BenMeadors.com » General

A quick photo set

admin — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:59:29 +0000

I really really love my 50mm lens. This set is from a dance rehearsal for a musical at my college.

My Band's Business Plan

admin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:47:18 +0000

My band is relatively new. We’ve been together about a year and a half or so. That being said, we have a small but loyal fan base that is growing rapidly. I would like to attribuite this to:

1. Good songs.
2. Strong internet presence
3. Interactions with fans

Our songs are catchy, melodic and unique. That is the first selling point for any band. None of our songs sound the same, and while they are stylistically similar there are noticable differences. So if you are a band starting out, try and write songs that aren’t all power chords, basic drum beats and boring melodies.

Our internet presence is mostly my doing. We started out with myspace (naively of course). Now we have accounts at :

Official Website – Our home base as far as the internet goes. Everything links back to our home page. We have a blog, our bio, music, photos and contact information there. We use a wordpress installation.

Bandcamp – The site we host music on. We give all our music away for free if a fan gives us their email address. Never give something away for free without getting something back. A lot of bands just think because they give their music away for free fans will come flocking. Nope. They might download it and listen to it, then forget it later. If you have their email, you can remind them about yourselves later.

Facebook – One of our biggest assets besides our personal site and bandcamp. Let’s be honest here, who doesn’t use facebook? Our target age is between 16 and 25 and I would bet a substantial amount of money that a lot of those folks use facebook. It’s just a matter of spreading the word. It’s the easiest way to advertise a show and interact with fans.

Twitter – Twitter is slowly becoming a great way to find new fans. It’s a lot of work managing multiple accounts but we are able to get more exposure every week.

Google Analytics I use this mainly to track who goes to the website, and how we are doing in seach engines.

FriendFeed – We use FriendFeed to create an RSS feed of all of our activities on the web. Fans can use a rss reader to subscribe and see what we are up to.

We alslo use Youtube, Flickr, and last.fm and those are all pretty self-explanatory.

So this is all great stuff to use, but here is the key. You ACTUALLY HAVE TO TALK TO PEOPLE. Don’t sit back and think having all these things will automatically get you more exposure, fans and fame. That will never ever happen. You have to interact and sell yourselves in order to become successful. In a class I took, my professor said “don’t be afraid to be bolden brash”. Sell and promote yourself! Don’t be afraid to brag about something awesome your band has done. If you haven’t done anything awesome yet, create something awesome and tell people about it! Get in people’s faces and let them know who you are and why they should care. But don’t be rude or condescending. Always be polite and professional. Would you like it if you met your favorite band and they were dicks to you?

One more thing. If you can’t do graphic design, there is no better time to learn than now. The internet is a vast resource for this. I do most of our band’s stuff right now and gotten great results. If you have no ounce of artistry in you (but you should if you are a musician) you could outsource the work. Find a graphic artist on elance or something similar. The point here is to make yourself look professional visually as well.

Sony Vegas

admin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:35:56 +0000

I started using Sony Vegas to edit video, rather than Adobe Premiere. Why? Native support for mp4 h.264 video, which is what my camera uses. Here’s the latest video I did. I’m slowly but surely getting good at it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNu6R4YP54I

Business Communications Video Project

admin — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:01:43 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EjUjgApWoQ

Communication Is Key!

A bit about my teacher

admin — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:47:05 +0000

A recommendation I wrote about my first and only bass teacher, who became my guitar teacher as well as a good friend. If you are in Indianapolis and need a lesson, he is the man. Rob Swaynie

“Rob is one of those no nonsense guys. He has a vast wealth of knowledge that is useful to any level of student, beginner or advanced, guitarist or bassist. Couple that with his quick humor and his ability to empathize with the student, and you have one extraordinary teacher. Rob doesn’t force anything on you, there aren’t rigorous practice schedules or quizzes every week. You have to have (or develop) the self-discipline to learn and practice. If you do, you will find Rob to be one hell of a good teacher, and you will find yourself progressing at a fast pace.

Rob is the best teacher I’ve had, and if somebody asks me where I learned to play, I always tell them to go see this guy.” Ben Meadors 10-1-06

I still value Rob as the man whom I owe a lot to for how I play bass today. He never played bass along with me, he always played his guitar instead. This forced me to get used to playing with others, get used to listening to the chords, and above all keep the groove no matter what.

Videos from the Tour

admin — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 02:44:54 +0000

So I forgot I had a website again. man, gotta stop doing that. Here are videos from the tour, in case you didn’t see them on twitter.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzjh0dNYUds

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vuoyv958ns

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdULFXKyh1I

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQUATHhQB-o

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMn6EQdjhGg

And the Tour Begins!

admin — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 04:50:59 +0000

We have one day of rehearsal left, and then we begin our weeklong tour of Kentucky! Check back here for video and photo logs of our trip!

Spring Break Tour

admin — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 05:58:33 +0000

Big news. I am going on a tour for 4 days in Kentucky over my spring break this year. 2-3 gigs a day across the mountainous state of Kentucky. 2-3 gigs a day sounds outrageous, but we are playing for elementary and middle schools. Our jazz quartet is educating kids about the only truely American art form. Jazz and Blues. I am really excited for this. We get paid (which is good) but we also get to teach kids about something they don’t really know anything about. We are planning out the presentation and music over the next few weeks. I think the plan is half talking/half playing with plenty of audience interaction. We will take students an a journey from New Orleans jazz all the way up to modern jazz. Swing, bob, hard bob, cool jazz and latin will also be in the mix. We are all coming up with songs we think would fit each genre best right now.

Also, Red Beard has a gig at the Grog Shop on the 27th. Check out the site for details. www.redbeardthemusic.com

movin on up

admin — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 04:05:30 +0000

a couple weeks ago i saw an ad in craigslist for a ramsa mixer. a really cheaply priced ramsa mixer. we have one just like it in the SAC for bands. so i decided, what the hell, its $100 bucks and my current mixer sucks. so a 4 hour drive later, i have this mixer. it came with a flight case that must weigh 50 pounds by itself. i get the case off finally, and find that all the knobs and all the faders are so rusty they barely turn or slide. not to worry, i’ve dealt with this before. FaderLube by DeOxit works wonders on this kinda stuff. 8 hours later, after removing each knob and fader and spraying it out, I finally get to test all 24 channels. they all work, no noisy pots, no malfunctioning. awesome. that mixer must be worth $800. Moral of the story: craigslist is awesome.

and so it is named

admin — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:12:04 +0000

i’ve been trying to come up with an alias with which to use when i do audio work. a production name, if you will. and here it is.

Pretentious Penguin Productions