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Behind The Board – The Winery & The Summer Wind

This Sunday, April 7th,  we began our working relationship with Maxim Records in NY. Stefano and Liz put together a world-class event at an old church converted into a restaurant/wine bar/music venue known as the Winery At Saint George. With a surprisingly decent sized stage and really warm acoustics, this was a fantastic setting for Maxim Records to show off some of their talents, which included Claire Walsh, Grace Doty, and Sarina Santore. It was quite a setting for a rock concert. A battle of contrasts if you will.

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The room was relatively easy to dial in for us. The only issue was the rear alcove. Setting the drums up there made an amazing sound chamber for a heavy hitting drummer. The warmth of the room really worked for the power singers like Sarina. Claire Walsh was absolutely fun. Hopefully Yorktown and the surrounding areas really support this great venue for years to come. The next event for Maxim will be June 30th. We will post details later on our calendar.

 

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The Summer schedule for the production staff is again really strong! Working with NEXT Music this summer is going to be amazing with Wild Adriatic in June, Jessica Lynn in July, and the return of The Matt O’Ree Band in August to help celebrate a years  worth of shows at Captain Lawrence Brewery. We also have rumblings of some great stuff in September! (will let details out as they become official).  First we have to get through our spring schedule. NEXT next week will be Glint at Captain Lawrence. And don’t for get the incredible The Attic Ends will return to NEXT in May to celebrate the release of their new album. Listen to the NEXT podcast to keep up with these bands and others you may not have known were your favorite yet!

NEXT - Glint _ Captain Lawrence

We still have plenty of room on our schedule for your Corporate events, Weddings, Parties, and speaking engagements. Photo, DJ, MC, Video, Music or what ever your production needs, just contact us through the contact page and we’ll get right back to you with a free quote.

 

http://youtu.be/xs15l8DVy5E

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Goodbye 2012, 2013 – A New Year of Music And Production

Happy New Year to you all. Welcome to 2013. We’re very excited for this new year and have been preparing for a bigger year. We also want to thank all our staff, friends, and partners for an amazing 2012! Special thanks go to Focus In Digital for all the great photography work. And a special photography mention goes to Aaron Kershaw of Studio On Main in New Rochelle for supplying some amazing artistry!

Our Wedding crew ended the year with some exceptional receptions. Hurricane Sandy threw a curve ball at one reception. We got that ironed out and the music was pumping afterwards. It’s always fun to see one of our DJs getting people involved and moving with in a reception party. The performance production side has been continuing to upgrade the systems we use for live music. November/December saw a series of new upgrades to our concert system and monitor system. If you’ve been to the NEXT Music Charity Concert Series in November/December you would have noticed a bit of change in the subwoofer system. The Stationary Set and Deadbeat Darling really enjoyed the improved monitors systems. We have always gotten great feedback from the bands about our monitor systems but it is important to us to continue to improve and expand the systems we use to make the band’s performance easier. The better the stage sounds to them, the better they’ll perform for you! This year we worked with some amazing bands including The Attic Ends, The Modern Electric, My Pet Dragon, Black Taxi, Fifth Nation and others.

The promotions side did some great things through 2012, especially the Matt O’Ree Band double-header in Stamford, CT. A night of acoustic blues on Wednesday, then a full throttle performance on Thursday in front of thousands of people attending Stamford, CT’s Alive at Five Concert Series opening for classic rock’s Foreigner. This was an exceptional part of the year! We especially enjoyed watching the younger crowd really getting into the band. We will have more shows coming into the area around spring 2013 with fun being a priority. Info will be posted here soon.

Eric Safka of The Matt O'Ree Band signs an autograph for a new young fan.
Eric Safka of The Matt O’Ree Band signs an autograph for a new young fan.

The last 6 months of 2012 saw a major change to the NEXT Charity Concert Series which we have enjoyed working with for so long now. A move that added to the fun of the show and the challenge of the production! The venue changed to the Captain Lawrence Brewery in Elmsford, NY. Performances are held inside the brewery in a large space, with exceptional craft beers and food. The sound is big! The dancing is big! If you haven’t made it out yet to one of these shows make it part of your 2013 plans. 20120825-171810.jpg Chris Bro of allthingsnext.com and the NEXT Music Radio Show/Podcast deserves a lot of praise for also constantly trying to improve his concert series and getting new music to the people of Westchester and Fairfield Counties. After all, this is an award-winning concert series and for obvious reasons! He has raised thousands of dollars for various charities. He has brought great live music to people throughout the area. He has improved people’s lives simply by the joy and love of music. We look forward to continuing to work with Chris and the NEXT Music crew through an exciting 2013.

So now we move into 2013. We have a series of goals to meet. The main goal is to improve the sound of life around you! We will make your weddings and parties more fun, your speeches and seminars more effective, and your concerts more energetic and moving! There is already a series of great performances scheduled starting with New York City’s greatest band Black Taxi on January 24th at Captain Lawrence Brewery. Our current small format (100-250 people) and medium format (250-500) systems will continue to be upgraded while we do have plans in place to build a newer larger format system that will match the sound clarity and dynamics we look for. Keep an eye on our blogs for more news about 2013!

Remember, music needs to be experienced. Live music is the only way to experience it. Make a resolution this year to get out and see more live music and new bands.

Be Effective this year! Hire us and be heard!

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Sound Advice – An Open Letter to Bands Pt II

Today the music scene is awful for young original musicians. The music industry has failed to survive the internet thus far. The record label behemoths have fallen. Popular commercial radio is consolidating to very few stations and formats in the big cities. Clubs would rather hire DJ’s and some cover bands than the original bands. Potential fans attentions have moved away from the new musicians coming up, and the DJ is the new “Rock Star”.  Bands today must work harder, for far less money for a long time building up a following that will raise their value to potential venues. Fortunately there is the tools of social networking out to help you do this. If used properly and consistently, a band can still build up a huge following.

A proper social marketing program for any band should include Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and Google+. They’re all free. They all have millions of users, meaning if used right, millions of potential viewers. Bands also should have a Sonic Bids, Reverb Nation, MySpace and last but not least their own web page. Your own web page will be your hub. All these social media pages will center around this webpage. It should also contain your “Press Kit”. Direct them to your page by putting out content that is on your page, but linked out to the social media world. For example, host a video of one of your songs on your web page. Post a link on your Facebook page with a preview and statement saying check out our latest performance (or similar). Viewers of your page will then see this on their news feeds, click on the link, and be taken to your page to listen to the music.

You must post at regular intervals. Not every 5 minutes, but hourly would help. The more you post, the more you show up in news feeds. The trick is to find the interval between presence and annoyance that makes sure people see you out there without hating you! Using insights on your Facebook page will help you decide the right interval by seeing when people are most likely to see your posts.

Content is vital! What  all these sites do is help you get content out to people. What is content? Content is pictures, audio clips, video clips, and little fun blurbs about the band. All of this must be of the best quality you can afford to get, so spend some money and invest in yourselves! If you’re going to put out lousy videos with awful audio, you’re going to give people a bad impression. BNK Productions is one of many companies that are able to help you with this. Load your pages with 3 or 4 pieces of music/videos to be rotated in a regular rotation. Post on your Facebook and Twitter pages links to the new content. Companies like ourselves come out and record a multi-track audio recording of your show, a bunch of photos, and some videos that can be mixed with the audio recordings. Now you have new content for your pages.  as you write new songs, or refresh old ones you can get more done.

Again, the quality of the content is vital. Fuzzy audio, pixelated video, and blurry pictures are absolutely annoying. You will lead people away with that kind of content. If you want to be taken seriously you need to appear serious! I’m sure most people who read this have gone on to Youtube to see a video only to find it was from someone’s phone and you can’t see or hear anything! It’s annoying. Do it enough and people will avoid your band and that will defeat all this effort!

For a great example of using the social net to market yourself, find yourself on Daria Musk’s Facebook , Google + and webpage . She is a perfect study of how to market yourself in the Social Music biz…and could be considered the music queen of the Google Hangouts.

For information on bringing us out to build your portfolio of content email us using the contact link above. We offer all kinds of marketing/promotional help for bands.

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Behind The Board – Tales From The Other Side of The Board

So, (some of you may be familiar with this from my live tweeting) as I was attending a marketing seminar last month, I had the chance to prove our point about “Be Effective – Be Heard”. The house provided a little self powered, 2 speaker sound system for the speaker to use. He also used a screen and projector to show videos from his laptop computer. Said laptop was also connected to the little sound system. Add in a wireless lavalier microphone of questionable quality and no experience with the equipment and you have a recipe for disaster. (Side note, this was a seminar about using today’s technology to market your company.) So the seminar starts with a video. The video showed up on the screen but all you heard was crackling noise  as the wire he was given to connect his laptop to the sound system was a bad one. When he got it to work, there was so much bass you couldn’t understand. I actually looked outside for a thunderstorm first (legitimate thought as it was storming that day). Then he began to speak. This guy was a large man with an average male low voice. Here, he sounded like an AM radio (for the kids, that was what they listened to before streaming internet and podcasts). Static, no depth, hissing, all the things we pick on the fast food drive through for. Once in a while the mic would cut out. As a sound tech, I was out of my mind. But, let me be objective and look at what others reaction might be. Looking around the hall, I could see only about 40% of the attendees actually looking ahead. Afterwards, I asked a couple people the straight question “what did you think?” The first three told me they couldn’t hear it. Moral of this story. How can you get your point across, if you’re not getting your point out to their ears? People are pre-programmed to block out bad sounds. Extraneous noises get ignored by most people. Sound Techs on the other hand get annoyed by it. HAHA. If you sound badly, people will begin to tune you out.45 mins of listening to hiss is not most people’s idea of effective. Let alone the embarrassment of all your equipment failures. You’re supposed to be a professional?

A proper sound technician would have checked all the equipment prior to embarrassment. They would set up better equipment under a proper budget. They would have tested your sound prior to show and set the tone reaction between you and the microphone properly to give you clarity with the right amount of strength. 

If you’re doing a speaking engagement anytime soon and you’re in our area, give us a call. It’s a lot more expensive to fail to reach people than it is to hire us to set you up right. Or in any other area, look up “sound technician” or “sound engineer” in Google for that area. It’s really not that expensive in the long run, and you look more professional than this guy who was less effective than the girl at the Wendy’s drive thru I went to earlier for lunch!