Tales from the Wasteland EP

Yep, that's right, before Tales from the Wasteland I'm releasing Tales from the Wasteland the EP. Four songs to get... whatever... flowing!

Download the album!

Well, I decided to put my music out there - for real! Head on to Mininova and download the thing for free!

Go ahead!

Hardships of promotion

I know I promised that my next post would be on learning to play, but I'll put that on hold for this:

Well, it's been about 10 months since my album was birthed, and it hasn't got the attention I think it deserves... The problem here is publicity - there's only so much you can do with MySpace, Facebook, Jango or other services, if you can't get people to want to look up your music in the first place...

Maybe I need a video on YouTube...

Money woes for the independent artist...

One of the major issues when recording my album was (you guessed it) money. Money for instruments, money for strings, money for software, money for hardware, money money money!

If you are a budding indie artist, people may tell you that nowadays you just need Reaper or maybe Cubase and a keyboard and that's it! Instant success... well, sorry to rain on your parade, but that's a blatant lie. I've lost count of how many times I've read or heard things like "buy this one thing and that's all you'll need to record an album", and my friends, it's unreal how far real life really is from that kind of argument.

First of all, you need QUALITY. Nobody will listen to your music if it sounds recorded on your mom's basement. You need good instruments, you need good mic's, pre-amps, you need good monitoring, a sound listening environment, you need to learn to mix (if you're doing it all yourself), you need to adopt professional recording techniques, taking care of your instruments, tuning up, warming up, spending that money on things that look like nothing, but amount to large sums of money.

And most of all, you must educate yourself. You may think your 5" woofer audiophile speakers are the best in the world, and that your Soundblaster is enough, but try listening to a pair of 1000€ speakers trough an Aurora, and learn why those sound different.

So, once you understand how to get a good sound, you must start saving up for it. I'm not blessed with a rich family, so every cent I spent on music came from my daytime job, and I know how much of me is in the recording gear I own.

And last but not least, NEVER go for the advertising hype. Read, read and read, sign up to recording forums, get books, read Bob Katz's site from top to bottom, read until you distinguish bullshit and misinformation and people who think they know everything from professional opinions, founded in practice and critical judgement.

And then, spend your money.

Hope it helps!

PS: My next post will be about LEARNING to play... all the gear in the world won't help if you're a lousy performer right?

Makeshift

Makeshift, that's what i called my first album. I like the way the word conveys a notion of something contrived in a hurry to surpass a necessity.

That's how i feel about music, I need to get rid of this creative force inside me and I had to make this album to overcome that necessity.

The other reason for choosing this name is that, well, i did everything to make it look, feel and sound like a 100 thousand dollar effort, even if i followed the DIY, or Indie, route.

Anyway, it's out there, enjoy.

Tunecore

I released the album through Tunecore. For those of you who don't know what Tunecore is, they're basically an online label with ties to all the major online music stores, like iTunes, Amazon, etc.
The thing that attracted me to Tunecore is that their core business is making a fixed one-time only fee for delivering albums to online stores, not forcing you to sign away your copyright, like most labels.
Basically, you pay a sum, your album goes online with their UPC codes, so the sales can be tracked, and it's up to you to manufacture Cd's or come up with publicity and buyers, IF you want to. You aren't required to do ANYTHING.

For about 30 euros/year, it's my kind of deal (you know, the IT'S MY MUSIC AND I'LL DO WHATEVER PLEASES ME WITH IT kind of deal)

What I'm all about...

In hopes of turning this blog into a coherent and updated story, i'll start with some info about myself:

I'm just a guy who plays guitar. That's about it.

I deeply enjoy creating music, and even though I would like to sell some songs, what i really want, above all, is for people to enjoy my music. I have a good daytime job, in a completely unrelated area, and bear no dreams of becoming a "professional" musician, in the usual sense of the word. I think I'll write a post explaining what i consider to be a musician, and what not...

I'm a pretty obsessed guy when it comes to my music, and delve deep into things to try and get the best results possible, technically and otherwise.