So, if you read my last blog post about the gig on Oct 7th with Michael Manring, you may have seen that I embedded in that post a widget containing a free-to-download live EP of Michael and I playing together in California.
The EP happened because while blogging about the gig, I remembered that after that show (which at the time felt like a particularly good set of music) someone had sent me a recording of it… I’d been meaning ever since then to put up the rest of the improv that made sense of this video on youtube, and when I dug out the recording (which was sat on my incredibly messy desktop), I found that the entire improv set was worth putting out.
Enter Soundcloud – I’ve had a Soundcloud account for a while, as I’d used to to upload songs for Twestival and the audio-book version of Andrew Dubbers “20 Things” e-book. I’d wanted to experiment with it further, here was the perfect chance.
A quick edit in Audacity (a free piece of music editing software), and we’ve got 3 tracks of ‘good bootleg’ quality for people to download, serving as:
- an insight into what it is that Michael and I do when we play together (and therefor a plug for the gig in Oct)
- a lovely reminder for people who were at that gig (all 40 or so of ’em)
- a thank you to anyone who’s ever been to see us in the past, and has been waiting patiently for us to release something.
- a sharable, tearable way of anyone who wants to tell their friends about us letting them hear what we do (the widget is embeddable anywhere, the link can be emailed, tweeted, posted on facebook etc…
Anyway, I was able to use audio recorded in the audience, edited with free software, uploaded to a free service (though I’m tempted to get a pro Soundcloud account, such is the coolness of their service), and from idea to availability was about 3 hours!
Here it is: Enjoy, share, embed, download, listen, email… 🙂
Steve Lawson and Michael Manring live at Don Quixotes by solobasssteve