step 1. Although it is not the
complete answer here's how Tonos relates to these steps: |
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Step 1 was to
"Get some
music together..." Here the member
collaboration of Tonos could make a big difference in getting
the music. Probably a majority of hit product results
from some type of collaboration and this is one of the strong
points of the Tonos services. |
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Step 2 was to "Start
to record and plan on continuous recording..."
Here the Tonos Studio service allows you to record
parts with musicians in another city, state or country.
We go into more detail in the "Web Recording" section below. |
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Step 3 was to
"Plan and
execute your first release..." Part of this
step is to obtain feedback on your endeavors. Although
automatic professional feedback is not provided by Tonos at
this time, there is plenty of opportunity for member feedback
and there is randomly picked professional feedback their new
"Founder's Feedback" features. |
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Step 5 includes
"Start your submissions to national
labels..." Here the Artist Showcase
and My Tonos features allow you to showcase yourself
and your product to companies, in addition to the A&R
Dropbox and Industry Opportunities feature.
We go into more detail on this in the "Web Submissions"
section below. |
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And You'll
Need... |
| Although Tonos
can help a lot, additionally you may well need need help in these areas:
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Step 2 was to "Start
to record and plan on continuous recording..."
Having the best recording and mixing quality greatly affects
your success. Consider learning how to boost this aspect
of your product and your presentation with
REQ Free Training,
PAS Theory Training,
Alexander Advanced Training
or
by attending a
recording school.
Without sufficient recording quality, all other efforts can be
lost. |
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Step 3 and 4 was to plan and execute
your first releases. Your best chance
at a hit record is though local release of your product,
successfully done. developing artist productions
is being established to help with recording quality,
production quality, song choices and marketing plans.
The service is in a "pilot mode" at this time where we are
accepting test projects to work out exact procedures that will
be used. Find out more and take our survey at our
website. |
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| Web
Submissions |
| For years I
have suggested that submitting product to record companies should be
done via a web page. |
| The "old" way
of doing a submission was sending a package of a demo tape and promo
pack. The pack had to arrive, and be kept track of on the
receiving end. Usually it would up in a pile of such submissions
and was easily overlooked. The prospective artist usually
tried to put so much into the promo pack that that no self-respecting
A&R person would take the time to sift though all of the contents.
Often the artist would try to include too many tunes. Sometimes
the important things could be missed simply because of the amount
of stuff that was in the pack. The record company executive would
often just ignore oversize submissions because of the hassle involved.
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| Let's say that the executive
liked what was seen and heard. The next step
would be to get the secretary to send out a letter, often requesting
additional tunes and additional information. "Snail Mail" by
definition is a slow process. Submitting by snail mail is slow -
slow enough for the executive to forget the original enthusiasm for your
product. |
| The Web solves a lot of these
concerns.
When the executive goes to the artist's site, a concise
and to
the point presentation can be made. The exec can click on tunes
to hear the product, click on the bios, see a picture, etc. But
more importantly, the site can be arranged that additional tunes,
additional pictures, additional anything is just a mouse click away; the
executive can go as deep or as shallow as time and interest allows.
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| Then there's
e-mail. With e-mail links the exec can ask you a question or
otherwise communicate with you by clicking on the artist website e-mail link. Of course
the executive can still have the secretary write a letter, but you are
making communication very easy - a very smart thing to do. Record
company executives will often read and respond to e-mail much quicker
than to snail mail. |
| Tonos members
can actually do this as part of their Artist Showcase and you get a
simple URL to communicate to companies (www.tonos.com/username).
The "profile" created at Tonos can give you an introduction and you can
include an additional web address in your description.
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| Web
Recording |
| Music
recording is quickly going into the computer. The next step will
be using the web to record that overdub with a person many miles away.
Actually, top studios are doing this with a service for Pro Tools users
(version 5.11 and above), called the
Digidesign Pro Net. |
| The Tonos
studio online available to members to do this kind of thing, a lot less
expensively. The TC8 software (which you can purchase for $29.95
at Tonos) is limited to 8 tacks, but used in conjunction with other
Digital Audio Workstation (like Cakewalk, Cuebase, etc, etc,) software
on the members own computer, it becomes unlimited. With this setup
you will get sufficient sound quality for national productions.
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