I’m gonna go right out there and say sore throats suck. I’m pretty sure there’s very few people on this planet that actually like them.
When
Right after I pretty much get my digital life back on track, I came down with some mild bronchitis. Maybe its some sort of bodily retaliation for spending so much time on something other than music?!? Eh, no. I don’t believe that. Obviously I came into contact with someone somewhere that probably had it.
It might have been the trip to California. Namely the plane ride. Recently read that you’re only likely to get ill within a few passenger rows of someone else. Which means it would most likely have been the flight to Los Angeles. As that flight was full. The return flight was probably 10% full, if that. Very light flight.
Coughing Goo
Around Thursday of last week I started feeling rather beat when I woke up. Mind you this would have been about a week plus of incubation. I woke up to feeling a little lethargic and coughing profusely and wanting to get something out of my lungs.
Could I have been singing to hard the several days before that? Tough to say. Yes, I’ve been in the studio working on a few new projects, especially now that my digital life is up and running again. I had been pushing pretty hard on a couple of heavier tunes destined for film/tv worlds. My throat was a little overtaxed, but nothing that a night of sleep wouldn’t cure.
Instead I started hacking up bright green goo. I hate sore throats, and shortly after the goo, one kicked in.
Progress
As things go, being ill means it progressively gets worse before it gets better. Not the case here. It has remained mild enough that I’m still quite functional. Not 100% full capacity but still functional.
Despite feeling beat down for the past few days, I’m taking in as much rest as I can – while still attempting to get things done. Which means that today I’ll be opening up to singing again. I’m coughing less, throat is less sore. Will need to keep an eye on it, because pushing too hard means I may fall completely down the illness rabbit hole where I don’t want to be.
Wish you well and hope you’re in great health, have a great rest of your Monday.
p.s. – join my newsletter.
There’s been an undue amount of silence on my website and social media. For those not interested tl;dr – this is a rundown of my past two months of real silence.
Silence on a Journey
Its been a tad quiet on my website since late November. That wasn’t by design. It was by life. The music industry generally shuts down in December and at the end of 2017, I ended up holing up myself with family and pretty much working on a project being planned for later this year in 2018.
I did my annual pilgrimage to NAMM in Anaheim. Letting out a little information about the upcoming plans, which isn’t something I’m want to do. Mostly because without a contract in place – its really all air being blown about. Its better to keep the silence when things aren’t in stone. Despite that, I and a couple of future bandmates got to partake in seeing Andy Grammer rock the outdoor stage at the convention center.
His songs are enjoyable, but after seeing him live I now understand his real talent. Putting on an awesome show!
Certainly gave me a bunch of ideas of breaking my live silence, when plans for later this year come thru.
Solace in Skiing
Winter got turned on its head. Eastern states got pummeled while the west was left nearly bone dry. Due to a bunch of unscheduled trips away from the studio, I turned to skiing to realign my soul. There’s a spirit in the high altitude that isn’t matched anywhere else. There’s a freedom to life when you succumb to gravity and let it pull you down mountains as fast as you can stand to go – and I can stand to go pretty damn fast. Most skiers can’t keep up. Thinking about that, it would be pretty awesome to spend a day skiing with Lindsey Vonn. She and I could just run the mountain in silence, but I’d probably gush in admiration.
Digital Mountains
In March I came to a realization that my old hosting service wasn’t going to be updating their backend software. After a couple of years of asking for updates, and being told, we’re eventually going to. This led to reaching out to my friend Derek Sivers. He suggested that I ought to strike out on my own and go self hosted. He claimed I could do it in a week. Therein began a real fork in the road for 6+ weeks. The true moment where I pretty much went into digital silence with minor moments of social media posts here and there.
Technology isn’t a stranger in my life, but I’d never considered learning to run my own server stationed on the web. Yes, I have a server at home that allows me to house digital copies of all my media and gives me an encrypted way to control my studio machine from afar. That’s far cry from the open ocean of the internet.
I began learning how to install an entirely different operating system than what I was used to. This led to a rather steep learning curve. I pestered Derek about software and options of what to do, until he pretty much said – I’m going out of contact for a couple of weeks. Fortunately I had a brother from another mother in Jesse Stern who was taking a very similar journey.
A crash course of learning the ins and outs of server life. It was eye opening.
Security was the original breaking straw of why I wanted to find a new host. I was installing the latest and greatest of operating systems, web serving software, databases, email, ftp and vpn setups. My first attempt found me about a 4 days in and suddenly locked out of my own server. Oops. My second server went much better, but still took a good deal of time.
Then came the need to extract all my data off of my old host. It spread into so many different areas. Once collected I found that it was roughly 1.6 terabytes. I couldn’t imagine I had that much data stored in places. It accrued in silence over a bunch of years.
Mistakes
A harsh reality smacked me in the face. A blog site that I used to run on a daily basis Single of the Day, took me hours to port over. Several thousand audio tracks. Plus an unruly database. It took me 3 days to delete hundreds of thousands of spam comments because WordPress couldn’t handle doing it itself. If you don’t think spam takes up much space – I learned that it was several gigs in my database. Once removed from that site’s database, it shrank from multiple gigs down to a few megs. Wow!
Come later this year my silence from Single of the Day will be broken. In the meantime, I will spend random time here and there to convert old posts to the newer format. A format that showcases posts like before, but instead of using MP3s, I’ll be going for digital streaming posts namely on Spotify. It falls more in line with my original goal of getting artists I’ve posted about, paid when people listen.
When email finally switched and went online with the new server, I was terribly naive. Within 24 hours my father’s email account killed my email setup. Yes, I’m hosting my dad’s website and email. He’s like most older people who aren’t terribly savvy with their email account. Tons of spam. It didn’t help that my ignorance also left my email server software open to outside users to crack and send spam.
There wasn’t much silence from my mouth after that realization.
Rebuild It Again
I had to destroy another server and start from scratch. By this time I was getting pretty darn proficient with installing things. However, I decided to switch hosts to a new cloud host as I was disappointed with the previous cloud host and their lack of customer support. The fortunate thing was, all my websites and other valuable info had been pared down to roughly 15gigs, far cry from the original 1.6 terabytes. This also meant spending more time securing the backend.
It took another week to get it close to running full speed. Email still eluded me.
Then I took a trip to see about a girl. Talk about a waste of several days of time right there.
I kept working on email. Making sure all my certificates for my domains were in order. I doubled down on securing the email server. To the point that once I got it working, it wasn’t fully working properly. I have about 180 email aliases. I do this in order to find out where what companies end up selling my info to spammers. Then I can delete that alias. It took several days to figure out a setting in the software that was missing literally two words from the code. Those two words cost me several days of time in getting email back to fully functional.
Attacks
Amazing. That’s the word I’d use for what happens to servers. They get brute force attacked. Which is why I ended up installing software to ban intruders. Fingers crossed it keeps things at bay.
At this point, I’m breaking my silence because yesterday I finally got all of my digital life back up to speed. Up to speed on way more modern software. I revamped this website and offered up a request to the software creator for a desired change to the music pages. They liked the idea, hopefully they’ll implement it soon.
This digital journey led to my websites serving pages faster than ever before. My email is running better than ever before, plus I’m getting less spam and I can see that despite spammer attempts to break in and send spam, so far its not happened. I’ve switched to a new email list software that I’d really love to have you on (hint hint – signup using the form at the bottom of this page!) It also means my phone and laptop are running faster, because I run a VPN for my data needs in public.
Back to Music
I’m back in the studio saddle. Still working on the plans for later this year, I’m really hoping to have some awesome news to share about that soon (I really thought it would be all set back in February). In the meantime I’m finishing up a slew of music for a new library. I’m finishing up several singles to add to the stockpile. And I’m ramping up on additional plans for later this year. Until then, please go listen to my latest single Rise Up!
Thanksgiving 2017 has rolled up on us (my U.S. friends). What are some of the things I am thankful for this year?
Thanksgiving 2017
I am thankful that I have family who support my musical endeavors.
I am thankful that I have a gift in creating music for you.
I am thankful that I have fans that love what I do.
I am thankful that I have been able to recover (slowly but surely) from a large theft.
I am thankful for the team of people who are forming around my music.
I am thankful for the people involved with a music festival / conference I’m putting together.
How About You
What are you thankful for, drop me a comment.
p.s. – may you have a wonderful experience with your friends, family, and/or loved ones this day!
If there is something I’ve learned – everyone wants to be heard by someone else; they also want others to want them. Have need for them. To love them.
There really isn’t a more definitive song about wanting others to want you than the infamous song penned by Rick Nielson of Cheap Trick.
I Want You
Actually I wish I had written this song. I’ve toyed with it for a long time. When I play it live solo acoustic, I slow it down and I stretch it out.
I tried recording it once.
Then I tried recording it again.
And again.
I was never quite satisfied with how I was conveying what I heard in my head as I interpreted the song.
Things Change
If you didn’t know, I’m working on musical endeavors outside of my artist persona. Thus I brought the concept of how to cover I Want You To Want Me to a co-producing friend of mine. We’ve been toiling over 30 original tracks for the past year and I decided we should heap on 10 more songs, 10 covers of classic hits in the style of our project. This is not something I would have considered even a year ago.
Last week I began rethinking and retracking all the parts, while I let my partner come up with a viable drum part and a few other odds and ends. The biggest trick was how to approach the vocals so that they became modern but were an ode to the era they came from.
Praise
Two days ago I finally finished the mix and got it mastered.
I want you to be able to hear it.
Turns out that friends who have already heard it have been saying things like:
“Dig this version!! Great vocals!”
“Love, love love how your voice sounds on this!”
“I just might love this better than the original.”
I’m not sure how soon it will come to the light of the world via streaming services or via a license for use. But I Want You To Want Me as reimagined by Razor Wire is definitely something you should hear. I hope it will be sooner than later.
p.s. – subscribe to my email list to stay informed of releases!
As you’ve probably heard, Malcolm Young passed away over the weekend.
Malcolm Young Guitarist
Before I even had an inkling of playing guitar (or any instrument for that matter), I had already felt the power of AC/DC. Staples of the party scene growing up with songs you hear at parties like Back In Black and For Those About To Rock. They are the kind of songs that drive people to join the legions of air-guitarists everywhere.
When I started playing guitar I assumed that Angus Young (Malcolm’s brother) was the mastermind behind such powerful songs. He was the focus, he strutted around in that school-boy outfit. It made sense to me. It wasn’t until later that I learned Malcolm was the real writing force.
Thunder
I always appreciated how AC/DC was able to make heavy loud guitars sound like they belonged in everyday songs that could be anthems. There’s a lesson in every one of their thunderous hits and Malcolm Young certainly should be studied in music schools. For no other reason than what it takes to make a guitar stick in your head and never leave.
Jealous is too strong a word, but I am certainly hoping that at some point in I might be able to deliver a guitar song so filled with power that it becomes an anthem.
Goodbye
The world will sorely miss what future riffs could have poured out of Malcolm Young’s mind and fingers. RIP to one of the original gods of rock.
Perfection can lead to trouble. The deep divide is coming. It seems everywhere I’ve been turning lately there is a deep divide based on people’s ideals of what they believe is perfection. Whether its in music or in ideology, people are becoming less tolerant of those who do not share their same taste or view.
I think forward. I’m always thinking forward. If a new sound comes out, I want to hear it. That’s the musician side of me.
Perfection
I think perfection. I didn’t always think perfection. Always do the best you can do, that was beaten into my head while growing up. I now take that very seriously as I produce music. As I start achieving what I hear as musical perfection, I notice how so many others do not understand it.
I love to help out musician friends and other up coming talent. What invariably happens every time I do this is a culminating point of frustration with the person I’ve brought in to work with. This is especially true with those who work day jobs outside of music. The general reason for the frustration stems from being unable to execute an idea.
Usually a budding musician will want to play their instrument or sing. I get it. Its a pride thing. As a full-time musician and often a producer, I’m more interested in the perfection of the performance and I care how I get to the end result. I wasn’t always that way, but I developed that mindset. Its not a common mindset.
Throughout the history of music there are numerous cases of where the writer/composer/artist is not the person on the recordings. Some cases become public, but most of the time no one is the wiser. In some cases, even the artist isn’t aware that its not them.
Is this problematic?
This could be determined by whether you believe that content is king. I’m one of those that believe content is king. The song is the master. Everything has to serve it. The performances, the mixing, the mastering, they all contribute.
The only time when I believe its a major problem is when attempting to use one singer’s voice as the voice for another front person. Aside from voices for the artist, I’m fair game with anything else to make sure that performance works. Why? The human voice is extremely personal and one that you can’t replace – a voice is the same as a fingerprint.
Common Argument
Often when confronted with the technological advances in recording, musicians will reference the purity of the Beatles and their recording process. What this tells me is that they don’t know how the Beatles used the technology they had available to them at the time they were in their heyday.
If you, as a listener or musician, fall into the camp that the Beatles were pure about their recordings, then its likely you’re not aware of all the techniques they used. The Beatles used every available trick in the book they could to achieve their goals. Sometimes going as far as to invent new ways to record sounds. One of my favorites is that they would change the tape speed in order to slow down the tape to make it easier for them to play a part. Then they would speed the tape back up to full speed to make it sound like they performed that music at tempo.
I believe the Beatles would have used pitch correctors, and time shifters to their advantage had the technology been available to them. Why? Because they were cutting edge and strove for perfection.
Currently
For some reason, when a musician uses today’s tools at their disposal they are considered to be cheating when going after that perfection. When in reality they are attempting to achieve the sonic goal they hear in their head. At least that’s how I envision it.
Conclusion
I’m not going to hide the fact that I make use of all kinds of technology to make music happen. In the recording process, I use a computer to track everything. In the mixing process I use all kinds of plugins to remove noise, correct timing (if its not grossly out), tune pitch (sometimes for a performance, sometimes as a means to create an entirely new sound), create space, etc. My entire musical chain is Digital from start to finish including my guitar rig when I perform live.
When I confront an artist that I’m working with or producing, I will explain the how’s and why’s of making use of the technology. Often once its explained, they have no issue with it.
I don’t use technology to deceive, I use it to enhance.
Its been a rough and tumble year. Things started off looking extremely promising then in a matter of months multiple projects and one bigger one all came to a crashing halt.
Rough and Tumble
The rough… A person I was working with for a nice boost on streaming media ended up stealing $14,000 from me. That might not sound like a ton of money, but as a non-signed artist that is paying for everything – that puts a serious dent in your operational cash flow. This is one of the primary reasons I’ve been so quiet here on my ‘dot com’. I’ve been out money to make things happen when I should have been seeing a return.
In turn, this slowed my process down on making the finishing touches on my website. (grrrr).
Its made it difficult for me to upgrade gear.
I’ve been unable to do any PR.
Not a fun position to be in.
Right now I have someone working on getting that money back from them, but after 3 months of trying, I’m beginning to lose hope.
Another element of fallout from this is losing the lovely lady I had been dating for nearly a year. That was a blow as well.
The tumble… They (whomever ‘they’ are) say “roll with the punches.” I’m feeling more like I’ve been tumbling. Whilst I’ve been recovering from the theft, I’ve been finishing music. Lots of music. Some with co-writers, some for TV placements, some for my future releasing. Writing and recording all this music is part of what keeps me sane in such a conniving business.
In other news. A device, that I developed for my own use a couple of years ago, is now generating interest from a couple of companies. I had a meeting with one company a week and a half ago at the end of July. The meeting was scheduled for 30 minutes. That 30 minute meeting ended up lasting an hour and 45 minutes. To me that’s a very good sign and sometime next week I will reach back out to them to follow and see where their thoughts are. In the meantime, I’ve started the patent process to make sure my idea is protected.
Some friends of mine have started developing a content platform for YouTube. As it turns out, my channel and website titled Inside The Recording Studio will get rebranded to be the umbrella for all the content. I’m looking forward to providing cool content about gear, recording and the process of creating music.
Moving on
As I sit here recapping on several months of what feels like waiting in a holding pattern, I’m working on keeping a positive attitude going into my birthday. I’m taking yet another trip around that sun. Despite being beat down again in my career as a musician, I can be grateful for being alive and healthy!
As the song image for Spotify shows above – I will Rise Up!
I’ll work on being a bit more energetic with content here. In the meantime, thank you for reading.
BTW – if you haven’t joined my email list, please do!
Rise Up My Juicy New Single
How To Find
Time to drop a little knowledge on ya in order to find my new single Rise Up. It released on Friday January 20 and can now be found on your favorite digital service (hint, my favorite is Spotify). That means you’ll find it at places like Tidal, Apple Music, Deezer, YouTube, and more.
Listen Here
Of course you could also listen to Rise up right here on my website on the Rise Up page. Of course that page also contains the lyrics, artwork, and liner notes. Kinda like having a web version of hardcopy version’s full blown information.
Significance of Rise Up
You might ask yourself why did I release it on Inauguration Day? Its a great question that has a real live answer.
The answer is, I felt it my duty to call out the fact that the country has elected the wrong person. A person who claims to be for the “little” guy, but in reality is solely out for himself and his family. If there is one thing that I hope to achieve, it is to have people Rise Up against going backwards in this country. My desire is to see people gather and protest. To demonstrate. To call out the elected leaders to start doing their jobs rather than creating chaos.
Enjoy
In all, regardless of whether you are a republican, democrat, independent, Green Party, tea party, whomever – you can put this song to use. In fact, I’d love to see you putting it into action. Share your photos and videos, of your using it for protest, with me on Instagram or Twitter. I’ll be happy to RT or share the love. Go forth and make use of your freedom, before you lose more of it. Enjoy it, sing it, share it!
Ready To Love 2017
Mere hours into the new year and I’m ready to love 2017 already. See, I got to spend time with my main squeeze at a really amazing party somewhere deep in wine country (a.k.a. Napa Valley, CA). Cool friends, cool place, great times. That’s an amazing way to get the new year started off right.
Happy New Year to you!
Ultimate New Music
My first thing I’m ready to love 2017 for is new music. My ultimate new music. That doesn’t mean I’m not looking forward to new music from other artists, but I do have a lineup of some amazing tunes. Tunes that cover a gamut of lyrical ideas – plus they are all sonically different as well as being stylistically different too.
In a time of when so many songs and artists all start sounding the same, I’m still sticking to the catch 22 land of proven difference.
Deliver More Themes
My second reason to love 2017 is another juicy opening theme. It was easy to miss last year when I snagged the opening theme to Nightwatch on A&E. A clever show that follows the engaging stories of police, fire and EMT heroes working the night shift in New Orleans. The show has been a rousing success.
I’m looking forward to having the opening theme on yet another show. I get all tingly thinking about having two shows running concurrently with music I created as their opening salvos.
Not sure how many Alan Thicke had, but I’d definitely love to measure to the number he had. I envision hitting 10 in my future.
Increase Live Performances
The third damn good reason to love 2017 is for the work I plan on putting into performing more live shows. There’s something in the works that should lead to the initial explosion for a particular song released a few months back.
I’m excited to be talking to some managers and agents about taking the show on the road and bringing it to you!
Plus it means getting the share the music with you. Which is what I want my 2017 to be all about.
Trendy music is always a topic on year-end lists.
Goodbye To A Lousy 2016
Looking back on a year that for a lot of us was probably not our greatest glory is a hard thing to do. I think the one thing that got a lot of people down had to be the deaths of a lot of entertainment icons. Musicians, actors, and creative types that many, if not all, of us are familiar with. Its sad to see icons pass away.
Sizzling Trendy Music
While I didn’t really grow up thinking about pop music, I have come to embrace it pretty hard in the last year. But it doesn’t mean I wasn’t aware of many of the popular musicians who passed away this past year. The main reason for the embrace isn’t to be chasing trendy music, but rather to spread out and create more interesting music. Rock feels like a dead subject – especially when most rock isn’t being overly adventurous in sonic terms. Pop music on the other hand is ingesting so many different vibes that it becomes really hard to ignore.
Fantastic Spotify
Spotify encapsulates the beauty of finding out what is trendy music. Streaming music and especially Spotify makes it incredibly easy to listen to more music than you can shake a stick at. For me it means taking time to listen to what is topping the charts. This in turn gives me the ability to tear apart the instrumentation and the concepts that led to the creation of the song. That in turns improves my writing, my arrangements, and my production skills.
An Inspired Past
While I don’t spend a ton of time dwelling on the past, I did spend time appreciating the music of many who passed away this year. Part of what has stood out is the timelessness of the music created by artists like Prince, George Michael, David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Leonard Cohen, and producer Sir George Martin. That’s an incredible list of people who redefined the music industry in decades long before I started playing an instrument.
Impact With The Now
Newer music like Daya, Shawn Mendes, The Weeknd, Alessia Cara, Bieber (yes, I’m putting him in this list), and DNCE shows how I can incorporate a variety of styles and make them something new. Looking forward into 2017 I’ve got a line of singles I’m excited to get released. Every song is different from each other. There’s even some that are a serious departure from my normal concept of releasing music. Think someone like DJ Snake or Calvin Harris, more trendy music and I’m looking to keep people on their toes.
Demolish Your New Year’s Eve
So on this final day of 2016 I want to wish you a fond farewell to a poor year of entertainment deaths and welcome you to an exciting year of new music. Wherever you end up partying tonight, I hope you’ll have a seriously mind-blowing time. I also want to see you survive any experience you use to ring in the new year.
See you on the flip side with new music to play for you!
Happy New Year!