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LinkedMusicians posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)Pinned Post
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
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Back in college, I actually took a course based on Sagan’s Cosmos and it was one of my favorite college courses of all. How old were you when this happened? Where you already playing the keyboards? Did you have any lessons or were you self taught? What happened from there?
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The VHS collection was a birthday gift from my grandmother. I was 15 years old 🙂
Later in the same year, me and my brothers received an yamaha PSR-78 as Christmas gift and then we started to take keyboard lessons. 😀
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I must have been between eight and ten when I first listened ‘The Wall’ by Pink Floyd. That was the sparkle. As a young kid, after listening to the original tape (from an older friend) non stop for a couple of weeks I decided that I wanted to make music like that. At the age of ten I was introduced to music theory at school and begun learning the…Read More
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My love for music was born thanks to two people: my father and Stevie Wonder.
I started with a Casiotone MT-540 when I was 7 years old, a Christmas gift from my father. The first song I ever learned in my life was I Just Called to Say I Love You.
My father turned our basement into a studio, and it became my second home. Over time, it also became…Read More
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I grew up in a family that appreciated music, but none were musicians. Somewhere around age 12 I decided I wanted to MAKE some music. I wanted to play drums, but learned enough to know that a cheap set would just fall apart, so I asked for a guitar. MOST cheap guitars are good enough to learn on. I took lessons for a few months. There was a…Read More
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I started in the early 70’s with one of the simplest instruments of all – tin (penny) whistles in various keys. It was hard to fine one that was in tune throughout the range but i was probably not paying enough. I also played the recorder which I had hated in my earlier music lessons in school. My one and only live performance was playing the tin…Read More
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Apologies for the typos !
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Oh come on, no one (okay, no one worth knowing) cares! It’s great to learn more about your story. Thanks for sharing, Joe!
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LinkedMusicians posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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…Read More -
LinkedMusicians posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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
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fretman posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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
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Paul L posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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!
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It does seem to be usual here in the UK unfortunately – I think people tend to think of them as more informal events so tend to talk more. If it is a free entry gig in a pub it is hard to control that unfortunately. What is worse is when there is a booked artist at a free entry gig and people talk all the way through – this happened at several…Read More
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You’re spot-on, Joe. A few open-mics that I’ve been to, the audience really respects the musicians and there’s definitely also an unwritten law that says that if most people are keeping their conversations generally quieter, then they will too, however, one open-mic that I performed at recently was at absurd conversation level even before it…Read More
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joegyork posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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
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bapu posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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.
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LinkedMusicians posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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
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LinkedMusicians posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
One Year of LinkedMusicians: Big Updates & New ToolsWe 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
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i’ve really only been coming to lm for the deals forum, but after your recent post, I tried some of the new site features. i tried out the reviews, forums, free presets, and free sample and sound effect search engines, and think they’re great additions to the lm. i can see that a lot of new features have been added recently, which I haven’t had a…Read More
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LinkedMusicians posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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
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LinkedMusicians posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
Is anyone checking their emails for updates from OPEN MIC? If so, could you post a comment below and let me know? Thanks! Peter
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LinkedMusicians posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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
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LinkedMusicians posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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?
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LinkedMusicians posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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
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LinkedMusicians posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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
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LinkedMusicians posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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.
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LinkedMusicians posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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 More1 Comment-
I just added a chord and scale finder tool to LinkedMusicians this morning. It’s under KNOWLEDGE HUB in the left-hand navigation menu. At the moment, it only displays properly in light mode, but we’ll get it working in dark mode soon.
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LinkedMusicians posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
Say hello! Share what you’ve been up to, even if it’s nothing! 🙂
19 Comments-
I’ve recently released my second album after spending much of the past 12 months writing & recording it. I tend to play a lot of open-mic events, as they’re a good barometer for which songs go down well and which sit on the shelf. I played a launch gig last weekend, have received some radio play, and also an online review. The album is ‘Night…Read More
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HI Paul, You should share it with us in our Share Your Music forum and on your PROFILE PAGE! I’d love to check it out. What style of music is it?
Say hello! Share what you’ve been up to, even if it’s nothing! 🙂Read More
– LinkedMusicians (@linkedmusicians) February 25, 2026
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Thanks, I’ll pop a post over there. The second album ‘Night Call’ has a darker edge to it, taking some of its cues from ’80s/90s synth bands and brought right up to date. Soundwise, there’s elements of The Cure, Depeche Mode, Editors, Verve, Radiohead etc.
https://skypatterns.bandcamp.com/album/night-call
The first album is more of a blend of…Read More
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You caught me when I was here, listening now — very cool! I can’t lie, I made a joke (my daughter and wife are in the room, as everyone took the day off), when I heard the English accent, I said, “Ah, maybe he’s a Chicagoan!” That was a joke because Chicago has a long history of singers pretending to have an English accent. I suppose Al…Read More
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Hahaha I’m 100% British, I live close to Manchester, home of Joy Division, The Chameleons, The Smiths, Oasis, and an absolute ton of other bands.
I know Ministry and can see why you’ve mentioned the accent. I know RevCo better, I saw them many moons ago playing in Manchester. I remember that they wanted to bring live animals onto the stage…Read More
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I’m an American, from Chicago. The most popular band I played in — back in the 90s — had a singer originally from England, but he moved here when he was around 5 years old or something. He had no accent–but when he sang, bam, English accent! You know, there’s not a lot of demand for songs sung by guys with Chicago accents! Hahaha. Everyone in…Read More
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I rather suspect that if I tried to sing with a fake American accent, it would be laughable! I’d probably sound like the Sheriff in The Dukes Of Hazzard
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While I was never a singer — always a drummer professionally, even though my first instrument is piano. This was my attempt to jam a song I never played before (I had to stop playing after an injury causing tendinitis). So, this was me just looking up the lyrics and chords for the song and doing a bunch of first takes for Wurly, drums, etc. –…Read More
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That’s a faithful version of the song, really good!
I don’t know if you’ve seen Carpool Karaoke with Paul McCartney, but he visits his childhood home and is recalling a story of when he wrote ‘She Loves You’ in the front room. Excited by it, he then walks through to the back room and plays it for his Dad, who says something like, “I like it, but…Read More
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Yep, I saw it. I actually was a little too young for The Beatles as a kid and became a McCartney fan first. Huge, huge, huge Beatles fan. I didn’t play their music much as a working musician, but now, with pretty bad tendinitis limiting what I can play without pain to really simple stuff, it’s fun to just crank out a Beatles song. I know them…Read More
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The surprising thing about seeing McCartney performing live is just how many songs we do know. I grew up after they’d already split up, and have very few of their albums, yet I know the words to many of their songs, which says a great deal about the quality of their songwriting. Whatever your personal goals with music are, simply stick to those.…Read More
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I’ve been preparing for our very first Love Music Hate Racism gig tonight in York – the original one 🙂 – we sold out a couple of weeks ago so it is going to be busy on the door!
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Well the gig was great – lots of teenagers having a lovely time (all so polite and friendly). Unfortunately an alarm went off several times towards the end of the gig and was eventually tracked down to someone vaping. We had to pull the plug half way through the headliner’s encore 🙁 From what we have pieced together from comments it seems…Read More
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Why apologize? This place was intended to be our outlet to express our love of music — and you’re combining that love of others and doing good in the world, I think that’s great and love hearing about it, even if there are some jerks here in there. Overall, it seems like the jerks — or jerk — was the minority; their behavior isn’t greater than…Read More
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Thanks @peterPeter – we are a bit down after a sad end to what had been a great night but certainly not out. No Pasaran as my friend Joe Solo and many before him would have said 🙂
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Fascists always appeal to the stupidest, most hateful among us, to manipulate them by their weaknesses (their hate for their fellow man), even against their own self-interests. Sadly, there’s always hateful fools who hand over their souls to them. I applaud you and all who stand up against hate. Fight the good fight, my friend.
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We’ll never stop – and you, my friend, have done the same by creating this lovely space where we can be safe away from the evil rhetoric that sadly pollutes some other forums. Onwards and upwards!
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Following on from my gloomy post earlier, early signs for the next gig being saved seem positive as the venue manager seems to have understood that the situation leading to the fire alarms being triggered was out of our control so (fingers crossed) we are still on for the March gig at the same venue! What a relief!
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LinkedMusicians posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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
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LinkedMusicians posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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
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I’ve bought tickets to see them. I’ve seen them twice previously, though not for many years. Ironically, I listen to hardly any other hard rock bands, but got into Rush around the time of ‘Time Stand Still’, bought ‘Hold Your Fire’ and the rest is history.
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I was into Rush for a while and went to see them in Southampton (UK) when I was around 20 (a very long time ago!!). To be honest I was a bit disappointed – I know they prided themselves on sounding exactly like the albumn but that is what I found deeply dull – there was no live feel to the music – you know those moments when things take an…Read More
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I really enjoyed Rush live. But a disclosure. Back in the day, musicians and drummers constantly compared me, as a drummer, to Neil Peart and it really annoyed me, because while I thought Peart was an excellent drummer, I didn’t think our styles had much in common beyond that we would do fast, precise drum fills and used high-pitched toms, I…Read More
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LinkedMusicians posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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
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Hey there! Good to see you. How you been?
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fretman posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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?
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When I’m doing a cover, I tend to crank it out super quick. I’ve finished some within an hour. I usually will have an idea in mind for how to arrange something and just record it. I’m done. If I were working professionally, it would just be a demo. When working on original songs, mostly written decades ago, I rely on memory to recall lyrics,…Read More
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I’ve certainly worked on several song ideas concurrently. In fact, one song can often generate an idea that doesn’t feel quite right in the current song, but can be used in a second song – and then there’s also the thing you’ve mentioned about not being sure of where to go next with the song currently being worked on, so you move to another one,…Read More
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andrewfly posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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
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peter posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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
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patrickwichrowski posted in the group Open Mic (Open Discussion)
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.
1 Comment-
They correct it 😀
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Eun Chul Choi
Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series with lots of Vangelis music.
Vangelis – Alpha is the music that changed my life 😀