mistrustmusic's posterous

Golden oldies - kids making electronic music

I often get asked how long I've been making electronic music. The answer is - probably most of my life! My dad was a TV engineer in the 60s and 70s, so he had allsorts of circuit testers and oscilloscopes and other bits of junk that I could mess around round and make odd bleeps and sinewave wails! My dad also had an old valve stereo radio and I used to tune it in to all sorts of weird and wonderful Eastern European radio stations on Short-Wave, and made crazy frequency sweeps. I even hooked up a model train transformer to the radio's input socket and made wacky noises. I moved on to buying a cheap stereo reel-to-reel in a wooden box and recorded tunes I made on an old electronic organ that worked by blowing air from a fan. The first "proper" song I made was called "The Car Park", and then something called "Do you know Mister Wall?" (anyone spot where I got that title from?). I used to try making "musique concrete" tunes by cutting up my tapes, but I didn't have the right gear to join them up again, and made a horrible mess of the tape heads! I got my first synth in about 1980 - a Casio MT31, followed by a Kay Memory Rhythm, and then a Jen SX1000. Not much, I know, but it was all I could afford and it allowed me to make tunes for all the lyrics I'd been writing about teenage angst and life in general. I recorded everything onto a Phillips hi-fi system (with adjustable Left and Right mic inputs!) bounced down with a Phillips portable cassette player and a home-made 4-input mixer (in a small tin box!). Most of the parts were pretty much played live, then bounced down and things like the synth solos and vocals were played over the top. I made about 5 cassette tapes full on songs around that time, and they all survive to this day. The only one I've copied to CD so far is the first one, called "Ultraviolent Light". Listening to them now makes me think of the songs of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, who still use similar gear as I used. One of the tracks from this "album" is called "This is the Mood (I'm in) and is here for you to listen to in all it's glory. Bear in mind that it's from a cassette tape that's nearly 30 years old and I haven't used any noise removal equipment..... it sounds quite a quirky little song....see what you think! This is the Mood (I'm in) - 4'40" [audio http://freedownloads.last.fm/download/192871862/This%2Bis%2Bthe%2Bmood%2B%252...] Download: This is the Mood (I'm in)

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A career in music?

I've always wanted a job in music, maybe as a pop star or producer (only kidding), but resigned myself a long time ago to the fact that it would never happen. I've been working in education for the last 12 years, and recently started doing a lot of e-learning stuff, which involves audio and video production, so thought it's probably the nearest I'd ever get to put my music tech skills and general musical knowledge to some use. However, that may change in the near future, and I may actually get my career in music after all. I've had an interview at a university where they want someone to become the e-learning subject specialist in their music library, which covers both general music stuff and music technology. They have quite a lot of professional music people teaching there, both composers and producers, so it would be an ideal chance to learn more about that side of things, and hopefully improve my own music and production skills. Of course, a lot of you on here probably already have the ideal music career, but I'm interested in technology, music, and how the two work to not only make music but promote it too. Sounds ideal to me! The only problem now is I have to wait to see if I've got the job......

Filed under  //   career   job   library   music library   music publishing   production  

The colour Purple

No post for a few weeks, mainly due to family commitments, work commitments, and stuff like that. However, I'm excited right now. I'm finally going to get some tunes played on an upcoming internet radio show. More details to follow after 10pm (UK time). In the meantime, you can get hold of all my music for free. See the previous post for details....

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Posted July 19, 2007

Zen and art of selling music

Some people have been asking where they can buy my music. Well, the simple answer is: you can't. It's all free to play/download over the internet. You can listen to it and download it, make your own compilation CDs from my tracks. As long as you don't sell it on or pass it on as youre own, I don't mind. I'm trying to get my music into film, tv, adverts, that sort of thing, so the more people who listen to it, maybe the more chance that some music supervisor somewhere will hear the tracks and want to use it. That's the idea.... "mistrust music" can be downloaded here: TV Tunes (10 tracks) at MusicFreedom (including: Dubcrazy, Paul the phone is ringing, All roads) Making Movies (8 tracks) on MusicFreedom (including: Never Alone, Happy Birthday) Making Movies EP on Nishi Netlabel Myspace If you prefer me to send you a physical CD, I can send one out to anywhere in the world for just a small price to cover printing, postage and packing, with either the list of tracks that are on MusicFreedom/Myspace or a "pick and mix" selection of your choice. Click here to contact me if you want a CD.... If anyone wants to use my music for film/tv/advert work etc., please click here to discuss your project with me. Have a look on Youtube for examples of my previous film work. I'm already signed to Candy Cover music library on a non-exclusive deal...

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Posted July 5, 2007

Attention surfer dudes

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!!!!

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Posted May 25, 2007

All the world's an MP3 stage

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,

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Posted May 3, 2007

Music Licensing

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.

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Posted May 1, 2007

Looking for music blogs

I can't seem to find many musicians who are blogging. Maybe everyone's too busy making music or playing live to keep a diary or blog of what they're upto. What's the point in blogging anyway, you may say. If you're a musician, unsigned or not, please post a link to your blog and I'll have a read and see what you're upto. I'll even add you the my "recommended" list. I know that Moby blogs on his myspace page, that's about it as far as I know. I blog so that I can a) promote my own music to people who wouldn't normally listen to it; b) let my "fans" and other listeners know what I'm upto with my music; c) help other unsigned musicians get some extra exposure. If you're not blogging or using Web 2.0 tools and all the latest social networking sites, you're missing out on a lot of exposure. Even my stepson has a blog about his music. So, as I said, please let me know if you've got a blog, or if you know of any musical bloggers out there. In the meantime, here's one of my new tracks for you to download for free.... mistrust: Say your name (glitchmix)...... [audio http://moses.last.fm/download/100909046/Say%2Byour%2Bname%2528glitchmix%2529.mp3]

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Signed by a music library

I've sort of mentioned this before, but now I can tell all..... I've signed a non-exclusive deal with a major UK music library, called CandyCover, that supplies music to TV, film, and advert production companies. They've worked with big players like Orange, O2, Virgin, and the Ministry of Sound. It's a massive break for me - never had anything like this happen before. They've asked to use 8 of my tracks - not my long, instrumental tunes that have been doing the rounds for a couple of years like Never Alone and For All we've done, but my more recent ones that are available at Music Freedom. They're all fairly short and are wanted for the library's "Art/Quirky/Cult Drama" section. I've signed a contract with them and the tracks are going to be registered with MCPS, the official publishing organisation in the UK, which means I get paid the proper rate if any of my tracks get used. I know that a lot of musicians get tracks signed to music libraries, and the competition is huge

Listen to this article

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Paul can't open up to people but he can talk to his blog

Should this blog be entirely about music? Comments please! I just wanted to put in a quick word about Paul's blog. Paul Harrison is my stepson, who happens to have PDD-NOS, a condition similar to autism and asperger's syndrome. He's very withdrawn and hates having to meet new people, as it makes him anxious and can't cope. He can't get into school at the moment as his stress levels go through the roof whenever he thinks of being in class - he's 14 y.o. and you just try making him go! The whole thing makes him more anxious and less confident. His school agreed to send him work home, which is a start...

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