Category Archives: Articles

Things I’ve learned the hard way so you don’t have to.

Interview with Music Supervisor Greg Debonne

Articles, Composer Tips, PIR News

Arron, the owner at PlayItLoudMusic.com has kindly given me permission reprint his interview with Music Supervisor Greg Debonne here in its entirety.

Interview with Gregory Debonne

Greg’s credentials can be found on numerous reality shows with networks including MTV, VH1, The Discovery Channel, SPIKE, A&E, Lifetime, BRAVO, to a name a few. As a music supervisor with experience as a composer/arranger in conjunction with session work on production music cues, Debonne also is a well integrated member of the Los Angeles music community. To top it off he has perfect pitch!

We want to thank Greg again for taking the time to answer our questions on a Sunday night.

There is a lot of great insight here!

What got you into Music Supervision?

I’ve been involved in music all my life. Prior to music supervision, I was an associate producer of reality television shows. An AP job on reality television shows has morphed, but back in the day -in the early 2000s- you actually had some reality shows on MTV and VH1 that were music oriented whereby as the AP, I was also kind of the music coordinator as well. I had to handle all of the clearance for that as well, the liaison between the production

and clearance. On shows where there was a music super, I would assist that music super because I knew the MTV and VH1 systems of doing things so well. It was a natural segway for me to go into music supervision.

How has it changed the way you listen to music?

I’ve always listened to music from an arrangemental and orchestral standpoint, but now I listen to music relative to what’s going to work well to picture in that regard as well. I’m listening to the phrasing of every instrumental element individually, as well as combined, assessing just how easy it is for a music editor to cut that piece of music to picture underneath dialogue, assessing its compositional value and the dynamic ebb and flow in that regard, as well as other aesthetic nuances.

How can artists find out about new projects and their related music supervisors?

Different artists have different ways of going about it. But I know people who literally get online and find out who is the music supervisor of what shows. People look up shows that I’ve done. “Oh, who’s the music supervisor on that? Oh, Greg Debonne. Well then, I’m going to google Greg Debonne.” So, there’s that approach.

There’s also the approach of where you simply know of the music super’s name and you contact them and say “Hi, are you’re looking for music?” That music supervisor will get back to you and either say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ It always helps for an artist to know what that music supervisor is looking for stylistically. Now, there are some music supervisors who only want what they’re looking for at the time, pertinent to whatever project they’re working. Me, I won’t turn anyone away if it’s good and potentially viable for future use. However, if it’s not applicable to whatever project I’m working at the time, I may not get to it right away.

Click Here to Read The Full Interview Continue reading →

Embedding Audio Files

Articles, Flash Audio Tutorials

How do I put background music on my web page?

It’s fairly simple to add background music to your web page but first you have to consider your visitors. Never put a sound that plays automatically in the background with no option for the user to turn it off. In fact, it would probably be best to give your visitors the choice of turning on the music only if they want to hear it.

 The <EMBED> tag is the most common way of adding sound to a Web page. Its advantage over the <BGSOUND> tag is that it is supported by both browsers, and more consistently across the PC and Mac platforms. The <EMBED> tag introduces many features that aren’t supported by <BGSOUND>. Furthermore, while the <BGSOUND> tag only supports background sounds, the <EMBED> tag also features an interactive interface (including various buttons to play, stop, and handle the sound). Let’s take a look at the <EMBED> tag in action
(requires a sound-enabled browser)

The HTML code that generates a control panel is very simple:

This code:
<EMBED height="20" SRC="http://www.partnersinrhyme.com/indexmidis/BLUES.MID" VOLUME="50" loop="true" controls="console" AUTOSTART="FALSE" width="128">

Will produce this console:

This version uses a WAV file instead of a midi:
<EMBED height="20" SRC="http://www.sound-effect.com/sounds/loops2/SweetDreams.WAV" VOLUME="50" loop="true" controls="console" AUTOSTART="FALSE" width="128">

If you find a sound you like somewhere on the web and decide you want to use it on your web page make sure you download the file to your hard drive then upload it to your own server. Do not under any circumstances link directly to the server you found the file on. Hot linking to someone else’s server is considered bandwidth theft and is against the law.

The attribute, "autostart=true," specifies whether the file should start playing automatically after it loads. If autostart is set to "false," then the file will load into the sound player utility but the user will have to click on the "play" button of the sound player utility in order to start the playing of the sound file.

The LOOP attribute tells the browser how many times you want the the sound to repeat. If you added LOOP="10" to the <BGSOUND> tag, the sound would play 10 times and then stop LOOP="TRUE" will play the loop until the user stops it.

If you need more music loops you can always download free royalty-free music loops here.

 

If you find a sound you like somewhere on the web and decide you want to use it on your web page make sure you download the file to your hard drive then upload it to your own server. Do not under any circumstances link directly to the server you found the file on. Hot linking to someone else’s server is considered bandwidth theft and is against the law.

The attribute, “autostart=true,” specifies whether the file should start playing automatically after it loads. If autostart is set to “false,” then the file will load into the sound player utility but the user will have to click on the “play” button of the sound player utility in order to start the playing of the sound file.

The LOOP attribute tells the browser how many times you want the the sound to repeat. If you added LOOP=”10″ to the tag, the sound would play 10 times and then stop LOOP=”TRUE” will play the loop until the user stops it.

If you need more music loops you can always download free royalty-free music loops here.

Reddit Conversation re: Performing Rights Organizations

Articles, PIR News

There’s a very funny and very informative conversation going on regarding performing rights organizations like BMI, ASCAP and in this case PRS going after people singing to themselves at work (?!?!?).

Check it out if you have a moment, it’s pretty enlightening;
this_is_getting_ridiculous_now_recording_industry

This comes as ASCAP loses their battle to charge mobile phone users every time their phone rings calling their ringtones a “public performance”.
Judge: No Royalties for Music Industry Each Time a Ringtone Plays

Continue reading →

10 Ways Businesses Use Twitter / 5 Essential Twitter Apps

Articles

follow me on twitter

Find out how to use Twitter to streamline your business and improve your bottom line including a list of the essential third party twitter apps you need to succeed.


1. use twitter to directly connect with customers

you can use twitter search to look for your industry keywords and connect to people in real-time as they ask about products, prices, etc.

2. use twitter as intranet communication for your employees

so they can keep up with each other throughout the day. much easier than texting, emails or phone calls. Updates could be set to private for security reasons.

3. use twitter for customer service

many companies are letting their customers contact via twitter for questions and help.

4. use twitter for updates and announcements

much quicker and more informal than an email newsletter. Have your customers follow you to see you product/website updates and announcements.

Customers can subscribe via mobile or RSS for instant notification.

5. use twitter to exponentially spread the word

if all of your employees have there own twitter accounts with their own set of followers you can use them to spread the word about a new blog post, a new product, a new company video, etc. Their friends tell more friends who tell their friends and so on.

6. follow your competitor’s twitter accounts

I do this just to keep tabs on them 🙂

7. time management

twitter can be used to keep a detailed record of what you are doing every day. you can set up a separate account to do this.

8. meetings

use twitter as an informal and casual way of arranging a meeting with workmates from wherever you are.

9. twitter groups

There’s a new service that is becoming popular very quickly called twittgroups. I’m not sure how to use this for business just yet but it is worth checking out. Possibly start a twittgroup for your company or industry or product?

http://twittgroups.com/index.php

10. twitter todo list

use twitter to record down what you need to do while you are away from the computer.

5 Titter Apps you can use to implement these strategies

1. Feedalizr

Mac and PC
http://www.feedalizr.com/

a desktop app that streams a variety of feeds straight to desktop. Use this in conjunction friendfeed.com and you will get everything you need streaming across your desktop in real-time.

2. TweetDeck
http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/

TweetDeck is an Adobe Air desktop application that is currently in public beta. It aims to evolve the existing functionality of Twitter by taking an abundance of information i.e twitter feeds, and breaking it down into more manageable bite sized pieces.

3. TwitAlert.com
http://www.TwitAlert.com/

Receive emails alerts for for twitter search results.

4. Twitterfeed
http://www.twitterfeed.com/

Automatically stream any RSS feed into your twitter account. Your blog posts for example.

5. Brightkit
http://brightkit.com/

BrightKit lets you manage multiple Twitter profiles and pre-schedule tweets. Any number of users can manage shared profiles. BrightKit will provide solid tweet metrics right on the dashboard, and loads of additional features are on the way.

follow me on twitter