It’s Monday, again. A weekly reminder that our weekends are no longer filled with rejuvenating times with friends, new experiences, random encounters, and spontaneous adventures. Nope! All gone.
So turn on your computer, dial into the internet, and let’s just pretend everything is normal.
The main riff in today’s Daily Loop was played on my bass, which I converted to MIDI notes.
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“Some days, I really hate this shit. Like really fucking hate it on an extra level. Today is one of those,” @georgehahn
This one’s kinda different than my usual fare but … at the same time not at all? Anyway, excited to share the cover for Sarattma’s debut release Escape Velocity! I did this in gouache on arches hit press paper. Album cover proper in a reply tweet. pic.twitter.com/h9ogUE5Owf
Anyone (literally) can get their song up on YouTube.
You don’t have to out run a bear, you just have to out run your friends.
Set up a site for your album. Put up your lyrics, your photos, your stories. You wish a cool media outlet would do a feature on your new release, right? In the meantime, do it yourself.
You’d post a link to that cool press if you got it.
For now, build your own “press” and post that link instead.
You dream of your killer live stage set up – lights, video screens, dancers.
Start now.
Make your website your stage. Fill it with your art, your ideas, your dreams, your colors, your imagery.
Because someone else just starting out in stage design is looking and listening and watching.
Because someone else is just getting started in costume design. And video editing. And graphic design.
Put more of yourself out there, in full form. Attract your people, your fans, your team.
Today isn’t the time for just posting throw-away Tweets that wash away in an hour. Not time for “stories” that float off like a plastic bag in the breeze.
Buy a domain name, set up a site, and stake your place on the internet. Your home. Your HQ. The source for your magic and your art.
Don’t just add a photo and post a link. Rip open yourself and get more of yourself onto the screen. Answer interview questions you’ve not yet been asked, list your favorite horror films, post that video of yourself making coffee in the morning with your music in the background.
Your music is part of life, part of existence, part of the human story. Don’t let your music fight all by itself on a crowded playlist, which is just two steps away from looking like a Google Sheet:
Control your destiny, your branding, and your look. Put together more of what you do, and who you are, in a space that you control.
Simple loops, for complicated times. It’s Sunday, time to replenish the soul in whatever fashion suits you.
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“Can you grow it with your tomatoes? If the answer is “yes” that’s a plant. America’s utterly bizarre superstition: criminalizing a plant and ruining peoples lives with a criminal record for consuming it. End this War on Drugs,” @JohnFetterman
“Passed by a Chili’s tonight with a dining room full of people. Imagine risking your life during pandemic when nearly 4000 people are dying every day in order to eat inside at a Chili’s,” @AstroKatie
It’s the weekend, so I thought I’d try shooting one of those play through videos for a loop today. Sometimes I forget to add a real bass line, as I’ve been playing since 1991 (though haven’t kept up in the last decade).
Shot the video with my iPhone XR on a tripod, then Airdropped them to my computer. From there, pulled everything into ScreenFlow, lined everything up, adjusted some of the video controls (brightness, contrast), and that’s it.
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“I often think abt how much we repress during this pandemic in order to wake up, go to work. To be forced to live our lives while 100’s of thousands die in the background. & I think abt how once ends & we can finally process, the scale of national trauma we’ll be reckoning with,” @catcontentonly
The thing you produce doesn’t have to be fully formed, or ready for prime time. The way you get better is with other people. Be them fans, or collaborators, or just casual friends cheering you on – fill the void with your thing, as often as you can.
The loop above took about 45 minutes to make. Find some sound to sample, work in a beat, make a bass line, figure a small arrangement. Find a good video. Edit together a video for Vimeo and IG stories. Write this post.
That’s energy going out into the world, and energy attracts energy. We saw the power of negative energy a few weeks ago at the US Capitol. That didn’t happen in isolation.
So consider the goodness we could birth in the opposite direction. Happy hoards of weirdo creative people releasing music, making videos, magazines, TV-style game shows distributed around the world.
We can do this.
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“Start now. Optimize later. An imperfect start can always be improved, but obsessing over a perfect plan will never take you anywhere on its own,” James Clear
“How can a magazine possibly hope to be relevant if it only has staff who can live in NYC on $45K? That salary is just code for “only apply if your parents pay your rent,” @lindsaycrouse
You don’t need to be a loud talker, have a $5,000 camera, a perfect studio, a big budget, or hours of time to “engage” and grow your audience.
There are success stories, sure. They can be deconstructed, taken apart and examined to figure out the “how” and “why,” but it’s nothing compared to the work.
The overnight success is 10 years in the making. The overnight success happens in a flash. Point being, if there were a map, a guide, everyone would be popular, all of the time.
There’s already a hundred “stars” who went viral, who crashed and burned, who’ve fizzled under the bright lights.
Do you work, craft your music, make your magic; everyone is waiting.
“That ceremony was many things, but it was also a reminder that no one needs a one-hour work Zoom call. They fit in J-Lo, Lady Gaga, Garth Brooks plus all the other stuff in 30 minutes. Keep it tight folks,” @meganmurp
“Amanda Gorman reminding all of us of the power and necessity of art,” @annabrones
Today is the last day of the Trump presidency. It was this day in 2017 when he was sworn into office, and it’s been a nightmare ever since. Good riddance.
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“Folks, I think that the crushing sadness of half a million people dying from a virus that could have been prevented by better planning is kinda getting to me,” @AGoldmund
Obama’s final address to the White House press core. Take a moment to listen. pic.twitter.com/Uyc62XwqpI
Loved this bit from the Extra Paint podcast with Meg Lewis, at about the 16:30 mark; about making stuff that no one asked you to create.
Not hired. No committee. No poll. Just making something because you want to see it in the world.
I started Skull Toaster in 2011 (oh my god, TEN years ago) because I wanted to put something on Twitter that didn’t send you off to read something elsewhere. I wanted to put the meat right where you were; on Twitter. No one asked.
No one asked me to start ‘Goodnight, Metal Friend,’ but I wanted to hear dark ambient and drone metal songs with NO DRUMS, because dammit I wanted to fall asleep to it! So I made it, and now I’ve made 12 mixes and a few fans! NEATO.
If want to stream, stream your thing. Write your thing. Post your videos. The world needs to see your own unique, different, oddball stuff because some people like unique, different, oddball stuff! Right now it’s just hard to get any traction because of all the algorithms and noise on social media. But do your thing, put it on your own website and promote it.
When you wake up the absurdity of a 22 year old aspiring to break into the Capitol building and steal a laptop from Nancy Pelosi and sell it to the Russians (allegedly), you get to work.
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“Share the quotes but also do the work,” @JWLevitt
