This blog is dedicated to the idea that learning and playing guitar should be as fun as possible. It is a fine read if you are starting to learn guitar from scratch and if you tend to search for ways to be more creative.
Learn guitar and have fun too.
This makes me a little worried about the future of Song Monday, even though I own the copyrights of the mp3s. From Pitchforkmedia.com:
"Over the course of the past day, the Google-owned blogging service Blogger has shut down a number of popular mp3 blogs, including Pop Tarts Suck Toasted, I Rock Cleveland, LivingEars, and It's a Rap. If you follow the links to any of those blogs, you'll see that they've been wholesale deleted. All you'll find is the Blogger message, 'The blog you were looking for was not found.' The apparent reason? The music posted on the blogs allegedly violates Blogger's terms of services."
Yesterday, I wrote about how Absolut Vodka was using a Joy Division song for one of their commercials. Here is the actual video. It makes me feel dirty to see it. Perhaps the only good thing is that the visual artists probably can pay their rent for awhile. That's nice. But Joy Division? I don't drink vodka, let alone Absolut Vodka. I misspelled their name yesterday. So there's no pun in me saying, "have some taste, ok?" Again, I really think this is pushing the limits of selling out.
This is interesting. The situation: Absolute Vodka is/was using a Joy Division song for one of their TV commercials. Joy Division isn't exactly known for their happy songs. The singer, Ian Curtis, killed himself when he was 23 years old. So, um, why the hell is Absolute Vodka using a Joy Division song for advertising? It doesn't make sense.
It's almost like Absolute Vodka is suggesting, "Hey you: Drink Absolute Vodka. It makes you feel better! Especially if you are totally depressed and love Joy Division!" This might define the limits of what selling out is and is not.
http://culinarypen.blogspot.com/2009/09/ian-curtis-swedish-vodka.html
(Shout out to Steve B. for sending me this article.)
My post yesterday dealt with the the rush to share songs. This is the situation where everything a professional musician writes ought to be heard. I realized today that I made a mistake. I didn't clarify the process I had in mind about how professional musicians go about sharing. Here is a very typical way to do that:
1. Write it
2. Record it at a professional studio (Electrical Audio, Steve Albini's studio in Chicago, is $600 a day but add another $700 if you want to work with Steve. Crazy.. This is what pops up when you click on Steve Albini's picture. Abbey Road doesn't even list their prices)
3. Mix it
4. Master it (aka, send it off to an engineer who does the final touches)
5. The label/benefactor then markets it in preperation for the release.
6. Release it.
7. Tour the hell out of it, unless you are Paul McCartney or Brian Wilson.
When a person has unlimited label support it is easy to do the above, as long as they don't mind being in the studio all the time. There are also guys out there like Randy Rogers who skirt this sort of idea. Randy apparently writes so many songs that I imagine that he doesn't have time to go through this process. I don't know for sure. From what I can gather, he tries out his songs on audiences whenever he writes them. This is really smart. Bonus that he also has a bunch of songs just sitting around and he can pop out at the right moment.
What other ways are there to share?
Put up a Myspace page. Do a website with a simple mp3 player. You can just ask your friends over and play songs for them (bribery is kosher). You can play for your spouse. Lay the song on a pet. Force it upon everyone with a megaphone on top of a car. You can go to open mics. You can do just about anything. So share if you have songs bursting out of you, dammit!
This blog is dedicated to the idea that learning and playing guitar should be as fun as possible. It is a fine read if you are starting to learn guitar from scratch and if you tend to search for ways to be more creative.
This blog is dedicated to the idea that learning and playing guitar should be as fun as possible. It is a fine read if you are starting to learn guitar from scratch and if you tend to search for ways to be more creative.
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