Social Networking - Now How Does That Make Me Feel?

I'm wondering how important social networking sites are for musicians. A few years ago, if you were a band or a singer-songwriter, you had to have one if you wanted to build a fan base and get work. Is that still that case though? Are people still using sites such as myspace to find and support local artists?

Over the last two years, I have been gigging as a solo acoustic musician, completely without the use of a social networking platform. I would say that I've done OK. People have heard my music through frequent live performances and through the exchanges of emails and face to face conversations, I've managed to get a fairly regular stream of gigs.

However, at almost every gig I play, someone asks me if they can find my music on myspace.

So the question is, should I be setting up a myspace page to promote my latest musical project - 'Tapper'?

I can't help thinking that the only people using these sites are other bands and musicians, all screaming for attention. Yes that could open interesting doors in terms of networking and collaboration but the fan base is what's important. People listening to your music, telling their friends about you and coming to see your gigs. And can this be done, perhaps with a greater sense of style and authenticity, by simply bypassing the whole social networking world?

Internet Connection

Thanks to the lack of internet connection in my flat, I have been unable to blog for about a week. Once again I would like to thank O2 for their fantastic mobile phone and internet service that they provide me with.

There is really two (maybe three) things that I have been meaning to get off my chest this last week.

Firstly, I want to talk about drum and bass DJ and producer, High Contrast. I went to a gig he was doing in Bath last week and had a minor epiphany. Normally in a club I will be pretty much worse for wear. I find myself in the same boat as everyone else on the dance floor - off my face and dancing like an idiot to music I can't really hear properly because of the level of drink I have consumed.

Well last week I went out and remained completely sober all night and had a fantastic time - I'm actually considering giving up drinking. After about 5 minutes I felt relaxed enough to begin dancing but there was a moment just as High Contrast was performing his first mix where things totally went off.

I expect that most people in the club were too drunk to notice or care, but as he gradually introduced his next track, you could actually feel the atmosphere rise - it was such a bizarre sensation. And has he finally dropped in his next track I just felt a huge rush of energy that I could only communicate through dancing harder and faster.

We all know that music can affect the way we feel, it alters our emotions and can cause us to react in particular ways, but I think when that's happening to hundreds of people at once, in one single space, it actually creates another energy, one that can be felt by everyone in the room.

The next thing I need to talk about is my personal musical journey. It must be that time of month again where I get fed up with what I'm doing, I doubt the quality of my output and start thinking of different directions to pursue. Well here we go again, except that this time, I actually think I'm going to follow it through.

Yesterday I started working on some music to be performed live using laptop, synthesizer and electric guitar and the music has an alternative minimal disco pop sound. I've briefly experimented with doing this before but what I did yesterday, it actually worked.

I've got ideas for another two songs, lyrics and all, and I'm feeling really excited about getting this new project out of my head, into the studio and onto the stage.

Which leads me to my third topic - Myspace.

Is anyone still using it? Is it really a useful tool for a musician looking to get work?

Just An Update

When I sit down and think about it, I actually have a few things going on at the moment.

Last night I sent my article to the culture sub-editor of Bath Spas student magazine. I'm not holding out any hopes that they will print it or even think it's worth reading but you never know - we all have to start somewhere. And I'm actually quite proud of the article so I guess that's all that matters really.

Work on my proposal for The Appledore Arts festival has been on the back burner this last week. I think I added a few paragraphs the other day and I have collected some examples of my work to put on a CD for them to see what my music sounds like. I actually think it's a pretty strong collection of music - fingers crossed, they will as well.

I also have a gig on November the 15th in Taunton. There will be a stage set up in the town centre with bands playing throughout the afternoon (I think) and then in the evening the Christmas lights will be switched on throughout the town. Yep it's that time already.

From somewhere, deep inside me, the urge to pick up the acoustic and play has started to appear again. Last night I had a little play and I plan to really get myself back up to performance standard over the next few weeks. I've been lazy for too long.

Interesting Point From A Conversation Last Night

In the article posted below, I comment on the mainstream music industries failure to provide us, or point us in the direction of, new and ground-breaking music. They do, however, like to recycle sounds and styles from a decade or so ago, and then spend lots of money trying to convince us that we havn't heard anything like it before.

The article isn't really about me getting up on my soapbox or anything - just food for thought maybe.

An interesting point that was raised last night (in a discussion about the war we are currently involved in) was that all the information we need, including all the music we wish to listen to, is instantly available to us. Arguments of whether the media are providing us with the correct information, or again music (if we want to keep this relevant to the topic), are completely unneccesary. With the resources and technology available in every home, it is down to us to find our own truths, our own information or even - music.

Still, shouldn't stop you from having a rant every now and then should it?

The Music Industry - Doing Its Bit For The Environment?

The music industry is always trying to focus our attention on how new a particular piece of music, sound, or band is. It helps them to sell things to us, after all, if they were to clearly point out to us that La Roux is in actual fact, just a more modern yet banal version of Eurythmics, we probably wouldn’t go out and buy her album. I’d probably be more inclined to nick my mums cassette copy of ‘Sweet Dreams’ instead.

It would appear, and most of us have probably suspected this for a long time, that the music industry really is just recycling music from times they thought we had forgotten, sorting through the platform shoes, the glittered flares, the humongous mobiles, and finding those little gems in the cultural dumping ground, dusting them off and putting them back onto the shelves of HMV.

Of course the exact same thing happened in the 90s. Bands such as Suede, Supergrass and Oasis took the country by storm. For some, a golden age of music, for others, lots of bands sounding like The Kinks but louder, with less Ray Davies and not dressed quite as sharply.

Recycling the styles of bygone eras has been a popular and reliable money making tool of both the music and fashion industry for quite some time, and generally, I think were happy with that. So long as the music coming our way sounds good and allows us to forget our meaningless existence (for some of us anyway) we don’t mind how original or groundbreaking it is.

But is now the time, I wonder, for us to ask ourselves, are we not being short changed? The music industry knows that we have a hunger for new music, for fresh, exciting and original sounds, and they respond with what? Synth pop? And what about the artists out there who are pushing boundaries, artists who are utilising the very latest technologies, rethinking how we compose, deliver and consume music, why aren’t they on the cover of The NME?

From sound artists, challenging our perceptions of sound and of music, pushing the boundaries of performance and what technology can do, through to dance music pioneers, exploring new worlds of texture and connecting with audiences through ever expanding mediums.

These artists are out there, working in what we call the underground, but don’t they deserve a little more attention from our mainstream music media? A little more credit perhaps? And we, the music buying public, don’t we deserve a little more?

Early Morning Post

It's 08:32. I've actually been online for about 20 mins now. I'm combating yesterdays slight depression with a healthy dose of being proactive so I have taken note of the reading lists for some of my modules and intend to hunt down some of the books in the library.

I'm not exactly sure what the difference is between autumn and winter, I guess winter is just a lot colder and with absolutely no leaves on the trees, except for evergreens of course.

All I know is, it's bloody cold here in Bath. It was also grey and drizzly yesterday which doesn't help when you want to get out of the flat and walk into town, hence being trapped in the flat all afternoon.

This morning however, I can see blue sky, the perfect sky for a proactive day.

My Proposal - Introduction

Here is the first draft of the first part of my proposal. I hope it makes sense and sounds interesting without going over the top with the lofty ideas.


‘The Sea....Take Me To The Sea’ places the listener into a whirlpool of sounds and textures, carrying them on a sonic journey through countryside to coastline as they follow along a small part of the river Tor making its way to the sea.

Using location recordings, synthesised textures, and multiple tape loops, I hope to create an open composition where sounds glide over each other, pushing one another in and out of phase and therefore, creating new tones as they disperse around the listening environment. I will purposefully set the individual elements of the composition so that the timings and structure of the piece vary over time, constantly presenting new harmonic and rhythmic relationships between sounds.

My hope is that, in this blurring of boundaries and structure, I can recreate the flow and constantly evolving state of water as it move around our planet and through our lives.
At the very least, This soundscape will seek to paint a sonic picture of our beautiful countryside and coastline and where the mix of sounds, some familiar, some not, will create a sense of harmony and peace for the individual listener.

Audio Diary Part 1

Just finished producing the first part of my audio diary which will document my artistic journey up to the Appledore Arts Festival 2010.

The first part is really just an introduction and an extremely brief overview of the project I will be working on.

I decided that I should produce a small loop of music to have running in the background as I give my introduction - the sort of thing radio presenters talk over or they have running on cooking shows as they tell you what ingredients you will need to make a pie or whatever.

Producing this short piece of music was the first time recently that I have really sat back and thought, 'Hey, I think I could make a career out of this'. I loaded up my production software and in about 15 mins, I had a professional sounding ambient loop of drums, bass, synth and piano, which now sits nicely behind my vocal in the audio diary. It's nothing hugely special, but it works, it sounds good, and it was ultra quick to produce and copy into the arrangement with my vocal.

It looks like working on this fairly large and complex project is really going to highlight the skills I have and the skills I need to become a professional in the world of sound and audio production.

It's All Around Us

Just to quickly say, thanks to everyone who was in The Perfect 5th last night. It was great to hang out with some old friends, drink slightly too much, and go on to play some of my new songs - which it would seem, all went down really well.

I'm reading a book at the moment which I picked up in Bath central library. It really discusses some of the key ideas behind ambient, soundscape, noise and experimental music. I'm really tuning into some of these ideas at the moment, thinking about how sounds move around spaces, how different sounds collide to create new textures, and how these sounds affect us, not just in a mental way, but also in a physical way.

An interesting idea in the book is that the earth is constantly emitting a low (below the register of human hearing) rumble which is perhaps caused by changes in air pressure across the planets surface, causing the earth to resonate like a drum skin. Although we can't hear this sound, we can definitely sense it's presence.

The book also talks about the idea that minute sounds, reverberations, build up in rooms, again without us actually hearing them, but causing atmospheres to inhabit spaces which affect how we feel in that environment.

All this is excellent and is giving me huge amounts of inspiration with the planning of my proposal for the Appledore Arts festival, news of which will be coming soon.