Check out this new unreleased version of Potential Energy.  Here is the old version that appeared on both my second album, Copay, and in the movie Loveless In Los Angeles.



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I recently added backing vocals to my unreleased song, “A Kind Of Chaos”.  Check them out:





Now tell me you don’t love that amazing guitar solo complements of Stein Malvey!



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My Revised (and realistic) Independent Music Release Strategy

As independent musicians we need to adjust our music release strategy to reflect the way the public now interacts with music.  We need to account for the growing way that music is obtained, namely by downloading to a computer to play across a variety of devices, and find ways to fight through the ever growing barrage of real-time information that people are exposed to.  In short, the old way of doing things, writing 10-15 song, recording them and then having a release of an entire album once a year just doesn’t cut it anymore.  A year is just too long in today’s world.

Last week I did an analysis of a music release strategy put forward by Forrester Research that generated some buzz a month or two ago. They were arguing for a tiered release structure and while I believe in the basis of the notion, I think that there needs to be an alternative to Forrester’s structure.  I’ve rearranged some of the key happenings into what I think is a more realistic approach:

Picture 3Week 1

So in week 1 I am advocating for what I’ll call the Premium Release.  This is the release of your song for digital download through channels that you control, i.e. your website and any other digital download site that allows you to simply upload and sell your music.  In the coming weeks I’ll discuss how to set up your own digital download channel through your website, but for now know that I am talking about making a song or songs publicly available for sale WITHOUT going through the more traditional gatekeepers of iTunes or Rhapsody.  Align this release with a show and promote it as a “Single Release Show”.  Build buzz with your most ardent fans, send out an email notice that a new song is available and tweet it, broadcast it and update all your social networks.  Maybe even make a video.  Seek online reviews, some sites will review a track at a time, try to time it right. Basically make it a mini CD-Release event.

Week 2

After you build your Premium Release event and have your show then start submitting to free or ad supported internet broadcasting music channels.  Update all social network profiles with the new track.

Week 3-52

Lastly, and really due to the nature of it all, is the creation of the physical CD for sale.  Note, throughout the ensuing year you should repeat this process roughly 10 times, the digital release of your music for sale that is. Once you have 10-15 tracks, pull it all together and throw a proper CD release.  Perhaps add a track or two to further entice the purchase of your music.  Of course once your music is put in this still industry standard format, you will have access to another tier of publicity and music distribution in CD reviews and physical CD sales as well as digital distributors that only deal with physical product.

Conclusion

Granted, these mini releases won’t pack the same wallop as a full blown CD release, but you can have the best of both worlds.  Stay better connected to your audience through a steady stream of output AND then pull it all together to create a traditional CD release event.  You will be rewarded by staying closer to your ardent fans and you will be creating more opportunities to talk about and draw attention to your music.  Good luck!

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imagesConclusion

I’m going to start this post with my conclusion:  No one should ever feel that they can’t do something they love, and, in fact, I believe a love of something is really the only true gift we are innately born with.  The rest is cultivated in some form or another. Not to sound like some big cheerleader, or perhaps this is the teacher in me, but I believe that ANYONE could make music like I do (and better than I do).  I believe the perception that musicians, or those doing something others admire, are able to because they are “gifted” is a myth.

This all began a few days ago when my friend, guitarist and longtime collaborator Stein Malvey and I were talking about music.  In so many words he said, “you have a gift”.  This got me thinking about what exactly that “gift” was.  What part of my ability to write, produce and perform music was I innately given?  All I could think of was how much I WASN’T innately given.  Here is the list:

1) My Ability to Play Instruments

Cultivated over the past 30 years of my life, first by my heroically patient parents through piano lessons, then by me on guitar, drums and voice.

2) My Ear

Cultivated by the Suzuki Method.

3) My Ability to Write Music

Cultivated by my 30 years learning, working with and loving music.  Break apart my songs into small enough chunks, or the right chunks, and you’d see that every decision I’ve made is stolen completely.  All of it is a shade of something I’ve heard and loved in other people’s music.  Melody is just notes in relation to chords and every note I’ve placed against a chord was done so because I’ve heard it before and loved it and wanted to put it in my creation.

4) My Ability to Write Lyrics

My love of language was cultivated by every English teacher I ever liked. My lyric writing began when I was around 12, but I became more intensely focused on it in my early twenties and throughout my time in college by my lyric writing teacher Pat Pattison.  Make no mistakes, when I am working on new material I am doing some writing every day, far from inspiration most of the time.

5) My Ability to Engineer, Record, Mix and Master My Music

Began in my teens with a 4-track recorder, then really cultivated in my studies at Berklee, but really developed over the last 10 years, first in my commercial writing work, then as I attempted to produce, mix and engineer my own music.  Every choice I’ve ever made as a producer I can trace back to some concept or result that I’ve heard and loved in someone else’s music.  No gift there, all stolen.

6) My Ability to Pursue Something Daily

Stolen from my mom and dad.  My mom was a special education teacher, something that takes a level of daily devotion and patience that few people understand, and my dad has been in the daily pursuit of something my whole life: Japanese, mandolin, operatic singing, stained glass…you name it.

The Gifts

So what are the indivisible elements that without which I wouldn’t make music?

1) My love of music: Bottom line, the single most important innate quality I possess.  If I didn’t love music, the way it has made and makes me feel, it’s boundless possibilities, I wouldn’t do this.

2) My delight in creation: I get a remarkable high from working on original pieces, for which the only limit is what I can (or can’t) imagine.

3) My sense of wonder: Somewhat ties to number 2, but if I didn’t feel a vivid sense of wonder at the world and a general delight in possibilities I would never have begun creating things.

So that’s it.  I didn’t ask for these and you could roughly say that I didn’t actively cultivate them, though I believe that number 2 and 3 can be cultivated and were in me by my parents, various teachers and other adults in my life.

Here’s how I’ve come to think of it, actually just throughout the writing of this:

I have been the recipient of some amazing gifts, 11 years of daily devotion to helping me learn piano from my parents and teachers, and another slew of devoted teachers and concerned adults in my life and a belief in me by some key people.  And then a whole lot of work by me that has been threaded throughout my 30 years of daily pursuit of some aspect of music.  Somewhere along the line music moved me deeply, I connected to that movement and wanted to recreate it over and over in myself and others.  Is that the gift?  I think so, which circles back to my “conclusion” with which I started this piece.  Our ability to feel love is the only true gift.  Your interest in that feeling, in feeling it yourself and cultivating it in others, can drive you to do anything you want.  And that sentiment, I assure you, was stolen completely from Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ, and countless others.

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