How to Create a Sample Reel to Promote Your Studio Business - Sony iPod/iPhone Dock Speaker System

How to Create a Sample Reel to Promote Your Studio Business


Hey, what's up guys? David Glenn for davidglennrecording.com,
theproaudiofiles.com, and my new site, themixacademy.com.
Today, I want to talk to you about business,
and hopefully a strategy that will help you
to grow your business. If you're doing this
professionally or you're doing it on the side
to make some extra money, if you're a hobbyist
and you would like to transition into maybe
finding some clients that are willing to pay
you, this could be a huge step in the right
direction for you. This works for me, I swear
by it, I tell everybody about it that I can
to try to help as many people as possible,
and I've written an article about it.
I've got that pulled up on the screen over
at theproaudiofiles.com on Grow Your Studio
Business, it's called “How to Attract New
Clients to Your Studio,” I would encourage
you to go read this, but I want to scroll
down. The part that I'm going to talk about
today and show you in Pro Tools is how I share
my work and I create an mp3 of my latest samples.
I do this about every quarter throughout the
year. Every couple of months, I'm going to
pull open a Pro Tools session, I'm going to
drag in my latest samples and latest mixes,
the work that I've done, and I'm going to
kind of balance the levels, do a quick little
mastering session, fade them in and out. If
you guys have seen those infomercials on TV
where they're promoting an album, you've got
the credits that kind of scroll throughout
the screen. That's exactly what I'm creating
is the audio from that.
I actually did one recently where â€" if you
go to themixacademy.com, you can check this
out. I have a video, and if you click that
video, I prepared a sample for promoting the
site exactly the same way that I'm telling
you in this article how to prepare it.
So go check that out, themixacademy.com. Cool
stuff there. A little shameless plug.
Well, this is that session. In Pro Tools,
I would go and I would drag songs in so that
they each have their own track. You'll see
that there's some processing on some of these
tracks. One track I just did some processing
because as I listened to it, I felt like it
was a little muddy, so I threw the VMR on
there. A little shout out for the Slate plug
that was just released.
You can see I've just faded in and out of
multiple samples. This one's a little bit
longer because it's for that video. I recommend
keeping your sample reel to about 4 or 5 songs
and be genre specific.
So if you want to gain a bunch of hip hop
work, then throw your hip hop samples in,
and go find hip hop artists. If you're working
to find maybe some country artists, by all
means, take just the country samples. I work
a lot in the Gospel and CCM world, and there's
a lot of cross genre work going on, so one
artist in the Pop/Hip Hop/R&B world, they
may also have some folk stuff, so for me,
I take those samples and I market to that
niche.
You want to be specific on who you're trying
to reach. You want to pull those samples in,
fade them in and out of each other. What I
was trying to say there was you want to keep
it to about 30-45 seconds, so don't be afraid
to fade in and tease them for 5 seconds on
one song, fade it out, maybe 5 or 6 of the
next, 10 seconds of the next. Try to keep
it short and sweet, because people don't have
a lot of time, and our attention spans are
a lot less than what we give ourselves credit
for, so you want to really capture them with
your most impactful stuff first. Don't be
afraid to include a ballad or whatever, but
make sure it's not the first thing you hear,
unless you're marketing to people who are
doing a lot of ballads. That would be a good
idea.
So I'm going to hit play to let you guys hear
a little bit of what I've done in this particular
one, and then you can see pretty much what's
going on.
[sample reel plays]
Okay, and I'm going to stop it there, because
I want to talk about individual processing
so that they sound â€" I dunno mastered is
the right way to say it, but you want them
to sound good transitioning in and out of
each other.
Some genres by themselves are going to be
maybe darker than others, or wider than others,
or more low-end, and that kind of stuff, and
with this sample reel, you're really putting
yourself on the spot here, and you've got
to be careful not to let one song out-perform
another too much. And so, for me, if I bypass
VMR, I'll open up and show you what I did,
I used a free plug-in, but coming out of this
song, listen to what this sounds like without
my processing here, and without the limiter
on.
[song plays]
Okay. So, noticing the difference, the transition
there, this song is one that I actually didn't
master. It went to a mastering engineer with
the rest of the record. It was mixed by myself
and a few other guys. So what I did is I pulled
in a maximizer for this song, set it to a
certain setting just to kind of hit it a little
harder, and then I've got a mastered â€" not
a mastered, but a limiter on the overall big
picture just so that if anything was going
a little bit above, that it kind of hits it
and keeps kind of a consistent level. Nothing
really too much going on with that.
But then VMR, I felt like Chosen was a little
bit too beefy, a little bit too much low-end.
It's kind of muddy, so I'm going to show you
now that we've got that limiter on to help
that one be a little louder, we'll adjust
the volume there. You could use clip-gain
as well, that's a cool tool.
But let's hear it, and then I'll pull VMR
in.
[sample reel plays]
And here it is in.
So now it's a little more comparable.
[sample reel plays]
And we accomplished kind of a meet-in-the-middle
view of between those two songs, the next
song, the same thing.
So anyways, just a little insight to how I'm
pulling these tracks in, fading in and out
of some spots that I really like of the songs,
and then using that to attach to my message.
Once again, check out theproaudiofiles.com,
“How to Attract New Clients to Your Studio,”
“grow-your-studio-business” is the link,
you can check that out up there.
Pretty much the basics of it is I'm going
to places like Reverb Nation, Facebook groups,
anywhere where there's bands and artists,
I'm going hunting for the guys that I want
to work with, and I'm sending a message to
them, introducing myself, who I am, what I
do, and including an mp3. Some people see
it as spamming, that's fine. It's not for
everybody, but I definitely noticed that whenever
I include a sample reel like this, there's
a better return on the investment of my time.
You want to take it one step further, go hire
yourself someone to copy and paste this e-mail,
find a list of bands, make a list of guys
that you really dig, you like their music,
and then have someone else do it for you could
be a cool way to market to the masses, and
then when people respond, do that personally.
All kinds of ways, I hope that helps you think
a little bit outside of the box. Get your
best work, your most recent work. There's
a saying that you're only as good as your
latest project, so make sure you do this frequently.
Every couple of months, go on, drag your best
samples, we're always getting better anyways,
you guys know that. Take your latest work,
put it out there. Hopefully you're going to
find some new clients. I hope that this helps
you.
Davidglennrecording.com, themixacademy.com,
like, subscribe, feel free to e-mail us with
any tutorial ideas, and then of course, theproaudiofiles.com,
all the incredible content over there.
So we'll see you in the next video!


Sony iPod/iPhone Dock Speaker System


Alright, look.
You can take that old iPod dock
that you have right now,
take it out in the back.
Blast it with a Winchester
because Sony has got
one that's nice,
it's small, it's simple.
And you're never going to
have the urge to shoot it.
Hey, check it out.
iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch docks
are out there everywhere.
They all seem very
similar and they all
keep cramming new
features in.
You can find iPod docks with
built in mini fridges.
You can find iPod docks with
built-in laser light shows.
You can find iPod docks
with just about anything.
Sometimes you just want
a simple iPod dock
that's going to work, that's
going to sound good,
isn't going to cost a fortune.
And this one from Sony
is actually going to get
all of those jobs done.
It's the SRS-GU10 iPhone/iPod dock.
And it's sitting right here.
And it does one thing.
And it charges your
iPod and it plays music
through some very nice
sounding speakers.
And... OK, thank you,
I guess that is two things.
It does two things.
It also comes with this
great remote control
that's going to allow you
to remotely control
all of the music that
your iPod is playing.
So from your bed,
from your desk,
wherever you want to be,
you can actually navigate
through all of your music
collection and all that stuff
with this remote control,
which is very nice because it
gives you complete control
over your iPod from
anywhere you are.
Operation could not be simpler
on this 20 Watt iPod dock.
It's going to be
10 Watts per speaker
which actually sounds very
good in a dock this size.
And, let me point
out to you,
that it is built of a high quality
wooden cabinet.
None of that cheapo plastic
cabinet stuff going on here.
This is a wood cabinet
on this bad boy.
It only has four buttons.
Everybody loves things that
have few buttons, right?
You've got a Power button.
You have an Input button
which is going to allow you
to switch between the iPod and the
auxiliary input that is on the back here.
And you've got two
volume buttons.
One to turn the volume up and
one to turn the volume down.
And that's really all you
need on this iPod dock.
That is all of the functionality that
you're going to be dealing with here.
It does have adapters for
every type of iPod out there.
So you're going to be able
to snuggly fit your iPod
into the cradle, right here.
Let me show you
the rear of this box.
So you can see exactly
how simple it truly is.
Take a look back here.
As you can see, the only
thing you have back here
is the Aux in and your power.
And that's it.
So if you have something else you
want to plug into speakers
you absolutely can.
And to switch to it, you simply push
that Input button right there.
Other than that, that's it.
Very simple,
very nice iPod dock.
Very small, very compact.
And it sounds really,
really good.
Ten watts per
speaker in a case,
in a cabinet this small is going
to sound quite nice.
So go check this out if you
need a brand new iPod dock
that doesn't necessarily have
a laser light show built in.
Right here. It is the
Sony SRS-GU10 iPod/iPhone dock.
To get more info
Sony iPod/iPhone dock Speaker System
go to com.puter.tv and search for
SRS-GU10.
For Computertv,
I'm Bauer.