78 - Back. Again.

Haven't blogged in month. MONTHS. Must be I've had nothing to say. Or maybe I needed a blog break. Whatever.

I've begun work on my new CD, "The One Thing." Much like my last CD, it will most likely be folk/rock, meaning acoustic guitar-based. Five of the songs are stories. I've got the ideas for all ten songs done. Soon I'll be doing demos, and I'll post some of those here.

You know, I'm not sure why I stopped blogging. I got a lot of positive feedback when I blogged before. It just got to be "obligation," where I'd have to post every Saturday, but it wasn't every Saturday that I felt I had something to say. So I'm going to try just blogging when I feel like it. Might be three times in a day, then nothing for 2 weeks. I dunno.

Reading my last blog was interesting. What to charge for my music... In the future, the majority of amateur musicians will give their music away for free online. It's not like I'm trying to earn a living. Should I now be giving away my music? Is it time? I seem to constantly struggle with this question. I'm streaming it for free right now, on Bandcamp. Still thinking about it. I probably should. I could be ahead of the curve, a little bit - there aren't a whole lot of good amateurs giving their music away online. Do I consider my music good? Sure. I wouldn't keep making it if I thought it stank. Others can think it stinks, but that's just their taste.

Well, isn't this a cheerful little missive. I'm on Christmas vacation, hooray! No work for almost two weeks. Playing at Whistle Stop Grill's open mic tomorrow night, because I asked if I could gig there and they ask artists to audition at their OMN so they can hear them first. Fair enough. Only problem is that it will be 50 degrees and the dang place is outside. Hopefully they have outside space heaters. It's also possible that I'll show up and the place will be closed. Small venues often don't update their own websites. There are still websites up for coffee shops that have long since closed. You'd think they'd take down their web sites, but nooo....

Maybe I'll blog about my experience Wednesday night. The Adventures of Amateur Musician Man. Pulse pounding excitement.

First blog back... no real insights, no "ah-ha" moments. Just me. Now I'm off to the Y. Won't be swimming, though - it's probably 60 degrees out. Too damn cold! That's it! I'm moving to FLORIDA! Oh, wait...

77 - Free or Not Free

Once again I struggle with the concept. I wonder about the future. If 5 years from now, every small time artist like me will be giving their music away for free online, then I should be doing it now, to be ahead of the curve.

Doors open to free, don't they? Example - I could tell everyone I work with (and a LOT of people know me) that they could go download my music for free. Since I sell my music, currently, I can't do that. I can't send out an e-mail saying "Hey, check out my website." But if it were free...

In away I'm sorry I ever left MacJams. When I was at MacJams, I had almost 5,000 downloads. People had my music on their iPods. I had fans.

Not really. I had "fake fans," which are fans who love your music but only when it's free.

But.

But the majority of the country is maybe now "fake fans." People don't want to pay for music any more. They value it less financially. But they do still value it.

I'm wrong. I would not go back to MacJams. MacJams is a fantastic site for people who are needing pats on the back, who are just getting started. Maybe it's changed. Hard to say... I just tried going there and the page is still attempting to load.

My CD Release party is October 23 at Pro Sound Studios in St. Pete. I'm co-hosting the party with the awesome Steve Vaclavik, a Tampa artist who does Americana. Bob Dylan crossed with Tom Petty, maybe. I really like his music. I'm selling my CD's there for $10. It's not because it costs me $10 to make the thing. Actually it cost about $3. Eventually I'll be selling them for $5. The people who are buying them right away, for $10, are helping support me.

I think my next move is to allow users to pay what they want, online, for my music, on Bandcamp. Right now the minimum price for a song is 25 cents. I wonder how that would work out. Might as well try.

76 - There was this one time...

I made the decision to put my new CD online at Bandcamp.com. If you're not familiar with it, Bandcamp lets you put your music online and people can stream it for free, at good quality. If they want to download it, you can set the price or you can let fans name the price, including zero. I set my minimum price to 25 cents per track.

In the news we see music heading in vastly different directions. ASCAP and BMI apparently want you to pay them every time you hum a song in your head. You pay more if you whistle it out loud. It's almost that bad - no, actually they want iTunes and other stores to pay them every time someone listens to a 30 second preview of a song. They are fighting for their business lives and are getting desperate. This move will no doubt drive even more music fans to illegal file sharing.

Meanwhile, Billy Corgan (ie Smashing Pumpkins) has announced that he's going to release 44 songs for free online. Free as in totally free downloads, you don't have to enter your e-mail address, etc. I wonder if Billy is with BMI or ASCAP. He's got to be with one of the two. I can image their reaction to this.

Billy could still sell music, no doubt. Why release it for free? To get people to come to gigs? I assume he can do that already, too. For publicity? Maybe. I dunno. If this trend gets hot and all the big artists start giving music away and living off concert tickets, then it's going to make it harder for small artists to sell music. I wouldn't be hurt too badly - music is a hobby for me. I could afford to give it away for free. But I'd definitely feel it. I use CD sales money to help buy new instruments and equipment. Everything costs money.

Well, anyway, check out my bandcamp page when you get a chance, at:

http://richardmaclemale.bandcamp.com/

75 - Promo for CD Release

I have a friend named Steve Vaclavik, who happens to be putting out a new CD the same time I am. Here's a cool way to double your marketing efforts. We are appearing on a local TV morning show together, we are appearing on a local radio show together, and we are performing together at a dual CD Release party. Pretty cool. No way I could have done it on my own. Steve likes my music, and I like Steve's music. Pretty cool.

Additionally, I'm uploading my new CD to bandcamp, so that fans can stream my music online to check it out. If they want to download it, they can name their own price. KEWL.

Within two weeks my CD's will be available at CDBaby. Sometime before the economy recovers, it'll be available on iTunes. It takes a reeeeeeeally long time to get your music onto the world's largest online music store, but it's important that I do.

Moral of the post - If you suck at marketing, like I do, partner up with someone who does not suck at marketing.

Hmm. I'm blogging from the bar in the lobby at our hotel. I don't know the name of this place. Loews something or other. At Universal in Orlando. I'd tell you what I'm drinking but oh dear, I work in education, and we are not allowed to be human, so let's say I'm drinking water with a kick. Just made the mistake of looking over a few couches and a couple is making out. Dude behind me needs to stop drinking water. It's kinda cool down here, though. I think I'll end on that note.

74 - Having CD's Made

I sent my order into Diskmakers and I should have my CD's in two weeks. I'm apprehensive and I hope they come out looking and sounding good.

I had 100 made. It is common wisdom that you should have 1,000 Cd's made, because nothing motivates you to sell CD's like having 1,000 of them sitting in your bedroom. I disagree. I believe you should order what you believe you can sell. That would be my business background talking. The "order 1,000" philosophy is good evidence of why 8 out of 10 small businesses fail. People make irrational business decisions. In this case, the stakes are much lower. You invest a thousand bucks. If you end up not selling them, you're out a grand. That's a valuable lesson but really, not a huge amount of money. But enough to sting pretty badly.

If you think you CAN sell a thousand, you should order a thousand. If I sell out of CD's in two months, then I made the wrong choice. But I'll have a thousand dollars and I'll be able to order more CD's.

73 - Recording Vocals. Again.

I have come up with a really good way to see if a vocal track is good enough, in terms of the audio quality. Solo the vocal, turn the volume up, and turn off any eq and effects. If it sounds good enough for the CD just the way it is, you've got something. If it sounds like it's coming through a bullhorn or a drive in theater speaker, you need to re-record it, because no amount of eq in the world is going to be able to save it.

Sadly, for me, this is the conclusion I reached when I tried fixing the vocals to my title track "Every Single Day" last night. It's time to admit defeat. It sounds terrible. So tonight I'll re-sing it.

It's the room, really, but I don't have much to work with. So I'm going to employ a trick that many home studio people don't, but a wise few do - I'm going to deaden the area directly around where I sing.

I was recently at a JPF showcase, where one of the members, Andrew Karpinski http://www.stonemarmot.com gave a demo on how he made his own device to deaden the sound behind the microphone. I'm going to build two of those today - a small one to go behind the microphone, and a large one to go behind me while I sing, at head level. It will no doubt be ugly but I bet it helps. A better vocal mic would help, too, but I can't currently afford what I want (AKG 414.)

As thrilling as this blog is this morning, I have to go eat breakfast.

72 - Freebies for Family and Friends

As everyone who knows me knows, I'm coming out with a new CD very soon. I expect to have them in my hands before October 1. I have about one week left to finish mixing/mastering. The problem with having your own studio is that it's hard to let go of songs. You're still tweaking them.

Side Note - I just posted a song from my new CD on bandcamp. Check it out if interested.

I'm ordering a small order (100) of my new CD, and when I sell out, I'll order more. If I sell out in two weeks, I'll order 1,000. If I sell out in six months, I'll order another 100. All of my friends and family want copies for free. Actually, that's not totally factual. Some of my friends and the majority of my family WANT to support me and want to buy the CD. Others expect it for free. Some artists say "Hey, this is putting food on my table." But my friends and family know that's not true! It's a hobby. It's more important to me than I can say, but it's not my job.

So here's what I'll do. When my friends and family want a CD, I will tell them I'll be happy to burn them a copy for free, but I can't give them a factory-made copy because I need to sell them to get back the money I put in making them. So if they don't mind a hand-burned copy, that's fine. If I give them a copy of the actual CD, I can't turn around and sell that CD for $10, therefore I'm losing $10 every time I'm giving out CD's. I have 100 friends and family members. I could give them all away for free and lose a thousand dollars. Um, no.

Gifts are different. If you give a CD away for a birthday present or other present, then it's the same as a $10 gift.

Anyway, here's my thought - your family and friends are not out to rip you off. They don't understand why you won't give them free copies of your CD. They can get other music for free, but not yours? They've got a small point - it only costs you about 20 cents to burn them a no-frills copy. But it costs you $10 to give them a real factory made CD that you'd sell to someone at a gig. I think all we need to do is make people aware of this and they'll be totally cool with the no-frills burned CD. Hopefully they'll also want to own the real thing. The more CD's you sell, the more money you can put into music, the better your music can sound. (I'm saving up for a better vocal microphone.)

71 - Jehovah's Witness

I'm off topic today. The Jehovah's Witlesses are invading our neighborhood. The cars are parked along the corner of the street and they're gathering their brochures and putting on their best cheery smiles. I put a sign on my door - "No Jehovah's Witnesses! Do not knock or ring bell! Thank you."

No, really, I did. My wife is still sleeping. These fools will knock on my door, the dog will go nuts, it will wake my wife up, and they will tell me that I need their version of God. No, I don't. Nor do I believe that this practice should be legal. Not the nutcases - but the act of knocking on doors and pushing your religious beliefs. I don't care what people believe in. You can believe in a big man in the sky, or worshop the sun, or some big fat guy, or Jimi Hendrix for all I care. Don't knock on my damn door and push your agenda.

There. Now I feel better.

I'm off to the Y today to run and do some light weights. Then I'm coming home for a massive marathon mixing session. And maybe redo the vocals I botched last night. My goal is to have this mixed and mastered by the end of the month. Since I have two weeks left, I'd say I'll reach my goal, but those two weeks will sail by if I don't get to mixing. So Y, then maybe groceries, then singing and mixing. The moral of the day - do not procrastinate about mixing. That and don't talk to Jehovah's Witlesses.

70 - Writing, Performing, Recording

This may not work for everyone, but it's working for me. The usual order is to write a song, record it on a CD, and then perform it. What I've discovered is that in the process of performing songs, I learn what they sound like when played different ways, ie different arrangements, and therefore end up with what I think is the best version of the song. So it's a tad weird to record a song and then end up playing a better version of it live.

The solution is to start performing the song before you record it. Once you've got it down and you think you've found the best way to sing/play it, then record it. I've done this for my new CD and it's definitely helped a lot.

Just a quick little tip on this fine Saturday morning. I'm going to put all of this stuff together in book form one day. So I can be an "author" and stroke my own ego.

69 - Success in Music

Is your goal to be a rock star? It would be pretty safe for me to bet you. You'll lose. Does this make you a failure? Why do we define success, so often, as being able to hit the highest possible mark? It really puts a negative spin on music.

I'm thrilled to be a musician and a singer/songwriter. I have zero expectations of making it a career, and I don't want to make it a career. I love music. Have my whole life. I'm lucky to have such a thing... I know guys who jump from hobby to hobby, dumping each one when they get bored, looking for something and never finding it.

Not me. I play a gig and I get in the zone and really feel it, and someone gives me a compliment or buys a CD, and I feel awesome. I think it's great when a little kid comes up shyly and puts money into the tip jar. They're seeing live music! Maybe it'll have an influence on them. Maybe they'll want to play an instrument, if they see it enough themselves. I thought it was cooler than hell when I was a kid and we saw someone play live music.

To me, those who are have some musical talent and love playing music are very fortunate. And even though you love it, there's no reason to not make a little money doing it. We all need money. So long as the money doesn't become the major thing... unless of course you're trying for a career in music.

I just got a Telecaster and I joined a Telecaster forum. Those people are nuts. They're totally in love with the Tele. Me too. But you read some of the threads and it just jumps out at you, what these instruments mean to these people. It's awesome. No one is talking about making it. They're talking about what the best pickups are and such.

But... soooo many people are holding out for stardom. They want to become a superstar and anything else won't do. This can be dangerous and destructive, and in some cases, can end up actually killing the person's love of music. They put so much pressure on themselves and when they fail, they feel like they've failed in life. Nonsense. The Music BUSINESS is a business. A lot of things have to click to be a superstar and the odds are that it won't happen for any of us. There's nothing depressing about that. Music is supposed to be fun, to enrich your life. If you can make a living at it, in any way shape or form, and that's what you want to do, great. If it's a hobby that you love, great. Whatever the case, just enjoy it. That's my take.

68 - Mixing

I'm currently recording vocals and mixing my new CD. I know that some people like to put down all of the vocals and then mix, but I like to record vocals for two or three songs, do some rough mixes, and then move on. To each his own.

I like to make mixing easy on myself so I don't have to do a whole lot of fader automation. One thing I like doing is to normalize all the audio tracks. Then I pull the faders down and readjust them. For vocal tracks, if there are big long silent parts, I'll cut those parts out of the track totally. EQ is the toughest part of mixing for me. It's not too hard to balance levels, I don't think, but EQ is difficult. You can't really EQ a track in isolation all that well, because it's part of the mix. With one exception - vocals. I like to solo vocals and sweep the EQ until I find a frequency range that sounds annoying to me. I'll boost it to make sure I've found just the right range, and then I'll cut it. Old trick.

Other tricks I use? I solo the drums and bass and make the bass roughly the same volume as the bass drum. I like to add some 100 hz to the drums for a little boost. I roll off a lot of low end on my acoustic guitar tracks because they muddy things up. I compress vocals when I record, at about a 4 to 1 ratio. Then on playback I compress them AGAIN, anywhere from 2 to 1 to maybe 4 to 1. And I put a limiter on them too. I use Melodyne Uno for pitch correction. I don't mind vocals that are ever so slightly out of tune, unless it's my voice... in which case it drives me absolutely insane. I'm anal about it.

For this CD, I will NOT be mastering it real hot. I'm going to master it like it's 1983. No "loudness war" for me. Maybe it won't stand up real good on the radio. I'm not expecting to be ON the radio too much. I also don't care what it sounds like in mono.

Well, there were some disjointed thoughts for you. I'm thinking that my CD should be done in about 3 or 4 weeks, at the rate I'm going. Maybe sooner.

67 - Zee New Home!

Welcome to my new digs!

OK. All I did was create a blog at blogger.com and I'm pointing my URL to it. I got sick of running my own Wordpress install and messing with it. Here is my most recent post:

After one week, I’m pulling the plug on my free downloads. After column 66, where I extolled the virtues of my forward thinking 21st century marketing skills, it’s not easy to admit I was wrong… uh, actually, it’s REALLY easy to admit I was wrong. I have no problem making mistakes. And this column is about what I’ve learned, what I’m still learning, and what I want to learn. So with apologies to harmonycentral forums, where I’ve already discussed this, here’s the deal…

I’ve spent the last few days talking to as many people as possible about the idea of free 128k mp3 downloads. And the results of those conversations were interesting. It’s always better to ASK people than to guess. Some key points:

• Younger people do not have a problem with going to a web site and listening to music streamed. Older people like it less.

• Some people actually prefer streamed music to downloads. One reason is they can listen to it from any computer. This did not make sense to me. If you download the song, you can put it anywhere. Doesn’t have to make sense to me - it’s how some people felt.

• The majority of people 35 and older that I talked to (who weren’t musicians) had no real understanding of higher quality file formats and what that means. To them, they thought I had just decided to give my music away, period. Eek.

• A few people actually got annoyed with me because they bought my CD and were wondering why I didn’t tell them my music was free. Eek again.

• Streaming music caused repeat visits, which is a good thing because it means people are thinking about you and coming back.

My biggest mistake was making assumptions instead of doing research - even limited research of talking to actual real people. A whole lot of people, young and old, have no clue that a 128k crappy sounding mp3 file is actually that much crappier than a CD.

So it seems to me that streaming music is much more likely to cause an eventual sale than offering free downloads of low quality format. I’m off to redo my bandcamp settings. I just thought I’d share the results of this, so people can avoid this mistake, or at least laugh at how stupid I was to try it. There’s some comic value in that.