Hey there recording cats. Last month we talked about FTP sites and how to earn extra income by remote sessions. This month, I'd like to explore another area of possible income. Not that it's all about money, but I don't think that starving artists really like to be starving. There are many ways to supplement your musical income without having to take a job that is either not what you want to do, or not in your industry.

I want to talk about a couple of ways to turn your guitar chops, and your recording chops into both a musical tool, and a profit center for you. For many of us, we are fairly genre specific. We may like many types of music, Jazz, Rock, Blues, Heavy Metal, whatever, but we generally play for income a few types of music. For instance, I listen to just about everything. My iPod has a ton of Fusion Jazz, Blues, Rock, Country, and R&B just to start. However, for income, I play the Blues. Most of my session work is Rock or Blues. So I have gotten pretty used to the I-IV-V chord progression. On top of that rhythm track, I usually play little groove elements as well. I found out a ways back that these things could be of benefit to me financially.

I ended up creating a few of these groove elements (single note, chord strumming, or arpeggio work), I started making up little song-ettes with these. I used my recording chops to record these mini-songs that are perhaps 16 bars, with say two to four guitar parts, and a bass line. Threw a drum track underneath, and found I was creating a pretty good guitar licks library. Eventually, after fine tuning it all, this became the POP ROCK GUITAR TOOLBOX loop CD for M-Audio's Pro Sessions Library. I had to create the tracks, make sure that they were clean in as far as to pops or clicks at the leading or trailing edge of each waveform. This was to ensure seamless looping. Then I had to create them as Acid loops, AIF Files, and .WAV files. Put this all together in nice folders, and what you get is a cool little loop CD, that has a ton of guitar tracks, rhythm guitar parts, fills, wah pedal stuff, etc. It was over 100 loops all told. This was a few years ago, and Apple also picked it up for a Garage Band refill CD. I still get checks in the mail. Now this was a very cool opportunity for me. It was a lot of work, but it ended very well, and I'm working on a new one.

Then I thought, well, could I just sell these types of CD's on my own? Like a custom loop CD? So I started polling producers, and non-guitar playing artist friends and colleagues to see if they saw a need for this. Some said yes. I asked them what type of music they were working on at the moment. One was R&B. Knowing now that most loops can be made to change tempo & pitch easily, I made some funky wah pedal stuff, and two note hits, and some octave work. I made the CD, and sold the CD. It's worked out very well for both parties in many cases. It's fun for me to play this stuff, and hear it on records later, as well as appreciating the extra income.

I write all of this to say that this is the Music BUSINESS. And as a business, specifically your music business, it's good to diversify some, to create as many avenues of income as possible while playing what you like, and doing what you want to do. Getting quarterly checks in the mail is a good thing. The more, the merrier.

Now, out side of the income side of town is another purpose for loops: easy song creation. Earlier I had written about how many of us are pretty much playing in one or two genres, which means lots of the same types of chord patterns in many cases. Now even in Blues, there are many types of I-IV-V. Slow Blues, Shuffles, Delta Blues, Stomps, etc. The same goes for Jazz, Rock and other genres. However, for myself, there are times when I'm writing a similar type of slow blues, or shuffle. And I want to get something recorded so I can work on the melody line, the lyrics, or of course the SOLO!!!!

What I've done is taken some of my own guitar playing from my songs, and created bass and guitar loops out of them. Mostly eight bar segments. Rhythm parts mostly, but there are occasional little licks in there as well. When I make these, I am very carefully to first make duplicates of the original files. Often in digital audio, if you make a change to a file that's being used in a song, if you change it, you change it everywhere it's used. So beware.

But what I'll do is throw in an intro and a verse, chorus and turnaround loop, and start constructing the form of the song. If you've ever worked with loops before, you know this is incredibly easy at this point. The coolest part is that the guitars are YOUR guitars, they already have your sound, and inflections. They sound good. They have your sense of timing. I tend to do this especially when I want to sketch song ideas to take to the band. It saves so much time. Then when I have created the song, I can then bring in the cats, and we can record it with the pocket that only musicians staring at each other can create. I will leave some elements in sometimes as filler, but I don't use the same guitar tracks for more than one song. I just like to do it as a cool songwriting tool. It cuts my production time way down, and let's me get to the melody work faster. Obviously, there are going to be many song creations where none of this applies. For that it's the regular recording process.

I say give it a try. Get Loopy! See if it works for you.

http://www.philgates.com
makintrax@philgates.com
www.myspace.com/philgatesmusic

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