Spring Cleaning for Musicians

Well, here we are with some time on our hands. Don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about the “V” word that starts with a “C.” Nope, we’re just going to focus on some positives today.

It’s Spring, and that means it’s time for some Spring cleaning! Aw yeah, throw open the windows, clean the nooks and crannies you’ve missed all Winter, go through old boxes, donate some clothes, fix all those annoying little things in your place that you duct taped over.

With that in mind, here’s what you, as a music maker, can do in this time of renewal to set yourself up for success. Who knows what’s going to happen in the next few months, but whatever it is, it’s going to happen fast, and you won’t have time to catch up for a while. So, let’s get organized. It’s Spring Cleaning for Musicians!

Here’s a list to get you started on getting more organized and being prepared for what comes next in this crazy old world.

Storage: I use Dropbox, Google Drive, and Box mostly for file storage, the pro accounts have more than enough room. But even if you start a free account, Google gives you 15GB and Dropbox has a few gigs too. No need to store all of my music in the cloud as that will be the heaviest, but now is a good time to figure out whether your local computer or laptop has enough space, whether you might want to add another hard drive (I prefer Western Digitals for Mac), or whether you want to pay for some premium cloud storage. If it helps you decide, I recently closed a $25k deal on the phone in an airport simply because we were able to deliver all the mixes and lyrics within five minutes by using our catalog storage. If you think you might need to sling more than just a link to a song on Apple Music while on the road, I highly suggest it.

Gear: This is a great time to get your instruments in order. Do this on all of your gear, even that third backup guitar. Change those strings, oil the fretboards, clean the pots with some DeOxit and don’t forget to oil your tuners. Time to switch out those drum heads and make sure all of your hardware is tight. Clean your switches and knobs on your keys and controllers. Do the same with any of your amps or interfaces. Test all of your 1/4-inch cords, and your XLRs and throw away that one that never works but is still in your gig bag! It’s a good time to hunt down all of those picks and extras like slides and capos too, make sure they are all in one place.

Hard Drives: Get your recordings in order. Create a folder for all of your Masters. Make sure to have a separate Bounces folder, Work in Progress folder, a Singles Folder, and an Album Folder. Hunt down all of your projects from DAWs or your iTunes library and make sure you have clean saves and bounces. Also, if you want to play in the licensing world, you’re going to need multiple mixes and formats; this is a good habit to get into now, and lucky for you, you have the time! You need a) a full master mix (the single or album cut) b) a separated vocal mix c) a separated instrumental-only mix. Each of these should be outputted to a separate file: WAV, MP3 128, MP3 320, and AIFF. Now, in the AIFF and MP3s you need to go in and edit the file and track info to add Metadata (genre, sub-genres, feel, keywords, tempo, writers, publishing, lyrics, licensing contact).

Lyrics: As more streamers integrate lyrics into the platforms and distributors like Distro allow it as part of delivery, you want to get your lyrics into a shareable form. This is especially where you want to use folders. You need a clean document for each song/lyric with nothing but the title and the lyrics on it. There are guidelines you can look up for most platforms, but for the most part here’s what you need to know from Apple’s submission policies: “Keep punctuation minimal, although it is most important to follow traditional English grammar rules. However, there should be no periods or commas at the end of any lyric line. Exclamation points, question marks, and quotation marks should be the only end-line punctuation, and should be included as needed. Punctuation, such as commas, may be used mid-line as needed.

Note: No matter how the artist is presenting, do not repeat punctuation to convey emphasis. (For example, “!!!” or “??”) Background vocals should be formatted in parentheses. Parentheses should be used to set off non-main lyrics.

Legal Folder: This might be the hardest one, but also the most important one. This is where you need to store scans of all your split sheets, producer agreements, musician releases, licensing agreements, LLC documents, label licenses, sample requests, copyright registrations, contracts and optins with HFA or Music Reports, SoundScan xls, UPC code registrations, distribution agreements, and master/sync agreements will be placed. If you tour a lot, this is also where your rider, stage plot, and boilerplate live performance agreements should be. You

might also want to place receipts for major musical instrument purchases in here for tax purposes.

Song Catalog: Different from your Song Files, this should be a Sheet or XLS document setup as follows: Song Title, Date Recorded, Artist Name, Running Time, Writers, Writer’s Share, Publishers, Publishers Share, CAE, PRO Registration, Label, Date of Release, ISRC, Part of Album or Single, and UPC. This will help you immensely with SoundExchange and databases like AllMusic.

Song Files: This is a folder where you will take all of those things you did earlier and compile them into one folder. The sub folders should be Singles, Albums (including EPs) and then sub folders for each song. In each of those folders, you will want a 3000x3000 jpg or png of the artwork used for the single or album uploaded. For each song you should have a Music Info Sheet - one document that outlines the tempo, key, running time, co-writers, publishers, Metadata, tags, moods, genres, ISRC code from your PRO, UPC code as a single or part of an album, split sheet received, what formats the song is available in. In that same folder, create a sub folder for each song, you then will put all of the output mixes in there and your lyric sheet.

Boom. You are all set for whatever comes next.

Now, go write that killer song, the world needs it!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR -Michael St. James is the founder and creative director of St. James Media, specializing in music licensing, publishing, production and artist development.

The Pros, Cons, and Future of Artificial Intelligence in Music S ince American Idol star and YouTube sensation Taryn Southern started composing music with AI in 2017, musicians all over the world have begun wondering about the implications of AI and modern technology where music production is concerned. Technology has long been an important part of the music industry, with artists utilising loop pedals and digital production software. But, if modern AI technology can now produce complete songs, is there a risk that human songwriters will become obsolete? Let’s a closer look at the role of artificial intelligence in music.

What AI Means for Music

It’s reported that Taryn Southern, an active VR/AR evangelist and keen sci-fi advocate, first looked to AI to help create music because she lacked knowledge about music theory. Instead of struggling to write the chords she could hear in her mind, she looked to technology for assistance.

The ability to use computer programming to communicate music is not a new one. The idea of the MIDI format (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) was the brainchild of electronic musicians back in 1981. The initial idea was of a ‘Universal Synthesizer Interface’; a program designed to translate musical data between instruments. Over the years MIDI files have developed into the widely used files that musicians and DJs still use today, to manipulate and translate music as required.

It’s this same computerisation of music that has enabled the use of ‘AI’ – or neural network technology – in the creation of music.

How Artificial Intelligence Generates Music

Music generating technology like Amper Music (as was used by Taryn), IBM Watson Beat, and Google Magenta’s NSynth Super, has the ability to read and interpret audio samples or MIDI files to create something new.

For example, a user could tell the software what kind of music they want. They’d input information about a wealth of existing music, and the computer would analyse the data and ‘strategically randomize’ it to produce new pieces of music. The user could then instruct the software to change specific things, thereby teaching it more about the preferred outcome.

This AI technology works using a sort of reinforced learning technique. Once an answer or suggestion has been affirmed, it will remember this and learn from it to produce further pieces of music.

The Role of AI in Music: The Pros and Cons

Using artificial intelligence in the creation of music is perceived by some as a helpful tool and by others as almost ‘the beginning of the end’. asked the computer program to generate music based on her requests in regards to style, and then tweaked it as necessary. It produced a tune, which she then altered to fit with her own lyrics and vocal melodies, editing it as many times as necessary. The end product was therefore a collaborative effort, rather than a piece entirely produced by technology.

Taryn’s story has a distinctly positive feel that highlights the advantages of using AI in music production. For some, this kind of software can be an extremely helpful tool. It can serve as a source of inspiration, and as an ideal jumping off point should a musician be hit with writer’s block.

Cons of AI

Conversely to seeing AI as a tool, some musicians consider AI to be hugely detrimental to the music scene. At the moment, because such technology is still so young, the music it’s producing is not necessarily conducive to what we want to hear. In short, it’s not of great quality. This means it can still take hours to develop a ‘good’ song, by which time many would argue that the user may as well have invested the time in creating something themselves. Those who have produced their own music, or even fans of authentic, artistic music, will also argue that a computer could never emulate the work (and human touch) of a true musician.

Music has been an integral part of the story of humankind for millennia; in fact, the first known piece of music is believed to be around 3,400 years old. Songs have long been used as a means of communicating messages and folk stories, encompassing everything from societal ethics to world history.

Because many people see music as such an innately human expression, it is often considered as too precious to impart onto technology. The thought of a computer generating a ‘random’ piece of music that hasn’t been painstakingly created by an artist is almost seen as sacrilegious.

The Legalities

More food for thought is the implications of the law; i.e. who owns the music that the software produces? At the time of writing there are no set rules surrounding this, and in the case of Taryn Southern, it’s reported that the ownership of each piece of music has been determined individually.

There’s also the issue of copyright. Some users of AI music production software will feed the computer existing songs within their instructions, to serve as parameters for the software to use to create a new piece of music. While it won’t produce an exact copy, it could be argued that a significant proportion of the generated song is already owned by another artist or production company.

What does AI mean for the future of music?

Regardless of which side of the argument you fall on, it seems likely that the use of AI in music production will only become more frequent. Our modern world is preoccupied with technological advancements. With Tesla’s self-driving car on the horizon, and the development of AI machines that can beat professionals in games like chess, it seems inevitable that AI and machine learning will increasingly seep into just about all aspects of modern life.

Instead of shying away from the idea of this Black Mirror-esque future, the best approach to take is one of optimism and curiosity. While there are always bound to be diehard old school musicians who refuse to use tech, as there are readers who still refuse the Kindle, music producers should consider AI as something to be embraced.

AI music software is still very much in its infancy, but with more investors interested in the development and outcomes of such technology, and considering the rapid growth rate of other tech advances in recent years, it’s only a matter of time until AI-produced music is seen as the new norm.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The article was produced by Laura Apps on behalf of The DJ Shop, one of the UK’s longestrunning DJ equipment retailers. Learn more at https://www.thedjshop.co.uk