Welcome back to the newsletter! October is done and dusted, with only mild chaos brought by our dear friend, Real Life. While I finished a couple of tracks and worked on some smaller colored-pencil illustrations, the majority of my time was spent working on the debut BtF EP. Yes, this is the same EP I've been hinting about for several months, and it's finally moved from the theoretical to the active-production phase of its existence. Yay! Currently two songs into it (out of a target of four) and it's sounding good so far. The plan is to track each song ‘til mixing stage, do the mixes, then finally the mastering, doing all the songs together so the mix quality is consistent. That's the plan, anyway. Originally, I wanted four songs for the EP -- still do, actually -- but apart from the two already in the can, I have no idea what the remaining songs will be. It could also expand to five or six songs if I hit a super-creative spell. Who knows! I've found this level of planning is probably as good as it gets with my creative projects: very broad, focus on the process itself, changes on the fly. Anyway, I've got three WIPs on deck, but they're best described as moods or vibes rather than solid melodies, so I'm keeping the door open for the next two or three random songs I come up with that don't suck. Few light years away from even a wild-ass guess on a release target date, but I'll definitely keep you posted...
Truth be told, I'm somewhat apprehensive about the EP, specifically my plan to put it on Bandcamp. Spotify and Apple Music scare me, especially all the stories about how any money earned on either service is...well, substantially less than advertised, so when I first thought of doing an EP, I figured Bandcamp, with its emphasis on indie artists and measured, controlled growth, seemed like a good fit. Unfortunately, Bandcamp has seen itself bought and sold a couple of times, with music-licensing outfit Songtradr the newest/latest owners. Right after they bought Bandcamp, Songtradr fired a whole bunch of writers and playlist curators who were responsible for highlighting newly-discovered indie artists. The ominous sign from this little move is that Songtradr really doesn't want to be in the business of nurturing talent that might otherwise be overlooked/ignored; rather, Songtradr wants to mine Bandcamp's library for licensing deals for TV and radio ads, no doubt for a pittance for what the artists could license with competent, independent representation. Obviously, if you don't want your music licensed for commercial use, you don't have to say yes to whatever Songtradr pitches at you, and go right on releasing music on Bandcamp...for now. Who's to say Songtradr won't engage in some skullduggery on the site's TOS making it a condition for uploading your music. I wouldn't put it past them. Anyway, while Songtradr gives me a case of the heebie-jeebies, I'm still going to push my EP onto Bandcamp and just cross my fingers. There aren't a whole bunch of other options...
(This topic of Bandcamp and royalties and streaming and licensing deserves a full newletter to cover... perhaps another time?)
Concerning Bud the Fish...
While doing the EP tracks, I found myself needing to come up for air long enough to examine some non-EP music ideas in more detail. "House Mouse 1", the first track I'm showing, was my latest attempt to make an entire song in Koala Sampler in a day, using only sounds sampled from my house. Well, the do-it-in-a-day thing didn't work out -- took three days instead of one -- but I like how it turned out:
Seriously, I'm almost to the point where if I had my phone, Koala Sampler, and nothing else, I could still create a track in short order. The beauty of a sampler like Koala is you can sample anything, then take that sample, reduce it down to a single waveform, and turn it into an actual instrument. Doesn't matter the sound -- it could be a percussive hit, random static, a dog's bark... hell, I've already sampled conversations at the local sandwich shop and turned it into a song, and if I hadn't just told you, you'd never suspect how it was done. Frankensteining sounds together is huge fun -- you should try it!
"Homecoming" was a totally impromptu jam done on my phone with Figure, my favorite idea-generating music app. I've got Ableton's Note app on the phone as well, and it does similar things to Figure, but I prefer Figure's layout. For this tune, I'm just using the same melody throughout, but changing the modes to make the melody move. Some MoogerFoogers for distortion and delay, and it turned out like this:
Concerning Roadkill Puppy...
As I'm going through the various sketchbooks and coloring the doodles within, I'm running into plenty of drawings that could... well, they need help. To that end, I took a few less-than-satisfactory doodles and redrew them on drawing paper with colored pencils only.
Back to the sketchbooks, here's a handful of characters from Moleskine plain-magenta 11 and Leuchtturm plain-blue 9:
Okay, that's it for this month. I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving, and I'll catch in December. Take care, my friends....
Dan