15.4 Evaluation

In the end of term gig I performed in five different bands but seeing as this unit is about the evaluation of progress I will talk about the main two bands I was in: Band C and Band F. I will look back at the whole first term and analyse both these bands, explaining the strengths and weaknesses of both. I will focus mainly on the potential of these bands and discuss how good things could have been.

Band C

In Band C, we deviated from our normal trend of playing well known classic rock songs and decided to play ‘Take Of Your Colours’ from the self –titled You Me At Six debut album. In hindsight I don’t think this was the best song we could have picked for the end of term gig. From an audience perspective the song is very upbeat, jumpy which makes sense because it’s a pop-punk song and is in a major key. I don’t have a problem with pop-punk, it’s just that I used to be in a very pop-punk band outside of college and to be honest I’ve grown fairly tired with that genre. To make matters worse, I played 4 out of 5 pop-punk songs at the end of term gig (2 You Me At Six songs and 2 Paramore songs). I felt like the genre didn’t really work well with our band. Mads for instance is a country singer at heart and although she really tried hard with this song, she expressed to us afterwards that she didn’t enjoy singing it all that much. Jack and Tim like classic rock and play music by bands like Led Zeppelin etc in their free time and, although they are both good musicians in their own right, I feel like they didn’t have a feel for the nuances of the genre like Aidan and I do (as we’ve both played songs like this before in the aforementioned outside-of- college band). A lot of the sound of pop-punk comes from having aggressive pick-attack and in this song in particular there is a lot of rhythmic palm muting in the verses and in the outro there are palm muted triplets and I feel like as a band we didn’t really capture that tonality and style adequately enough. On a more positive note I felt like our physical performances of the track were pretty good. In that respect, I feel like we did capture the energy of the track a bit more as we were moving about and making good eye contact with each other. Another very positive thing I liked about Band C was our relationships with each other. I know Aidan and Jack from secondary school and I’ve actually been in bands with them both previously, I have become close friends with Tim and we are in a band together currently outside of college with Aidan. I have become friends with Shaune and Mads too and I think the highlight of this first term for me is being in that band with such friendly people. There was a real sense of cohesion and I think the social, inter-personal aspect of a band is one of the most important. Our communication in Band C was excellent as a result of this. As previously mentioned, our discussions about song selection were very good and similarly we were able to schedule regular rehearsals effectively and in the lead-up to the end of term gig we rehearsed a lot and benefitted greatly because of it. In rehearsals themselves our communication amongst ourselves was very good and we were able to effectively highlight parts of the song that needed working on as a band as well as individual aspects that we could change or improve upon. In conclusion, I found Band C to be the most positive and co-ordinated band that I was a part of in this term. There was definitely a level of professionalism and there were standards that we adhered to in order to develop as a band. Communication and organisation were very good, as was the social aspect and our physical interactions on stage during performances. We could have improved a lot by sticking to the strengths of individual band members. We had learned during our two band choices in our class performances that we work well as more of a classic rock band doing Thin Lizzy and Guns ‘N’ Roses than we do trying to do a You Me At Six cover. If we were to continue as a band I think we should try and cover something by Led Zeppelin or The Rolling Stones or something along those lines.

Band F

In Band F, after Amy Booer left, we stopped trying to find songs that were piano based and instead looked towards the pop-punk genre once again. As we had played ‘Misery Business’ as our second compulsory track this term, Callie suggested that we played ‘Crushcrushcrush’ from the same album. As a fan of Paramore’s older music myself, I relished the opportunity to play this song on bass. Like ‘Misery Business, ‘Crushcrushcrush’ is in Drop C# tuning and the pre-chorus emphasises the low C# which, especially on bass, has a huge impact. The bass line is very fun to play and in the verses it actually walks around a little bit and it’s definitely not the typical root-notes bass line that is expected from a pop-punk song. I definitely thought that the line-up of this band was much more suited to play a song like this than Band C. Having two female vocalists to sing Hayley Williams parts was great. Callie’s powerful vocals went well with Sophie’s rich, deep voice in a yin-yang kind of way. Tom and Matt’s guitar playing was very faithful to the original track despite Matt later telling me he wasn’t that happy with the song choice and Aidan’s style of playing suits the genre nicely as previously mentioned. There were definite downsides with Band F though, despite how positive I’ve made everything sound.  The main issue with Band F was the organisation and discussion as I talked about previously in unit 15.1. Everything felt very cobbled together and rushed; I don’t think we ever sat down for a moment as a band and just talked about how anything was going. During practice and rehearsals especially there was little to no creative feedback about how we were sounding and what needed improvement. In conclusion, I thought that Band F had the most potential out of the bands I have worked in over the term, however, a lack of communication, co-ordination and overall dedication meant that we fell behind and didn’t achieve our full potential. In my opinion, not meaning to sound boastful, I think that band had the most talented individuals in the class and I think it was a great shame to see that talent wasted.  On the night of the end of term gig I thought we did actually perform ‘Crushcrushcrush’ very well but I think that’s only due to strong individual practice. That’s what that band was: 6 strong individuals rather than 1 strong band.

15.1 Song Selection

Song Selection

Putting the End of Term Gig aside, during the majority of the first 14 weeks of the course I was a member of 2 different bands. In Band C I played predominantly lead guitar, the line-up consisted of: vocalists Mads Quinn and Shaune Moorey, Aidan Henderson on drums, Tim Osborn on bass, and Jack Keogh and myself as guitarists. In this first term we had thorough discussions, both face to face as a group in college and making use of a Facebook group, to decide our 2 band choice songs for the term. Our main aim was to find 2 songs that everybody was happy playing, rather than just resorting to ‘majority rules’ and leaving 1 or 2 people disappointed that their views were overlooked. My second band, Band F, was created part way through the term so that second year student Amy Booer could play keys in a band for her course. I decided to play bass in this band as it’s an instrument I’m fairly comfortable with but have an awful lot to learn and I was hoping that this band would serve as an opportunity for me to develop as a bassist. Band F was the largest band in the class consisting of: vocalists Sophie Lamont and Callie Mead, Aidan Henderson on drums, Matt Alfrey and Tom Coxhead as guitarists, Amy Booer on keys, and myself on bass.

Band C

Originally, it was discussed in class that we would go and learn ‘Teenage Kicks’ by The Undertones as it’s based on a simple verse-chorus structure and would not be hard to pull of. There are quite subtle but still noticeable vocal harmonies in the original track that Mads and Shaune were going to expand upon and Jack and I basically just double up the same guitar part the whole way through with the exception of the short solo I was going to take at the end. I went home and learnt the whole song in the evening it was suggested but I noticed it was almost too simple. Simplicity is not a bad thing, if anything the easier a track is the more it can be tightened up and perfected, however, with this track I felt the simplicity was almost too constrictive and didn’t allow for any of us to shine individually through our technique and playing. I flagged up my concerns in the Facebook group and it was quickly established that the others had come to the same realisation as me. With that in mind, Mads suggested ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ by Guns ‘N’ Roses. I told everyone that I was very happy to play it as long as everybody else was and so it was agreed upon. Like ‘Teenage Kicks’, ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ is an absolutely classic song that everybody knows and, if perfected, would certainly sound very impressive. From my perspective, that of lead guitarist, the song is incredibly virtuosic and challenging but definitely not too challenging that I would be unable to play it.

The discussion we had in college regarding our second song choice was remarkably quick and unanimous. Sticking with the theme of classic rock songs, Shaune suggested ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’ by Thin Lizzy and that was agreed upon. Jack and I thoroughly enjoyed playing this song together as there aren’t defined rhythm and lead parts as such. Instead, we both played the same parts for the majority of the song, playing the distinctive guitar harmony riffs in the solo and post-chorus. Mads and Shaune alternated singing parts rather than singing together, this was especially effective in the chorus where it goes quickly back and forward between them both when they sing “The Boys Are Back In Town”. Tim had a lot of fun with the walking bass line in this song as did Aidan with the classic rock drums and some interesting song structure.

Band F

Song selection with Band F was quite frankly an absolute mess. For band choice one there really wasn’t much of a discussion about song selection. I was just informed that we were doing ‘How to Save a Life’ by The Fray and that I had to learn it. I assume there must have been some sort of discussion but at this point in the proceedings we didn’t have a Facebook group set up yet so the conversation must have happened face to face without me. Whatever it was that happened I definitely did not get any say in the matter at all. The process of song selection for our second band choice was somehow even worse. It was originally decided that we would play Killer Queen by Queen as apparently Amy was a competent pianist, Matt would have a lot of fun with Bryan May’s lead guitar parts and overall it’s such a phenomenal classic of a song. The main problem was that the singers found the song incredibly hard to manage as well as the fact that Amy dropped out of the band. Matt, Tom and I were very passionate about trying to play the song, I even resorted to learning all the piano parts and got Tim Osborn in to play bass in my place but in the end we had to completely compromise and perform ‘Valerie’ (The Amy Winehouse cover of The Zutons) with the original line-up minus Amy.

Personal Practice

Band C

My Sharona:

For this song I mainly learnt it by ear and practiced by playing along to the official video. When there was a trickier spot in the song that I couldn't easily work out by ear I referred to this tab from Songsterr.

Sweet Child O' Mine:

I was very lucky with our first band choice because I already knew how to play the song having played it lots before. To practice I played along to the long version of the song on Spotify.

Misery Business:

Once again I lucked out and I already knew how to play both parts of the song. I have played along to the track on Spotify and I have also been playing along to the drum track as this song is pretty rhythmically challenging.

The Boys Are Back In Town:

A good tab for this song was surprisingly hard to find. Ultimate guitar for instance only had really bad tabs. In the end I went to this tab on Songsterr which I found to be pretty good. I practiced by playing along to the song on Youtube and if anything was wrong with the tab I just figured it out by ear.

Band F

My Sharona:

The bass for this song really doesn't differ a whole lot from the guitar. Essentially it's the same thing but an octave down for the majority of the song. This made learning very easy as there was very little for me to actually have to learn. For practice I played along to the official video and any part of the bass line I didn't know I just worked out by ear.

How To Save A Life:

The bass line for this song is really quite simple. I found a 90% accurate tab on Ultimate Guitar and where it faltered I just used my ears to figure it out once again. I'm not a bassist so I'm not particularly great at trying to embellish bass lines with my own style but I've tried my best with this song. To practice, I played along to the video.

Valerie:

Initially it was decided that we were going to do Killer Queen by Queen because we wanted to take advantage of having Amy on keys in our band. Unfortunately it was changed by our singers last minute because they said they were struggling to learn it. So after having learnt the bass to that, I had to learn the bass to Valerie. It has a very repetitive but fun bass line so I picked it up from just listening through the video of the song once and then playing it to myself over and over. Admittedly I didn't practice this as thoroughly as I normally do but after having spent the weekend learning Killer Queen I felt that the song was easy enough to not really practice for hours on end.

39.5 The Importance of Licensing and Royalties

The Importance of Licensing and Royalties

In the modern age of music, music copyright, licensing and royalties play a very important part in earning money from the business. Those musicians with a better understanding of how licensing and royalties work are more likely to be financially comfortable than those who don't.

There are three main companies for songwriters, composers and publishers which exist to collect licence fees from anyone that uses music for a business benefit and then pay royalties to music creators in the UK and around the world. These are PRS. MCPS and PPL

PRS for Music as an umbrella, which has two important sub-companies: Performing Right Society Limited (PRS) and Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society Limited (MCPS). PRS represents songwriters, composers and music publishers and collects royalties on their behalf whenever their music is publicly performed. This includes performances of both live and recorded music or music from TV and radio, in premises from concerts halls to corner shops. MCPS also represents songwriters, composers and music publishers, but collects royalties on their behalf whenever their music is reproduced for products such as CDs, digital downloads and musical toys. [1] Venues and businesses need to purchase a licence from PRS for Music which enables the public performance or reproduction of music in that venue. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 states that if you use copyright music in public, you need the permission of every writer or composer of the music you wish to play. PRS for Music acts as the middle man and a music licence gives the owner the legal permission to play the millions of songs controlled by them without having to contact the music creators directly.

PRS for Music asks venues to provide full details of all music performed as well as gathering information from TV and radio. With smaller businesses, surveys are used. From all that information they calculate the royalties due to each member of PRS for Music. Royalties to PRS members are distributed in April, July, October and December each year.

The third company, Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL) is an entirely separate independent company from PRS for Music. In most instances a licence is required from both before you can legally play recoded music in public. Both organisations licence the use of music and collect royalties but each represent different people. PPL collects and distributes money for the use of recorded music on behalf of record labels and performers. PRS for Music collects and distributes money for the use of musical composition and lyrics on behalf of authors, songwriters, composers and publishers.

Another source of royalties I would like to mention are synchronisation (or synch) royalties. Synching refers to using the music together with visuals e.g. a song in a film, tv show or even live theatre. In terms of numbers, the royalties paid can be up to say $250,000 for a movie film score.

Music Streaming Services

I wanted to briefly mention royalties from music streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora. A lot of artists are outraged at the ridiculously low royalty rates that they receive from plays of their tracks on these services. Spotify say they pay an average of £0.004 per play to their artists on a section of their website called Spotify explained. However, I don't think things are as bad as they first appear.There are a lot of very positive statistics on that site too, for instance they have given out $1bn in royalties, $500m of which were paid in 2013 alone. The global value of the recorded music industry has been steadily falling and Spotify aim to provide a better service than piracy and convice people to pay for music once again. I am a Spotify premium user and I have barely pirated any music since. Statistics collected by spotify actually show that 55% of 18-29 year olds pirate less when offered a free legal alternative. Spotify premium users pay more on average per year than normal US consumers that  purchase physical music or download digital music. Spotify actually pay 70% of their total revenue as royalties to rights holders and compared to other video or radio streaming services they pay considerably more. Spotify is a huge and very useful marketing platform and even if the royalty rate may be low, the chances are more people will hear an artists music and then they may want to go to their concerts or buy that persons's merchandise.

Historic context of copyright

"Copy, transform and combine it's who we are, it’s how we live, and of course, it's how we create." Kirby Ferguson - Everything is a Remix Part 4 [2]. In this part, he goes on to talk about the original intentions of copyright and how ultimately the system is a failure. "Our system of law doesn't acknowledge the derivative nature of creativity. Instead, ideas are regarded as property, as unique and original lots with distinct boundaries. But ideas aren't so tidy... and when the system conflicts with the reality the system starts to fail."
In America in 1790, copyrights and patents were invented to make sure that original creations were protected from being copied for a limited period of time in order to give creators a window to earn a profit. Copyrights covered media and patents covered inventions. After copyright expired, creators work entered the public domain to be freely used and built upon by anyone. That was the goal of copyright: to have a large public domain where ideas, products, arts and entertainment would be available to all for the good of humanity. The idea of 'intellectual property' turned copyright into what we know in the music industry today.
One famous example is that in 1981 George Harrison lost a $1,500,000 lawsuit for subconsciously copying "He's So Fine" by The Chiffons in his song "My Sweet Lord". More and more copyright acts are being developed and put into effect as time goes on and some musical corporations exist for the sole purpose of suing others. Famously, Bridgeport music sued the hip hop group N.W.A. for using a heavily altered 2 second sample in one of their songs. This effectively killed sampling, no matter how small, and made it difficult and expensive to use samples in songs. Copyrights and patents were invented for "the encouragement of learning" and to "promote the progress of useful arts". In the modern era of music, copyright doesn't understand the need to "copy, transform and combine" and rather than progressing and expanding off of each other, artists are constantly being sued for copying and theft of "intellectual property".

Music 'Piracy'

We are currently living in the 5th age of media, the Digital Age. Preceding the Digital Age in chronological order are:

• Oral Age. Campfires and singing (10,000 years ago)
• Scribal Age.  Writing and documenting (5,000 years ago). This is the point where people realised that in order to establish ownership of media, there needed to be proof of creation and ownership.
• Print Age. Mass produced texts and sheet music (1,000 years ago). Towards the end of this age was when copyright came into effect in order to stop people from literally copying sheet music.
• Electric Age. (around 100 years ago) This age covers physical music like vinyl records and cassettes, radio, television and film.
• Digital Age. The age we live in now. The internet is dominant, music sales from iTunes etc are huge and illegal downloading is huge too.

Back in the day, before the internet, if you wanted to steal music you had to walk into a store and physically steal a CD or a cassette and get out without the guards noticing or the alarm bells ringing. Nowadays with filesharing and the fact you can just take the audio from any youtube video, obtaining songs for free is stupidly easy. Everything used to be physical, sharing music with a friend meant lending them the tape or maybe even a 12" vinyl. If you wanted them to hear a playlist you made, you had to physically make a mixtape and hand it to them. Copying a tape faded it, listening to a vinyl could scratch it. There was a fragility and very important realism to how music was shared and copied. In the digital world, stealing from someone is more like stealing an identical copy rather than taking a proper copy of a record. A million people can download the same song effortlessly for free, something that was impossible 20 years ago. It's also important to note that there is no loss in quality from sharing and copying digitally too. Immediacy and convenience are very important words when talking about this subject. As immediacy and convenience rise due to disruptive technologies like the internet, meaning and value lowers. I did some quick maths and I found that, buying music legally from itunes at 79p a track, it would cost me well over £4,000 pounds to fill my 32gb ipod with songs. Not to mention the fact that I have to sign up, make an account and enter lots of details and credit card information to do so. Whereas, I can very easily find a proxy for ThePirateBay and donwload that 32gb very quickly for free. Music 'piracy' isn't necessarily a bad thing. The Arctic Monkeys' debut album sold over 360,000 copies in a week and remains the fastest selling debut album by any band and this was largely due to the internet and free downloading and sharing. The Arctic Monkeys found that early on people knew all the lyrics to songs they had barely had a chance to perform. Illegal downloading isn't always a bad thing and can often boost the career of a band due to the fact that music can spread enormously quickly and easily. In the modern music industry, a much larger proportion of a bands profits come from live performance and merchandise anyway and music sales aren't necessarily the majority of a bands income. In fact, an extremely recent article from digitalmusicnews.com has found that the top 1% of artists earn 77% of recorded music income and they say "Whatever money is left in recordings, you're probably not making it."

On the other hand, famous examples of lawsuits against illegal downloading services exist. The most iconic case of this is Metallica vs Napster. Napster was a peer-to-peer network where users could easily upload their digital music and it could be re-downloaded by any other user. At its peak, Napster had 80 million registered users and arguments exist that it was a huge promotional power and contributed to many bands successes. Lars Ulrich of Metallica found that a demo of their song "I disappear" had been circulating before release and led to some radio play in the states. Lars traced it back to Napster and was horrified to find their entire discography free to download with ease. Metallica sued for $10,000,000 and Napster as a P2P site was shut down.

DRM, short for "Digital Rights Management" is an anti-piracy technology used by copyright owners to remote control how people can install, listen to, view, copy and share files. DRM can be thought of as a sort of digital padlock on a file and some argue that is should be considered necessary to protect 'intellectual property' just as a real padlock protects physical property. Have you ever bought a song on iTunes and realised that you can only access that file on 5 other computers? That's DRM in action. DRM in my opinion is a really bad thing as in effect it creates the illusion of ownership and inconveniences legitimate customers. An example of DRM being a terrible thing is when, rather ironically, Amazon remote deleted Kindle users copies of George Orwell's 1984 & Animal Farm. The reason behind it was that the books were sold by a third party seller without the rights to do so. If this had happened with the physical books, Amazon would have no right to enter your property and burn your book, yet amazon seem to have the power and the right to remotely delete content with no notice, warning or consent.

The issue with copyright in the digital age of music is that it really doesn't understand immediacy and convenience compared to meaning and value. Music copyright is still tailored to how things were before the internet where physical items were more personal and valuable. The world is constantly changing, technology is forever advancing and once in a while something entirely new comes along that changes everything forever. In that way, music is forever adapting and having new forms and right now we still haven't really figured everything out yet.

Practice Diary

Sun 12/01/14

• Today I learnt 'Respect' by Aretha Franklin. The song is very short so I played through it probably at least 4 or 5 times.
• I did this in order to familiarise myself with the structure

Mon 13/01/14

• Today I watched some Youtube videos of different interpretations of the song to see if I could try some different things. I worked more on what I think Steve called "chipping" which is like the sharp staccato top end of the chords.
• I did this in order to improve my tone through my playing and not just through amp settings.

Tue 14/01/14

• Today at lunch time I rehearsed 'Respect' in the live room with other people in the class before our performance later in the afternoon. Not necessarily our bands, just playing with Aidan, another guitarist and some singers.
• I did this because playing with other musicians helps me get a feel for how the song sounds live. I could work more on my tone too by working out some nice sounding amp settings.

Wed 15/01/14

• Wednesday's I normally give myself a bit of a break to have some fun and just play around. I played along to some Asking Alexandria tracks and a bit of Bring Me The Horizon. It's pretty challenging stuff especially on the right hand so beforehand I did some alternate picking exercises to warm-up.
• I did this to help improve my right hand technique and focus on challenging right hand rhythms.

Thu 16/01/14

• Today it was announced that over the next few weeks we would each have to perform three varied solo pieces. I originally decided that I would do 1 punk, 1 classic rock and 1 metal song for my three. I knew I'd have to do a 30 second demo of a song this time next week so I set to work practicing 'Letterbomb' by Green Day as it's a piece I'm already very comfortable with. To practice it, I first just played along with the song a few times to just familiarise myself with the feel of the piece, the tempo and structure. I then played along with a metronome at 180 bpm and aimed to bury the click. I found it took a few attempts to really play perfectly in time.

Fri 17/01/14

• Today I learnt 'Harder To Breathe' by Maroon 5 for Band A. I also decided that for my rock solo performance I would do 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love' by The Darkness. It's an awesome song that I am extremely familiar with as I've been playing it for at least 8 years. I spent a while just playing the song over and over again from top to bottom, kind of just remembering how it goes and the structure and everything like that. Later on I'll focus on the 3 solos individually.

Sat 18/01/14

• Today I learnt 'Best of You' by Foo Fighters for Band B. This songs lead line, despite being 99% octaves is actually pretty challenging. Aside from playing along with the song multiple times to get used the to structure, I had to really narrow down my focus and start practicing specific sections. I practiced the solo section with the tremolo octaves over and over again, as even though it's 15 seconds long, it's the most challenging part of the song and required definite attention in order to get it up to speed.
• I did this because I had never really done tremolo picking across multiple strings before and I had to learn a new technique.

Sun 19/01/14

• Today I spent some time thinking about the other metal song I should do and narrowed it down to two songs: 'O.G. Loko' by Of Mice & Men and 'It Never Ends' by Bring Me The Horizon. I already knew 'It Never Ends' so I learnt 'O.G. Loko' and then practiced both. Both are really challenging to be honest, I actually made a cover of 'O.G. Loko' for fun which you can check out here, and here's a link to 'It Never Ends' that you can check out too if you want. Both songs have really challenging breakdown sections with triplets and quadruplets and odd rhythms and stuff. 'It Never Ends' has a section where it goes from 8th note triplets to 8th notes to 4th note triplets and then back to 8th notes again. I found that really quite hard at first but I used a metronome at 205bpm and played along until I actually managed to bury the click. Here is the section in question, again if you're interested.

Mon 20/01/14

• At this point, I'd left it kind of late but I decided not to do a metal song and to instead do 'Parisienne Walkways' by the late Gary Moore. The song is effectively 100% guitar solo, it's not fast or filled with notes particularly apart from one lick but it requires a lot of thought for timing and feel so I thought I'd give it a go. The aforementioned lick is at this part of the song and I had to learn it note for note incredibly slowly and I spent maybe an hour trying to gradually take it up to full speed. I have a lot of fun playing this song and I'm very happy with my decision to do this over a metalcore song.

Tue 21/01/14

• Today I rehearsed 'Harder To Breathe' and 'Best of You' in our respective bands at lunch time before the performance in our double lesson. 
• I enjoy rehearsing as a band in order to tighten up our timing and knowledge of the structure of the song

Wed 22/01/14

• Today I found a backing track for 'Letterbomb' which I added some hi-hats to at the start so that I knew the tempo before the drums started, as the guitars come in with absolutely no tempo indication in the real recorded track. The second guitar part was also missing from the outro but I didn't want to add that back in, instead I worked on my internal metronome and got much better at counting missing beats in my head during the moments of silence in the outro. I practiced by playing along to the backing track until it was basically second nature to play the song.

Thu 23/01/14

• Today I performed my 30 second demo of 'Letterbomb' which I thought went fairly well.

Fri 24/01/14

• Today I decided to practice 'Parisienne Walkways' some more because even though I'm leaving it until last, it's by far the hardest piece I have to perform this term. I found a really good backing track and because it's all solo guitar, I don't have anything to hide behind. That requires me to really focus on the way I play. I decided to really practice my bending today.
• I did this because my bending technique is frankly terrible and this song is a great opportunity to focus on my bends and pitching them perfectly.

Sat 25/01/14

• Today I learned to play 'Locked Out of Heaven' by Bruno Mars. 

Sun 26/01/14

• Today I had an interesting day where I decided to practice the hardest parts of all 3 of my solo performances. I didn't play any of the pieces all the way through, I just worked on: The solo and outro from 'Letterbomb', the 3 guitar solos from 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love' and the fast blues lick from 'Parisienne Walkways'.
• I did this because when you just practice the entirety of a song every time, the bits that require more practicing to really perfect get kind of glossed over.

Mon 27/01/14

• Today I recapped Locked Out of Heaven. I'm not going to lie, this song is insanely boring to play, I don't like it and it's horribly repetitive. I practiced it through a few times and left it at that.

Tue 28/01/14

• Once again, today I went up to the live room before our double lesson and practiced 'Locked Out of Heaven' with some other people.

Wed 29/01/14

• Today I practiced 'Letterbomb' loads. I like to practice things standing up as well as sitting down because I think playing something standing up feels different and is more like the real performance. I played along to the backing track lots as well as focusing on the intro, solo, outro and also thinking about where I'm going to use the amps foot-switch to change between clean, crunch and overdrive.
• I did this to thoroughly prepare for my performance tomorrow.

Thu 30/01/14

• Today I performed 'Letterbomb' all the way through for the first time in class and I thought it went pretty well. The guitar cut out at the start of the solo, which is basically the worst place it could have done so, but I pulled it back together immediately. The bit at the end could have been better timing wise, but in a situation like that time estimations tend to be quicker and therefore I was a little bit early.
• To improve, I will work on my timing more.

Fri 31/01/14

• Today I had a bit of a break and jammed around with some of my favourite songs and worked on writing some stuff too.
• I did this because I just think it's important that a practice routine doesn't get stale.

Sat 01/02/14

• Today I learnt 'When You Were Young' by The Killers for Band B. There really weren't any specifically challenging parts of the song so I didn't feel the need to focus on any part in particular. I just did my normal thing of learning the song with a mixture of tab and by ear and then practicing by playing along.

Sun 02/02/14

• Today Band A decided on 'Inhaler' by Foals which is the first song I've done on this course so far that made use of any guitar effects. The songs main riff and lead part uses a really nice delay which was interesting to learn seeing as the rhythm I play isn't the rhythm I hear but I got used to that fairly quickly.

Mon 03/02/14

• Today I practiced 'Inhaler' and 'When You Were Young' because I learnt both over the weekend and felt like I really needed more time to practice both before tomorrow. I played through both songs but decided I really wanted to start focusing on the end section of 'Inhaler'. The timing is very weird and to be honest I didn't really get it figured out 100% in time.
• To improve I will definitely work on that end section.

Tue 04/02/14

• Today I performed 'Inhaler' and 'When You Were Young' in class. I thought both performances went fairly well although to be honest I wasn't particularly confident with the structure for 'When You Were Young'.
• To improve I will learn the structure more for 'When You Were Young' by maybe studying it and writing it out or something similar.

Wed 05/02/14

• Today I thoroughly practiced 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love'. I played along to the backing track and after that I played along to a click. Following that, I focused on playing the 3rd solo over and over again until that was perfect. I also thought much more about my tone in order to have a really nice powerful sound that isn't overly distorted.
• I did all that as preparation in case I have to play it tomorrow.

Thu 06/02/14

• Unfortunately today I didn't have to perform 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love' so that was a little disappointing. Taking that into account, I decided to practice it a little bit more at home but too much as I really don't want to start getting sick of playing such an awesome song.

Fri 07/02/14

• Next week is going to be a fairly complicated week as Tuesday I'll be doing 'Respect', 'Harder To Breathe' and 'Best Of You' and then Thursday I'll most likely be doing 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love'. With four songs to practice, today I started practicing one per day and I'll continue to do so over the next four days. So today, I started with 'Respect' as it's been about 3 weeks since I've played it. I listened to the song and played along to refresh my memory and played the new lead parts that I'd improvised in the lesson.

Sat 08/02/14

• Today I practiced through 'Harder To Breathe', spending some extra time focusing on the solo and seeing if I can memorise some of my favourite improvised parts so I can reuse them.
• I did this because I think it's a little bit easier to only improvise say 75% of the solo and then remember 25% and reuse those same bits everytime.

Sun 09/02/14

• Today was 'Best Of You' day. I just played through the song but I decided to focus more on my dynamics and the way I play the octaves.
• I did this because dynamics are an important part of performance and I don't normally practice them.

Mon 10/02/14

• Today I gave myself a bit of a break before tomorrow because I have to perform 3 songs in our double lesson and I just feel like a break. Wednesday I will practice 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love'.

Tue 11/02/14

• Today our performance lesson was cancelled but I went to it anyway just to see if people wanted to practice anything and I did get a little bit of practicing done with some of my band mates that showed up.

Wed 12/02/14

• Today I practiced 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love' some more in preparation for tomorrow. I feel like I've focused on specific areas enough previously so I just played along with the backing track like 5 times.

Thu 13/02/14

• Today due to a really long story that I'm not going to go into, I was unable to perform 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love' yet again and now I'll have to wait until Thursday 27/02/14. With that in mind I'll probably wait a while before I practice it again because it's half term tomorrow.

Fri 14/02/14

• Today is the first day of half-term! To be honest, I'm not sure how much I'll be practicing college stuff this half-term, I'll probably leave it until more towards the end of the holiday. 

Sat 15/02/14

• Today I thought I'd just learn some songs instead of practicing stuff that I already know. I learnt 'Chelsea Smile' by Bring Me The Horizon and 'Creature' by Asking Alexandria. 

Sun 16/02/14

• Today I played some acoustic guitar for a change. I wanted to work on my finger-picking so I learnt an arrangement of 'My Heart Will Go On' made by Sungha Jung. It's quite a challenging arrangement as you have to play both the melody and fragmented chords simultaneously.
• I did this to improve other styles of guitar I don't play often enough

Mon 17/02/14

• Sticking to some more acoustic stuff, I decided to practice some stuff on my 12 string acoustic. I played a lot of David Bowie and some Pink Floyd.
• I did this because I think it's good to be varied and I really don't play 12 string enough.

Tue 18/02/14

• Today I did something I don't do that often. I found several blues backing tracks on youtube in different keys and tempos etc and spent an hour or so soloing around.
• I did this to improve my improvisation and lead technique.

Wed 19/02/14

• Today I practiced working songs out by ear. It's something I do a lot of already and I think it's much better than learning from some inaccurate tab you found. I worked out several acoustic Mallory Knox songs by ear and I had the added challenge of trying to figure out the tunings too.

Thu 20/02/14

• Today I did something different and had a five hour rehearsal in my living room with my proper out of college band. We play almost entirely originals now and it's really nice to have a change of scene from all the covers we have to do in college and rehearse our own stuff for upcoming gigs.
• I did this not only for fun but to practice with a full band for an extended period of time.

Fri 21/02/14

• Today I decided to learn some of the music from Sherlock the tv show. I don't know why but it was actually very fun to work out by ear

Sat 22/02/14 

• Today I decided to really get started in preparation for Tuesday where I have to perform all 6 songs I've done with my two bands last half term. I started with the song I'm probably the least confident with, 'When You Were Young'. I wrote out a complete structure and played through the song 3 times looking at the structure and now I am way more confident with the song. Okay, next! I practiced 'Best of You' twice and my previous practicing of this song has definitely paid off as I completely nailed it both times.  The exact same thing happened with 'Harder To Breathe' which is pretty awesome. I love the fact I improvised the solo so it's different every time. I had some trouble practicing 'Inhaler', I don't have a delay pedal and on an amps built in delay, it's very hard to get the delay in time with the track.  'Locked Out of Heaven' was the same thing as best of you, just played through it twice with no problems. Same with 'Respect'.

Sun 23/02/14

• Today I had another band rehearsal with my outside of school band because we have a Battle of the Bands audition coming up as well as a gig in Brighton. We also recorded a demo on my computer which is pretty cool.

39.4 Business Plan

As an introduction, I realised after writing some of this that this business plan would be a lot more lucrative if I wasn't in college and had a music degree so for the sake of this assignment, I'm going to imagine myself aged 21.

Service:

The service that I'd like to provide is guitar lessons in the local area. I want to start this business because in the past I've been very lucky to have several extremely good and devoted teachers and I'd personally love to educate others myself. I believe that I've been playing guitar long enough to feel confident teaching beginners or even quite proficient guitarists. I'd like my teaching to be informal and relaxed and mainly be focused on teaching technique and how to play songs rather than theory.
I'd prefer to travel to the houses of the people I teach as I think that learning in your home is a much nicer atmosphere than travelling to my house or a local space I'd have to hire out.

My mission statement is to provide high quality and fun guitar lessons at an affordable cost.

In order to stay true to that mission statement while still maximising profits I need to try and expand my business to more customers but I can also do some things on the side such as making some tuition material that I could sell or providing instrumental loans.

A different route I may also consider is being affiliated with a school instead.

Target Market:

I don't know of many people that would be entirely happy with being taught by someone vastly younger than them so to be honest I'd be aiming to teach children and teenagers instead of adults. My main target market would be students at local secondary schools and colleges but I would consider extending to primary schools and university students. Bearing in mind that I'd have to travel to them I'd probably only teach within a 15 mile radius of my house. If I wanted to work at a school instead I'd much prefer to work at a secondary school.

My local area, Haywards Heath, has two large secondary schools and several primary schools. Within a 5 mile radius there are at least 17 primary schools. There are two music shops, one that caters for a wide variety of genres including classical instruments and one which specialises in rock music and electric guitars. The noticeboards of two music shops are definitely a useful advertising space to have very nearby. Also there are very small venues in the nearby area.

There are some disadvantages however. My area isn't without competition, I know of several guitar teachers in the area already that run very successful business and there is also the aforementioned "Rok Skool" which could be a major competitor. Other things I have to keep in mind are travelling times and parking fees, which could run up extra costs.

I did some market research in the form of a 7 question survey, the answers of which are below:

The results here show over 72% of guitarists that answered my survey where aged 16-20. This shows that I may have an older market than what I originally anticipated.

 50% of guitarists have been play less than 5 years which means they could still very much benefit from learning new things.

The most popular way that people have learnt guitar in the past is by guitar lessons outside of school. People also use online tab websites a lot so maybe I could earn more money by making a website with very cheap high quality tab for people to download or something similar.

The most popular genre of music that people play is unsurprisingly rock by quite a large margin. This is a good thing for me as it is undoubtedly the genre I would feel most comfortable teaching.

50% of people live in my nearest town which is great as I'll spend less money on petrol that way. A lot of people live in Brighton however. Other responses showed people living in East Grinstead and Albourne which are both fairly local.

The most popular response was that people like guitar lessons. Almost 1/5 of guitarists love them! Over 95% of people fall somewhere between feeling indifferent and loving guitar lessons.

This is the most surprising result in my opinion. The majority of people would actually rather travel to me. I may not need to buy and maintain a car and could save thousands by finding a place to hire out such as a school.

Development:

As I'm aiming to travel to people I need to include the cost of getting a car in my budget. I have to buy a car, lessons and insurance which will cost a few thousand pounds. As I'm teaching teenagers in full time education, my working hours will need to be weekdays from about 4pm onwards, preferably early evening. I'd consider doing lessons on weekends and definitely during school holidays.

If I were to become affiliated with a school, I would teach 30 minute lessons throughout the entire school day. Lessons needn't be 1-2-1 either, my old secondary school used to have a similar system where two kids would be paired and be taught together. On the side, I could also run a "Rock Orchestra" that kids at the school could join. It's essentially a massive band with multiple guitarists and bassists. Parents would pay a termly fee and the kids would get to perform at school concerts. At £6.50 a week per kid for 90 minutes and the fact there can be between 15-20 kids, an extra £97.50-£130 per week is fairly profitable. Schools welcome after school activities as it enriches their students education.

There is a business in my area called Rok Skool where kids pay to have guitar lessons, get put in bands, write songs with people and play gigs. Another possible source of income from teaching guitar would be to try and get a job at a business like that. I think that the more sources of income I have from teaching guitar the better. I see no reason other than time management why I couldn't manage self-employment, working at a school and working at a rock school.

To grow as a business I'd get business cards and other advertisements to share and put on local noticeboards etc. I'd also try and market myself online by making a website, facebook page and twitter where I could easily advertise and communicate with people. I could also make posters which could be effective marketing. On Vistaprint.com, prices start at £9.99 excluding VAT for 250 business cards.

It may take time to set up the business before I even start teaching. If I wanted to start the ball rolling right now, it would take at least 5 months to get a car, learn to drive and pass my test. During that time frame I could prepare all my teaching material, set up my online presence and get all my business cards and ads together.

Legal Aspects:

If I want to work at a school  I need to get a DBS check (used to be called CRB) so that I'm allowed to work with children. A standard DBS check costs £26. Also if I teach lessons at other people's houses, I need to get public liability insurance so that I'm covered if there are any accidental damages. The Incorporated Society of Musicians (ISM) costs £12 for a subscription if you're studying for a degree in any area of music, £65 if you've graduated, and £164 if you don't have a degree or diploma. The ISM offers 24/7 legal support and expenses cover for up to £100,000, tax support, advice and £10,000,000 public liability insurance and another £10,000,000 again for employers liability insurance. In order to have proper car insurance cover for my business, I need to get business car insurance. Typically this costs more than regular car insurance so i'll try and keep costs down by using  a service like moneysupermarket.com to compare insurance rates. Also, as far as I know, costs can be lowered by having a box fitted in the car that monitors your speed so the insurance is lower if you don't travel at excessive speed.

Financial Aspects:

Aside from the initial cost of sorting myself out with a car, there's also the price of petrol itself that I'd have to buy. I'd have to buy a small portable amplifier to take with me and I'd probably consider buying a hard case for my guitar. I may need to buy guitar accessories such as cables, straps and guitar picks in case they get broken or lost during my lessons.

With that in mind, to turn a profit I'd charge £25 per hour for hourly lessons and £13.50 for half an hour. I'd try and include flexibility in my prices: regular customers would get every other week of hourly lessons for £20. If someone didn't want weekly lessons I could arrange biweekly lessons instead. I would make sure to let people know that any lesson cancellations within 24 hours will still cost full price as I think it's fair that I take precautions so I don't lose too much money.

The idea I discussed previously of working at a school is actually very profitable. Potentially I could teach 10 half hour lessons per day, 5 days a week, 36 weeks a year. If I organised a "Rock Orchestra" on top with 20 kids that adds up to £28,080 annual turnover.

If I earn under £32,010 per year, I'll have to pay 20% income tax to HMRC but if I manage to earn over that, I'll have to pay 40%. Furthermore, if I'm self employed, I'll need to pay class 2 and class 4 national insurance which amounts to £2.70 a week as well as 9% on profits between £7,755 and £41,450. If I do have an employer, If I earn between £149 and £797 a week, I have to pay 12% of that and if I earn over that I have to pay an extra 2% on those earnings.

It may be worth hiring an accountant to help me with all of this. According to an article in The Guardian newspaper, hiring an accountant for basic book-keeping and sorting simple tax affairs shouldn't cost more than £200-£300 per year.

Business Proposal:

This is a link to a thorough business plan that should be donwloaded because it looks terrible in mediafire. It shows a 5 year projection of the business, my yearly incomings and outgoings and shows final yearly profit for each year.

Guitar Technician

A Guitar Technician (Guitar Tech) is part of a musician's or band's road crew who looks after and sets up guitars for one or more guitarists. A guitar tech may also be responsible for amplifiers and effects pedals as well as electric or acoustic guitars. They must have basic guitar playing skills, an ear for tuning and a good idea of how the equipment is supposed to sound in the style of music the band is playing. [1]

Becoming a guitar tech might start from being interested in guitars and wanting to help out a friends band. Many guitar techs may have taken courses in guitar repair at a college or lutherie school. The salaries and working conditions vary depending on whether the band is unsigned and doing a small regional tour or if they're a major international touring act. [1]

A guitar tech has two main jobs to perform: Setup & Soundcheck and Maintenance & Repair

Setup & Soundcheck

Before a show, guitars need to be strung and tuned with an accurate electronic tuner. A guitar tech needs basic guitar playing skills and an ear for tuning to strum some chords on the guitar to ensure it's in tune. Guitars need to be carefully placed on racks, straps need to be securely on and cables securely connected.

During a show, a guitar tech needs to be ready to hand any instruments to their guitarist(s) that they may require. This may be due to an unfortunate technical failure or string snap or may be preference for a different sound for a different song. Every guitar needs to be re-tuned again before the guitarist needs them because strings tend to slacken due to hot stage lights or humidity. A guitar tech may hand towels to the guitarist to clean sweat from their hands which corrodes strings and other things like bottles of water. Guitar picks may also need to be set up in easy to access places such as double-sided taped to amps or mic stands.

After a show, cables are unplugged, all instruments are cleaned and packed back into their cases.

Maintenance & Repair

On a guitar there are plenty of important variables that need to be maintained: string action, fret dressing, intonation etc. Valves on valve amps need to be checked along with cables and batteries on effects pedals, tuners and pre-amps. Any crackles or buzzing (or silence) to do with any equipment is checked and repaired by a guitar tech after troubleshooting. A guitar tech often has to be a jack of all trades. They need to be good at electrical repairs (e.g. re-soldering loose connections inside guitars), swapping out damaged speakers, repairing damaged guitars and other similar tasks. If a guitar is beyond repair, it is a guitar tech's duty to find a replacement guitar or part. Of course there is regular restringing of guitars which on a tour is often before every show.

The conditions of work for guitar techs vary a lot. Some guitar techs for much smaller acts may set up guitars for all of the performers. They may also have to take on tasks beyond guitar tech work such as helping to set up sound equipment or soundcheck the mics. On the other hand, guitar techs for huge international touring bands may be part of a large road crew team which includes amp techs and guitar techs for each guitarist. In short, they may have less to do as there will be more members of staff to carry out specific jobs.[1]
The salary can vary hugely depending on who a guitar tech is working for. If you start out working for a small local band that you know to gain experience then you might just work for a cash payment rather than having a proper salary. In small touring acts the guitar techs may be paid through a simple contract during the tour. and there may not be health or dental benefits. They might even have to have another more permanent job and tech on the side when their band is on tour. A guitar tech for a band on a short regional tour may stay in cheap motels whereas a guitar tech travelling with Green Day, for instance, may stay at the same 5* hotels as them and eat catered buffet meals or have their own catering crew. The guitar techs for the most famous international guitarists such as Jimmy Page can become a minor celebrity within the guitar enthusiast community because of their close contact with musicians who are considered to be 'rock legends' and for their in depth knowledge of how a certain guitarist's unique tone is created.

Artist/Performer

An Artist/Performer is someone who performs music solo or in an ensemble (and often composes too).

Being a successful musician is arguably the most glamorous job in the music industry. Take The Rolling Stones for example, their band name has become synonymous with living the high life, fame, wealth, drugs and partying. The success usually doesn't come easily and being in a very small time band can be extremely hard work with very little pay. Early on in his career, Green Day front man Billie Joe Armstrong lived in a slum. Lower Than Atlantis front man Mike Duce worked at Morrisons full time while playing in his band in the evenings.

How To Make It In The Music Business by Siân Pattenden states that being a "Pop Star" is a 24/7 job that has enormous health risk, pressure, constant travel but is extremely glamorous. "It's a rotten job, but lots of people want to do it."

There are vary clearly defined pros and cons with being an artist and I'll try and bullet point as many as I can think of. Often some things like fame can fall under both categories depending on who you are. It's often nice to be in the spotlight but if you make mistakes or do something embarrassing, it can be a curse as well as a blessing. Not to mention the paparazzi.

Pros:

• Fame
• Wealth (Paul McCartney is worth an estimated $800 million)
• Sense of achievement
• Having a loving, loyal fan-base
• The satisfaction that comes from giving enjoyment to others
• Job satisfaction (Ultimately making music is what a successful artist loves the most)
• Being in a band (Spending most your time with a group of your best friends)
• Making music, on your own or as a band
• Feedback from the audience (This little section from Bring Me The Horizon's set at Reading is the most recent thing I've seen showing what I mean)

Cons:

• Loss of freedom
• Loss of privacy
• Pressure (and similarly the pressure that deadlines create)
• The stress of performing
• Constant travelling
• Extreme tiredness
• Being tempted into a life style of drugs and alcohol (and dying when you're 27)
• Being away from family and friends for long periods of time

Artist/Performer is a very broad job role and there are many different settings that the artist will find themselves in. Performing at the O2 arena will perhaps require a tighter schedule and the artist may feel more pressured than if they recording at a studio. The artist will need to perform at rehearsals too and if they are a songwriter as well then that's another part of the job. At each setting, the artist is essentially just playing their instrument/singing, however, depending on what they're doing and where they are, the job can vary immensely. Performing a one off massive show is also very different to a long tour. Playing two sets at Reading and Leeds on two consecutive days is going to be very different to playing much smaller venues on a tour for two months. The stage at a festival is going to be much bigger and more elaborate, there will be more members of stage crew, more lights, a more complicated sound rig for instance. It will be louder and there will be a much bigger audience. Often, depending on whether you're headlining or not, you might be filmed live for a television channel. You will probably have a smaller setlist too (again depending on whether you're a headliner) which means giving a performance your all for say 45 minutes, rather than playing a 90 minute set where you can take short breaks or play slower, calmer songs.

After your wonderful performance at Reading, magazines, television channels, radio stations and newspapers are probably going to want to interview you. Public relations are very important and if you want people to buy your songs and listen to your music, you have to show the public what you're like. Having a fan base is incredibly important. Lots of artists have social media platforms such as twitter and reach out to the fans while they're on tour. It's really quite beneficial for fans to feel like the bands they listen to consist of real people just like them that they can connect with.

Other public appearances that an artist might have to make include live television performances and (if you're lucky) award ceremonies.

Not every part of the job is public though. After all, the music business is a business and there will definitely be meetings with record labels, publishing companies, lawyers, accountants and managers etc that the artist will have to attend.

Compared to other jobs involving live performance, being the performing artist that's the center of attention comes with increased rewards but the pressure might be too much for some. A session musician on that very same stage with the aforementioned artist may feel much less pressure. I'm probably correct in assuming that at least 75% of the audience don't know the names of the session musicians sharing the stage with the famous band they've gone to see. Session musicians will be paid less than the main act unfortunately but there are interesting differences between the two. A session musician might only be contracted short term (for say a tour) before going to work with a different band or artist. The change in scenery so to speak is probably very refreshing as sharing a tour bus with the same people for months on end can be pretty purgatorial. On the complete opposite end of the scale, there are guitarists like Jason White worked with Green Day as a session musician for 13 years before they actually made him a member of the band. A session musician might only perform live, or might only work in a studio. It could be said that they have more freedom over exactly what they want to do as musicians without gigantic record labels on their back steering them towards doing what will make the most money.

An important aspect of any job in the music business is contracts and artists will have to sign lots of different contracts throughout their career, including but not limited to:

Publishing Contracts (Anything from a single to a whole album)
Recording Contracts (Again, anything from a single to a whole album)
Record Label Deals (Signing to a label)

Artist Management Contracts

Artist Venue Agreement

The length of these contracts can vary from between one page for a simple agreement to perform at a venue to around 50 or more pages for a long-term Artist/Record Label deal.

The following contracts are scans from How To Succeed In The Music Business by Allan Dann and John Underwood:

This contract is an example of a short agreement given to an artist or his manager to sign for a specific booking or a series of bookings like a tour.

Clause 1 is very straightforward. It's just an agreement of where, when and for how much the artist will be playing.

Clause 2 goes into detail about timing. It outlines when the artist has to arrive, how long their setlist is and when it ends.

Clause 3 should really be watched out for. The normal radius in an agreement like this is about 15 miles and if you are a little known band playing lots of small local venues nearby, this is unreasonable for the venue to make you agree to this. As a small band or artist, you should definitely try and get this deleted before you agree to play. This normally only exists for gigs where a good turnout would be noticeably affected by you being billed to play another local venue around the same date.

Clause 4 lacks some detail that is worth asking about; ultimately you want the salary paid in cash on the night.

Clause 5 is also very straightforward.

This is an example of an incredibly unfair contract you should never ever sign. It is extremely exploitative and unfair. Technically you couldn't be held to it because it is so unfair and ambiguous but it's a good example.

Clause 1 metaphorically sells your soul to this company. It says that you are never allowed to "render your services to another party for any purpose whatsoever".

Clause 2 says the company can rename your band to anything they want at will and the artist is entirely responsible for any lawsuits that may ensue.

Clause 3 forces the artist to go anywhere the company wants within 30 minutes "reasonable" notice. If they don't attend the times and places the company decides the artist loses all their rights under this or any other agreement.

Clause 4 gives the artist a really low royalty rate for their songs. 1% or less because the company has the full decision to make any deductions they want.

The artist could be fooled by Clause 5 if it was glossed over. If the artist is a duo the entire royalty rate is halved first before being paid to the artist.

Clause 6 is obviously a way of denying the artist any access to their money.

Clause 7 says that the artist has to pay all of the expenses involved in production, manufacture, distribution and advertising of their records. If they are unable to pay due to bankruptcy then relatives and friends must pay.

Clause 8 is straightforward but extremely unfair as the artist has to go abroad to get money for the company.

Clause 9 makes the artist agree that they have had no legal advice on this contract and they are not allowed to discuss any terms of the contract with any other party.