henning

So I have been wrapping my head around this for ages and for me finding a great stage name or band name is one of the hardest things to do. I would like to start a thread about finding or creating awesome unique names that stand out from generic uninspired names (and by uninspired I mean something like "The Lunatic Dolls", "Blue Tree House" or "Dudes From Pluto" - apology to bands actually calling themselves that). Just a few examples of names that I personally find unique, catchy or beautiful (independent from the actual music): N.E.R.D., A$AP Rocky (ASAP = always strive and prosper), Lana Del Rey (she came up with it hanging with her Cuban friends), Pretty Lights, Grimes, Jay-Z (developed from his nickname "jazzy"). Of course in general the name should describe your music or should be somehow related to yourself or to your lifestyle. No death metal band is gonna call itself The Maybe Maybe's and no Bluegrass band will call itself The Raging Hell Warriors. So the name kind of depends on the genre. However some names seem to fit incredibly well because they are memorable, easy to say, fit the concept and are unique on top of that. I tried to come up with a list of possible name searching approaches: Use your own name (or the name of the lead singer, or the drummer's name so he doesn't get mad) Use a stylized form of your own name (e.g. Marshall Mathers -> MM -> M & M -> Eminem) Use suffixes and prefixes with your own name or a derivative of that (e.g. all the Lil's and Big's in Hip Hop music) Single nouns, verbs or adjectives (e.g. Knots, Sunken, Blur) Verb + noun or adjective + noun (e.g. Spinning Wheels, Flying Cars) Multiple adjectives/verbs/nouns (e.g. Sleeping White Ghosts, Crazy Bass Players) Include Numbers (e.g. High 5, 6 Strings, 4 against 1) Add a "the, a, le, les etc." in front of everything Actual sentences (e.g. We Don't Care About Your Opinion) Completely random strings that are possible to pronounce (e.g. Fendojendo) Mix languages (e.g. Rock Maison) There may be more... I would love to hear your ideas for finding an awesome name or names you think sound great.

Thanks! Might record more in this style. You got a pretty cool band and a pretty cool homepage!

Thanks a lot whoosh!! General question on the grimey bass effect - how do you do it? I usually move the frequency cutoff according to a rhythmic pattern but maybe you can get cooler effects using a Vocoder or something. Never tried it though.

I started using it and I think it's a really cool effect when you wanna spice up a beat. It also works well on acoustic instruments - like you have an acoustic guitar riff and some chilled real-world drum sounds and you add a grimey bassline to it. Here's one song where I used it. The lead is a detuned saw mixed with a rapidly LFO'ed sound: .

I usually use Sonar 8 and Propellerhead Reason 5 in ReWire mode. For recording quick ideas Audacity does a great job. I prefer actual hardware synthesizer samples but Lennar Digital Sylenth is a crazy good VST and besides effects that's also the only VST I use.

Thanks ricks! Those are some good points. So I'm just gonna get started and see how it goes.

I'm looking for some tips on how to use Twitter as a promotional tool. I started following a couple of people who are "big" in the business and they twitter a few messages a day with appropriate hashtags and obviously they get tremendous numbers of re-tweeds and favorites. I'm interested in some general guidelines or experience reports on how to build a solid Twitter community, best practices, things to avoid etc. Looking forward to your answers!