Sindustry

Alot of you may know I play a little bit of guitar, but when I need some quality lead work or fingerpicking on my recordings, I turn to my good friend, Roger “Razor Ray” Singleton. He is a helluva guitar player in all regards and can be heard on several of my tracks including “Severed” (all lead and harmony guitars), “My Demise” (lead guitars), and “If I Die Before I Wake” (acoustic guitar). We also shot and mixed this video in my studio.

Roger is currently in a heated guitar player contest over at gtridol.com and needs your vote. Please take a minute to goto GUITAR IDOL to check him out and vote for him there. If you’ve enjoyed any of my fore-mentioned tracks, then help support what we do by taking a minute and voting for him! We appreciate it!

by George Howard

The Sine Qua Non
This article addresses specifics that you as a musician or participant in the music business must face head on. Put simply, if you don’t address these issues, you have little to no chance of succeeding in the music business. These specific details can be referred to as the sine qua non of the music business. That roughly translates to, “without this there is nothing.”

There are two specific details that you must address immediately. The first is a concept that Jim Collins outlines in his fantastic book, Good to Great. It’s called the Hedgehog Concept. The second is an internal factor. Specifically, it’s the belief that your own music, or the music of the artist on whose behalf you work, must be heard. I’ll explain both in some depth, beginning with the latter. (more…)

by Regis Behe

It used to be a musician’s goals were simple: A record contract, a national tour and, if the stars magically aligned, “the thrill that you get when you get your picture /on the cover of the Rolling Stone,” according to the song by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show.

That was long before the Internet, P2P file-sharing and a sharp decline in the sales of albums created a new paradigm for musicians. No longer is it enough to merely release music and tour.

“It’s definitely an evolution,” says Pittsburgh-based musician Bill Deasy. “I’m hard up against the economic realities. I can’t really sustain myself on the old model of recording and touring.”

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