My August song for the 2011 Songwriting Challenge is based on Psalm 73.
Here is a rough acoustic demo:
I believe this Psalm is extremely important for Christians in our culture today. Asaph is struggling in his faith. He has, in his own words, “kept his heart pure”, and he feels like it has been for nothing. He sees everybody around him turn from God and prosper. Nothing makes sense to him. That’s what I tried to capture in this song.
This is part of a “Tools for Indie Musicians” blog series where I highlight what tools I use to spread my music out there. See other posts in the series here.
My last post in this series was over CD Baby. TuneCore does pretty much the same thing – and that’s getting your music to iTunes and other digital retailers so people can buy your music and make you rich and famous.
TuneCore has a few differences, though, and I’m going to highlight those here, as well as detail my personal experience with them.
This is part of a “Tools for Indie Musicians” blog series where I highlight what tools I use to spread my music out there. See other posts in the series here.
If you make music, you probably want to be able to sell it. And if you want to sell it, you want to sell it on iTunes. Trust me on this one. But, how in the world do you get it there?
Getting your music to iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, Amazon, etc, is called “digital distribution”. It’s really difficult to do this yourself, so there are several companies that will handle this for you acting as a middle-man, taking care of the distribution as well as the money. Today we’re going to talk about CD Baby.
CD Baby has been around for a long time. They handle both digital distribution as well as sales of physical CD’s. I’ve used them for several of my releases, and I’ve been extremely happy with them.
I’m going to start posting a series of articles titled “Tools for Musicians”.
There are lots of great sites out there specifically for indie musicians like me, but hearing actual user experiences is always a good thing. I don’t claim to be a super successful recording artist, but I feel like things are picking up steam for me, and I’d love to share some strategies and tools that I use to get things done.
Just as a teaser, I’m planning on reviewing and sharing my experiences with (links take you to posts over that topic):
I’m also planning to talk about different strategies for blogging and sharing music.
My hope is to have all of you who are indie musicians to add to the conversation so we can all learn from our shared experiences. Stay tuned!
I love YouTube. I hope that’s obvious in the fact that I have 121 videos up. Actually, my 122nd video is currently uploading.
YouTube comments are great, too. There are lots of haters out there, but I have some great subscribers and viewers that say nice things to me. Here’s a particularly awesome comment I received on my Amazing Grace My Chains Are Gone cover:
If your playing a martin you better be able to sing like jesus, and you have succeeded
to which I responded…
I, too, believe that Jesus would play a Martin.
Thank to YouTube user 661BlackJesus for leaving such a spectacular comment!
I wrote this song back in April 2010, and it’s one of my personal favorites of all the songs I’ve written. I released an acoustic version of it last year, but this is a full-production version of the song.
This song will remain free through NoiseTrade until October, when the next free song is released. If you download through NoiseTrade, you’ll get the acoustic version as well.
Another awesome weekend at Evergreen and River Oaks. The band is just continuing to get better and better. Here are the songs we played with audio. The recording setup is working like a charm.
This is going to be big. At least – I sure hope so!
Starting this Friday, I’m going to start releasing one fully produced single a month to iTunes. Up to this point, I’ve been giving away all my music for free, and most of that music has been acoustic or a really stripped down kind of recording. I’m starting to re-think this model just a bit.
I’ve been writing and recording a lot more lately, and I’m recording these songs with full production. I think they sound pretty good, and I’m excited to share them with you. So, on the 1st Friday of the month, I’m going to release one of my songs to iTunes and everywhere else you like to buy music. The cool thing is that I’m also going to release the songs to NoiseTrade, which will allow you to download them for free.
That’s a lot of options!
Though I Walk Through The Valley (November 2011)
lyrics, charts, and other info
Ultimately, I’m working toward a full-length full production release. These singles will most likely be very close to the final versions of the songs that go on the full-length LP.
So, to recap – Free music released the 1st Friday of every month. Sign up to the mailing list and you’ll never be out of the loop.
I totally stole this idea from Jon Meyer. He is an awesome musician and audio engineer.
Tonight Alastair Vance and I played a few songs at Loco Lu’s Coffeehouse at their weekly open mic night. We had a good time! Lu had a great turnout – we got to hear some really talented musicians.
Here are the songs I played:
Set 1:
I played toward the end, so they asked if anybody wanted to play a few more songs. So, my 2nd set was:
Alastair did an awesome cover of Perfect by Pink.
I still remember the first time I heard it. I was on a vacation with my family in California visiting my cousins. It was sometime in the early to mid 90′s – I was probably 13 or 14. My cousin Mark asked if I’d ever heard of U2. I probably hadn’t. After all, I grew up in small-town western Oklahoma. Garth Brooks was big, but I wasn’t much of a fan.
Anyway, Mark puts the CD (maybe it was a cassette?) into the player, and all the sudden I’m hearing the coolest sound I’d ever heard in my life. This crunchy overdriven auto-wa’d electric guitar riff with some weird percussion behind it. Then the song kicks in. I’d never heard anything so incredible in my life. I was hearing Mysterious Ways by U2 for the very first time.
I got the name of the band and the album, and as soon as I got home, I ordered it – probably through one of those BMG or Columbia House programs where you get 8 CD’s for the price of one, but then you are obligated to buy 15 more CD’s over the next year or so.
A few weeks later, Achtung Baby arrives in a little brown cardboard package, and I think I wore it out. To this day, it remains one of my favorite albums of all time, and I consider it one of the more influential albums as far as shaping my taste in music. U2 is absolutely my favorite band ever. I always cite “Joshua Tree” as their greatest work, but I think if I had to choose between the two albums, Achtung Baby would win.
The album has a few tried and true U2 classics, including One and Mysterious Ways, but some of my favorites are the more lesser known tracks. Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses has always been a favorite, and Ultraviolet is really cool. This is one of those albums that you can just put on and listen to straight through.
If you haven’t heard this entire album before, go check it out. What are some of the essential albums that have shaped your taste in music?
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