So you wanna be a musician?

[photo of DJ Tiësto]
From a young age I looked in awe at anyone famous.
The lifestyle, the rock & roll videos, the partying til dawn, living like a kid, and hundreds of beautiful women surrounding me, err uhm, I mean the rock stars.

You too?
Good. Then I can get past all the boring stuff.

All your friends and support will likely tell you, dedication, hard work, and practice practice, practice, practice, practice, and memorize, and practice some more.

Blaa! No wonder that most everyone shakes their head and does something practical instead for a living instead.
Where's the fun?

So, I'm not gonna tell you to do that.
I have two requirements:
-Some rthymn talent or a pretty good musical ear
-And time to play

A while ago I started listening to edm, well all my life if you count Beastie Boys.
If you are extremely new and wondering what sampling and layering are, you might wanna YouTube some interviews or lessons. But if a quicky and dirty run-down will work, then think of sampling as recording a sound you'll use a bunch. Some like to record their own, and there are many other choices from buying to trading out there, and if you go professional or too big too quick you're likely to be overwhelmed and lost in the terminology alone.

For most, I'm gonna tell you to stumble into a 'Garage Band' type app instead; where everything is built-in and kids play.
Remember earlier where I required you to wanna play?
The trick isn't into forcing creativity, that's unbelievably difficult to accomplish.

Instead, trade you games online, into making beats instead.
The challenge of imitating but not dulicating your favorite artists is a new high score worth playing around for!

So, never take yourself to serious and start tooling around a bit.

If you use Apple devices, pick up a copy of Garage Band.
The rest of this tutorial is for droids.

I use Android and have quickly fell in love with Music Maker Jam.
It doesn't cost anything except space, ohh and by space you need more.
So lemme share a trick.
I have Android 5.1 so your selection and changes may be different, or perhaps even unavailable.
But let's check.

Open your Storage from your Settings Menu.
And hit the radio button that says SD card for your Default Write Disk.

If your storage is almost full, I recommend a fresh start card, or a back up and drastic cleaning first.
Making music takes lots of space.

So get out there and start making tons of tunes, ask your friends online for their likes and rock out a lot!
I use an experimental sound app for added tools and cleaner fades, called Wave Editor.
I dropped the couple bucks for the upgrade, cuz I liked it's simple controls, it doesn't crash, and it opens ogg, and can save as a .flac file for uploading.
Some other sites you may want to use later require .aiff, .wav, .ogg, and even .mp3. So look at your requirements.
SoundCloud.com let's you upload most any, but my record company deals with lossless, uncompressed and will accept .flac files only.

Amuse is a music release company. They will help you get you music on to the streaming sites like Apple Music, Pandora, Spotify, etc; they are the newest on the block, and best of all, completely free, minus a few frustrations which need a simple tutorial ;) Enjoy!

Part two:
Releasing your song with Amuse.
Ok, there are a few known bugs in the current 1.x versions, but Amuse works with both Apple and Android.

First off, let me first congratulate them for being a Swiss company and still very patient with, well, me hahaha!
Much love Amuse!
(https://amuse.io)

But the one thing they lack is what I'll help you through a few steps in a simple and quick walk through of my apps.

So I mentioned MMJam, and WaveEditor. Another requirement is a kick ass file program called ES File Explorer.
I suggest arranging you music folder from the start so create a few folders. Two I need use are:
-amuse uploads
-MMJam Records

The second of which is created by MMJam.
After you record your songs with MMJam, the recordings end up there.

From there I open the .ogg file with WaveEditor and tweak, clean, adjust, fade and save my recording back to the MMJam Recording folder as an .ogg file, so I can upload my creation onto their free social sharing site.
Step two while WaveEditor is still open is to save your final recording to your 'Amuse Upload' folder as a .flac file.

I can sense your giddyness, you are officially an artist! You can even save your own .mp3's to share directly with friends using WavEditor, this simple app kicks tons of ass!

So after you get your reviews and likes it's time to populate the streaming sites with your goods, so you can start living the penny royalties' lifestyle you say.

And here you need the best photos, uncompressed. If you uploaded it to Instagram or edited it before with any program, sorry but the photo might be now unusable.
I have an old digital camera that is 10 times the camera my phone is, even with less pixels, so I use it because it gives me crisp, unblurry photos almost all the time.

After you have your perfect awesome pictures it's time to move to editing.
I love GIMP on my computer, and was ready to dive right in on my Droid, except GIMP requires the internet.
You have a hell of a viewer to check you photos offline, but sadly I was unable to test it for editing my photos with Amuse at this time.

Needless to say, Amuse is legit for graphics. If the text is pixelated, and it is, then your art will keep your music offline until it's crisp.
Like you own you own printing press, good.
I know, I had 16 tries and Amuse must hate me now, so I have a tip.

Get this app:
Cover Photo Maker
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cover.designer.maker.scopic

Design and save you art with it. Think simple, large words and easy enough to redo quickly if you have to.

After your art cover is ready you have one last step before you can upload it.
It must be 1400 x 1400 pixels exactly so grab one more app:
Image Size
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.vsmedia.imagesize

And save these to a 'Covers' folder.
I suggest renaming the picture files with your song name using ESFileExplorer now, to save that headache later also.

And final app:
Geez, yeah I know but again... Trust me on this.
Get the newest DropBox update
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dropbox.android

for the one which might already be installed on your phone.
And those giant .flac sound files you have now, just upload them to your Dropbox.

From there, you're ready to fire up Amuse and release that baby baby ohh song everyone loves.

Create an account with your real name, a band account and fill in all the required goodies along the way.
One the bottom of the first screen on the right, hit that plus sign and let's finish this up!

Upload your 1400 x 1400 cover, answer three questions, give your track a name and begin the next step by pressing the missing file attention square in the middle of the page.

Here you upload your file immediately without waiting, by selecting the file you uploaded to your Dropbox.

After saying it's your original work, you can move on, pick a date and get ready to launch!

You jumped ahead, I know. But here is where you might ask, "and then?" Yup, if you get to the "Launch Rocket" window you must go to the bottom where you'll see two buttons:
Cancel Release
Press 'Release' and you are done!
What's that you say?
No buttons?
Ok, I'm sad to report you have the bug.
My only solution at this time is to use my tablet to Release tracks using the Amuse app.

I did a lil app design so I know the problem, and have shared my advice with them to fix this bug.
It is currently still in the 1.11.0 version of the app, but here's hoping it's the last one without 'my fix'.

If you think I deserve a nickel for sharing my fix with this company for nothing.. you're right!
And if another for this quirky lil write up, then after you hit the like button, hit that awesome resteem one as well! LoL! Thanks! ;)

Much love and fewer headaches to my musical artist's!

If you're wondering I've got my first four going into the stores on Friday, the 20th! WooooHooo!!
I'm a bit excited! =D

Hope to see ya around soon! ;D
Send me links to your sounds!
And check out more of my goods at:
(Twitter)[https://twitter.com/seebeedee2]
(SoundCloud)[https://SoundCloud.com/SEeBEeDEe]
(And here on Steemit)[https://steemit.com/@unfaakinreal]