Happy Birthday AudioJungle: 44 Articles for the Recording Musician

Today is exactly one year since Adrien (the other Adrien, who later became our Community Manager) posted his “Welcome to the Jungle!” message to announce the birth of AudioJungle. Happy birthday!

The last year has been an eventful one! AudioJungle has grown to be a successful audio marketplace, and currently has 176,113 members, 5,678 music files, 2,069 sound files and 34 source files. Our forum is active, our blog is attracting eyeballs, and many of you have made money. Well done!

In this article I’ll highlight the 44 articles (not including competitions and site announcements) that have been written by various authors over the last year. They cover a wide range of topics that every recording musician should be aware of.

Here are 44 articles to equip, educate and inspire the recording musician:

Listening to Music

We musos spend as much time listening to music as they do playing it. Listening to music gives us ideas and inspiration, broadens and develops our musical taste, helps us to choose the style of music that identifies us, and is just plain fun. The software, large hard drives, and powerful portable devices available today make listening to music more convenient than ever.

1. 10 Things Songbird Does That iTunes Can’t

“Songbird’s unique features make it a great media player in the Web 2.0 world. It is a flexible tool that belongs in the toolkit of any musician who explores new music online. In particular, the way it works with music-related websites and blogs greatly interests me.”

2. 13 Free MP3 Players for Windows

“Many of us listen to our music using fairly standard software: either Windows Media Player or iTunes. But there are literally hundreds of similar programs available for Windows, most of which are free. They all do the same basic job, but may have unique features or a different interface.”

3. 63% of People Can’t Live Without Music. Are You One of Them?

“‘I can’t live without music!’ Have you ever heard or said that statement? 63% of people can’t live without music. This article will show you whether you are one of them.”

Your Studio and Gear

Playing and recording music costs serious money. Especially if you’re serious about producing quality music. We spend our money on instruments and mikes, audio gear including mixers, amps and speakers, and the best computer system we can afford. They are the tools of our trade.

4. How to Create Your Own Home Studio

“Home studios are great. They allow us to play producer, singer and recording artist. They enable us to record (hopefully) pretty good quality music that we can share with others, and maybe make some money from. They can be addictively fun, incredibly frustrating, and consume all of our spare time and money. And they’re all different.”

5. 8 Budget Audio Interfaces for Your Home Studio

“There are budget audio interfaces out there, so using this list you can hold off on breaking the bank at least until your next big audio purchase comes up.”

6. 50 Guitar String Hacks for Recording Musicians

“If you’re going to record your guitar, you might as well get the best sound out of it. While good strings won’t make a bad guitar sound amazing, bad strings can totally ruin the sound of a good guitar. There are techniques for making your strings retain their brightness longer, and the way you hit those strings can make a major difference to the sound you get.”

7. 8 Guitar Amp Myths: How Many Do You Believe?

“The key thing is that in most cases you do get what you pay for. Consider your budget when choosing your amp. You won’t get a $5,000 sound for $500. Trust your own ears and buy the best you can.”

8. 40 Tips for Better Guitar Technique

“Learning how to play guitar requires mastering a set of skills. You can achieve great improvement in your playing by getting fussy about your technique, and caring enough to do things properly. You need to banish sloppy playing from your musical vocabulary.”

Audio Software

Computer software plays a central role in making music. It is just as important – or possibly more important – than all our audio gear. It costs money to buy, time to learn, and years to master. Here are six articles that focus on the less expensive side of the scale.

9. 8 Free, Cross-Platform Apps for Musicians

“Like most of us when we’re in the studio, it’s hard to get me to work with anything other than the industry standards; Pro Tools, Reason, Logic (which sort of falls into that category), and so on. But given the rising prices of just about everything under the sun, not to mention the chronic emptiness of the musician’s wallet, it’s worth taking a look at the alternatives out there that can be had for free.”

10. 7 Free Digital Recording Apps for Windows

“Being a musician can be expensive. With musical instruments, equipment and software you normally get what you pay for, and we want to sound good! So we pay, and pay big. But it’s good to know you can get some things for free.”

11. 14 Tips to Make Windows Break the Sound Barrier

“What can we do to make Windows record music more effectively? I spend a lot of time supporting and maintaining Windows computers, and here are my 14 tips to make Windows break the sound barrier.”

12. Why Linux Could Be Your Next Digital Recording Studio

“Like Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows, Linux is an operating system, but it is one that many people have never met. You won’t see ads for it on TV, and you’re unlikely to see it running on a computer in a shop. Nevertheless, Linux has a growing base of enthusiastic users, and there are good reasons to consider it for a digital recording studio.”

13. 29 Music-making Apps for Linux

“Fortunately, there is a long list of excellent music applications available for Linux. If you choose one of the Linux distributions recommended last week, many of them come preinstalled.”

14. Audacity: The Versatile Audio Tool for Everyone

“Audacity is used for all sorts of audio tasks. There may be more specialized applications in each category, but Audacity does a great job. If you have anything to do with audio, this program deserves to be in your toolbox.”

Roles in the Studio

This great series of articles clearly describes the roles people play in a studio: producer, engineer, musician and manager. In your studio, you just might fill all the roles!

15. The Role of the Producer in the Studio

“The producer has a job that consists of many roles. Some of them happen in the studio, and some of them don’t.”

16. The Role of the Engineer in the Studio

“A good engineer is priceless. They’re often referred to as minions of the producer and I even introduced them in this post as the producer’s henchman; but this is a vast oversimplification of their role. If they can’t place mics and dial in settings that produce a great sound, they’re useless.”

17. The Role of the Musician in the Studio

“At the most basic level, the role of the musician in the studio is to deliver a performance of high quality that can be released to the world.”

18. The Role of the Manager in the Studio

“Bottom line: a good manager is an excellent thing to have. They look after the business of your band. That said, you, as the artist, look after the creative production. Businessmen do not, and should not.”

Creating and Distributing Your Music

The process of creating and distributing music is becoming more complex, but more of the process is now in your hands. Improved technology, better infrastructure and new licenses allow you to accomplish more while giving less of your rights away.

19. How to Collaborate on an Audio Project Over the Net
“Today it’s quite possible to collaborate on audio projects using the Internet, since we can handle the uploading and downloading of large files pretty quickly and without racking up a huge bill. But that doesn’t mean the methods for doing so have been refined, and you’ll be surprised how many producers, engineers and their collaborators aren’t sure what to do when they first sign up for this kind of venture.”

20. 10 Hints for Creating a More Tuneful Melody

“Whatever style of music you write, your composition is likely to benefit from having a memorable tune. Here are ten hints for creating one.”

21. 60 Ways to Make an Arrangement Richer
“An effective arrangement can make a good song great. Music arrangement is like arranging flowers or being a gourmet chef: you take the existing ingredients, and put them together in a way that is interesting and satisfying. It is also like story-telling, you take the listener with you on a journey, and leave them on a higher plane.”

22. 5 Forms & Contracts Every Musician Needs
“Being a musician seems glamorous to the outsider. The truth is, there is paperwork to be done and legal precautions to take, just like in any other business—whether you’re selling millions of tracks on iTunes every week, or you’re losing money.”

23. AUDIOTUTS: 5 Biggest Music DRM Debacles of All Time

“DRM is a broken technology that punishes the consumer while pirates go virtually unaffected. We don’t use DRM on any of the audio we sell here at AudioJungle, and we never will.”

Marketing Your Music

Only marketing gurus enjoy marketing. For the rest of us it is a necessary evil. But if you don’t market your music, no one will listen to it. Here are five sensible articles that will get you started.

24. 16 Websites Where You Can Promote Your Music

“So what’s a musician gotta do to get some attention around here? I’ve scoured the Internet looking for a few good places to plaster your music and your name. Some you might know, some you might not—here we’re going beyond MySpace and trying to make your tunes as ubiquitous as possible.”

25. Quick Author’s Tip: Promote Your Portfolio!

“Having trouble getting anyone to buy your audio files? Perhaps you just want to sell a few more than you have been for a little more pocket money. For most AudioJungle authors with flatlining sales figures, the solution is simply to start promoting your portfolio”

26. Quick Author’s Tip: Know Your Target Market

“But promotion is a fine art, and the simplest and most effective way to increase the effectiveness of even the most basic promotions is to know your target market and sell to them.”

27. Quick Author’s Tip: Presentation is Everything

“When you’re submitting files to AudioJungle, take your time and think each element of your submission through.”

28. 9 Tips for Selling More on AudioJungle

“Like anything, selling stock is something that you get better at over time. In my job working on ThemeForest, FlashDen and AudioJungle I get to see a lot of the things people do to maximize their income, some of them are quite ingenious. Since it benefits us if we have clever authors on our sites and it benefits Freelancers interested in selling stock, I’ve put together my top tips for selling well on stock sites.”

Learning Music Theory

The better you understand music, the more naturally you will be able to make it, and the richer your vocabulary will be. These four articles cover intervals and notation: two important aspects of music theory.

29. Boot Camp for Your Ear: Detecting Intervals with Song Associations

“But ear training isn’t theory. It’s practical. When you take a mere ten minutes out of your day, every day, to master this aspect of the musical field, you’ll find you’re better able to transcribe and dissect riffs that inspire you, and better yet, turn the tunes in your head into tunes you can play without spending hours guessing the notes. Even if you’re a rocker.”

30. 5 Ways to Notate Your Music

“People have been notating music for four thousand years now, and it’s all we have of music that was written before recording was invented. Today it remains an essential tool for every musician, and the ability to read and write some sort of notation is a skill well worth learning.”

31. The Ingredients of Melody: Intervals

“So I kept on practicing my scales, learning how to read music, working out how synthesizers worked, and bought a portastudio. I got to know the ingredients of music, how to put them together, and how they related to each other. And I learned about one of the ingredients of melody: intervals.”

32. Nashville Notation: Playing by the Numbers

Resources for Learning Music

Learning is a life-long activity. Here are six articles about websites and software that will keep you learning for a very long time.

33. Time to Learn Something New? AUDIOTUTS is live!

“Even the most hardened veteran benefits from updating skills and experimenting with new ideas. And as someone who learnt most of their profession from online tutorials I can testify to the utility of a good tutorials site! So it’s with a lot of pleasure that I announce our latest member of the TUTS family of sites – AUDIOTUTS!”

34. 6 Apps & Websites to Get Your Ear in Shape

“This time, we’re going to look at a bunch of applications and websites that will help you with regular ear training sessions. Most of these go beyond intervals, of course.”

35. 10 Audio Tutorials to Help You Improve Your Stock Audio

“Over at AUDIOTUTS, there have been a whole lot of tutorials that should prove useful for AudioJungle authors from a whole range of musical styles and genres. We’ve hand-picked a bunch of the best from the last couple of months and hope you learn some new skills to enhance your music, and enjoy yourself while you’re at it.”

36. 7 Sites That Teach You to Read Music

“If you’re serious about learning music, actions speak louder than words. Check out some of those sites, and get to work!”

37. Get Free Music Lessons from halfStepup.com

“Learning music can be expensive, and it’s great to know that HSU is completely free of charge. Most of the resources of the site are available without signing up.”

38. 20 Podcasts that Keep Musicians Up-to-Date

“A podcast is like a radio show, only distributed via RSS over the internet. Some are professionally produced, but many are done by amateurs. Most are about a particular interest or topic. And there are a ton of them on music and recording – some featuring indie music, others exploring music technology, and many explaining techniques for playing and recording music.”

Music Applications on Portable Devices

Many of us carry around gadgets today that can enhance our musical lives. While not being ideal for serious recording, they do offer some interesting possibilities.

39. Your Portable Studio: iPhone Apps for Musicians

“But jokes aside, the iPhone really does have some great offerings for musicians that you should know about, and I think it’s a platform with huge potential for musicians, especially on the move.”

40. 5 Music Gadgets That Tempt Me to Play

“There’s something about a portable music gadget that you can actually make music with that makes me want to play. And I had that feeling this week when I heard of a Moog synthesizer that you can play on a Nintendo DS. I want to play!”

41. All the Music Apps for Google’s Android You Could Need

“The third party application market for Android is still quite young and immature, and there is no doubt that these apps will improve, and more are on their way. But at this stage, the iPhone’s counterparts offer better value . . . assuming you own an iPhone!”

Health and Lifestyle

Musicians can be socially responsible, organized, and healthy. Here’s how.

42. The Power of the Musician’s Voice to Create Change

“The artist is in a position of power. Creators working within the arts and entertainment play a huge role in defining culture and influencing the public discourse.”

43. 6 Ways Airset Can Help Musicians Get Organized

“AirSet is great at organizing individuals, but collaboration and organizing groups is where it really shines. Composing music can often be a very personal and individual creative act. But the Internet and the digital nature of recording gives us ways of collaborating with others that have never existed before. I’d be interested to hear in the comments about whether this has affected the way you compose.”

44. How Musicians Should Look After Their Hearing

“Here are some tips about how musicians should look after their hearing, and a few hints about what you can do after the damage is done.”

So, happy birthday AudioJungle! What has been the highlight of your year?


2

Comments

Adrian

Adrian is writer and editor for Audiotuts+ and the AudioJungle blog. He has been playing keys and acoustic guitar for three decades, and has six kids. Follow him on Twitter at @audiotuts.