Category: Music

Make Yourself an Experience

Anyone (literally) can get a song up on Spotify.

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.

Daily Loop #23

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.

LIKES:

“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

Source

Daily Loop #22

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.

LIKES

“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

https://twitter.com/youyve/status/1352326254041522180

Video by Ricardo Esquivel from Pexels

Be The Tape Wizard You Want To See In The World

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.

(video via Dino)

Daily Loop #21

Full steam ahead. Lots of work to do.

LIKES

“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

Video by Free Creative Stuff from Pexels

Daily Loop #18

Today I beat Instagram. Today, on MLK Jr. Day. I scrolled once, twice, and knew the comfort that it brings. I could just crawl back into bed, pull the covers up, and swipe, swipe, swipe.

But I cracked open Abelton Live, plugged in my gear, re-arranged some stuff, and got to it. Maybe saying “got to work” is a bit much, but maybe that’s true, as well.

If you write, you’re a writer.

A friend told me recently she met Victor Wooten, the amazing, other-worldly bassist. She mentioned that she was taking lessons from someone he knew, so he exclaimed, “oh, so you’re a bassist,” to which she replied, “well, umm.. I mean…”

She told me he squared up, looked her in the eyes, and said, “you’re a bassist.”

LIKES

“To our LGBTQIA fans and fellow musicians: we love you. Thank you for being who you are. Metal (and the rest of the world) is stronger because of your voices and power. We are grateful for y’all.” @khemmisdoom

Daily Loop #17

Don’t discount yourself. That’s something I struggle with a lot these days. “Oh, I just ran a mile today,” is something that came out my mouth recently, when just 4-ish years ago I couldn’t run a mile without being in pain for a week afterwards.

I’m tempted to discount this loop today, as there’s so much more that could be done here. Better arrangement, better mix, more vocals, more sizzle, more pop… the list goes on and will never end.

But this baby got out today, and that’s all that matters. This is the public facing audio treat, and that’s final. It’s not the final mix, and frankly no one cares.

LIKES

“blasting shoegaze while driving means turning it down every five seconds to make sure that the weird noises in the song aren’t coming from your car,” @dniellechelosky

“I’m not one for ‘told ya so’s but in 1989 when David Duke won the state House seat in Louisiana, some of us said this was an inflection point in American politics. This wasn’t just the logical result of Reaganesque racial dog whistling. It was something different,” @timjacobwise

“I’m just thinking again about how many lives would have been saved had the US had competent — or even vaguely interested — national leadership when the pandemic hit,” @AstroKatie

Video by Anthony from Pexels

Daily Loop #16

Today’s Daily Loop gets a little raunchy, featuring a vocal sample and a mish-mash of other sounds and debris. Still getting the hang of the APC40 but woo, I love it.

LIKES:

“I love @YouTube and put a music video on there the other day… how can this be happening? I don’t want my fans or anyone to be funding hate or violence,” @selenagomez

https://twitter.com/Ang_Ramm/status/1350308428569337856

Daily Loop #16 Video by C Technical from Pexels