on becoming comfortably fluent with social media

[funsongs]

Greetings, fellow Taxi-peeps; pardon me while I yammer a bit

I bailed after 38+ years of a reasonably successful one-man custom home design business,
specializing in hand-drawn construction documents, for projects in and around the South Bay Area of Los Angeles.

While my 'peers' were busy embracing CAD, computers, and the digital revolution in our business...
it wasn't at all what I wanted to do. It didn't appeal to my artistic sensibilities, and I just didn't feel 'up' to learning a whole new set of tools and rules. Also, the down-turn in the construction industry at that time didn't help things, either... and other 'life-things' were demanding my attention outside of my career; including moving back to San Diego after 35 years living 'up there'.

Fast-forward to today: right in front of me are the raw tools to begin learning how to do music production from home. Yikes - that still strikes as terribly contradictory -
YAY & YIKES ... there's so much; where do I begin?

How much do you DIY folks use and rely on, say, Facebook?
Is that one of the languages one needs to speak fluently... and use for networking in the business?

It just feels a bit intimidating and overwhelming, at times, to be starting from what feels like square one... to another square one... etc. getting comfortable using a mac; I do not own any smart devices. I have a bit of a phobia of spending/wasting time distracted by those things, like I see with others who withdraw from conversation & personal, face-to-face interactivity.

If I'm gonna treat this music-making thing as a business and not just a casual hobby (that still feels like a huge plunge) then it makes sense that, no matter the pace, I gotta get whatever help necessary to become fluent... at least within my sphere of interest; which currently is simply wanting to share original songs that come from the things that I enjoy.

My first RR, 2015, as a brand new member... I felt like a guppy in an ocean of artistic sharks...
and I was every bit excited and happy as intimated and overwhelmed... all at the same time.

All this yammering is a bit of self-examination, I guess... a bit of pep-talk to stir up whatever it's gonna take to 'fail-forward'... as I've heard it stated.

How can a reading-challenged invididual jump into, say, GarageBand... for beginners. Trying to read a tech manual or lots of text only tends to discourage and dull the excitement of learning. Watching others use the tools is more user-friendly for this old dude.

Well... here's to the RR 2016 and my Sophomore Guppy year. I'm diligently working to have completed by then at least my first real DIY CD project, which would be a huge personal accomplishment outside of the career I left behind in 2014.

Cheers!

[Kolstad]

Facebook is good for business. I use it as a website, and works well as a contact page. Soundcloud is a good companion for your music portfolio.
As a private media Facebook is a convenient platform to stay in touch with family and friends, that you are not with in the same time and space. But show a nipple, and you're out of there. It's a political correctness dynasty.

So, it does work well if you keep it clean with playing other people good, and only make a fool of yourself -type of media.
Social media is a bit misleading, as it's all about having a clean cut image (= business). Corporate media would be more in tune with reality, imo.

With Garageband, it's trial & error. You can't mess anything up, so just experiment. Use logic and think of it as a console in a studio. You need sound in, proper levels, and monitoring, as basics to record. Start with figuring that out. Routing seems to be everyones quarrel in the beginning, because it's not as obvious in the computer as with tactile equipment. Make mistakes, and then consult the manual is my suggestion..

[Len911]

Well Peter, google and youtube. The 4th category over on google after your search is "videos".

For example:
google garageband
https://www.google.com/search?as_q=gara ... nd&tbm=vid

around the bottom something called "The GarageBand Guide", looks interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGaragebandGuide/videos

using a mac
https://www.google.com/search?as_q=usin ... ac&tbm=vid

[MattCurious]

I can only speak for my main job, really. Social media (in that case, LinkedIn) has been useful for making new connections and occasionally receiving proposals for work. But most studies (and my personal experience) suggest that work comes from a network of people that you're connected to in real life, either because they've experienced your work as positive (ie. submissions and the like) or they've met you in person (Road Rally etc). I've yet to land a project solely through social media.

[Cwadroon]

I have a few websites , and my honest opinion would be to not even overwhelm yourself with all that right now. Focus on what you love funsongs, which sounds like, well, fun songs!! Recording digitally is a lot of fun. Yup, start youtubing is what I would recommend too by what you have said. Search up " GarageBand beginners tutorials" , "getting started" or such, and go from there. Pretty much any question you could have is answered on YouTube lol. Dig in and enjoy! Write your songs, record them , have fun and enjoy the ride. Whenever you get stumped in the workflow, do a YouTube search for what you need to get to the next step. You will have your first goal of completing your cd done in no time. Aquiring most of the technical daw skills along the way. Then move on to the boring " businessy stuff" . Take a few minutes a day and learn something about face booking or making videos, but yeah ... focus on the music is my 2 cents! Wish you all the best bro!

[funsongs]

I have a few websites , and my honest opinion would be to not even overwhelm yourself with all that right now. Focus on what you love funsongs, which sounds like, well, fun songs!! Recording digitally is a lot of fun. Yup, start youtubing is what I would recommend too by what you have said. Search up " GarageBand beginners tutorials" , "getting started" or such, and go from there. Pretty much any question you could have is answered on YouTube lol. Dig in and enjoy! Write your songs, record them , have fun and enjoy the ride. Whenever you get stumped in the workflow, do a YouTube search for what you need to get to the next step. You will have your first goal of completing your cd done in no time. Aquiring most of the technical daw skills along the way. Then move on to the boring " businessy stuff" . Take a few minutes a day and learn something about face booking or making videos, but yeah ... focus on the music is my 2 cents! Wish you all the best bro!

Many thanks... good stuff.

[cosmicdolphin]

If you're not into embracing the digital age I honestly wouldn't bother with Facebook as a business tool. It can be a real distraction and time sucker.

I've ran Facebook pages and set them up for other people's businesses, they are good for certain things. My wife for example is a Wedding Photographer so it's great for sharing sneak peaks with her clients and getting them excited as well as somewhere for potential clients to view her latest work. The customer testamonials are also great "social proof" as they call it for someone in that line.

For the Taxi ride, you'd be far better off going to the RR as you plan, and I'd suggest putting a portfolio on Soundcloud and consider setting up a Linkedin page so folk can find out more about you if they want.

Mark

[funsongs]

If you're not into embracing the digital age I honestly wouldn't bother with Facebook as a business tool. It can be a real distraction and time sucker.

For the Taxi ride, you'd be far better off going to the RR as you plan, and I'd suggest putting a portfolio on Soundcloud and consider setting up a Linkedin page so folk can find out more about you if they want.

Mark

Hey, Mark - thanks.
Point 1 you make resonates most true & applicable for my station in life; and I prefer good old email for communication purposes.

Regarding the 2016 RR, I hope to have some clearer goals in mind by then.

Regarding Soundcloud, simply as a means of displaying works done, or in-progress: seems to sorta already be a portfolio.
It's simple and gets right to the meat (or bacon, as some might prefer) of it: the songs.
Cheers.

[BlindTruth]

Hi Peter

While I am relatively new to Taxi (and loving the ride), I've been honing skills on digital music production for a long time. So long that it's really hard to remember how overwhelming it can be when getting started.

The YouTube suggestions made above I endorse fully. I still regularly get an idea for something that I would love Logic to be able to do, and go straight to Google to see what others have done.

But if it's at all possible to find someone local who doesn't mind you just sitting behind them and watching for a while, you'd soon find yourself picking up the core of a whole lot of basics. Frustrating part is that sometimes you hit a brick wall for the silliest (and hard to find) software design reasons - some button that needs to be pressed that you'd never know was even there!

Happy for you to throw operational questions my way if you can't find what you're looking for.

As for Facebook, I have an account but rarely use it. I can't imagine who reads all the stuff that people write, when everyone is busy writing their own stuff (bit like this post, really. Lol)

Cheers

Steven

[hummingbird]

How much do you DIY folks use and rely on, say, Facebook?
Is that one of the languages one needs to speak fluently... and use for networking in the business?

It just feels a bit intimidating and overwhelming, at times, to be starting from what feels like square one... to another square one... etc. getting comfortable using a mac; I do not own any smart devices. I have a bit of a phobia of spending/wasting time distracted by those things, like I see with others who withdraw from conversation & personal, face-to-face interactivity.

If I'm gonna treat this music-making thing as a business and not just a casual hobby (that still feels like a huge plunge) then it makes sense that, no matter the pace, I gotta get whatever help necessary to become fluent... at least within my sphere of interest; which currently is simply wanting to share original songs that come from the things that I enjoy.

My first RR, 2015, as a brand new member... I felt like a guppy in an ocean of artistic sharks...
and I was every bit excited and happy as intimated and overwhelmed... all at the same time.

All this yammering is a bit of self-examination, I guess... a bit of pep-talk to stir up whatever it's gonna take to 'fail-forward'... as I've heard it stated.

How can a reading-challenged invididual jump into, say, GarageBand... for beginners. Trying to read a tech manual or lots of text only tends to discourage and dull the excitement of learning. Watching others use the tools is more user-friendly for this old dude.

Well... here's to the RR 2016 and my Sophomore Guppy year. I'm diligently working to have completed by then at least my first real DIY CD project, which would be a huge personal accomplishment outside of the career I left behind in 2014.

Cheers!

I'm not big on FB, except I belong to groups like GYAWS (Get Your Ass Writing Songs) where many members are also TAXI members. I'll send you a PM about that.

I focus my 'networking' outside of the FB groups on this forum and TAXI TV. This forum can teach you a LOT. I knew zero zero zero about production when I first joined. But I learned what I know by being on songwriting forums like this one and figuring out what I needed to know, what tools I needed to have, and how to get them.

I seldom read manuals unless I have to look up something cause I can't figure out how to do something I want to do. However, if you want to improve it's going to take work. I'd start by using YouTube. There are tons of videos on how to use DAW's, including Garageband. Watch, take notes, try stuff out. Post it here for feedback. We'll help best we can.

Recently I decided that some of my composing time each week should be focussed on research and learning. I've been going back in the TAXI TV Library, watching youtube videos, and things like that. This was inspired by a TAXI TV episode that Michael did on how to fail faster in order to become successful.

HTH
H'bird