Month: December 2020

Songwriting Hit Maker Style

Our songwriting camp will teach how to write, record and perform a student’s original song. 

As an artist, learning how to write a song is a good way to exercise that skillset, apply what you learn to current songs you are writing and also develop the confidence to build your talent similar to learning an instrument. You can also write songs for other artists and develop that title along with musicianship. Here are some of the items covered in this program:

Songwriting Camps

Learn song form, harmony, and developing lyrics. Recording, producing and adding live instruments are also part of our camp. Most importantly, students will get to combine all that they have learned by creating, writing and telling their story with song. They will get a chance to perform their original song during the song camp and receive guided feedback.

You must be wondering by now, how can I write that hit song? How can I get people to sing along to my lyrics, reach the Billboard charts or reach high streaming numbers. There is a formula to writing “that” song, and it starts with song length. Hit songs these days stretch three minutes to three minutes and thirty seconds. Anything shorter your audience might forget and a song longer than let’s say four minutes, might lose a listener’s attention.

The chorus of your song must be at the 45 second mark or minute no longer. Listener’s want to hear that chorus quickly. Some songs include the chorus right at the beginning of the song to get you hooked and you should aim for the same. 

A hook that people remember is a winner. Think of your favorite songs and when you anticipate the hook, you want to do the same for the song you write as well. Hooks are catchy and a part of the song that most people remember and sing along to. 

The key you write the song in is also something that you have to consider, major key or minor key. How do you want the listener to feel when listening to your song? 

Your verses should be short and help tell the story of our song. You want your listener to remember the verses too, and keeping the lyrics tight helps. 

Beats per minute, an important factor to consider for your song. Songs that reach 136 BPM and have a faster tempo do well on the charts. One hundred twenty beats per minute is a good beginning and still maintains a good tempo. 

An additional tip is to add a pre-chorus before the chorus. The lyrics here don’t have to be the same every time, but are more memorable if it stays the same. The pre-chorus adds excitement plus help to stretch the song if it is short. 

This is the type of songwriting skills you will learn at the Belinda Brady Arts Academy. 

Stage Presence Matters

Whether you perform for yourself, on YouTube to your followers, on your TikTok account, IGTV or any other platform, stage presence matters.

If you want to learn the art of performance, you have come to the right place to engage your musical performance skills. There are three key points to learn when understanding stage presence and performing:

Get in the Zone

If you’ve ever heard of being in the zone, it can be described as when a performer is having the best performance of their life. Everything has fallen into place, it is where preparation meets practice and you’re engaged, the audience is engaged and you are focused!

Learning how to enjoy being in the moment, and ad libbing is an art within itself, all make for a better performance. 

It takes a lot to stay in that zone and you can apply focus points to make sure you are in check.

Questions like these can help you maintain focus and get back into feeling truly engaged. 

Preparation and practice is key

Learning how to enjoy being in the moment, and ad libbing is an art within itself, all make for a better performance. 

In front of any audience can build confidence. Fun fact, when Missy Elliot was a kid she used to perform for bugs! Whatever audience you are in front it will help you connect with them so that they feel the need to learn more about you, buy your music, stream it, share it with family, friends etc. and all of this leads to a growing fanbase and maybe go viral too. 

Photography is a Must for Artists

Professional photography is a must for any artist to build their brand. Everything we do now is visual, whether traditionally or currently the music industry has always connected music with visuals. Album covers used to be one of the driving factors to sell albums back in the day. Even now it is extremely important to create and build a visual brand. From album covers, digital print or billboard, an artist must have a brand personality that matches their music. Similar to a trademark your persona must be recognized by your fans. 

Brand Identity

One way to find your brand identity is to look to other artists you admire and the elements about them that inspire your music. How do their social media accounts speak to you, what do they post? Do they have concert t-shirts and posters? What do the past album covers of your favorite artists look like? 

All of this and more can be used to influence your visual brand. When creating a professional press kit it is important to have high profile images and the following: 

• An enticing bio that speaks to your artistry and the music you have created and what is next for you
• High-resolution, downloadable photos are a must! Live shots, stills, a variety of images should be included that visually speak about your music
• Your music of course must be included and the appropriate streaming platform where it can be found
• High-quality videos of live performances, studio sessions, meet and greets and more are always a must for the media to use
• Reviews, highlights and articles of your music, performances and videos are all necessary to complete a press kit
• Don’t forget social media handles and links but only to the accounts that you use the most
• Last but not least always include your contact information and if you have an agent or publisher, include their contact information as well.  

Ensure that your performance photos are well represented on your website, social media, streaming platforms and more! Stand out from other artists and engage with your audience with your photos. 

Analogue Recording

As an artist you may want to experiment with analogue versus digital sound. You will learn that with analogue you will require a full studio and the reel to reel known to give a warm inviting sound. Traditionally, analogue recording stood at the forefront of music production as artists and bands produced, mixed and mastered their singles and albums to press into vinyl LP, or cassettes tapes. Bands like Bob Marley and the Wailers, Led Zeppelin, Elle Fitzgerald, Pearl Jam to name a few took advantage of this format of recording creating their staple sound.

Digital Recording

Recording using digital mediums today simply requires a computer, a good pair of studio monitors, a condenser microphone and a decent flat sounding environment to record mix and master. Digital distribution requires a high quality audio file to save an mp3 or wav format. Of course, you can add more bells and whistles to create a state of the art digital studio recording environment. The cool thing is, your studio can be scalable and suitable to your needs. We can help you be more efficient in the studio to produce material quicker from start to finish.

Music Song Production Portfolio

As a recording artist it is important to build your portfolio musically and represent the direction you want to go in. The multiple genres of music you want to explore including the message you want to express in your music are equally important. We can show you how to showcase your artistic style and personality through your music. You want your audience to recognize your sound immediately and get your music on podcasts, streaming platforms, radio, social media, and more. Users spend 25 hours a month listening to spotify and there are 286 million active members! As long as the quality of the production is good the better it will appeal to your fans. Music production has evolved so much now that you no longer need large studios but still artists do require a professional touch and expression based on their own unique sound to stand out.

Belinda Brady has stood out and studied engineering and production at the Harris Institute and produced her own music as well for over 15 years, where her songs have played worldwide on commercial radio. She learned from award winning producers Sly and Robbi, accomplished Canadian Derek Brin, whom she shared a Juno nomination, and Marvin Prince one of the producers of Canadian star, Snow who sold over 7 million copies; “7 inches of Snow” chart-topping hit, spending seven consecutive weeks at number one of the Billboard Hot 100.

Why Video Visuals Are important for an Artists

As an artist your visuals become increasingly more important as there are more platforms available to share, stream and post all of your content.

When it comes to video and social media, video is king. On Instagram alone videos generate more engagement than any other type of content on that platform.

YouTube especially is where you will need to have your content for the following reasons:

With statistics like these, it’s extremely important that your videos create more fans and capture an audience. When starting to create your music video you have to consider which of your songs to choose. The longer the song the more it cost to shoot. Is your song coming out at a specific time? Is it a new single? Do you need a team to help bring your video together?

From Video Concept to Video Publishing

Your video production must start with a concept, what do you want the visuals to represent about the chosen song? A storyboard helps to draw out scene by scene how you want your video to come to life. What do you want the location of your video to be? Completely in-studio, specific landmark, city, a body of water? Options are endless.

Do you need talent to be a part of your concept? Dancers, actors, models, extras the list goes on. Makeup artists, stylists, must also be considered? How will the clothing and look for yourself and anyone else in the video production fit with your concept?

Don’t forget the editing process, choosing a good team to filter out what’s needed and what can be cut can be a challenging process.

As the star of the video and centre of attention creatively challenging yourself can be a fun, and inspiring journey as an artist. Put yourself out there, share the vision for your music, build a fanbase with a target video strategy using social media, streaming platforms, your own website, Vimeo, YouTube and more.