Week 4 is brutal. In fact, I’ve been working on week 4 for 4 weeks. The book, “Music Success in Nine Weeks” is theoretically structured in a way that you “could” follow it week to week and complete the 9 main chapters giving each a week to accomplish, but realistically, it’s more complicated than that. Depending on the kind of free time, technical know-how, and desire you have, you may or may not be able to follow this letter for letter.
Chapter 4 is all about social networking. In my case, I have a number of the things that the book suggests already in place; i.e., a mailing list, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace accounts. At a bird’s eye view, it doesn’t take long to create an account on each of these sites, but grokking how to use them does take a while. Establishing a presence that is consistent visually can be a large time sync, and really getting MySpace and Facebook off the ground can take a very long time.
I’ve had my MySpace account for ages and it’s barely attracted any friends mainly because I don’t like to use it. I find it more tedious than enjoyable, and frankly, I have enough things in my life that I “have” to do. The problem is that much of the music industry still judges you on your outreach to fans and number of friends you have on MySpace and for good reason: The last statistic I heard about MySpace was that even tho it’s fallen behind Facebook in unique visitors, it’s still at about 50M. That’s a LOT of people. Also, if you want to get gigs, it’s a great way to find out about venues in cities you haven’t played before. Just find a musical artist or group that sounds like you in a particular locale and see where they play, that simple.
For me, striking a balance between the have-tos and the want-tos is critical. Managing Facebook and Twitter has much more appeal for me than MySpace because Twitter is just plain easy and Facebook keeps me connected to my actual friends. I’m able to have a personal page and an artist page and even tho the two are barely connected thru the Facebook interface, they’re easy to manage and stay connected to people, not just about what you’re doing but seeing where they’re doing. So, all in all, I think you should put your energy where you’re going to receive enjoyment out of the process. If you’re enjoying it, it will reflect in your presentation. By all means, keep your want-tos and your have-tos in balance.
One of the things that’s really baffled me about the social networking part of this is something that I brought up in a previous blog post, What a Big Day This Is!, and it’s the private vs. public life situation. I’m not by any means comparing myself with big names like Tiger Woods or Bill Clinton, but look what happens when you do something controversial that captures the public eye. They rake you thru the coals and it’s not pretty. How are you able to keep a private life separate from a performance life? And with social networking, that line gets blurred even more. The latest talk in the music industry is all about exposing yourself as a person, not just a performer up on a stage, where the fans get to know you and possibly have one-on-one contact with you. That’s all well and good, but where is the line drawn? Is there a line? I’ve been facing this dilemma especially with Flickr. I guess I can kinda consider myself an old skool Flickr user, since 2003 actually. What I ended up doing was starting a new Flickr account just for music related photos. I’ve decided not to connect my personal account with my music account. Ariel suggests letting your fans get to know you at more of a personal level and I’m okay with this to an extent. But the way I’m looking at it, if I post something to my blog about my personal life, it will be premeditated. I will have decided to divulge something about myself that I feel is something I’m comfortable sharing. It took a long time for me to decide to expose my dream blog, but in the same way that I will only share photos that are relevant to my music, I’ll only share dreams that don’t cross the line of the ultra personal. This is completely subjective and probably different for everyone, and even for me, that line could change at any time. Maybe to truly be a successful artist, you have to be completely exposed! I’m not sure. A teacher of mine, Jan Engels-Smith told me that when she was writing her book Becoming Yourself, she received guidance that she needed to be completely open about her personal life to touch her readers. In a lot of ways, I do that as a song writer as many others do, and maybe that line is part of every artist’s personal journey.
Ariel’s step-by-step procedure for each site is comprehensive and she points the user to commoncraft.com to watch well done videos that explain in detail the concepts that she’s sharing in this chapter and other parts of the book. You’re in good hands here, and probably have a small likely-hood of failing if you dig in and follow her plan. I’ll probably be working with this chapter for a while myself and there have been some really good suggestions that will take time to implement and seed with information and photos, etc.
Last but not least was the inclusion of your music in podcasts. I’m still working on this angle. What I decided to do was offer some of my songs on my first CD without voice, just instrumental which I thought would be good for background music because there’s a lot of electronic texturing in the songs. I’ve bounced down the songs and I’ve converted them to mp3. Next, I’ll update the id3 tags using dbBpoweramp which is an awesome music converter that runs on Windows. The site I’ll upload the music to is Music Alley which connects musicians to podcasters. I’ll have to get back too you on the success of this venture, but right now, it looks promising.
I think that’s it for now. Stay tuned for next week’s chapter on blogging. This gets really interesting, technically.
Rhythma Music | Comments Off on Music Success in Nine Weeks: Week 4
I was with a guy and a girl and we’d broken thru a wall into a long dark tunnel. We followed the tunnel for quite a ways and came out into an incredibly opulent Tibetan temple. The walls were golden and very ornate and covered with beautiful and enormous thangkas. One of the things that was most intriguing tho were the “cats” that were there. I only call them cats because I’m not really sure what they were. They reminded me of the cartoons of the Japanese bobtail cats like the Maneki Neko where the bodies are thick and the heads are fat with a kind expression filled with large loving eyes. One was a dark grayish brown and the other white with gray stripes, and their fur was very short and somewhat course, tho softer, longer and pure white on their undersides and paws. The darker one I found absolutely irresistible and reached out to scratch it behind the ears. It was very cautious at first, as curious of us as we were of them. I managed to scratch just the right spot and whoo it into submissiveness. Within moments, I was lying on my back and it was lying on it’s back, on my chest, and I was scratching it’s belly and beside myself with how cute it was.
All of a sudden, a very angry Tibetan woman came in and completely ruined the atmosphere by screaming at us for breaking into their temple. Within moments, the dream had shifted and I was walking down the street with the girl that I’d entered the temple with, explaining to her that I’d hired a lawyer to defend me and by no means was I admitting that I’d broken into the temple. She asked if I felt I was lying and I said, “Absolutely not! We went in their under no malicious intent and I was not about to be blamed for having any ill intention.”
Dream Journal | Comments Off on Tibetan Cat
Snakes!January 9th, 2010
I was staying overnight at a house somewhere with a large group of people. There was one guy in particular that seemed to be in a bad mood. We all fell asleep and when I woke the next morning, a door to the outside was open and thru the door I could hear him cursing up a storm. He apparently owned a 70’s VW Beetle that he was working on while a kid was in the drivers seat trying to start it. The car wasn’t starting and he was really pissed off.
I suddenly found myself floating up a small river in an old wooden row boat with a cat on board. I had been floating for quite some time and to amuse myself, I had snugly wrapped my arm around and under the mechanism that would’ve held the oars in place had they been attached to the boat. We drifted toward the bank but before we actually reached it, the boat bumped into a large root system from a tree that had probably been dislodged further up the river during a storm months previously. As the boat settled against it, a snake that had already been on this large piece of wood sunning itself became perturbed that I’d disturbed it’s moment with the sun. What was worse was that my arms were still entangled with the oar holder and my hands happened to be positioned right where the snake was on the wood. The snake looked to be a corn snake so I wasn’t worried about death should I get bitten, but I was still not too interested in the prospect of being bitten over and over while trapped in this position with the boat. The first thing I did was to grab it behind the head with one of my hands, but because of my entangling predicament, I couldn’t grab it right where I wanted to and it was about ready to lurch and bit my grabbing hand, so… I distracted it with my other hand which was fa enough away from it that it looked at it as a threat. I continued wriggling my arms to free them and finally they let loose and I was able to throw the snake up onto the shore. With a sigh of relied I leaned back to thank whatever powers helped me to escape the snake’s bite when suddenly the cat jumped up on the shore to get the snake. I tried to stop it but before I could do a thing, it swallowed the snake up whole. I’m not even sure the snake could fit in this cat’s body, but the whole disappeared somehow. This caused me to wake from the dream.
I fell asleep and went back into the dream and I was back at the house. I had told this large group of people that I needed to show them something and it was important for me to show them something and persuaded them to follow me, especially including a female videographer. We walked along a dirt trail next to the river. There was a very old wooden fence; posts cut about 6×6, staggered every 8 feet or so with a couple of 4×4’s connecting them. Along the way were many shelves or boxes built into the fence. The videographer that I was having conversation with out of the blue mentioned that she was deathly afraid of snakes. I told her straight up that we were going to come across them but that she shouldn’t be worried, that I’d protect her. Sure enough, we came across snakes. Lots of them. They were all over the shelves and boxes, the further we walked up river. Then they were in the trees, on the rocks, on the shelves and boxes on the fence. There were corn snakes, gopher snakes, garter snakes, vipers, and what were either king snakes or coral snakes. I remember thinking to myself that I couldn’t recall the striping differences between the king and coral and was worried that I might have a big problem on my hands if someone was bitten. It was really amazing how many there were, must’ve been hundreds.
I reached a place on the trail where a few people were stopped and started to hold a ceremony. They had drums, herbs, and were dressed in ritual regalia. I commented that I could use a drum and beater because I was going to find out what sort of message the snakes had for us. A woman that was there handed me a beater and pointed out that I was already holding a drum. I looked at my hands and sure enough I was holding a drum that looked like an african talking drum with cowhide that was adorned with beads. I took the beater and the drum to a throne that sat in between two large rocks. I started beating on the drum asking for a message from the snakes. Immediately, I got this long sentence the explained some profound truth that bewildered me, partly from how sudden it came on and partly from the length of the message and it’s diabolical nature. I was so startled, I woke up again.
I was kind of flabbergasted that I’d received what appeared to be some important truth so I asked to go back into the dream again and get the message again. Shortly, I fell asleep again and immediately when I did, I got another message. Marc Andrew Dean.  I have no idea what that means or who that is.
Dream Journal | Comments Off on Snakes!
You know the kind I’m talking about where you give money to organizations who go to the front line in Washington to push a political agenda, many times trying to maintain a political right or uphold legislation. Currently, I’m speaking about the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, legislation for marriage equality, the restrictions on abortion arising from the new health care reform, big oil, preserving our national parks, preventing wolf slaughter, stopping quasi-scientific whale slaughter and dolphin slaughter in Japan’s coastal waters, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseam.
Although it seems like its a necessity to counter your opposition to make change, I also find it an annoyance that humanity hasn’t evolved to a place where we can act with less selfishness and rather more compassion on a whole. When I look at today’s problems, it’s the same old thing that you can read about in world history, dating as far back as there is recorded history. But what’s really getting me going right now is the fact that North Americans spend millions of dollars thru donations to non-profit organizations to defend and establish the rights of fellows humans and animals in a country that’s rampant with greedy capitalists and religious zealots. This money could go toward helping out people in other countries that are starving, rendered shelterless by the scourge of warfare, and dying from disease that could be treated if the resources were available. The money could educate people about birth control and sanitation, help to establish medical clinics in impoverished nations. It could even go back into our own country to help and assist rather than be used for warfare. When I think about how much money from the public went to putting Obama in office, it makes me cringe. Money is not the root of any evil. It’s all about how it’s used.
I just need to rant for a moment because I get SO many emails asking for money to defend this, support that, fund the other. After a while, I just wanna gurge.
Life in General | Comments Off on I’m Tired of Poli-Economic Warfare!
Week 3 is all about setting up your web site to build your email list and creating two-way communication between your fans and you as an artist or band. This is actually a really short chapter but is going to be the spring-board for a number of other chapters because it starts opening a can of invertebrates, which will become more apparent in the next couple of weeks. You see, I needed to jump ahead in the book because I’d already done a number of the things that the book requests, as I’ll note later, and I’ve known that there were things I needed to do like opening up this blog to really get things rolling on my site. This is also where most of my work has gone into.
Something that is of high importance for other web sites and yours is to maintain a similar look and feel, as well as maintaining similar content and messages. How does a potential fan draw the connection between you here and you there? This was easy for me because it had already been done. “Music for the heart, mind, and spirit” was already my moniker that was on MySpace, Twitter, FaceBook, ReverbNation and everywhere else I’ve created an account, and I’d created a background image for my website long ago that I also used on Twitter and MySpace. I set up a couple quick colour schemes and added other items like photos that exist across all my web presences to make it all cohesive.
Next, I was to make sure my site loaded quickly and had no Flash intro. Well, that was also done years ago. Luckily, I have years of experience working on the internet and I know what works and what doesn’t. I wrote all the code for my initial web site in 2001 (gasp) and it does need an overhaul to bring it up to web standards admittedly, but it was built for performance and ease of use.
Lastly, the part I actually had to put some work into. Ariel wants you to offer a free download to a song as an incentive to sign up on your mailing list. Since I host my own mailing list created by Active Campaign, I had to build this into my site. I decided to offer “Be the Change”, a song that’s on my latest CD, “Between the Lines”, and currently the only song that I have a video for from the new CD. There’s another coming REALLY soon, but more on that later. And so as not to be unfair, if you’re already on my mailing list and don’t have a copy of the CD or that song, email me and I’ll make sure you get a copy.
Dream Journal | Comments Off on Music Success in Nine Weeks: Week 3
I was outside somewhere with a large group of people. We were having fun and I think it had something to do with music. At some point, I looked down and noticed that my forearms were really red and I commented that I’d gotten sunburned. The people closest to me told me that I hadn’t actually gotten sunburned and that I shouldn’t worry about it.
Dream Journal | Comments Off on Sunburned
I was having a conversation with Dallas. He was very alive and very healthy. I knew some time had gone by since he’d been out of the military and in the back of my mind, I wanted to know why he wasn’t dead but I felt it wasn’t appropriate to ask him. He seemed so happy and full of life. We conversed about music and about life in general and it was so good to just be talking with him.
Dream Journal | Comments Off on Dallas, Still Alive
That sounds like a band name but it’s not. I recall being in Zimbabwe. I was in a village and I was looking for the place that I was to compose music. The people I was with were trying to get me to follow them. I was preoccupied with where I was and investigating the area and observing the people. Someone from the village talked me into following him. He led me by this area where there were mbiras that had been taken apart or in disrepair and no one knew how to fix them. It was kinda sad because I wanted to go look at them but I was being led along.
Suddenly, I was in some sort of giant open flea market, standing at a wall with a young African man. He was asking me what a phrase meant that was carved on a wall. I was telling him that it meant that you always have a choice to do something or not. That choice makes us who we are. Someone walked up too me and told me to come with them. I did. We walked downhill and to the right thru a large causeway and another guy with long blonde hair told me that Jason Mawl wanted to see me. I asked who he was and what he wanted and they told me it was a great opportunity and that I should just go see him. I was led to a room and when I walked into it, I saw a very shiny microphone and a man, tall, heavy set, and bald.
Dream Journal | Comments Off on Jason Mawl and the Mbiras
Two different houses from dreamland co-mingled. The first house was the one that sits on the boulevard but has the enormous acreage in back that looks over rolling hills, creek and the divided up lots with fruit trees. The other was the haunted house with the really creepy second floor. Both of the houses are white, but in the dream, I was talking with a girl about painting a room in another place, and remarking that I had let over purple and magenta paint from another house I’d painted and I knew exactly where it was stored. What I remembered was that at the front of the haunted house was a large closet where I’d stored the paint. But I wasn’t thinking that the house was haunted when I was thinking about the paint. I only made the connection when I woke up.
Then, I was in the boulevard house, in the upper room to the back left, upstairs. There’s a rounding staircase that goes up 3 floors with an atrium ascending up thru the middle. Someone was holding Kevin M. by the ankles, upside down over the atrium.
I was driving my dad’s old Cadillac El Dorado down the street, looking for an address. I knew I didn’t nee to be at this destination for quite a while but I figured I would like for parking early because I was expecting a lot of people. The address was a large building where two street intersected, that resembled a live-in work environment with a large parking lot for tenants. I pulled into the parking lot but couldn’t find guest parking spaces so I drove out. I noticed that there was a building sitting directly on the corner. It was a single apartment with large windows, and open on all four sides. You could see the people that lived there thru the windows and I was thinking that it looked like a fish bowl, living like that. I drove around the block and found a parking space.
Suddenly, I was in a car with Eric R. and someone else. They were driving me past the fishbowl apartment and to a club. They wanted me to hear the music that had on their stereo. When we got to the club, Erik O. was there from work. He was arranging tables or something and there was a huge group of people there. They were doing some sort of karaoke to original songs. This guy got up and started singing this song that I’d never heard. At first I couldn’t decide whether he was any good, but when he hit the chorus, the song really opened up and so did his voice. He was singing something about being skinned and a cross. I remembered the melody and the sound of the chord progression when I woke and recorded it. I couldn’t remember the lyrics tho.
Dream Journal | Comments Off on Dream Fragments
If you’ve followed my last couple of posts, you’ll know that I’m participating in a contest created by Ariel Hyatt of Ariel Publicity. The second chapter of the book is all about defining who you are as an artist, and the style of music that you do. To help you define yourself, Ariel takes you thru some exercises to help you create “The Perfect Pitch.” This pitch should be something you can use at the drop of a dime when someone asks you about who you sound like, what your music evokes in others, what to expect should someone come to see you perform live, what your CD might sound like. Many have called it an elevator pitch because from the moment you step into an elevator til the time you step out, you should have been able to share you with someone else to the point that they have a somewhat clear understanding of you as an artist. Sounds easy, right? NOT.
Now, I’ve always felt there was value to having a moniker, a one-liner, and something that accompanies the name, “Rhythma”, if not for any other reason than to just inform someone that I’m a musician. So, as many of you probably know, I’ve been using “Music for the heart, mind, and spirit…” for years. I still think this is sufficient for the purpose of adding something to Rhythma for high level clarification. The thing that’s gotten tricky for me is that Ariel’s book wants you to put your perfect pitch on myspace, twitter, facebook, your web site… and I think that there are different pitches for different reasons. My moniker is already on all those sites as well as my business card and has been for a long time. The only thing that’s left me unsettled is that it doesn’t work when someone wants a clearer idea of who I sound like. This is where Ariel’s technique came into play.
She had me break down certain elements of my musical style, influences, and other details, and then combine these elements into the pitch. Then you have to try the pitch on for a while to see how it sticks. If it sticks, then you get another unique addition which is access to her private ning.com group where you can try the pitch out with your peers to see how they react too it. This was helpful too me since I couldn’t come up with just one pitch.
So, all in all, I decided to stay with:
“Music for the heart, mind, and spirit…”
for my overall catch phrase which accompanies my profiles online, my web site, and my business card. It feels right for me. However, when asked to describe my music in the elevator, I’ve settled on:
“If Paul Simon produced Jack Johnson in a studio a Tesla coil.”
Now, if that’s just too obscure for someone or they just stepped off the boat and ask me, “Who is Jack Johnson?”, then I’ll try this:
“Where pop, rock, jazz, folk and hip-hop collide.”
If that doesn’t work, I’ll just tell them I’m the TV repair man and I’m offering year-end discounts right now.
Rhythma Music | Comments Off on Music Success in Nine Weeks: Week 2
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