Happy Birthday by thingstocome

In three years I’ve made 937 posts. There were 40,674 visits in the last 30 days that came from 147 countries. Happy 3rd Birthday Wire to the Ear! As a birthday gift please tell all your friends who love making music that there is a blog that loves them back.

photo credit: Cle0patra

If you remember not too long ago I mentioned I was recently endorsed by Propellerhead Software. An old friend of mine James Bernard who is a Product Specialist at the company helped set me up. Last week he started his own blog on the Propellerhead website. I think this is a great idea as the blog format is my favorite way to get info these days and James has a huge amount of pro-audio knowledge to share.

“Welcome to my first entry to my new blog page on the Propellerhead Website! I plan on using this page to share any tips or tricks I have picked up, insight on some of my travels around the world doing Producers Conference events and also share some useful files or links I might come across. Please let me know what you think of it and feel free to request any specific tips/tricks you would like to see.” – James Bernard, www.propellerheads.se

His first posts are great. He kicks it off by showing us his own project studio which includes a FM3 Buddha Machine, modified Roland TR-606, Auralex Treatment and of course Reason. Next, he creates a few songs using one sound. Yes. One single sound. In fact he uses just one single TR-909 kick drum. We all joke and think about doing things like this but James tackles the task and lives to tell about it.

There is more than just show and tell on his new blog which I believe is titled “.plan”.  You get free goodies such as Refills and Regroove Templates.

Check out James’s new blog: click here

One year ago today I installed WordPress and starting typing this blog. My main motivation was to give my friends a break from the relentless emails and instant messages I was invading them with. I couldn’t stop showing them new audio gear and software I thought was cool. I figured if I started my own blog they could come and visit if they so cared and I would also find new people to have conversations with. I am happy to report I have gained quite a lot of new friends and my old buds are reading the blog too.

Another motivation was to have a place for common questions I was being asked repeatedly. Today if someone asks me a question I have a post I can point them to. Getting an unwanted distored sound from your DAW? Go here: keep-your-channel-faders-low… You don’t know how to bring in external hardware into Ableton Live? Go here: use-the-ableton-live-external… By the way if you have a question you want me to try an answer send me an email: oliverchesler@wiretotheear.com

Of course as a professional musician having a blog is a must. I’ve been using Wire to the Ear to share my remixes and new releases. Getting unbiased feedback from strangers should be a priority for any artist. Your friends and family are always going to tell you your music is good.

My goal is to continue to post a balance of original content mixed with the best stuff I find along my online travels. I’ve had a blast visiting Jomox and doing interviews with people like Dan McPharlin so expect more material like that. I really want to give my fingers a break and get in front of the video camera and do some video posts or even a fancy show. So far the test video posts I did were too geeky to show the world. Eventually I will figure out a way to produce something that I am happy with.

If you want to help support Wire to the Ear all you have to do is go tell your friends to read it! Remember you can also subscribe to the RSS feed by: clicking here

Thanks for reading!

photo credit: jpc101

We all love blogs because they give us a quick fix of hot info. A little more than a blurb a little less than an article. A break from the sequencer and comping vocals. Yes we all take too many of these breaks but hey it’s fun and sometimes we actually learn something! Do you know about music blogs? MP3 blogs? Blog labels? Honestly I’ve just been turned on to these in a big way. This is where the hip cool people hang (I think?!). I’m not going to delve into copyright stuff here because it doesn’t take too much time viewing any of these blogs to realize you can steal the music off the sites easily. If you want to get into that discussion head over to my post titled “What if music should be free?“.

A great example of a hip music blog is missingtoof.com. Bright graphics, flyer’s for events where everyone is on cocaine and DJ mixes compressed so loudly your teeth hurt are the norm here. At first the lingo will make you wonder if it’s an English speaking website. Despite that, keep reading because these are music lovers sharing with you! I’ve discovered more new music here than searching Amazon.com by a long shot. I also now have a never ending supply of said DJ mixes for the gym.

Want something more indie? Stereogum.com is the place. It’s basically the Austin, Texas, Seattle and any other cool rock town music scene in blog form. The writers here always let you into the story with a bit of history on the band. Forget the pretentious Pitchfork review site and crew and spend more time at Stereogum.

Want a user driven music blog Digg style? Then run to Fairtilizer.com where I recently discovered the Swedish band Six Figure Transatlantic and their incredible cover version of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. I hope Fairtilizer keeps growing because with a voting system good music gets noticed without big marketing budgets. This is the way it should be no?

Here’s a few more I know of:

• bigstereo.net
• discobelle.net
• blog.electriksuicide.com
• getweird.wordpress.com
• drdrt.com

There is a master music blog site that grabs audio from all over the music blogoshpere called The Hype Machine. It’s a bit more aggregator and impersonal but if new audio is all that matters to you then its a must view.

Lastly, I would like to point out that some of these blogs are highly influential and as a musician it could do you a lot of good to have your music on them. Apparently many musicians are already fighting to get noticed by bloggers. Check out this article at Puddlegum.com titled “Ten ways to get music bloggers to notice your email”.

Do you know any cool music blogs not listed here?

photo credit: gtmcknight