Jody Whitesides

Author: Jody Whitesides

  • Touch Nominated For Best Pop Song

    Touch Nominated For Best Pop Song

    Touch-Jody-WhitesidesWaking up via an email in your inbox saying Touch nominated for best pop song is a pretty cool thing!

    Touch Nominated For UMA

    This morning my inbox contained an email from the Utah Music Awards, kinda like the Grammys for Utah, stating that Touch (feat. Jacarri) would be up for an award come this September for Best Pop Song. That’s enough to help get this week started off on a good foot.

    UMA Header

    Makes a musician/producer feel like all the hard work putting a lush pop song is worth the effort. Next up is submission for the actual Grammys. Yup, Touch will be in the initial voting round for the 2016 Grammys. Fingers crossed it can garner enough votes to break into the nomination round. Anyone willing to hold their breath for me?

    Its gonna be an interesting week as other big changes are about to occur.

    Stay tuned.

  • HIVE Is Alive

    HIVE Is Alive

    HIVE Is Alive:

    The custom foot controller, HIVE, that I’ve been chatting about in the past couple of months, has finally been completed!

    IMG_1145Months of thinking about design and functionality are finally over. The longest bit was the construction of the casing. Despite a quote of a 1 week turnaround, it ended up being 7 weeks.

    Once the case was in my hands there were three days of soldering the internal wiring and a late night session of a little rewiring of the LED lights.

    Add an additional three days of reading manuals and figuring out how to code the brain of the unit to be able to work the software I’ll be using in conjunction with it. And voilà – HIVE is alive!

    What Is HIVE:

    The plain and simple is that its a midi foot controller. With 11 buttons and two real time controllers. The real genius is the computer monitor that gives real time visual feedback of what the computer is doing. It was inspired by the Chewie Monsta. However this is much more versatile in application.

    Pure speculation on my part that is. Ed Sheeran’s pedal only deals with looping as far as I know.

    I will be using HIVE for my live performances for solo acoustic and full band events.

    In the not so distant future I’ll be posting videos of how it works and how I’ll be using it. Until then… stay musical!

     

  • Eddy Cue Says Apple Music Will Think Different

    Eddy Cue Says Apple Music Will Think Different

    Another Open Letter For Apple

    Dear Apple & Taylor Swift,

    A kind thank you goes out to Eddy Cue for taking swift action (pun intended), or rather reaction to the open letters from Taylor Swift and many other artists in regard to Apple about Apple Music and their non payment of royalties to artists during the trial phase of an account.

    Here’s his three tweet response to Taylor Swift and Indie Musicians:

    “@cue: Apple will always make sure that artist are paid ‪#‎iTunes‬‪#‎AppleMusic‬

    @cue: #AppleMusic will pay artist for streaming, even during customer’s free trial period

    @cue: We hear you @taylorswift13 and indie artists. Love, Apple”

    Eddy / Apple Music obviously felt more of a sting from Taylor Swift than they did from musicians like me. For that, I am happy to have Taylor speak up about something all musicians should be more vocal about.

    Personally I don’t allow my music to be on services that pay no royalty at all. While I can understand why others aren’t happy with Spotify’s freemium model – I actually like it. I’m very interested in seeing how Apple Music can differentiate itself from the herd and build a product people want to use.

    In referencing what I tweeted last night: Thank you Apple, Apple Music @cue and Taylor Swift for Thinking Different. I appreciate that a company can see the forrest for the trees and make good for the very art they’re attempting to build their platform with. If only all the other services did the same thing. I only support those that do. However the streaming landscape pans out, I will have my music on the services that properly compensate artists and people use and pay for. That you can count on.

    Thank you for reading this, supporting my music and I hope see you in the streaming future!

    Jody

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