Kenny D's blog

Hey everyone,

We've created simpler URL redirects to make it easier to send people to your shops. The format is this:

http://www.BeatHive.com/shops/YourProducerName

For example, PXR8's shop URL is this:

http://www.BeatHive.com/shops/PXR8

Remember, if you are a producer, you can also place a badge on your webpage that links directly to your BeatHive shop. Go here:

https://www.beathive.com/user/index.jsp

And click on "Producer Badge."

Whew, we made it. Despite a few bouts of chronic exhaustion along with near misses with colds, stomach viruses, and a little known disease called Hangoverous, we managed to get to the end of this marketing expedition intact.

Sunday was spent with more of the same kind of things: People coming by, us telling them about the site, and in general, getting a very enthusiastic response.

We also managed to go upstairs and shmooze with some of the more established outfits. There's "someone" in every major DAW company that knows who we are and what we are up to.

Today was filled with more of the same. We're getting adept at giving the site demo and it's been great to field all the questions from everyone. It's been a learning experience, for sure!

Our neighbors on the other side of us are really great folks with video tutorials of all kinds of music programs. Check them out at Askvideo.com!

The highlight of the day was a visit and hearty endorsement from DJ Mark Luv of the Zulu nation (!).

Halfway through! Man, we are wiped. When we got back to hotel tonight, Ron crashed into a "prayer to the bed" position (see attached photo). After another run to Whole Foods, we got rejuvinated.

We had a lot of visitors today. And response has been positive. It's great to meet other musicians, composers, and industry people - all working different sides of this crazy music business.

Oh yeah, did I mention the tradeshow babes/bimbos? (TSBs) They were definitely out in force today. Uh, maybe some photos of that to come...

Action scenes from today:

No vacuuming last night. Damn. It was 9:15am and we could see the crowd gathering at door by our booth, simmering like holiday shoppers on the day after Thankgiving, at 4am, in the rain, and waiting for Macy's or whatever to open.

So myself and Alex (bless his heart) got down and picked it all up with our fingers.

The sunflower shells were dry.

We picked up Alex, our senior audio producer last night from the airport. The crew is all set. We ended up driving around greater Tustin, CA for a while in search for a Whole Foods that had moved recently. We eventually found it, and like most things Southern California, it was freaking huge!

We've had a great start to the NAMM show. At 9:30 AM, the proverbial flood gates were opened and it's been all things BeatHive for the rest of the day. I'm starting to kind of feel like talking about, um, ducks or something else besides music production, but it's a good problem to have.

We had a good demo of our neighbors' wares this afternoon. Brian and Micah of Pure Magnetik have quite a few great sounding sample packs for Ableton, Kontact, EXS24, Logic and Garageband. Check 'em out!

They are from NYC and good looking to boot! Check out the photo attached...

I picked up our Director of Technology, Ron Dennison, at the airport this morning. My sweet dreams of a clean carpet were quickly banished by the sight of the spent sunflower speeds, still sitting in the same location from which they were original spat upon. But then, to rub salt into the wound, was a friendly note to make sure to ORDER CARPET CLEANING SERVICES (see attached photo). OK, I know I'm getting dramatic about this, but hey, we're here, and we're excited, and want to make sure everything is tight and and representing our producers and our site the best we can.

I just pulled into the Anaheim convention a few hours ago and have started setting up. Despite it being in Hall E, aka, the Basement, our booth is in a pretty decent location - right by one of the main registration desks. Alas, the banner has been raised!

We'll be at the NAMM show next week. If you are attending, please stop by! We are at Booth 1003 in Hall E.

A map is attached to this post.
map

Hey everyone,

Now you can have a BeatHive-style play button on your own website or myspace page! Just go here:

http://www.beathive.com/playbutton/

Feedback is appreciated!

There are currently two kinds of Track Packs on the site: song based and collection based. You will sell more loops if you organize your single loops into one of these two kinds of Track Packs.

Before you upload a Track Pack, you need to create a DEMO MIX for it.

For a song based track pack, create a loop the full mix of all of the component loops being played together, similar to this:

http://www.beathive.com/clientReq.do?trackpackId=141

For a collection-based track pack, get a random sampling of the loops and paste them, one after the other into a new audio file. If there are 13 loops in your collection, you could put 6 or 7 of them in the demo mix. The idea is to give the user a decent idea of what's in the pack. They can then click on the Track Pack icon to see the Demo Mix and preview all of the pack loops like this:

http://www.beathive.com/clientReq.do?trackpackId=172

BeatHive was born out of the idea of creating a revenue stream for producers/composers - just one of a variety of ways to make money with your music. Some have asked me about these other ways, so I thought I'd bring a few ideas to the table and open it up for discussion.

Hi Demo Man,

There is a free application you can download from Apple to create your Apple Loops. You can get it here:

http://developer.apple.com/sdk/

It's called "Apple Loops SDK 1.3.1 SDK (DMG)."

Open your audio files in this app and start tagging all the meta data. IMO, these are the most important fields to fill out:

File Type (looping or non-looping)
Key (if applicable)
Time Signature
Genre
Instrument and Sub-Instrument

Then click on the "Transients" tab and make sure the transient markers are placed correctly. This app does a pretty decent job of figuring them out, but to double check, I like to lower the preview tempo of the loop down 15-20% of the original tempo. If a transient marker is misplaced, it's most often noticible by a "flammy" effect when you listen to it.

One thing to consider is to be careful when genre tagging your loops. I know there is a lot of crossover between genres, but if someone does a search for "Electronic" and something comes up that's clearly a hip hop loop, that loop risks being poorly rated and coming up further down in a search result.

Also, remember that only one genre is required per loop.

ACID is not my native music application, but I have successfully been making ACIDized WAV files out of my loops.

First, you need a PC, or a Mac Dual Core running Windows. Get ACID - there are free and trial versions available here:

http://www.acidplanet.com/tools/?p=acid&T=2414

Open up a new session in ACID, then open the loop you'd like to convert into the program. In the "Track Properties" window, select the "Stretch" tab. You will see the waveform with the markers. The markers can be moved by adjusting the "transient detection" amount, or by hand. I like to test the marker placements in loops by previewing them at 15 - 20% less than their original BPM. Incorrect marker placements will create a "flam" sort of sound at this lower BPM.

Also, check to make sure the number of beats is correct. Adjust the Root Note if the loop contains a chordal center.

Save the ACID loop information by hitting the SAVE button in the Track Properties window.

A few tips: