Members SchroedingerCat Posted January 31, 2011 Members Share Posted January 31, 2011 Hi everyone, I represent a band from Northeastern Pennsylvania, where it is highly unlikely that we will be discovered and promoted by a major label entity (in fact, in recent years, only Breaking Benjamin has made it out of here), and I am seeking some advice on how to best proceed with our career. We are at a point where we still don't have a major devoted audience (perhaps 20-30 people will come to a show "for us," on a given night), but have built up a decent amount of legitimate original tunes (currently 7 finished with only polish needed and around 5 that need to be put together and arranged to satisfaction). We have enough decent-quality recording equipment, know-how and dedication to self-record and produce whenever we feel the time is right, but are not sure how to best reach an audience outside of our fellow NEPA brethren. Now that you all have sufficient background on us, here's the question: Is is better to record an EP of 5-7 really great songs, produce the hell out of it, and proceed to attempt to market it through iTunes, Bandcamp, Amazon, and attempt to get it on internet/indie radio stations and Pandora, or is it better to wait out the recording process until we have a full album (10-12 songs) worth of sufficiently good material (with no filler, of course)? Any and all advice from an educated third party such as yourselves will be greatly appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members sventvkg Posted February 1, 2011 Members Share Posted February 1, 2011 Imitate what Breaking Benjamin did. Use them as a model. You need to be HUGE in your home market, selling out places and selling lots of schwag. Play in your own market infrequently and tour. That said, work on your tunes and hone your live chops. ALL of your tunes HAVE to be GREAT and I think you need to have a hell of a lot more than an album's worth of good tunes. Keep writing and keep developing. Sounds like that's the stage you're still in. Overnight success will take you YEARS. Seriously. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators daddymack Posted February 1, 2011 Moderators Share Posted February 1, 2011 Get one or two songs done, perfect, then shoot really eye-catching videos, get them up on Youtube, promote the hell out of them to everyone you know on the planet and see if you can make it go viral.That is how bands will make a name for themselves for the foreseeable future. Then go make an EP with ~4 songs and sell that... How you pay for all this high-end production will depend on how determined you are to succeed...If this generates interest in the band, then go finish recording the full CD and start selling it.Good luck, and welcome to the crapshoot. YMMV...the management is not responsible for lost or stolen articles... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members richardmac Posted February 1, 2011 Members Share Posted February 1, 2011 You have to tell us the style of music, because different genres should approach building a future in different ways. You might consider playing covers and slipping in your originals, if you can't get gigs. Choose covers that are the same genre as your original music. Cover bands get gigs easier than original bands and make more money which can be put back into the band. Then over time do more originals than covers. Then drop the covers altogether. Worked for Van Halen. You could do that AND the route daddymack suggested. Oh, and I agree with sventvkg - all of your tunes have to be great, or don't bother planning on going far. Write, write, write. Most of all, do this for fun and for the love of music. Playing to 30 people can still be fun. Not as much fun as playing to 300, true. Worry about making great music first and foremost. If your music is great, the rest might fall into place. If not, you won't go anywhere but can still have fun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SchroedingerCat Posted February 1, 2011 Author Members Share Posted February 1, 2011 You have to tell us the style of music, because different genres should approach building a future in different ways.You might consider playing covers and slipping in your originals, if you can't get gigs. Choose covers that are the same genre as your original music. Cover bands get gigs easier than original bands and make more money which can be put back into the band. Then over time do more originals than covers. Then drop the covers altogether. Worked for Van Halen.... Yeah, that was silly of me to omit, admittedly. We are an alt. rock/punk band. Perhaps not the most original format ever, but we've yet to encounter a negative response at a show, I suppose we just haven't blown enough people away for them to go home and find us on Facebook and other social media outlets...oh well. As for covering material, that is how we started. It was great for developing our musicianship and collective performance integrity, but the issue facing us now is mainly the oppressive lack of venues in our area for both full bands and underage acts (which we currently are members of, and will be, for another year). The majority of performance opps here are for solo acoustic guys, duos and, on the other end of the spectrum, heavy death metal bands. The lead singer and myself have contemplated breaking off and doing duo things on the side to promote the band as a whole, but have yet to act on it. For the more moderately-paced, larger, 5 man college indie rock bands like us, there is basically no scene except for the universities themselves, and we feel if we play at any one place too frequently, our appeal would stagnate (a fear that may not have grounds, granted). As for our material being great...it's definitely getting markedly better, but only 2-3 of our 7 songs would register as "great," if I'm being honest with myself. Such is life, I suppose. Thank you all for the advice so far, and thanks to all who continue to contribute. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BlueStrat Posted February 1, 2011 Members Share Posted February 1, 2011 Having 12 songs is not enough to get label attention. Maybe things have changed, but labels have traditionally looked for band that had a good 2-3 albums worth of material, hoping to get 10 decent songs out of them, with at least 3 being regarded as radio-type stuff. You also need to move if you're really serious about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators daddymack Posted February 1, 2011 Moderators Share Posted February 1, 2011 Well, IIRC, there is a very (or at least was) active collegiate circuit in the Pa/Oh/NJ/NY. Seems to me you need to look around, in and out of town a few miles...there are tons of schools. Search for colleges within 100 mile radius of Wilkes-Barre...you may be happily surprised...right around W-B you have Wilkes University, King's College, Misericordia University, Penn State Wilkes-Barre and Luzerne County Community College...they all probably have student unions and hire bands on weekends...alternating betwen those five could get you guys a decent following fairly quickly... and definitely look into the duo configuration for brunch gigs/restaurants..plus is the old Lion Brewery still open up there? (yes, I have ben in W-B, many years ago...and Erie, too...), they might pay for the occassional festvity... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Inazone Posted February 2, 2011 Members Share Posted February 2, 2011 While you're working on building your fan base, be that local or over a broader area, get a couple of songs as polished as possible and get them online. The Internet is 24/7, so those songs always have the potential to attract new fans, even if you're limited to what you can do from a gigging perspective at the moment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JonChorba Posted February 3, 2011 Members Share Posted February 3, 2011 Hey, do you guys have a website with dates? I'm from the Scranton area! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SchroedingerCat Posted February 3, 2011 Author Members Share Posted February 3, 2011 Thanks for all of the advice guys, I'll try to take all of the suggestions to the band at the next rehearsal and see what comes of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SchroedingerCat Posted February 3, 2011 Author Members Share Posted February 3, 2011 Well, IIRC, there is a very (or at least was) active collegiate circuit in the Pa/Oh/NJ/NY. Seems to me you need to look around, in and out of town a few miles...there are tons of schools. Search for colleges within 100 mile radius of Wilkes-Barre...you may be happily surprised...right around W-B you have Wilkes University, King's College, Misericordia University, Penn State Wilkes-Barre and Luzerne County Community College...they all probably have student unions and hire bands on weekends...alternating betwen those five could get you guys a decent following fairly quickly... and definitely look into the duo configuration for brunch gigs/restaurants..plus is the old Lion Brewery still open up there? (yes, I have ben in W-B, many years ago...and Erie, too...), they might pay for the occassional festvity... We actually have played at Wilkes several times now (3 of the five of us currently attend, with a fourth set to join us from LCCC next year, we're all sophmores now). As for the other colleges/universities, they aren't terribly receptive to the idea of live music, at least on a full band scale. PSU Wilkes-Barre and LCCC are commuter colleges, so there is little to nothing going on there on the weekends, methinks. But the suggestion was solid; the few shows we played at Wilkes had decent crowds. In September we played on South Street (literally on the street) for a fair, and had 100-150 people there...cool experience. And yes, the Lion Brewery is still up and operating in scenic Mid-town Wilkes-Barre (haha), but I'm not sure that they'd allow us to play 'till we are all of age, which won't happen to July 2012 hahaha...although it couldn't hurt to ask and we hadn't thought of that before... Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SchroedingerCat Posted February 4, 2011 Author Members Share Posted February 4, 2011 Hey, do you guys have a website with dates? I'm from the Scranton area! We're currently working with a web-developer/server-owning friend/colleague of ours to get up a legitimate .com website, but that isn't really close to completion. We are on Facebook (search Zero Point Theory and hopefully it'll pop up) and I think we may be on reverbnation and various other promo sites, however we've changed names recently (legal issue with a previously eponymous band from Mexico that sent some threatening emails to us...yikes), and I don't really remember which accounts we've updated/retained. Thanks for your interest, though, if you want to know anymore catch us on Facebook, this really isn't a polite place for self-promo and I don't want to offend or annoy anyone else in this thread (sorry to anyone I have already annoyed with this semi-self-promo response). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators daddymack Posted February 4, 2011 Moderators Share Posted February 4, 2011 however we've changed names recently (legal issue with a previously eponymous band from Mexico that sent some threatening emails to us...yikes) Seriously? They were in Mexico and felt threatened by a band 3000 miles away? You should have told them to sue you...they couldn't even if they wanted to...what were they going to do, come all the way up to W-B and spraypaint on your wall? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JonChorba Posted February 4, 2011 Members Share Posted February 4, 2011 We're currently working with a web-developer/server-owning friend/colleague of ours to get up a legitimate .com website, but that isn't really close to completion. We are on Facebook (search Zero Point Theory and hopefully it'll pop up) and I think we may be on reverbnation and various other promo sites, however we've changed names recently (legal issue with a previously eponymous band from Mexico that sent some threatening emails to us...yikes), and I don't really remember which accounts we've updated/retained.Thanks for your interest, though, if you want to know anymore catch us on Facebook, this really isn't a polite place for self-promo and I don't want to offend or annoy anyone else in this thread (sorry to anyone I have already annoyed with this semi-self-promo response). No worries. "Liked!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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