The comments section of the site has been down for a few days, but is now back up and running, if a little shakily… So please go back and post all those lovely comments you’ve been storing up over the last few days! :o)
Comments down…
The comments are currently not working, so save those pearls of wisdom until further notice. :o)
Recording again…
Back to recording today… Why? Well, on this album adventure I’ve had a remote co-pilot, the Shark. It just started by me sending MP3s over for her to hear, but her comments were (usually) well placed and useful, and she’s become a very valuable sounding board. So album was finished, and Shark drops into IM conversation ‘is that the version of Behind Every Word that you’re having on the album’. The evil lady sows seeds of doubt in my mind, and I head back to try a new version, coming up with a new (trickier) arrangement, so I’m back recording again… The new version is sounding fab though… so that’s one thing, I guess!
If you want an easy life, don’t listen to anyone else!
all right, own up…
who has put my email address on a public website somewhere??? I’m getting so much spam over these last few days, it’s mad. I’ve had very little for the last 6 months or so. Seemed like a lot of it had gone. But now it’s back, and I’m getting loads of spam comments on this blog… they get filtered, and I can delete them, but they are a pain in the arse…
grrrrr
*grumble grumble*
MySpace tips for musicians
I’ve been on MySpace now for about 8 months. It seems to be going well for me in terms of finding people who dig what I do. I’m selling a few CDs as a result, and we’ll see if it does well for me when the new album comes out, and in the upcoming run of gigs.
Here are a few tips for musicians on there, to maximise your exposure.
Let’s start with your page – make sure it’s readable. Don’t put loads of video clips and preloading audio nonsense in the rest of the page. The format is confusing enough as it is without you making the page take hours to load. And ditch the background images – they nearly always make all or part of the text impossible to read.
Influences – yes, I know it’s really cool to claim not to have any, and I can see why trying to narrow a lifetime of musical listening down to a short list is tough, but really, it’s worth it. A lot of people search for bands by influence and sounds like. They’ll find you if you have loads of artists listed in those boxes (and you spell their names right!) – put down everyone who has ever influenced you in the influence box. If that means you’ve got 500 names in there, that’s fine, honest. Just go with it. For sounds like, just put all those crazy things that people email to you – you remind me of such and such etc. Stick them in there. Go on, more people will hear you if you do.
Genre – make sure you pick three! Don’t put ‘jazz/jazz/jazz’ or whatever – you don’t get listed three times, you just miss out on more directory places. For people searching by style they aren’t going to find you. Put three that are close enough to what you do.
Bio – make sure you’ve got one! Update it, put a picture in there, format it so that it’s split up into paragraphs, use bold text and hyperlinks to highlight what’s going on. If you don’t know how to do that, ask someone! find out, it’ll make the whole thing work much better for you.
Blog – USE THE BLOG – it’s a great opportunity to communicate with people who dig what you do, even if it’s just to say how excited you are about the upcoming gig dates that are listed. Talk about anything, I don’t mind, just use it, it’ll keep people coming back to your page. (and on the subject of upcoming gigs, I don’t need to remind you that you really need to put your dates in there, and make sure you get the information right, as it’s listed by region and searchable by postcode.
Right, that’s the stuff to do with your own page. Now, the active stuff –
rule no. 1 – don’t use one of those automatic ‘bot’ programs that does it all for you. Apparently MySpace can work out who’s using them and deletes your profile… you’ve been warned.
However, it is great to invite people to listen to your music. So, go into music search (that’s the red search bar, not the general one) and search for other bands that are similar to what you’re doing, search by influence or sounds like, narrow it down to the region where you’re gigging, and invite them. Have a listen while you’re there, and post a comment if you like what you hear. It all works out well for everyone. You’ll get clicked across to from other people’s comments section. (oh, and while we’re on comments, don’t put images or music in your comments, and it’s probably best to disable HTML in your comments – I think it’s in the privacy option in the edit screen on your home page).
Oh, and make sure if you do contact anyone that it’s clear that’s not just a form response – everyone on myspace is obsesssed with the possibility that they are being spammed. No-one likes getting anonymous messages, so at least stick their name at the top! ‘Hey, thanks for the add, check out my band’ is no way to hold a conversation.
Go to it, it works great – most of the time, I’m the most viewed british jazz artist on an indie label on the entire site. That’s not bad going, is it? :o)
CD recommendations from yesterday…
For any students from Salford reading this, here’s a list of all the CDs I mentioned at various times and for various reasons throughout the masterclass yesterday –
Voodoo – D’Angelo (made me rethink my whole understanding of rhythm)
It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back – Public Enemy (ditto, also amazing for the cavalier way they treat ideas of dissonance and tonality)
Spirit Of Eden – Talk Talk (the one mastered by the bloke who mastered my last record, a glorious album)
Michael Manring – Soliloquy (not only the finest solo bass album ever made, one of my most amazing solo statements by any instrumentalist ever)
John Lester – Big Dreams And The Bottom Line (the solo bass/singer-songwriter who was on at Bass Day that I’ve toured with, who’s fantastic)
KT Tunstall – Eye To The Telescope (I shouldn’t really need to list this, but she’s the anti-Blunt – great in exactly the same ways that James Blunt is shit.)
And of course all my my stuff, available via my webshop where you can also get the Michael Manring and John Lester CDs.
Can’t think of any others that I mentioned for now, but if you want a more exensive listening list, just request it, along with the areas you’re interested in, in the comments section. :o)
Few more thoughts on last night's gig
So, the format was that we’d do three sets, and each ‘curate’ one of the sets – I started, and I played solo, then duo with Cleveland, then we played as a trio. Next up was Cleveland solo, duo with BJ then trio, and finally BJ solo, me and BJ duo, then trio.
The three trio pieces were all very different sometimes very floaty, but the last one a high energy beat-box-led number – Cleveland’s contribution to a looping set is huge – being able to beatbox, sing tunes, do that tabla vocalisation thing, layer chords… he’s amazing. Couple that was BJ’s remarkable emotional empathy with his instrument – the steel in BJ’s hands has an amazing yearning quality, and my melancholic but ultimately hopefully noodlings, and you’ve got a rather potent mix.
the duos were really interesting, just to see what happens when you take one element out of the trio – the track that BJ and I did was fun, in that instead of ploughing our usual dark ambient furrow, we actually morphed into a country 12 bar! There was a bridge at one point, but I wasn’t looping at all until the last minute of the piece… an unexpected one for us as well as the audience!
I think the most fun for me as a listener was Cleveland’s solo set – he’s only just getting familiar with the Echoplex, and so his looping method is gloriously haphazard, but the end result was amazingly slick – his ability to respond in a group situation spills over to his looping, and he made whatever was happening work. He was just spinning the dial on his FX unit and using whatever sound came up, and coming up with the most incredible layers of vocalese.
All in all, one of the best gigs I’ve been involved in for ages, and two out of two for the Recycle Collective. It’s definitely turning into what I’d intended it to be – the most vital new music night in London!
If you were there, feel free to post your reviews in The Forum or here in the comments on this post…
Galloway – Dereliction of Duty?
The ever thought-provoking Sid Smith has blogged today about George Galloway on Big Brother, quoting the following excerpt from the Respect Party website –
“I will talk about racism, bigotry, poverty, the plight of Tower Hamlets, the poorest place in England sandwiched between the twin towers of wealth and privilege in Canary Wharf and the spires of the City. I will talk about war and peace, about Bush and Blair, about the need for a world based on respect. Some of it will get through.”
As Sid points out, there’s no way on earth that Channel Four are going to allow the Big Brother broadcasts to be a platform for political rhetoric. From what I’ve seen, there’s been none so far. There have been A LOT of conversations edited for content – those conversations could be libelous, commercially sensitive or overly political. I think George is going to be sorely disappointed when he gets out and sees the footage.
I’m with Sid on this one – I said from the start that I thought Galloway’s decision left him in dereliction of duty as an MP – he’s been democratically elected to represent the people of Tower Hamlets, people who are voiceless. He’s missing the parliamentary debate on The Crossrail project, he already has the third worst attendance record as an MP (last year he was second worst, behind Blair – I’m guessing someone somewhere is off on long-term sick). He’s just not doing his job.
My feelings towards Galloway are mixed – his anti-war stance is great, his opposition to the Blair/Bush lunacy and lies is laudable, and his performance in the US senate last year was one of the outstanding political acts of my lifetime. But the Respect party is a bizarre mis-match – a union of the far-left Socialist Workers Party and the rather more authoritarian Muslim Association of Great Britain. I wouldn’t vote for either party in isolation, and I’m certainly not about to support them in their bizarre union, though I guess one has to applaud the pragmatism of those involved – there can’t really be much of an ideological cross-over between the two groups!
But all that aside, I really don’t think Galloway should be in the BB house – and it’ll be interesting to see if he gets called up in front of a select committee and fined or punished in anyway… But it’d also be nice to see the papers being a bit more balanced in their political reporting, so MPs like Galloway don’t end up doing reality TV to try and get a point across! what a bizarre world we live in. I’m sure part of it is just that Galloway is a bit of an ego-maniac, but if there’s any truth in his appearance being part of an attempt to reach the apolitical masses, then the media is failing to educate and inform.
However, it is fun to see Galloway being exposed to the seedier side of life via the conversations of Jodie Marsh and Dennis Rodman, who are both utterly foul. Dennis Rodman comes across as one of the most sexually predatory people I’ve ever seen in my life, and Jodie seems in capable of any degree of self-restraint, she’ll seemingly say anything to out-filth whoever else is talking, even to the point of sounding wholly unconvincing in the process.
It really is a rum bunch of no-marks in the house. A lot has to do with the way it gets broadcast, and in general we see very little of Maggot, Rula, George and Faria in the shows, unless they get caught in the crossfire of another conversation about sex/orgies/boobs/surgery/yada yada yada. Is that really what people are interesting in hearing about these days? I am, as Liz said in the comments the other day, hopelessly out of touch…
Don’t forget that if you want the latest news, forget the BB website, and follow codenamelizzy’s updates – far more entertaining!
calling all blogspot/blogger.com bloggers
Oi, you lot with the blogger.com/blogspot.com blogs (and anyone else on one of those kinds of blog sites) – how about heading over to your blog now and making it possible for people to comment without having a blogger account – yes, you Sid Smith, and you Orphy! Many’s the time I’ve wanted to comment on lots of blogs, but can’t.
I don’t, in all honesty, mind people having no comments – if you just don’t care what people think, that’s fine – I had none for years before I was, frankly, bullied into it. But to limit it to blogger subscribers is a all too arbitrary way of filtering your blog comments. You can use that wassname thing – the words as images that you have to copy thing – to protect from spammers…
go on, I want to comment!
Best Christmas records….
Robert Elms phone-in this morning on BBC London was top three christmas records. So I texted mine in which are –
1 – Cry Of A Tiny Babe by Bruce Cockburn
2 – River by Joni Mitchell
3 – Fairytale Of New York by The Pogues and Kirsty McCall (not the dreadful new version with Katie Melua which is only available as a download, the original which has just been re-released for a fantastic cause – – the Justice For Kirsty campaign)
there you go – post your top three in the comments.