mistrust music
In the last week I’ve had my very first interview on the radio, and my kids made some “well done” messages for me….
my kids did these pics for me when I was on the radio!
In the last week I’ve had my very first interview on the radio, and my kids made some “well done” messages for me….
my kids did these pics for me when I was on the radio!
Well, I'm certainly getting a lot of hits on here about kids using Facebook. Why's that then? Dunno, really. Maybe a lot of kids go on it, and a lot of parents either want to monitor what they're doing on it or don't want them on it all. I like all this social networking thing. Don't get me wrong. Think it's great. Very useful, very now. Can't see the world going back to a Facebook-less era. However, why are parents still letting their kids as young as six or seven going on Facebook? Why? What reason? Have they forgotten how to talk? Fine - if your relatives are halfway round the world. What about Skype. What about setting up your own family social network on blog thing. Anyway. The debate still goes on and it rankles with me that I still see all my kids' friends on there. So what are the schools doing about it? Not a lot at the moment, but maybe it's finally getting through to the schools that something should be done about it. Take this for example. Internet Safety for children. Maybe things will start changing. So, why am I on Facebook if I'm not happy about young kids being on it? Well, I've been in touch with a few people from school, and I'm using it to plug my music. That's it. That's all. If you're on Facebook and want to become a fan of my music, click here and "Become a Fan". I'm also on Twitter. The gratuitous plug. I did a remix for dub band International Observer a while ago. The track is called "Popcorn Slavery (mistrust remix)" and is out on the band's EP on Monday 22nd February. You can hear previews of it on my Soundcloud and Myspace pages, and it's available to download from Monday on all major music sites, and the band's own Bandcamp page. Spread the word. Here's the soundcloud player for it.... [soundcloud url=http://soundcloud.com/mistrust/international-observer-popcorn-slavery-mistrust-remix]
Just read this article on the BBC News website about how the future of music is changing "We all know what the alleged future of music will look like. The record industry will be reduced to a smouldering ruin, the album replaced by endless individual songs and music rendered pretty much worthless by the fact that it's universally free." Read more here.... BBC NEWS | Entertainment | The golden age of infinite music. There are more and more musicians - like myself - who are abandoning making a physical product and putting their music out for free. However, I hope that some people are still going to make a record or a CD and that I'll still be able to go into my local record store and handle a physical product instead of downloading some artwork on to my pc.
I've been working on the Pitch Black remix for the last week and a half, but I'm getting quite bogged down with it. The problem is that I've been too reliant on sample CDs to find something that fits the existing tune ("Rude Mechanicals") and not really restricting myself to only a few sounds. I use Acid Pro pretty much all the time for getting ideas down quickly, but it's too easy to become lost in all the options that it gives you. My attempt at this remix is a bit "directionless" at the moment, and I'm probably doing the wrong thing by listening to remixes of other Pitch Black tracks in order to get some direction. A friend of mine - DJ and musician, The Only Michael - who did a Pitch Black remix a couple of years ago, advised me not to listen to other remixes, and to just do what inspires me from the original track.
Just to let you know I'm finally in Music Tech Magazine for winning the Motif XS6 synthesizer! The article is in February's edition - but in case you don't want to buy it, the editor sent me a copy of the page, and I've attached it here as pdf (the whole page) and a jpeg (click to see the whole pic).
Other news... the manager of a band from New Zealand called "Pitch Black" has said I can have a go at doing a remix of a track from their new CD, "Rude Mechanicals". If it's good enough, it'll appear on the band's remix CD and as a download on music sites like iTunes and Beatport. More on that soon when I decide which track I want to have a go at.... Non-music stuff: we took Paul to see a residential school in Shrewsbury today. Absolutely amazing place. Part of a 16th century hall and estate. Class sizes are usually 2 students and one teacher - it's for kids with autism. He sounds relatively keen on it, but we'll have a job on convincing the education authority to pay for him. It's around £30,000 per year! Page from MTM magazine reproduced by kind permission of Music Tech Magazine/Anthem Publishing/Yamaha UK (c)And it's absolutely amazing!!!! I won it in a promo that Music Tech magazine were running on their new Studionet forum. I went down to Yamaha's R&D offices in West London yesterday and got the official Yamaha training from one of their product specialists. I spent most of yesterday afternoon grinning like an idiot after hearing the sounds the Motif can make and just how incredible the whole thing is. I think I can seriously say goodbye to making music on Acid Pro from now on! It seems to be able to do everything - it's got 355MB of ROM for the internal sounds, 6000 arpeggios, song and pattern-based recording, backup over Ethernet, full integration with Cubase 4. I can predict some long nights over Christmas getting to grips with this thing!!!!
This is my first post in two months - more about what's been happening later this month. Needless to say, it hasn't been very pleasant.... At least I'll have a nice Christmas present!
I got an email yesterday saying that O'Neill, the surfing, skiing, and snowboarding company, have launched O'Neill TV, featuring all their promo films, profiles, and all sorts of other video footage. I thought it would actually be proper tv station on Sky or the Extreme Channel, but it turned out it's just a glorified Flash player on their website. I'm not dismissing it though. It looks great, and there are loads of videos on there, especially for all you surf, ski, and snowboard types out there. Plus, it's got me on there. Actually, it's got my music on a couple of videos up there.
Three tracks - Croydon Library, Never Alone remix, and Hello - are on the Deep Blue Open 2005 event video, and two - Croydon Library and Never Alone - are on the video profile of Trent Munro (world-famous surfer dude). I signed a non-exclusive deal with O'Neill Europe a couple of years ago, thinking that I'd just get a couple of DVDs from it, but I'm still getting exposure from it. I guess this O'Neill TV thing is getting a lot of hits, so more exposure for me. You can play the two clips here: Trent Munro Profile Deep Blue Open 2005 Both of these clips show how well my music fit with a variety of visuals. Any film makers out there who need music for their latest project, please get in touch!!!!I'm something of a perfectionist when it comes to something looking right, and usually I get this nagging feeling in the back of my head telling me that something doesn't look as good as it should. That explains why I've changed the look of this blog about 5 times in the last few weeks. I've reused the old "green" header and adopted a more plain-looking body. Hopefully I'll be satisfied now and not want to change it again. I've been trying to work out what to write here because there's just been so much going on at home, work, and with the music. When I've got everything straight in my head, I'll post more info here. Other things: I've been helping Paul with some more tunes. He's finally got back into music-making, so he's been asking for some help. Expect more of his stuff on myspace soon. Also, I came across a great Wordpress blog called Svartling. It's a comprehensive list of loads of new VST plugins and music-making software. Highly recommended!
I've been thinking about the number of music hosting sites and MP3 directories that I have my music on. Most of them are free-to-download places where people can just have my tracks for nothing. I started off in late 2004 by choosing just one site - Electromancer.com, which is now no more, just because I lacked confidence about my music and it seemed like a good place to start when I'd never even considered putting my music out to the public. In fact, even though Electromancer closed down last year, a lot of the artists are still active on the forums of another site, Nervejam, and are still as friendly and supportive as ever. I got a bit more confident after getting some great reviews, thinking that more people might give me a listen, so I followed links and recommendations about other hosting sites, signed up to 2 or 3, and waited for the plays to roll in. Then I started chasing more sites and more plays, until I had tracks on about 1o or 15 sites. I've now lost track (and usernames/passwords) of most of those sites, and still get the occasional email from them, saying someone has posted a comment. A quick check on google as to which sites I'm on offers up 94 links for "mistrust music site" and 30 for "never alone mistrust" (my first track from 2004). I still see the same old faces on all these hosting sites,
Someone on the Big Chill forum that I occasionally visit wanted some advice about getting his music marketed through a music library and wondered if he had to sign up with MCPS and pay £100 for the privelege. As you may have read on here, I've recently signed a non-exclusive agreement with a major UK library, and haven't had to register with MCPS, so something doesn't add up if this chap has been told otherwise. As far as I'm aware, the agreement I signed sorts out pre-clearance for my tracks that the library is offering to film, tv, companies etc. In other words, if a few tv production companies hear of one my tracks on the music library's website and want to use it, there's no need to wait ages for them to send me an individual agreement for each programme, for me to check them, sign them and send them back, etc, before anyone can use them. From what I understand, the music library registers my track with MCPS (they get listed as the publisher), the production company requests a licence from MCPS website giving the catalogue number of my track, and the production company pays MCPS for the licence. MCPS (eventually) sends the licence fee (minus their admin fee) to the music library, which then pays me (minus their take - usually 50%). If anyone else is looking for advice on signing up with a music licence in the UK, have a look here at the MCPS production music guide, which even shows you the official rate card for different types of production (anything from about £20 to £000s). The music library should be registered with MCPS - if they're in the UK and not on this list, it's probably not worth dealing with them. If anyone from the USA or other countries is reading this and knows something about it in other countries, please let me know.