I got a message on MySpace from a guy in New York who couldn't find a place to buy one of my CDs. Crap! I don't have any CDs for sale. He listened to some of my stuff on last.fm, but only had internet access at work. So, I sent him a free copy of some of my old recordings in the mail. I figure if he wants it bad enough to ask a stranger for it on MySpace, he deserves it, postage free...
I'm working on an album...hopefully to be released at the end of the summer. I finished a rough draft of one of the songs, yesterday. I plan on doing more polished versions of some of my older songs, but mostly newer songs. I'm still plodding through the process of getting familiar with my new recorder. Perhaps I'll buy it a beer tonight...
Anyone have any advice for making vocals sound good? My recorder came with all kinds of effects...but the best of them have a little too much echo and sound a little tinny...and the worst of them just make me sound like a robot. I might end up just letting the natural echo of the room be my reverb. The reverb on the recorder has all kinds of fuzz and static on it.
Also, if there are any stray drummers out there, I needs me one...
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Music, Independence, and the Internet
Disclaimer: I'm Nicholas Slone and This is My Long Account of My Life With Music (With Equally Long Title)
Lately, I've had an abundance of energy and ambition that is spilling forth into my one great passion....music. I've loved music all my life. I can remember flipping through hymnals when my mom took me to choir practice, looking for some better songs to sing. When I found one, I would insist that we sing it, over and over again, until it became a part of the repertoire.
My nieces and I would sit around with a crappy tape recorder and make up songs, pretend to be radio D.J.s and various other corny things that were incredibly fun. I'd say around 4th grade I started writing the words down. Of course, every few years, I'd look at what I'd written, decide it was all sappy crap and trash most of it. I took piano lessons briefly, discovered just how lazy and impatient I was.....then took guitar lessons.....again, too lazy and impatient to learn scales and such, and settled on just writing words. Plus, most of the songs I liked back then were terrible and required very little guitar.
But I always loved to write and sing. I was raised on a dairy farm (like Lemony Snicket), and I often had to run the cows into the barn when it was time to milk them. Now, there are plenty of ways to scare a cow....but pretty much any kind of loud noise will do in a pinch. I'm sure to this day, that many cows have fevered nightmares about me singing/shouting various curse words and declarations of love at them, flailing my arms in the twilight. Why the combination of singing, swearing, and declarations of love? Well, where else does a shy kid from a good Christian family get his rocks off, but on the open range?
Flash forward to high school, when I always sang loudly with the radio. Hell, I loved high school dances, just so I could sing at the top of my lungs....much to the dismay of my sore-footed dance partners with ringing in their ears. Finally, I was given an outlet when I started hanging out with Joe Keaton. Along with Adam Clausing, we formed a band called Azre-el. I got my first taste of actually singing with a band. I also started playing around with a guitar around the same time. I took a couple of lessons from Joe, who is quite an accomplished guitarist, but ultimately, I just hated learning other people's shit. We recorded a 4 song demo, and I got my first chance to write a song, set to music that Joe wrote. I LOVED it. By the time we recorded, I wrote my own song, lyrics and music. I had caught the songwriting bug. Afterwards, I started writing all the time. The band wanted to learn 3 hours worth of covers, so we could start making money, which makes perfect sense. But, I just wanted to write. So, I quit/was replaced.
That's pretty much how I spent my time with music for a long time. I played with people here and there, most notably with my friend Luke Chamberlin, but I just focused on writing and finishing my English degree. By the time I was finished, I was a little sick of words and tired of most of the music I was hearing. After graduating, I moved from Athens back to Ironton for a year, where I was exposed to a musical renaissance by my friends Patrick and Brandy. Nearly every time I visited their apartment, I came away with music by 3 or 4 bands that I had never heard. I was shocked that so much music existed under the radar. It also exposed me to a method of discovery and distribution of music that I hadn't yet considered, probably because I didn't have access at the time......The Internet.
During the time that I worked on my Master's in Library and Information Science, I had the opportunity to really learn and explore the internet in a way that I previously hadn't. The major thing I discovered about the internet and its relationship to music (and in fact, most forms of media), was that the old way of doing things was slowly dying or evolving. In the old days, the major record labels essentially held a monopoly on distribution and exposure. What this did, and what ultimately led to my past disgust with the music available.....is that it created an artificial scarcity of goods. It wasn't that there wasn't a massive amount of music produced, it was that only a small fraction of that music was available in stores/on radio stations. Specifically, the music that these massive corporations are trying to sell. The internet, or more specifically, those that access and utilize the internet to access, promote, and distribute music, cracked the game wide open.
I've seen it elsewhere, and I believe it.....a musician can make a living if he or she has 1,000 true fans. A true fan is someone who will pay for every CD, not because that's the only way to access it, but because they truly want to support the artist. But that's only a tiny part of it. Even if they can't afford to buy it, they'll be promoting it, or will dish out the money to see a show. The most important thing seems to have been lost on the major media corporations. Focus on making something first. Make it your number one priority....the MAKING. If you make something with your heart and soul in it, SOMEONE will like it. It's what needs to happen....more people that make music because they HAVE to. They're internally compelled to. Just because it's what they do. My generation has been bombarded with advertising all our lives, and we're desensitized enough now that hype alone will not make us fans. Now, we create our own hype. There are too many different kinds of people for everyone to like the exact same music.
So, what was the point of that rant about the music business? The point is that the same renaissance that revived my critical interest in other people's music has also reawakened my desire to create and distribute my own. I have around 30-40 songs that I've written over the years, and I'm still writing. I have an old album that I recorded on a shitty tape recorder, years ago. I have it up on last.fm for free streaming, right now. Along with some stuff that I recorded with Joe's help a couple of years ago. There are some tools that I've recently learned about, as well as some new recording equipment I just bought (thank god for tax returns). So, why am I telling everyone about it? I don't really know...maybe because it's like an adventure to me....and I think all of this stuff is so damn cool....
So, I'm gonna start blogging about what I'm doing with all this stuff. What I'm doing, what I'm using, where I'm at on the internet. I have the luxury of a full time job, so I'm certainly not afraid to try shit out and fail miserably. Success, I'm told, is often far scarier. Right now, my plan of attack is as follows (I'll go into more depth in the near future):
1) last.fm - full track streaming - people listen to your music for free, they pay royalties now based on how many listens you get (plus links to buy albums)
2) Use new recording equipment to make album on the cheap
3) Amazon's CreateSpace - On Demand Publishing (Very Cool)
4) Use recordings to recruit additional band members, give fellow friends/musicians a chance to learn my songs...
5) Play every open mic night known to man (until gas money runs out)
6) Get paid to play my own music (The Dream)
7) Fly around on a hover-board, dropping jellybeans on people as they clock in for work, thereby throwing them off schedule by a few minutes and severely angering The Master Timekeeper, like in "Repent Harlequin, Said the Tick-tock Man," by Harlan Ellison, except I won't get caught (the other dream)
Click for My last.fm Music Page
Click for My MySpace Music Page
Lately, I've had an abundance of energy and ambition that is spilling forth into my one great passion....music. I've loved music all my life. I can remember flipping through hymnals when my mom took me to choir practice, looking for some better songs to sing. When I found one, I would insist that we sing it, over and over again, until it became a part of the repertoire.
My nieces and I would sit around with a crappy tape recorder and make up songs, pretend to be radio D.J.s and various other corny things that were incredibly fun. I'd say around 4th grade I started writing the words down. Of course, every few years, I'd look at what I'd written, decide it was all sappy crap and trash most of it. I took piano lessons briefly, discovered just how lazy and impatient I was.....then took guitar lessons.....again, too lazy and impatient to learn scales and such, and settled on just writing words. Plus, most of the songs I liked back then were terrible and required very little guitar.
But I always loved to write and sing. I was raised on a dairy farm (like Lemony Snicket), and I often had to run the cows into the barn when it was time to milk them. Now, there are plenty of ways to scare a cow....but pretty much any kind of loud noise will do in a pinch. I'm sure to this day, that many cows have fevered nightmares about me singing/shouting various curse words and declarations of love at them, flailing my arms in the twilight. Why the combination of singing, swearing, and declarations of love? Well, where else does a shy kid from a good Christian family get his rocks off, but on the open range?
Flash forward to high school, when I always sang loudly with the radio. Hell, I loved high school dances, just so I could sing at the top of my lungs....much to the dismay of my sore-footed dance partners with ringing in their ears. Finally, I was given an outlet when I started hanging out with Joe Keaton. Along with Adam Clausing, we formed a band called Azre-el. I got my first taste of actually singing with a band. I also started playing around with a guitar around the same time. I took a couple of lessons from Joe, who is quite an accomplished guitarist, but ultimately, I just hated learning other people's shit. We recorded a 4 song demo, and I got my first chance to write a song, set to music that Joe wrote. I LOVED it. By the time we recorded, I wrote my own song, lyrics and music. I had caught the songwriting bug. Afterwards, I started writing all the time. The band wanted to learn 3 hours worth of covers, so we could start making money, which makes perfect sense. But, I just wanted to write. So, I quit/was replaced.
That's pretty much how I spent my time with music for a long time. I played with people here and there, most notably with my friend Luke Chamberlin, but I just focused on writing and finishing my English degree. By the time I was finished, I was a little sick of words and tired of most of the music I was hearing. After graduating, I moved from Athens back to Ironton for a year, where I was exposed to a musical renaissance by my friends Patrick and Brandy. Nearly every time I visited their apartment, I came away with music by 3 or 4 bands that I had never heard. I was shocked that so much music existed under the radar. It also exposed me to a method of discovery and distribution of music that I hadn't yet considered, probably because I didn't have access at the time......The Internet.
During the time that I worked on my Master's in Library and Information Science, I had the opportunity to really learn and explore the internet in a way that I previously hadn't. The major thing I discovered about the internet and its relationship to music (and in fact, most forms of media), was that the old way of doing things was slowly dying or evolving. In the old days, the major record labels essentially held a monopoly on distribution and exposure. What this did, and what ultimately led to my past disgust with the music available.....is that it created an artificial scarcity of goods. It wasn't that there wasn't a massive amount of music produced, it was that only a small fraction of that music was available in stores/on radio stations. Specifically, the music that these massive corporations are trying to sell. The internet, or more specifically, those that access and utilize the internet to access, promote, and distribute music, cracked the game wide open.
I've seen it elsewhere, and I believe it.....a musician can make a living if he or she has 1,000 true fans. A true fan is someone who will pay for every CD, not because that's the only way to access it, but because they truly want to support the artist. But that's only a tiny part of it. Even if they can't afford to buy it, they'll be promoting it, or will dish out the money to see a show. The most important thing seems to have been lost on the major media corporations. Focus on making something first. Make it your number one priority....the MAKING. If you make something with your heart and soul in it, SOMEONE will like it. It's what needs to happen....more people that make music because they HAVE to. They're internally compelled to. Just because it's what they do. My generation has been bombarded with advertising all our lives, and we're desensitized enough now that hype alone will not make us fans. Now, we create our own hype. There are too many different kinds of people for everyone to like the exact same music.
So, what was the point of that rant about the music business? The point is that the same renaissance that revived my critical interest in other people's music has also reawakened my desire to create and distribute my own. I have around 30-40 songs that I've written over the years, and I'm still writing. I have an old album that I recorded on a shitty tape recorder, years ago. I have it up on last.fm for free streaming, right now. Along with some stuff that I recorded with Joe's help a couple of years ago. There are some tools that I've recently learned about, as well as some new recording equipment I just bought (thank god for tax returns). So, why am I telling everyone about it? I don't really know...maybe because it's like an adventure to me....and I think all of this stuff is so damn cool....
So, I'm gonna start blogging about what I'm doing with all this stuff. What I'm doing, what I'm using, where I'm at on the internet. I have the luxury of a full time job, so I'm certainly not afraid to try shit out and fail miserably. Success, I'm told, is often far scarier. Right now, my plan of attack is as follows (I'll go into more depth in the near future):
1) last.fm - full track streaming - people listen to your music for free, they pay royalties now based on how many listens you get (plus links to buy albums)
2) Use new recording equipment to make album on the cheap
3) Amazon's CreateSpace - On Demand Publishing (Very Cool)
4) Use recordings to recruit additional band members, give fellow friends/musicians a chance to learn my songs...
5) Play every open mic night known to man (until gas money runs out)
6) Get paid to play my own music (The Dream)
7) Fly around on a hover-board, dropping jellybeans on people as they clock in for work, thereby throwing them off schedule by a few minutes and severely angering The Master Timekeeper, like in "Repent Harlequin, Said the Tick-tock Man," by Harlan Ellison, except I won't get caught (the other dream)
Click for My last.fm Music Page
Click for My MySpace Music Page
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