How do you become band friendly? Well there are a multitude of ways, but let me give you my top picks.

Last Updated (Sunday, 15 January 2012 00:36)

 

Here we go again, where did the year go?

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Public liability insurance cover is due for renewal again for all those who go through Duck for cover. For those of you who need to get some, just go to www.duckforcover.com.au and sign up. They even offer personal injury cover to help you keep some money coming in if you are injured while performing. Including travelling to and from your gigs.

These days it's hard to get work without this cover, and it's less than $200 a year. Well worth it to keep to show on the road.

It's worth pointing out that they are also offering equipment cover this year as a bundle option. You get 2 choices. $99 for $5000 and $198 for $10,000.

Ed..

Last Updated (Friday, 05 August 2011 16:02)

 

 If you have the benefit of running a small home studio, this tip might come in very handy for you.

I have a reasonable sized room under my house along with a control room. This setup works extremely well when recording other people. However, when I'm doing my own stuff, it got extremely irritating to be running back and forth between session and control room every time I needed to stop the recording and start again.

So whats the best solution when you don't have a extra pair of hands to help you? A laptop can be your best friend. All you need to do is connect your laptop wirelessly to your DAW and use remote desktop to control the main DAW. If your DAW is not already on a network, just get yourself a wireless router and connect it to your DAW and away you go.

Once up and running, you can simply sit in your session room and stop and start your DAW as often as you like. This will save you untold time and frustration.

Happy recording

Ed.....

Last Updated (Friday, 24 June 2011 06:56)

 

It's that time of year again. Time to get your Live Performance Returns up to date if you want to collect any royalties this year for your music.

Royalties? What do you mean royalties? Ahhhh, I guessed as much. How many of you musicians out there are playing your original music at your gigs? Not all of you may realize that you are able to claim royalties for playing your own music.

How can this be I hear you ask. Well first of all, you need to become a writer member of APRA. Then you register your original music with them, which is a good idea even if you dont play them live. Then it's a matter of simply completeing the LPR's or Live Performance Returns on the APRA website.

It's a simple process of logging all the gigs you played throughout the year and also which original songs you played and how many times you played them. It's a handy idea to keep a diary or something on your computer for keeping track of this stuff through the year.

Then once your LPR has been lodged, the nice people at APRA will pay you royalties for your perfomances. No they are not some incredibly generous fairies that live in wonderland and love to give out free money.

The way it works is this. The venues at wich you perfom in must pay a license fee to APRA each year that gives them permission to play copyrighted material. That includes your songs. APRA collects fees from any where that plays music whether its live of recorded. At the end of the year they do their calculations and then distribute those royalties between its members based on your LPR.

So what are you waiting for? Get over to the APRA website and learn more about what they can do for you as an Australian musican. 

 
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Two members of Brisbane band Flannelette were killed in an horrific road smash in Queensland in the early hours of Saturday morning 28/05/2011).

They were bass player Mick Fisher and Guitarist Tyler Gunn. A 33-year old female was also killed.

Lead singer Matt Campbell was the sole survivor of the crash. He is currently recovering in a Queensland hospital.

The crash occurred at around 2.45am Saturday morning when a semi-trailer ploughed into the back to the band's van between the Gold Coast and Brisbane.

Flannelette had played a gig early that evening as part of Loud Fest at the Beenleigh Tavern in which they had won the semi-final.

The driver of the semi trailer was a 32-year old man from Casino.

Flannelette’s van was experiencing engine trouble when Campbell attempted to pull over to the side of the road and was struck by the truck.

The Back Stage News would like to pay tribute to lives lost too soon. May the music live on.

Ed...

Last Updated (Friday, 12 August 2011 11:06)

 
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