Tinnitus for Beginners

The easiest way to achieve the tinnitus you always wanted is to consult an expert:

• Registered practitioners of acoustic overstimulation are listed on the All Music Guide.
• For news and reviews, try Pitchfork (from the US), the Quietus (from the UK), or the hundreds of blogs aggregated by The Hype Machine.
• Live concerts are probably the quickest method of perforating your eardrums, and tickets are available from (among others) Ticketmaster UK, Ticketweb, SeeTickets and We Got Tickets.
• And if you're not downloading all your recorded music from the iTunes Store or eMusic, actual physical records can still be bought from places like Amazon UK and Norman Records.

Of course, you could always take the do-it-yourself approach. I've played in a number of bands, most of which have been Oxford bands:

• First, the (thankfully) forgotten The Rare Grooves
• then Louche
• then a swathe of bands formed with J-P Stacey: Cover Story, Choker, Company Car and Mofus
• after which I was recruited into moonkat
• out of the ashes of which briefly arose cassette for cassette.
• For a while I played bass for Alice {Musics}
• but these days I have a solo project under the name Plantagenet 3.

Instructional books and sheet music can be bought from the likes of musicroom, FretsOnly, jazzwise and St George's Music Shop. However, all you really need to make lots of noise is a guitar and an amp. Here are some sites that may help:

• Musictoyz sell all the guitar effects pedals you could ever want,
• while Strings Direct stick to the more prosaic realm of guitar strings.
• If six strings is just too much, try basschat.co.uk.
• When it comes to the drumming side of things, the Drum Tuning Bible is a useful reference.
• You can occasionally find cheap musical equipment on eBay.
• If you're going to take music seriously you need all the help you can get - try the Musicians' Union.
• Who needs real talent when you can learn how to play Air Guitar with the best of them? Bring on the air groupies...

You could also start up an indie record label - my attempt at this was Jitter (briefly known as Tinfoil Recordings). I also tried (and mostly failed) to provide a bit of help to the people at Purr. Of course, record labels get a lot of bad press - check out what Steve Albini has to say on the Problem with Music.

Whether you're an artist or a record label, you should know all about the complicated world of intellectual property, which in the UK involves:

• PRS for Music, an alliance between:
  • the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society, who collect music/lyric royalties from the sale of recordings
  • and the Performing Right Society, who collect music/lyric royalties owed from live performances and radio/TV broadcasts
• Phonographic Performance Ltd. (PPL), who collects recording royalties from the broadcast of recordings, both for record companies and for performers.