Alright, is your band the first thing that comes up in the search results? Is it on the first page?

Anyone looking for info about your band, be it a fan or a promoter, will probably start with a Google search (and if you’re lucky, they might even spell your band’s name correctly). If they can’t find you easily in the search results, you’re missing out on new fans and gigs.

If your band isn’t coming up, what can you do?

No Results – If Google can’t find anything on your band, you’re actually not in bad shape. All you need to do is put more stuff online and Google will index it. Start with a website, MySpace page, Last.fm profile, Sonicbids EPK etc. and you should start to see some better results.

Confused with someone or something else – If searching for your band brings up something else with the same name what you’ll need to do is become more popular online and generate more content than the thing you’re competing with. For example, Franz Ferdinand the band has much more content online than the Archduke they named themselves after.

Another band with the same name – This might only be a problem if the other band is more popular online than you. If the other band isn’t active anymore they’ll be easier to surpass on Google, although if they were using the name before you and have it trademarked, it could lead to some legal trouble.   If the other band is still gigging and putting out records, a final solution will require a bit more diplomacy and a trademark attorney. I’m not going to get into trademark law here, but if you’re interested in learning more Donald Passman’s ‘All you need to know about the Music Business‘ has a good chapter on trademarks and band names.

Simpler Solutions
If you’d rather not get involved with trademark disputes at this point, there are two simple ways to deal with having a band name that’s confused with other things.

1) Change your name – Changing your name to avoid confusion is nothing new. 50 years before Google was invented Ray Robinson changed his name to Ray Charles because of boxer Sugar Ray Robinson saying in his autobiography “I figured two Ray Robinsons might be one too many.”

If you’re still a relatively new band or you think that your name is holding you back, simply pick a new name. Just make sure to do some research on Google beforehand so you know that no one else is using it.

2) Don’t worry about it – Truth be told, I was in a Frank Zappa cover band called The Brain Police and there were 2 other bands that went by the same name. A 60’s psychedelic band was using the name before anyone in my band was even born and a “stoner rock band” from Iceland was also going by The Brain Police. Being a cover band, we weren’t trying to sell records so it wasn’t a big deal that someone else came up in iTunes and fellow Zappa fans had no trouble finding our shows since we’d circumvent Google confusion by posting info about our band and our shows on Zappa message boards reaching out to potential fans instead of waiting for them to come to us.

As long as you’re aware of where your band ranks in Google you can take some steps to make it easier for people to find you.  If you’ve got any tips on making your band stand out in search results share them in the comments.

One of the most interesting parts so far is reading about how Stax songwriters analyzed Motown songs and then used the formulas they discovered to churn out their own hits.

“David Porter figured out the lyric structure for ‘Don’t Look Back‘ and it applied to a number of Motown hits.  He deduced that they all had an opening that laid out the scenario, followed that with a bit of action, and then some sort of denouncement.  All were in first person, and none of them ended with complete resolution.” (page 91)

The first song that David Porter wrote using that formula (with Isaac Hayes as a writing partner) was ‘Hold on I’m Coming‘.

Whats your take on the Motown formula?

This article was written by Ben Priceat Sweetwater. We’ve publishing an entire series of articles in the Lounge from Sweetwater. Keep your eyes peeled and check back often! And now for some motivation.

Equalization – or EQ, if you prefer – was created in the early days of telephony to counteract the frequency loss in the signal when it was sent over long transmission lines. Broadcast and studio engineers adopted the technology as a creative tool for adjusting the timbre or sound quality in reproduced sounds.

There are tons of resources out there for understanding the technical side of EQ, so I won’t get into that side of it here. In this article, I want to get into a more esoteric topic: microphone placement as EQ. Yes, before you reach for the EQ in your desk, rack, or DAW, try moving that microphone around. The relationship of mic placement to sound source offers unlimited variances in tonality and frequency response.

Take, for example, miking a guitar amp. Grab your trusty mic (Shure SM57, Royer R-121, Sennheiser MD 441, Beyerdynamic M160, et al.) and put it right up on the center of the dust cap. Pretty bright sound. Move it out toward the edge of the cone, half inch by half inch; you’ll find the sound gets progressively less bright, or warmer, or duller – choose whatever term works for you. Now take that mic and place it at a 45-degree angle and do the same thing – a parallel universe of different tones. With both techniques, pull the mic farther away from the amp in small steps and soon you’ll have a whole 3-dimensional matrix of tones at your disposal. Don’t forget that in addition to mic placement as EQ, different microphones act as their own EQ as well. Each mic, and sometimes even different versions of the same mic, will have its own inherent sound. If the midrange response of the beloved SM57 is a little too uneven for you, try a mic with a smoother midrange.

There are so many options here, you might feel like you’re lost as to what sound to use. Don’t fret – choose the sound that works for the song. It doesn’t matter how amazing the tone is when it’s soloed, it matters how the part sounds in context with the rest of the mix. One thing that confounded me in my early days of engineering was how all the huge sounds I worked so hard on sounded awful in the mix. The problem is, when all the sounds are big and grandiose there is no room for everything to fit in. Remember, when we’re mixing a song, we’re working within an artifice. No group of musicians (acoustic or electronic) naturally come out of a pair of speakers, so we use dynamics processing and time-based effects to shape the music and create a cohesive presentation. It’s basically suspension of belief on the part of the listener. Small and big, close and far, bright and dull, left and right, stereo and mono, and on and on.

What I’ve learned is that not every sound in a mix can, or should, be huge. Each sound should integrate into the song as the artist and producer intend. Often small sounds work better in conjunction with big sounds. It’s really about that contrast – we need context to understand what we’re hearing. And this is another point; to my ears, balancing the instruments of a mix is almost an extension of EQ. It’s about relationships within the song. If the bass is playing the appropriate part with the right sound, you probably don’t need a ton of low end in the guitars, which will sound bigger in the mix because the bass will act as an extension at the bottom end. The more you understand which sounds work well in a mix, the better you’ll get at choosing the appropriate mic placement at the beginning.

In my early days as an engineer I found myself EQing sounds with some pretty heavy-handed boosts and cuts. As I’ve gained experience over the years, I find myself EQing less and less. Lately, generally speaking, when I grab an EQ I’m doing only a few dBs of boost or cut and often with a fairly broad bandwidth. Sure, sometimes you need that notch EQ to eliminate particular nastiness in a sound. When I made the jump from a primarily analog-based setup to a digital one I found myself using a lot of narrow-bandwidth EQs and the resulting sound was much more uneven and pinched. At the time I felt like the precision was exactly what I was looking for but I soon realized I was quite unhappy with the results. When you look at EQ curves from the classic EQs out there (Pultec, Neve, Trident, etc.) you’ll see fairly broad bandwidth curves and often you’ll see fixed frequency points. These classic EQs were designed so well that a combination of mic placement and those fixed frequencies really was enough to get you where you needed to be in terms of tone. With all the options and programmability we have with digital EQs, try some broad strokes to color the sound as opposed to very narrow EQ curves. You may find the results to be more musical – and musicality is what we’re after, right?

Of course, sometimes a sound “happens” through EQing and you should not be afraid to crank up (or down!) the EQ when necessary. One thing I try to keep in mind is the need to find the right sound for the project or song at hand. Doing this leads to unique sounds as opposed to making sounds that are just like some other record. Boring.

There are rules, but there are no rules. If it sounds good, it is good, at least until you’ve trained and developed your ear further and you hear better, meaning more critically. Not quite the masterful summation I had in mind, but I don’t really have any trite, cute ways to wrap this up. So disengage your EQ and go move that mic around. Let me know what you think.

Ben Price has over ten years experience as a professional engineer, producer, studio manager, and musician. He’s currently signed to a small record label and working in sales at Sweetwater in addition to working as a freelance recording engineer. He can be reached at 1-800-222-4700 ext. 1329 or ben_price@sweetwater.com.

Niche Music Blogs – Although Pitchfork is the first music maven blog that comes to mind, I think true mavens will be reading (or in many cases writing) super niche blogs dedicated to a specific genre or scene. A good example is Natalie, a blog that covers j-pop news from Tokyo.

P2P Communities – A number of music oriented file-sharing communities have been popping up and in many cases shut down (like the late, great OiNK.cd). While you might not sell many albums to these mavens, the users of P2P music sites are undoubtedly passionate about finding new music and sharing it with others.  In fact according to this article the most downloaded album on the underground p2p music site What.cd is a compilation of songs from bands that posted their own albums to the site.

Music Discovery Services – Services like Pandora, Last.FM, iLike, and now iTunes Genius all go about recommending new music you might like based on what you already listen to.  I’m not sure how many true mavens like the idea of an algorithm finding new music for them, but regardless having your music is on file with these recommendation services can only be a good thing.

MySpace – I’m not sure how many music mavens keep an active profile on MySpace, but regardless, MySpace is often the first place anyone will go to hear a new band.

I’m sure I’m missing quite a few places mavens go to discover new music. If you’ve got any to add, post them in the comments.

This article was written by Kavit Haria, founder and consultant at Inner Rhythm in London.

The independent music world is really rocking right now, and if you’re going to take advantage of it and play the game the right way, you’ll need to operate for maximum results.

•   As independent musicians, we have tons of work to be doing, from making and performing music, to doing the promotion, booking the gigs, getting together a band, the accounting, networking and press.  It’s a lot of stuff. Most musicians see no way round it, but there is. Here are a few things to understand:

First, understand that you are not merely playing towards a music career; you are running a music business – a complete system that is in charge of taking your music and getting it into the iPods and households of as many people as possible. Second, understand that you are the music business leader and owner. You are the music entrepreneur, or as I like to say, the musopreneur. You are the one who works on the ideas, has the big vision and assembles a team to achieve it. Thirdly, for your music business and ultimately music career to succeed, you will have to have a framework for it, which I’d like to spend the rest of this article discussing.

•   When writing my latest e-book entitled How To Design A Winning & Profitable Music Business, I asked myself an important question: What are the important skills and practices required to create a winning and profitable music business apart from good music?

The answer I realized, rests in three crucial things: Being a good leader of your ship, having a well-designed and communicated strategy, and having a good marketing plan that can be executed to promote your music in a structured way.

The word ‘winning’ in the question is important in this context. An average strategy, when executed, gets you average or mediocre results and may not be a fair reflection of your true talent. A winning strategy plan, on the other hand, transforms your current situation into larger success by developing the right tools, people, techniques and street teams to share your art with the wider world.

As musicians, we are explorers. As explorers, our job is to explore the depths of our hearts and souls to share the music that feels most at home to us. Our job is to experiment, and experimentation takes time before it is successful. Your music business needs a framework for achieving results that can be built upon to achieve your specific goals in your specific music genre. When you start to put together a puzzle, you would start by finding the corners and the edge pieces before building and assembling the inner pieces. It is the same with putting together the framework for your music business.

•   Apart from understanding the basic ideas of putting together a business plan for your music, you should also understand the “Four Step Model of Artist-Fan Relationships” on which the success of your career is based:

1. ATTRACT – Attract the fans through your promotion, playing gigs, getting referrals, building a mailing list.

2. COMMUNICATE – Communicate with your subscribers/fans using tools like newsletters, bulletins, forums, blogs, etc

3. BUILD TRUST – Build strong loyal relationships with your fans through regular contact, interaction, and two-way conversations.

4. MONETIZE –After 1, 2, and 3, turning the fan into a buyer of your CD, downloads, gigs, merchandise, teaching, etc. becomes much easier.

Kavit Haria is founder and consultant at Inner Rhythm, a London-based music business consultancy providing workshops, courses and consulting to musicians looking to develop better strategies, marketing and music business success. On Sept. 9, 2008, he released his latest e-book entitled, “How To Design A Winning & Profitable Music Business” absolutely free. You can download your copy at http://www.innerrhythm.org/ebook/

This article was written by Simon Picazo at Sweetwater.  Over the next few months, we’re publishing an entire series of articles in the Lounge from Sweetwater along with contests and prizes. Keep your eyes peeled and check back often!

So how do you get to where you want to go with your music from where you are right now? Here are 10 key things to keep in mind.