Just A Girl and Her Music

The R&B genre has suffered a decline in album sales over the years. Previously one of the most popular forms of music has taken a backseat to the others, such as rock and pop music. The big question here is WHY? R&B sales in 2015 were pretty low in comparison to other genres. Some of the top performing artists were only selling around 40 and 50 thousand copies of their albums, such as NeYo and Miguel. This year, K. Michelle is currently the number one R&B artist on the Billboard R&B chart, having sold 54,000 copies  of her new album More Issues Than Vogue  in her first week. But that pales in comparison to the number one pop and rock albums. In 2014, Taylor Swift's 1989 sold 1.3 million copies in just the first week of its release. According to Nielsen reports in 2014, rock and pop music were the top performers in sales but when it came to streaming, R&B and Hip Hop led the pack with 29% of total streams for the year. This presents a really inter...

Reviewing the TED.com site, I watched several talks that were music related and informative and entertaining. One such talk by Mark Applebaum, entitled "The mad scientist of music" , was particularly interesting. Mark is a composer in a very nontraditional sense of the word. The meat of his talk was framed around the question "Is it music?". Surrounding this question, Applebaum sought to focus on boredom and how he uses it as a catalyst for creativity and invention, how it forced him to change the fundamental question he was asking in his discipline, and how it pushed him towards taking on roles beyond the traditional narrow definition of what it means to be a composer.   He began with an excerpt from Beethoven, commenting that it was boring. Shocking, right? But what Applebaum did from here was transform the audience from being shocked by his statement to eventually leaning more towards agreeing with it. The resolve was that Beethoven's music is...

I've never really sat and thought of how great an impact music, particularly singing, can have on people. I'd always thought that I just had a connection with singing and enjoyed doing it or that someone enjoyed listening to music because it sounded nice. Can you imagine that singing can be more than just pleasing to the ears, but also helpful for the mind and body? The Alzheimer's Society in the UK began a program entitled "Singing for the Brain" , which allows people with dementia the opportunity to get together to sing and socialize with one another. They have found that these people show signs of improved social function as well as memory as a result of the program. Music not only makes them feel better, but it effects their brain function as well. In that same token, there are studies on children that show that children who have singing lessons or some other sort of musical instruction and practice have higher IQs and other brain functions, su...

There are several topics that an artist should be aware of and should be concerned about both before entering the music industry as well as once in it. There are a few that I'd like to discuss: 1. Demo production 2. Artist royalties 3. Deals to consider 4. Independent versus major record labels A demo can some times mean the difference in an open and closed door for an artist. Artists have a long list of items they must present to a potential employer in a demo, whereas if presenting the demo to a publisher, the list is a lot shorter. For an artist, it's not just about the songs and production, it's an entire package they must deliver. The songs themselves are largely important, but to labels, they want to see if the artist is someone that they can "sell" along with the music. For someone just presenting their music, perhaps to a publishing company, there are key elements required for a demo, including well recorded music and vocals, good and original...

Since January 10, 2016, news broadcasts all over the world have featured David Bowie. This legendary English singer, songwriter, musician, producer, and actor died on the 10th from an 18-month battle with lung cancer. Having released 27 studio albums between 1967 and 2016, the coverage and the devastation felt all around the world is warranted. As a songwriter, David Bowie was incomparable and influential, with lyrics that were truly unique and non-confirming. Bowie was said to have been most famous for using a method called "cut-ups" , where he would write phrases and words on paper and sort and rearrange them until he was pleased with the results. He almost writes with a stream of consciousness feel but when analyzed and dissected, his lyrics make lots of sense. In an interview with Bill Demain , Bowie says he uses the method to "provoke a new set of images" to himself. An example of this style of writing for David Bowie is a...