Land of Lyrics

The layout of the site is a bit cheap and nasty with moving banner ads and large sized print.

It separates the searches out by album name, but depending on the album there are sometimes no songs listed.

There is a very small forums and articles section on the site.

Visit Site: http://www.landoflyrics.com/

Other Resources:
1. Forum (small)
2. Articles

iLyric

This is a straighforward search site with approximately 126,000 lyrics in it’s database.
Song search results are fairly well displayed.

Visit Site: http://www.ilyric.net/

Other Resources:
1. Forum
2. Articles

Get some noise

The site has a few useful resources such as band reviews and forums (you have to become a registered user to use the forum).

Visit Site: http://www.getsomelyrics.com

Other Resources:
1. Band reviews
2. Interviews
3. Forums

Wholenote.com

This is one of the best sites for guitar lessons and general resources. The lessons are in depth and clear and there are a number of very cool resources such as Composer and Groove Builder which allow you to easily create your own chord progressions for easy play back and practice.

Visit Site: http://www.wholenote.com/

Levels: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced

Other Resources:
1. Articles

Myguitarworkshop.com

A good site that’s easy to use with 16 different guitar lessons sections. There are also a lot of good articles and it’s own datbase of tablatures.

An interactive fretboard/chord locator is also on the site.

Visit Site: http://www.myguitarworkshop.com

Levels: Beginner

Other Resources:
1. Articles
2. Tablatures

Instituteofbass.com

A useful site with 22 lessons from 4 artists. The site is aimed specifically at the art of contemporary bass playing and the study of bass tradition. The articles under each lesson are extensive and informative. However, a few of the lessons don’t have tablature which could cause a problem for those who don’t read music.

Visit Site: http://www.instituteofbass.com

Levels: Beginner, Intermediate

Other Resources:
1. News
2. Reviews
3. Forums

Insaneguitar.com

Altough the layout of the site makes it a little hard to find what your are looking for, the archives section has a lot of good articles and various lessons. There are quite a few articles and lessons in the archives section which are definitely worth looking at.

Visit Site: http://www.insaneguitar.com

Levels: Beginner, Intermediate

Other Resources:
1. Articles
2. Interviews

This site is well laid out with a lot of useful lessons and techniques for learning guitar. The topics are defined well so the site is easy to navigate around and the lessons are in depth and written in layman terms, so easy to follow.

The site also has other useful resources such as how to record and release your own CDs.

Visit Site: http://www.ibreathemusic.com

Levels: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced

Other Resources:
1. Recording your own music
2. Articles

This is a member site with a lot of useful lessons and various tools. There are quite a few free tools on there as well, including chord generators, quizzes etc.

Visit Site: http://www.hotfrets.com/

Levels: Beginner, Intermediate

Other Resources:
1. Articles
2. Theory
3. Chord Finder
4. Quiz

Avante Garde Interview

Interview with Avante Garde (Ai Uchida and Hiroshi Kim)

Ai Uchida and Hiroshi Kim released their album through their own label, Spinshell records. You can find their first album, ‘Just a Dream’ on Avante Garde’s web site at http://www.ag.mu/. They also run an entertainment website for the international community in Japan, and for those people around the world who are interested in Tokyo www.Spinshell.TV.

Interview with Ai Uchida (AU) and Hiroshi Kim, by Richard Johns (RJ), Tabreview.com

RJ: When did you start playing music?
HK: I started learning piano when I was in early elementary school but soon gave up. I started again after graduating from High School.
AU: I started taking piano lessons from the age of 5 and from the age of13 I started taking guitar lessons. After starting college I began to sing seriously.

RJ: When did you start singing and what inspired you to start singing?
AU: My first big singing part was doing lead in a musical in middle school. In high school I was the vocalist of an alternative rock band, but it wasn’t until college that I learned to discipline myself about singing.
I was inspired to sing probably when my mother took me to see the broadway musical, Cats, when I was about 7. I loved the score, and the performance really moved me.

RJ: How did you go about getting your music released? Who did you approach first and what was the process involved?
HK: The process was lengthy and difficult. First you need to the minimum required to be able to release your music, i.e., that is be prepared to be able to send out your music (CD) whenever you receive an order in a timely fashion. You must be prepared and responsible because you are putting your music in the public domain.

Getting this set up, we spent long time trying to get a contract with CD distributors. This is how you get your CDs out to major music stores. There are few exceptions and you can make negotiations directly with specific outlets, but usually, especially in Japan, you need to go through existing distributors.
We finally got one as a label, so one of our responsibilities as a label is to release titles constantly.

RJ: What labels have you recorded with?
HK: Spinshell Records, Sounday Records

RJ: Do you sell MP3s online as well as CDs? If so, do you sell MP3s on itunes and/or on other sites? If so, what sites can they be found on?
If you sell on itunes, can you give a general description of the process involved in getting your music up on itunes?
HK: Yes, we do. Our songs are available on many major online music
stores such as iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster etc. The process that we
went through to put our songs online was similar to how we did it for our CD distribution. We needed to sign with an online music distributor and we made a contract with one of the major digital music distributors. The distributor distributes our songs to various online digital music stores.

RJ: Where did you record your album? Was it a costly process? What recording equipment do you use?
HK: We recorded, mixed, mastered at our private studio, Spinshell Studio , located in Tokyo. We used Pro Tools HD Accel system for recording and mixing. We also use various analog equipment such as Manley, Avalon Design, Neve etc.

RJ: Are you currently making a living out of music?
HK: Yes, I am currently making a living out of music.

RJ: When did you first release a CD and where are they distributed?
HK: We provide songs to Japanese major label artists as well as managing and producing our own artists. We have released our first CD though our label Spinshell Records, which it was not incorporated yet back then, and the CD was AVANT GARDE’s first mini album ” Just A Dream”.
The CD was distributed by ourselves to cafes, restaurants and other shops in Tokyo.

RJ: How long did it take to produce your albums from start to finish?
HK: Quite a long time, depending on when we consider the actual ‘start date’.
If we include the time we took for composition and arranging of the songs, it would have taken more than a year in total. The actual process of recording, mixing and mastering took about 3~4 months for our fist released CD.

RJ: What percentage of music do you sell offline (i.e. in stores, at gigs etc.) compared with online?
HK: CD sales online are more consistent and obviously doesn’t require us to be gigging. We have sold a large percentage of CDs at gigs and events, but online sales provide a unique convenience for us and users. Sales at gigs obviously will fluctuate, depending on the frequency of your gigs.

RJ: What advice would you give to any aspiring artists trying to sell their music on the internet?
HK: Use the internet as much as possible. Try to explore various possibilities and don’t be scared to try new things. The music industry and the way business carried out is now in the midst of change and we should take advantage of this trend.

RJ: What are the pitfalls to avoid when trying to put your music on the net? What would you avoid if you had your time back?
AU: Be careful about the timing of your releases and couple it with your own PR if possible. It’s very easy to release something on the Internet as soon as you’ve mastered it, but if you don’t have your PR plan lined up, your song runs the risk of being unnoticed. A good song deserves a good release plan.

RJ: Is it necessary to copyright your originals before putting them on the net? Is this difficult? Did you copyright your own material before doing so?
HK: Depends….For a musician, it is natural to feel that his or her rights to be protected. However, the world is going more open and vague about how society should pay for one’s intellectual rights. This has a lot to do with the high speed that technology is being developed. If your primary goal is to get your music to as many people as possible, I think you should just let it be heard by people, meaning put it up on the net. People might download it for free, give it to his or her friends for free, but remember, no evaluation nor success come without your song being heard by somebody.
I don’t think it is too late to think about your copy rights etc after your song(s) get noticed. At your own risk of course!

RJ: How did you set up your website? Did you get a professional to create it? Was it difficult to set up the credit card system so people could purchase your music online?
HK: We were very lucky in terms of our website creation. We met a wonderful (professionally and personally) web designers. They built our website just as we wanted it to be and they gave us more than what we asked for.
You don’t need a credit card system on your website to sell your CDs online.
Payments can be done via PayPal if you want.

RJ: Best of luck with the sales of your CD and your company, Avante Garde. I’ll be in touch later on to see how you are getting on.