Musics Summary

New shows at ACL Live include Pink Martini (March 26), Al Green (April 26) and Ziggy Marley (May 2). Pitchfork announced the rest of its showcase with Fiona Apple. A campaign to have Willie Nelson perform at halftimeOriginal article

You have signed up with a reliable music distribution agency, have been selling songs online, and have gotten a supportive fan base. Want to go on tour? Perform live gigs in clubs, bars, and if possible, concert arenas? If it’s a yes to all, start booking for your tour.

Here’s how to book your tour (and in the end, do Music Promotion and sell songs):

1.    Assign a tour manager.
With meticulous planning, you need yourself, someone else, or one of your band members to solely focus on managing tour dates. Someone qualified for this job must be systematic, organized, and with great interpersonal skills.

2.    Decide on a date range.
You need to plan at least four-to-six months for a tour. Booking a tour requires months of contacting, follow-ups, and problem solving. Venues have different booking requirements, some just one month, others six months at a time. As you do oculars or checking out of venues, you have to continue to network with the local press, promote the concert, and continue to market an artist/band’s music. Take advantage of this opportunity for music promotion.

3.    Choose your tour route.
You have to look at a tour logistically. You can’t book tour dates on venues that are too far apart from each other. Consider the hours of driving, the days-off you will take, and the payment scheme of venues. Big cities usually require a ‘pay to play’ option or they cannot pay you a pittance. Smaller towns are willing to offer the big bucks and are easier to land bookings.

4.    Contact venues.
Now that you have checked out venues, know the contact persons, called music promoters, who you will have to talk to. Send an email, a private message to their Facebook or MySpace, call them on the phone, or fill out their standard contact form. Personalize your message and sell your stuff—buttom line is to undertake music promotion efforts that could lead to Selling Songs. Remember that on going on tour, you’re doing your own music promotion, but promoters want the bottom line: profit. They don’t care about good music or artists, they want to sell tickets. You can visit free, searchable database sites such as byofl.org or onlinegigs.com.

5.    Follow up with venues.
Ask for confirmation from venues to make sure you have a place to play. Send them posters or details to showcase on their websites. Never forget to follow up before you go on tour.

6.    Always have a backup plan.
If a venue doesn’t push through, get creative. Contact locals, radio stations, churches, newspapers, or companies that may need an artist/band at any of their events – private party, in-store gigs, radio interview – anything will have to do.

For top-notch music distribution that could also help you get a headstart in music promotion, choose a digital music distribution partner that has a reach of over 750 retailers and mobile partners across 100 countries. For more information on music distribution services, visit www.jmddistribution.com or send an email with a link to access streaming of your songs to: submissions@jmddistribution.com

Relaxation is considered to be very important to live life with excellence and if you are not relaxed then you may be going on the wrong track of your life. You really have to make sure that you are not always stressed up and tensed as well due to your tasks and daily jobs. You need to find some sort of time for yourself in order to attain relaxation. There are many people all around the world who believe that relaxation can be attained with the help of music. This particular concept is correct because music can surely allow an individual to get superb level of relaxation. However, the type of music is also very important when it comes to getting proper relaxation because you may be able to get boost of energy in your body with a faster and rocking music. So, one can’t judge that all kinds of music can surely give same sorts of results. There are various aspects included in it which should be there in the mind of a person so that he will be able to utilize music with excellence. You can surely attain superb results in your life with ease with the assistance of good music and there will be no issues for you to get relaxation as well. There are a few special kinds of music and sounds which can slower down the activity of your brain and this can also be considered as very good when it comes to proper relaxation. The Alpha sound is considered to be one of the best for this particular purpose as this sound can surely allow an individual to get better level of relaxation with ease. There will be no issues for you with music as you will be utilizing music for healing perspectives through the Alpha sound. There are numbers of people all around the world who are getting top notch benefits from it and you can also be one of them as this really is very easy and this particular sound level is very slow which will be reducing the activity of your brain in order to get a better level of relaxation. There will be no issues for you to relax your mind and get everything according to your expectations so that music for healing can be improvised with excellence. Healing Music is a relatively newer concept though there are many people around the globe who are getting superb benefit form it and you can also be one of them. All you have to do is to just find a source where you will be able to get more knowledge about this special sound or music. This can be considered as a vital music for you when it comes to get top notch benefits. It will be much easier for you to relax your mind and once you are able to relax your mind then you can surely diminish stress as well with ease. Learn healing with music and get top notch relaxation with ease.

Sweet Music

so gently held against my breast

her head upon my shoulder lain

Of all places, on my local mostly NASA station, I discovered a local Minneapolis jazz/swing combo led by singer Rhonda Laurie, backed up by a trio of guitar, bass, & violin. Yeah, violin!!

My earliest memories have a jazz soundtrack. It was the music my father listened to, that permeated our home. As a rebellious teenager, I rejected it as “old people’s music,” favoring the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. (No one told me about their jazz influences until much later.) During my college years, however, I experienced a transformation of musical taste.  I happened to have a boyfriend who loved jazz, and he was amazed at my wide range of jazz knowledge. Likely he would have been far more impressed with my father’s jazz collection, if he had only known.

Happily, I was finally able to embrace the music my father so ardently wanted to share, and I can honestly say that the two jazz concerts I attended with my dad before he died are some of my fondest memories together.

Since then, I have come to believe that live jazz performances are the best way to experience this music. Why? Because jazz is never the same; the improvisation musicians bring to the stage when playing is what makes each song and live performance so special. What I have also come to learn is that there are many fans of jazz around the world, as these festivals indicate.

Below are just a sampling of some of the finest jazz festivals in the world.

Festival International de Jazz de Montreal
10-11 days in late June and early July
Every summer, Montreal embraces its international sensibilities and fills its streets with festival goers of every type. By far its most important event, however, is the Montreal International Jazz Festival, which includes more than 3,000 musicians from 30 countries around the globe. From Tony Bennett to Al Jarreau, from Pat Metheny to Nora Jones, and beyond, this jazz festival attracts all of the jazz greats and spans the range of music from Latin Jazz to Electronica, from Reggae to Bebop.

With more than 2 million attendees, this is the largest jazz festival in the world, and it continues to grow. Performances take over the downtown area, centered around Place des Arts. Using 10 outdoor stages and 10 concert halls for hundreds of indoor and outdoor performances, Montreal gives over its streets to the festival, and includes a musical park for kids. This festival has something for everyone!

Havana International Jazz Festival
7 days, mid-February
Since the early 1980s, this jazz festival has been drawing not only on its own musical roots (heavily tinged with African influences) but on the importation of music from beyond its borders. With approximately 30,000 attendees this festival is a wild intermingling of musical groups and sounds, with as much of the excitement stemming from impromptu sessions that occur in after-hours venues as what appears on the official program. It may appear disorganized and sprawling, but it has a depth and closeness to the music that cannot be rivaled. Americans can attend via organized tours, often through Canadian companies. Professional musicians and those associated with the music business are also able to obtain legal visas with no problem.

North Sea Jazz Festival
3 days, 2nd full weekend in July
Condensed into a three-day weekend, this Dutch festival held at The Hague has been going for more than 25 years and is the largest gathering of jazz musicians in Europe. When the festival began, there were 6 venues, 300 artists, and about 9,000 attendees. Yet it also had some of the most famous names in jazz performing, including Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, and Stan Getz. Today, the festival has 15 venues, 1,300 artists, and about 70,000 attendees. The entertainers remain top notch. Just about any performer you can think of in the jazz genre has played here, from Nat Adderly to Herbie Hancock to Alicia Keys, and more.

The festival is particularly known for introducing new artists to the European jazz audience, and with the festival’s popularity, two new events, “Heats the Hague” and “Midsummer Jazz Gala” have been added on the eve of the festival’s opening.

Montreux Jazz Festival
16 days, including first 3 full weekends in July
Since 1967, this jazz festival has always been ahead of the curve, featuring both new and established jazz talent. Set on the shores of beautiful Lake Geneva, Switzerland, the Montreux Festival is the largest jazz festival in Switzerland and well known throughout the world. Today it attracts more than 200,000 people over a slightly longer than two week period, and every name in the jazz and rock business has performed here, from jazz greats like Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald to rock legends like Sting and Black Eyed Peas. Whether it’s the gathering of artists or the beautiful location, the glory of Montreux continues on.

Cork Jazz Festival
4 days, late October
As the second largest city in Ireland, Cork is number one when it comes to hosting the country’s largest jazz festival. With its importance as a brewing center, it’s little surprise that Guinness (“the wine of Ireland” according to James Joyce, its beloved son) sponsors this lively festival. With more than 1,000 musicians and 50,000 attendees, this festival has gained so much in popularity that nearby Kinsale (18 miles south of Cork) has recently taken up the cause and holds its own (albeit much smaller) four-day Gourmet and Jazz Festival.

Chicago Jazz Festival
3 days, Labor Day weekend
Those thousands of jazz fans pouring into Grant Park along Chicago’s Lake Michigan know that they are in for a real treat each Labor Day weekend as the top names in jazz come to play. In addition to its outstanding location, with easy access to transportation, hotels, and city center, it’s a completely free event. Created in 1974 by a group of Chicago musicians to honor Duke Ellington following his death, the Chicago Jazz Festival today has expanded to include hundreds of acts in a wide range of music variations. Sponsored by the Jazz Institute and the Mayor’s Office of Special Events, jazz can be experienced at both the Petrillo band shell and at small stages scattered throughout the park. Events also spill over to the Chicago Cultural Center across the street from the park. The music begins at noon and carries on into late evening, when diehard fans head out for the jazz and blues clubs sprinkled throughout the city.

For those who love jazz, there’s nothing better than a live performance, and as can be seen by the huge numbers attending these annual festivals, jazz continues to be a draw. Whether on the shores of Lake Geneva or Lake Michigan, combine talented jazz musicians with a crowd of jazz lovers. and you’ve got a truly wonderful musical event.

My favorite TV show is “Jeopardy”.  It’s a game show where they give you an answer and you have to form the correct question that applies to the answer.  It’s fun to watch and to try and get the “questions” before the contestants do.  Sometimes I’m brilliant and I amaze myself .. LOL .. but most times I’m scratching my head in amazement that the contestants even know the meaning of the words in the answers and questions.  Today I learned something new about Jazz.

Today’s final Jeopardy category was about where the word “jazz” was used before it was applied to music.  I did not know the answer (or question).  The correct question was “What is baseball”.

It seems that “jazz” became a popular baseball slang word in California about 1912, coined by sports writers of the era, meaning, pep or enthusiasm, spirit, energy or spunk, when describing different exciting aspects of the game.  The slang term, in the sense of pep and enthusiasm, soon caught on and was used for several years before it was ever submerged into the music scene.  Jazz began to be applied to music in Chicago, around 1915 and is now recognized as a music category.

I am a Jazz music fan, I love its jazzy beat.  I also have a very jazzy flapper hat inherited from another era stored in an old trunk in a jazzy room in my humble but jazzy home.