Hi everyone – where do you get your free midi files from – I mean legal ones obviously! I’m particularly interested in folk and classical music which is mostly out of copyright. I’ve used various sites a long time ago but want to ensure I am using a legitimate site to download from

We will soon be closing OPEN MIC and the forums and just wanted to give everyone a heads up. Help us go out with a bang and have a change to be one of the two winners for the IK Multimedia, Orange Tree Samples giveaway of $378 in prizes.

📢 LinkedMusicians 1st Anniversary FREE Giveaway Thread! $378 Worth of Prizes!

Hi everyone. I was thinking the other day about the music that first really moved me emotionally and I wondered what other people’s first ‘tear jerkers’ were?

Mine were my sister’s single of ‘Reflections of My Life’ by Marmalade when I was around 12 and the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s 6th (Pathetique’) symphony.

I was a miserable child 🙂

I remixed the song I wrote for LinkedMusicians last year to encourage people to post. The lyrics are both meant seriously and slightly tongue-in-cheek. 

I thought it would be especially fitting to remix it for this thread, as Evolution Indie Rock is all over the track. The two main guitar riff parts that are both use Indie Rock and the rhythm…Read More

Recent reports find that roughly 44% of new music uploaded to platforms like Deezer is AI-generated. This is sparking a major debate about “Human-First” branding and whether authenticity is becoming a premium commodity. I’ve used AI for mixing and mastering, and even played around with AI vocal tools (but never for lead vocals). Do you use AI in…Read More

If you haven’t already commented in our First Anniversary Giveaway Thread, you’ll want to do so. Just make a comment in the thread to be enttered to win IK Multimedia ReSing MAX (list price $199) or Orange Tree Samples Evolution Indie Rock (list price $179) electric guitar sample library for the free Kontakt Player. It’s that simple.…Read More

📢 LinkedMusicians First Anniversary Giveaway Thread! - LinkedMusicians

One year ago, we set out to build a different kind of music community—one rooted in ensuring non-toxic, friendly interactions, ethics, transparency, platform

linkedmusicians.com

I wrote my first song at 4 years old and would play it on the piano and sing it to entertain my family, relatives, and family friends. But the event that really caused me to start seriously writing songs was the loss of a close friend at 16. Songwriting and multitrack recording was my outlet to deal with grief. Words or tears didn’t feel adequate…Read More

Tom Service is a Marmite presenter here in the UK on the classical music station BBC Radio 3 – people either love him or hate him. For the record I love Tom but hate Marmite! He also writes for the Guardian newspaper / website and I thought people might enjoy his latest column about comparisons between classical music and heavy metal. He seems to…Read More

From the devil’s violinist to devil’s horns - why classical and heavy metal are a natural pairing

With ear-splitting excess, flamboyant virtuosity and a talent for transgression, where classical music has led, metal has followed. Let’s hope the Philharmonia’s Metal Orchestrated concert turns it up to 11

www.theguardian.com

What are you listening to?

Welcome to my friend @detlef! Happy to have you aboard. Detlef and I go back more than 20 years in real life.

I’m watching a baseball game with my wife and the organist plays a little bit of the Donna Summer song, “Hot Stuff.” I remark, “That was a really corny rendition of the song.” My wife replies, “Organ doesn’t sound cool,” to which I reply, “How dare you! [mock outrage] You do know that I took years of organ lessons, right? What about Jon Lord,…Read More

LinkedMusicians now allows you (LM members) to add a SoundCloud player and playlist of your music to your profile page. Check it out. Your profile page is a great way to show our community your musical skills, what you’re working on, and let them hear your or your clients’ music.

As we’ve been rolling out new functionality, I’ve heard very…Read More

📢 Your Profile, Upgraded — Add Your SoundCloud Playlist, Skills, And More - LinkedMusicians

We’ve upgraded member profiles to give your music and creative identity a real home on LinkedMusicians.

linkedmusicians.com

Okay, it’s not music-related, but it is LinkedMusician-related. I fell asleep working on the site on my laptop on a couch. I woke up to my cat barfing out a furball on my head. Not the ideal alarm clock, but it was still highly effective.
Ah, my rock and roll lifestyle.

What was the first instrument you learned to play? Specifically, what was it, the instrument type (e.g., acoustic guitar, electric guitar, electric bass guitar, acoustic bass guitar, upright piano, grand piano, electric piano, drum kit, etc.). You get extra credit if you can remember the brand and model of the instrument.

For me, it was a…Read More

Just a simple FYI.
I realize that our members haven’t spent much time in OPEN MIC. It works like Facebook Groups, reddit, and other social media platforms when it comes to making posts, created threads, and commenting. When you want to comment on a thread (technically, it’s called a status update) just look at the bottom of the original post that…Read More

NEW! Custom reaction emojis for OPEN MIC (yes, these are custom made for LinkedMusicians). We won’t be using all of them here, just some. I’d love to get your thoughts. I realize that our community has music producers and composers from all areas of music, but I thought the rock and roll spirit would be fun to represent for the attitude and spirit…Read More

Origin story – here is a portion of what I wrote for our local bluegrass club newsletter:

Imagine you’re back in 7th grade and you’re going to your first dance in the mid-60’s. The girls are all over there. The boys are all over here. Everyone’s nervous. No one knows what to do or what to expect. And then the band starts playing. Luckily…Read More

Is it just me – or is there a general thing at many open-mic events where people chat throughout performers’ sets? It’s a tad frustrating!

I’m going to have to purchase a massive stack and turn it up to 11!

Just back from the second Love Music Hate Racism gig I have helped to arrange in York (England) and pleased to say it was another sell out – the last tickets sold this morning which was a relief! The format was the same as last time with three punky bands and lots of young people moshing in somewhat alarming fashion in the eyes of this 66 year…Read More

February 11, 1964 The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. I turned 11 four days earlier (the day of their first arrival in USA). The desire was there but the means did not come until my 14th birthday where I got my first electric guitar and amp from West L.A. Music.

Every one of us has an origin story about how we ended up as a musician/composer/producer/audio engineer, whether you’re a pro, semi-pro, former pro, or a hobbyist. Do you remember the first time you thought, “I want to be a musician, songwriter, or composer?” How old were you? Where were you, and what were you doing? I’d love to hear your “…Read More

We’re enhancing Member Profiles. The goal is to have your member profile feature SoundCloud, Spotify, and BandCamp players so you can easily embed a playlist of your/your band’s/your clients’ music. Right now you can do that by making posts on your wall, but it’s a clunky user experience.

There is a tutorial on how to do everything on the…Read More

One Year of LinkedMusicians: Big Updates & New Tools

We are officially approaching our one-year anniversary since taking LinkedMusicians public this April, and the growth has been incredible. We’ve hit a milestone of **20,000+ unique monthly visitors!

To celebrate and improve the experience, we’ve been busy making some significant upg…Read More

Welcome to our new members @philtmusic @crystaltiger, @sounddust and everyone else who has recently joined LinkedMusicians.

I wanted to make sure that you’re aware of the guide to getting started at LinkedMusicians. While it’s in need of an update that I’ll do before the month is over, it remains useful for understanding the basics of the LM…Read More

Getting Started At LinkedMusicians - LinkedMusicians

The son of a music teacher and musician, I started piano lessons at 3, became a drummer in our family band the next year playing around the Chicago area. I later took organ and drum lessons from various teachers, played percussion in school bands from elementary school to HS and started playing as a drummer semi-professional at 18, continuing for around 12 years until sustatining an injury causing lifelong tendinitis. Biggest achievements: joining a critics darling rock band and getting fans including Jimmy Chamberlan and Louise Post (Veruca Salt) who attempted to persuade me to join Veruca Salt for their first major US tour. I declined. Oops. Today I'm just a dad / hobbyist musician attempting to record music 20+ years after stopping.

linkedmusicians.com

Is anyone checking their emails for updates from OPEN MIC? If so, could you post a comment below and let me know? Thanks! Peter

For those of you on Facebook, I created a new personal Peter Woods profile page. FTR, that image isn’t me! 😉 If you want to connect, please feel free. I’m eventually going to connect up LinkedMusicians to Facebook and our subreddit.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61583779686553&sk=directory_work

Peter Woods

Peter Woods is on Facebook. Join Facebook to connect with Peter Woods and others you may know. Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected.

www.facebook.com

CURRENT PLAYLIST: A modern folk music playlist I put together myself featuring Fleet Foxes, Iron & Wine, Noah Kahn, The Lumineers, Sun Kill Moon, and Midlake.

What about you? What are you listening to, or what was on your most recent playlist?

For much of my career, I’ve had a habit of asking fellow employees, my employees, research PhDs, consultants, assistants, secretaries, family members how they think of names and concepts for things I’m working on, from the marketing of mobile phones to insurance to software to well, too many things to mention. Now, before I turn to a human, I…Read More

We — okay I — have been introducing features for the site that make LinkedMusicians an extremely useful resource for finding the things that a DAW-based music producer might need. Today, we rolled out a PowerSEARCH engine for finding no-cost, royalty-free and public domain recordings, audio samples, and loops and I’m working on a PowerSEARCH…Read More

LinkedMusicians reached an impressive milestone of 500 unique visitors before noon CST today! Now we need to boost our activity to get more of those visitors to move from lurkers to registered members. Say hello, friends! Share what you’re up to. Share your thoughts. Share your music. This place is better when we hear your voice.

For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, this week we released:

– Forum Daily Digest Emails.
You now can get one email with a bunch of links for any forum you’re following instead of a single email for each topic.

– Mixing & Mastering Problem Solver tool.
Just enter any mixing and mastering questions or problems that you have and you…Read More

Say hello! Share what you’ve been up to, even if it’s nothing! 🙂

As LinkedMusicians has taken off, I’m increasingly receiving codes for NFRs (Not For Resale — basically free licenses) from developers for plugins and sample libraries. I always make clear that I’m not an influencer and I have no interest in becoming one. If I really like a plugin or sample library, I’ll mention it. If I think something is meh,…Read More

Any other Rush fans here? Yes, I have very wide musical tastes, but Rush is one of the many rock bands that I grew up listening to, so they hold a special place in my heart. While I didn’t get tickets for their upcoming tour, I am very interested in what they’re doing and excited about their playing again and the addition of their new drummer.…Read More

Hello (hello, hello), is there anybody in here?

We just introduced two new tools for researching the tools we use and companies we buy from that I think are very useful. It doesn’t produce a penny in revenue, but I think these tools are really valuable resources for all music producers. I wrote a blog post about it. Please try them out and…Read More

How To Cut Through Influencer Bias And Research Music Gear Smarter — With New Tools From LinkedMusicians - LinkedMusicians

Influencer marketing and developers and their contractors posing as regular users in online forums and social media has made it increasingly difficult to find unbiased product information. LinkedMusicians offers two new tools for more effective and efficient research of audio production tools.

linkedmusicians.com

Hi guys, what’s up

Do you work on one project until “completion” and then start next, or do you work on more than one at a time? When my ears get fatigued from hearing the same thing over and over again I usually go walk the dogs or go grocery shopping. But I’m thinking maybe I should just switch to another project. I could get more done that way. Thoughts?

Dear friends at Linked Musicians, I wish you a wonderful holiday season and an incredible New Year.

2025 has been a year of major change across our industry. Between economic pressure and the fast rise of AI, many musicians have felt uncertain, and I’ve seen how this uncertainty can sometimes turn into frustration.

As a sample library p…Read More

I don’t think I’m alone in loving “This is Spinal Tap.” I used to have the quote, “There is a fine line between clever…and stupid,” in my email signature at work back in the 00s. I own a VHS and Deluxe DVD version of the movie, and my wife has the DVD too (from before we were married). This past Saturday, my wife, daughter, and I watched “Spinal…Read More

Rob Reiner mourned by Barack Obama, Jerry O'Connell, James Woods and many others

Many prominent people are paying tribute to Rob Reiner and his wife Michele, after they were killed in their Los Angeles home on Sunday.

apnews.com

I don’t know what they updated in Synthmaster 3 that it installs but doesn’t open in my windows 10 pc. Not even a warning about lack of avx or anything else. I will do a search to discover the minimum system requirements for the synthmaster 3. Synthmaster 2 Player runs ok here.

Kontakt 8 is nice, but it causes problems with old libraries (Xperimenta Harpsichord make loud noises in ASIO mode).

Okay, developers and retailers, you can ease up now, right? Time to go out to dinner with the family. To all those in the US celebrating Thanksgiving, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. And to those around the world who don’t celebrate, I want to thank you for being part of this community. Let’s show the world that social media can be kind,…Read More

I have a Spotify playlist with my favorite songs of all time on it. I’ve pretty much done research on each song to learn more about its meaning. One of those songs is Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers to Cross.” He wrote the song during a period of great disappointment, after moving to England in hopes of a career in music. Jimmy had said that he thought…Read More

THOUGHT OF THE DAY:

Retailers need to hit the pause button on sending Americans emails with the subject line: “You’re on the list.” Seriously, I have two marketing emails from developers with variations on that subject line. In ths US, being on “the list” has certain implications right now. None of those implications are good. I’m just sayin’.

How many times a day must we be forced to prove we’re not robots?

Paul McCartney is going to release his first new track in five years, a protest to the use of AI in the music industry.

I’ve tried to keep my real last name out of search and AI for this site and one of the big AI tools just figured it out. I’m not sure how. But let’s keep it off here. I use my pseudonym from my working musician days, Peter Woods.

Woods was my mother’s maiden name — although legally it was an adopted name and not her birth name (so I’m not…Read More

Dad and daughter compare how many Radiohead songs are on their Spotify playlists.
Dad: 180
Daughter: 48

To be fair, I also include Thom Yorke solo songs. My wife says I am in the Radiohead “superfan” category.

I’m going to need a huge break after Black Friday.

The day’s not even over, and we’ve already had the highest traffic for any single day in LinkedMusician’s history. In fact, we’ve had more unique visitors today than we had in an entire week during our first several months. I did expect November to be a busy month, but I didn’t anticipate that we’d be at this level. For the IT pro members, I…Read More