It’s like musical HTML/CSS
Matt Stevens, the excellent loopist and guitarist, posed a question on Twitter recently, “Is it important for musicians to be able to read music?”
This is a perennial discussion point amongst musicians and often seems to divide down the lines of those who already can and those who can’t favouring their own state. I’m in the can read and think it’s a good thing and here are a few reasons why. Read More
We can all benefit from a helping hand
Last night I awoke to find I had drifted off in front of the television. That’s never a great feeling but I happened to hear something I wouldn’t normally have which softened the blow. There was a poker tournament on and they were interviewing a young British poker player who had just lost his imaginary money and been eliminated from the tournament. He was asked what he attributed the rise of young British poker players to. His response was interesting. He said the rise was catalysed by the emergence of a cooperative attitude between his peer group on the poker circuit.
Poker is a competitive environment and he was talking about a group of people who were in a sense adversaries learning to cooperate for long-term benefits. This hadn’t happened before as British poker players were competing against each-other, looking for short-term advantages. I wonder how much cooperation could be deepened within the independent music community.
There are several ways that cooperation is already thriving, there are blogs where lots of bright people share their knowledge and there are amazing communities of people interacting through Twitter helping and supporting each-other. Both these things are wonderful but I think there is scope to make even greater strides in creating a new music industry by increasing some more tangible aspects of cooperation. Read More
The album Disarm by She Makes War is out now
A lovely coincidence of information occurred today that give me a chance to beat a drum for using good studios to record your music, if at all possible, and to do this sensibly by preparing thoroughly for the recording sessions.
The first element is a great blogpost from warriorgirl announcing the release of the She Makes War album Disarm. Before going any further you can (and should) buy the album here because it’s great. In the post she shares her thoughts on making an album as an independent artist including the decision to spend money on making the album in a studio rather than recording at home.
… I wanted to show people that indie artists could make a product with a quality of sound and aesthetics on a level with or better than those with label backing, at a fraction of the cost. By being prepared for the recording sessions (the songs were all written and arranged) and getting down to work in the studio rather than wasting time playing pool and drinking coffee you can get a professional sounding album made for a reasonable sum of money, and I’m happy I chose to work with Myles rather than added the pressure to become a good quality engineer to my already full plate.
There are a couple of things here that I want to heartily endorse, Read More
