[the] Smart Musician

If you are like me, and a thousand more of us, we tend to be great at starting but not so great at finishing. And even if you aren’t great at starting, then I still think you may be able to relate. But if you’re a starter, you know what I’m talking about. You have a great idea—it could be a song, a record concept, consistently connecting with fans—anything, and you start it and you are stoked…

The Smart Musician story has been one of starts and stops, with no real consistency. This has been mainly because of my own inconsistency, but also because I have not been 100% sure of how to translate my years of experience into something that would be of value to other like minded musicians, something that has a direction, a point that is clear, and that has an understanding of who I am talking…

Quick Songwriting Tool in Studio One 3

If you at like me, there just doesn’t seem to be enough time to get songs materialized quick enough. I am working on the first 5 tunes of a project and have the ideas charted in my Moleskin notebook and lyrics in an Evernote notebook (my hybrid songwriting tools). I have a songwriting process that I will get into in more detail in a future post, but I just learned about a feature in PreSonus’…

Hey all you Smart Musicians!! So, here’s the deal. The all new TSM Podcast will be re-launching the week of January 1st, 2018. I am working on all kinds of new things, and the topic landscape is changing a bit—more like broadening. We will be highlighting technology, but not just gear, but how technology can be used in creative ways to make your life easier. Being a Smart Musician is all about…

I know I may be writing about things we all know already, but in my experience this is just as important as new ideas. I don’t know about you, but there is so much information to the point of overload an a daily basis that if it’s not repeated or somehow kept in the front of my mind, it will just drop out of sight, forgotten. So, I may be repeating myself or stating the obvious, but that’s…

Expanding The Landscape of TSM

I have been a bit lax the past week or 2 in my blog posting responsibilities, but I have not been sitting on the couch binge watching Netflix. What I have been doing is getting ready for a 5-Song EP challenge for the month of May, which started 2 days ago. I have also been thinking about TSM and where to go with it, especially seeing as my original motivation was focused on live performance,…

I am not sure what I would do without the internet. It’s crazy to think back 25 years and imagine how I made any sort of progress without it. The fact is, that everything tends to maintain a sort of balance. Without the internet, I just had to figure things out by learning from somebody—asking them questions, or just do it on my own through trial and error. The reality is that is how I got the…

I’m a dummy

Chances are if you are someone who is involved with music in any way—a musician, producer, songwriter, engineer—that you are not flying solo 100%. Collaborating, communicating and just keeping things straight can get to be a challenge pretty quick. There are a few tools that I have found to be very useful in collaborating with others, whether they are in town or another part of the world. But…

Analog Workflow in a Digital World

As I have been getting back into the recording side of music over the past several years, I have been re-learning a completely new toolset—a digital one. While I am like a kid in a candy store with all of the tools that are now available (and affordable), I just haven’t found that joy I experience when behind a physical mixing console. Being able to visually scan an array of channel strips and…

Start In the Studio

The title of this post is both metaphor and literal. For me, just about all things musical start in the studio. As I stated in my previous post, my studio is made up primarily of gear that is north of 25 years in age. There is only so far I can go with it when trying to integrate it into a digital workflow where the weakest link is the AD/DA link. I have cobbled things together so it "works", but…

TSM has been on and off for the past 6-7 years, with a handful of false starts. Life is what it is and often times does not leave as much time for working on those “side projects” as we would like. One of my objectives this year is to jump start this project once again, but with a slightly different approach. Looking at where I came from, my experiences and what I have now–both in terms of gear…

Reboot (Let’s Try This Again)

Hey there, everyone! Just wanted to drop a line and let you all know that TSM is getting ready to breathe in some new life in the coming weeks. Life throws many challenges in our paths, but making music is a sure way to deal with those challenges. It has been my objective to help musicians in whatever way I can using my experiences and knowledge, particularly at the intersection of music and…

After a little over a year, the Smart Musician podcast is returning. Also known as the TSM Podcast, this series will be getting a slight name change–it will now be called the TSM Music Tech Podcast, putting the focus on gear and the creative uses of technology both on stage and in the studio. John Thayer and I have started production and will have Episode 17 on its way very soon.

Along with…

Your Band Is A Business

Missing structure around how the band is organized and operates Leadership and decision making Mission and vision definition Roles and responsibilities

For many musicians, music + business = sellout. But if you really look at the activities that are common to just about every successful business, you will start to see that how they operate has nothing to do with money, but goals and objectives.…