No news

Have to prepare Cathy and Boy for this weekend to submit to the MMD musical reading program. I need to fix Cathy's lyrics and have to get Emily to learn "Boy" as soon as possible. R.C. Has rewritten the lyrics so that the parts I had prepared for chorus are to be sung by Pat and Neil, two characters with the same vocal range. Joy.

Back On Track

Will be the power ballad from Zombie Wedding!

Ratfans!

Not blogged in a fair few.
Got a Zombie Wedding reading tomorrow so am being kept up preparing demo mp3s for that, nearly done, but passed the midnight limit for a daily blog, so there might have to be two blogs today.
They are going to read from Cathy all the way through to the beginning of the misfortunately titled "All You Need Is The Girl". Hopefully the singers will do a better job performing the music than last time, I've set the songs a little lower in the singing register and they specially requested the mp3s to get a rehearsal done before the reading, which is very nice of them I must say, and I really should put together mp3s more often than when I feel like sending something to RC.

I made a frightening discovery the other day, R.C. and I have only really got five songs for ZW done. Sure Dream Wedding is a big song, but only five, of about twelve, and I hoped to get it done before Christmas! Yikes, I think since R.C. has a real job and I'm a little hesitant about jumping in a starting songs without him we have come to such a stalemate. In reality I should just do some music, but which, and why, and how? I can really see how I got stuck procrastinating on this for a year; too much to do.

Monday blues

Have loads of work to do, need to have an integrated score ready to give to the ANMT people by tomorrow at the latest. No time for a blog. No CEP news but I can officially say that the investigative part of the CEP is pretty much over, we have 50 gold comments and emails referring to the people and that is a manageable amount. Now comes the writing.

Sunday might be a funday from now on

... because I'm starting a blog with my friend and Westminster insider Tom. I don't mean blog though, I mean podcast! :D.

Got loads of work to do to get "Boy He Will Surprise You" rehearsal ready for Tuesday for an LA reading with ANMT, and an improved version of 'Grab A Shovel'

Friday Evening

Nothing much to say. In wake of yesterday's Zombie wedding dramaturgical feedback session I decided it was time to give the script an overhaul. yes it's not my job but there are certain ideas I have, lyrics and such that I have been withholding for no reason and it's probably not helping to do so, so I'm going through the script and doing all the stuff that I (by the right of someone who has secondary say in the script) can really do.

iWeb Pages is wicked for putting contents pages and such together, and I hope the hard work I'm doing formalising the script will work in R.C.'s Microsoft Word, and I hope he wont just redo the pretty changes.

Decemberween!

Man I'm tired.
A meer wee RE ZW for today I'm afraid.

Met up with a Mr John Sparks, dramaturge and musical theatre development person in some hotel bar to talk for a couple of hours in London. I had to go all the way to strange old Leicester Square. I tell you what central London is a land of contrasts; expensive hotels and shitty doorless shops that sell "I <3 London" hoodies, mental people talking at their dogs through a coiled up Metro and people with lesser mental impairments. Mr Sparks had good, insightful things to say and I promptly left him the bill for my coffee as I ran for my train home. London's just dirty.

Old, Fat Tom

No no, its not a mistitle, I'm aware that it's called Robinson's Old Tom, I just have a very dear friend called Fat Tom and I thought I'd mix things up a little. Its a rich, syrupy ale at a princely 8.5%. About as heavy as a stout but none of the marmite-y nodes you get in Guinness or Mackeson's. If you like sweet beers this is a princely example of that tradition. It smells like jam and tastes like what you would expect molasses to taste like if it were brewed. It is rather nice.

No RE for CEP.
RE for Zombie Wedding.
Spent most of today working out an arrangement for "Cathy". It has to be a ballad, a rock ballad, but what else? Rock like Journey or like Europe? The Police or Bonnie Tyler? Well right now i'm not sure, I like it having the soft, clean guitar, but also the piano. Sigh, but then there's the synth strings.

This has been a terrible blog :(.

Mini beer post

Just had a Crabbie's Ginger beer. Marketed as a kind of Edwardian novelty like Pimms, this alcoholic ginger beer is currently undertaking a major marketing campaign, sponsoring the British comedy awards, TV advertising and reduced RRP at supermarkets. Now this little beer blog might seem a little trivial coming from a beer man so I'll give you a little Daniel Sturman history lesson. Before I discovered ale I worked in a horrible pub (I was about 17) that only served lagers, mixers and all the normal pub fair. Unlike the majority of lager haters who drink it anyway, or buy it and stare at it and wondering why they conform to this amber macho bullshit, I took the first step; other drinks. I still had to be the man so I couldn't very well have a screwdriver or Baileys-Amarula, but I wasn't about to let my glad eye leave the optic line just yet. I gave Whisky a run. Hated it. I disguised my distain for whisky by disguising in strong ginger beer (not ginger ale) and that suited my fine. Years later I discovered that it's an actual drink. I worked as a musician for a theatre group and one of the actors gave me the recipe to a really good cough mixture; some special honey that I can't remember the name of and "Rochester Dickensian Recipe Ginger Wine". It's non-alcoholic and its so strong it will curl your toenails. I still buy it to this day and drink like a "secret judge" sneaks tots of whisky. So yes I would say I know a little bit about the drinking of Ginger. So back to the beer in question. First of all Crabbie's isn't a beer I'm afraid. Don't quote me but I think there's something in the sugering process that qualifies this as a Cider, which is where I take issue. This tastes like cider. It tastes like cider with, I'd say, 5ml of ginger wine in it. That is not ginger beer. Ginger beer should, as everybody who is subject to the premise of the offer of an alcoholic ginger beer would expect, be beer first and foremost. And a heavy beer at that. Something more like a honey mead, and smelling like ginger-loaf. This smells like ginger wine, which isn't a problem in itself, but it's not beer.

If you like cider or if you're like Neil who doesn't like pint-drinks at all so takes his cider flavoured with strawberries and such you will probably throw it on the sweet-pile. I however will leave your ginger beer and continue my passive, meandering existence, occasionally and briefly awakening at the beckon of ginger drinks.

Try Rochester Dickensian Recipe.

Fryday

So called fryday because for breakfast I had scrambled eggs and pancakes, a bodybuilder's breakfast. It's my favourite plate-based pastime. Spent all night until late past bedtime tuning Surprise for a little demo recording. Then this morning I realise that I don't like riff and have composed a more down-key one (more like Prince and less like a musical theatre Swartzy impression of Prince). I'm taking on and improving on "Cathy" while R.C. gets back to me with Surprise and what he wants to do next, I'm worrying however that I'm going to end up tinkering with this stuff forever. However, forever. Cathy needs work though, it's boring and the lyrics don't work, they say what the character is thinking but they are a little airy and vague which is out of character from the other songs. It will probably need a new bridge, counter melody and arrangement certainly. Also it's too high for a Barry to sing with any strength.
(That was all about Zombie Wedding by the way)...

RE: CEP
Nothing today, although its only 11 so more will probably be done later. Tim hasn't got back to me yet about getting a meeting together with him.

When making curry

When making curry use tinned coconut milk, don't try and ground your own coconuts, it takes ages and doesn't work anyway. I am knackered today, and as for "woodern hand brewery's CORNISH BUCCANEER", bust beer I've had in devon, devilishly drinkable golden ale. Now where was I?
RE: CEP
Got some emil responded from an email solicit for views which were nice. Other than that, today has been my day of from CEP work. I've been doing...
RE: Zombie Wedding
Jesus H. Christ when will this song be done. It's 89% finished I swear... but then I still have to instrumentalise it :(. I cracked the choir writing- keep the Sops and Tens with the melody, and put the widest interval between the Sops and Alts, so the Sop would have the 8th in a quad (a four note chord). I'm up to the bit when Cathy squabbles for the broach (or whatever it will become. I think when I start the next song I should put a day marker on it so I can keep track of how much time i'm pissing away crafting this music.

My friend Michael is coming over tomorrow until Sunday so I have to get the song finished if I'm to spend any time with him. Beer will flow.

EMERGENCY BLOG

Okay I was fiddling around with some youtube.com touting. (It's when you comment on songs and people check out your page etc) and after doing it for an hour maybe (its not really work) my myspace views are up about 140 views. The play-count is the same (which tells you how annoying the play-counter is) but just mucking about on youtube has gotten me a good chunk of views... and about three more comments! Wicked!

Tuesmidday

It's actually not midday, its about quarter to two and I just had a possibly gone off soup and microwaved mexican "matter" that might have a few days ago been Enchiladas. I can feel the poos coming on, which is exactly not what I need right now. The bad lunch must have been potent because I had hard boiled egg for breakfast which usually sets any stool like a sword in stone. A chocolate sword.
RE: CEP
Some rather delightful news. Someone on Jack Lynde's myspace wrote this baby...


(Cool I'm responding on this for Indieforums)

not feeling thing this pseudo deep video and song with its californiay beachy words. Im gonna say posery. The websites pretty smart which only makes the song seem more dishonest.
on behalf of indiemusic forums, 2 stars


This is exactly the kind of information we are looking for and we got it! I guess the rubbish forums do yield (one) response. Neil and I have another plan to get the view count for the youtube pages up, it probably won't work though. Erm, a couple more myspace comments. I think Myspace is a bit of a dead horse really. 
RE: Zombie Wedding
Still on that f*ing "Surprise", It has possibly the best lyrics I've ever written but my inexperience in chorus writing is so clear. I don't know if you use arcs or build up your chorus until the end or not, or what inversion of a chord say, is the grander when sung in harmony. Is close harmony bigger sounding than 4ths and 5ths? I might actually have to do some investigating. The song has a bit where they wonder into a new strange store and I've inadvertently written what sounds like a little Holst-y moment. It could be the Neptune suite. 
Oh I feel sick :(

Monday, Monday.

Just had a nice bowl of porridge with cold busting honey; I have a chesty cough.

RE: CEP
Finally about eight comments, all banal so I'm going to definitely have to message each commenter and request that that leave a more detailed, biguous comment. Also had a couple messages in myspace from people who read the forum requests so I might post them on the myspaces to encourage others to give more specific comments. views are up too.

RE: Zombie Wedding
Still that stupid Surprise song. I think I'm just going to have to completely choreograph the scene to fit around the song, the book-writer probably wont write it but it will make better theatre. I need to learn how to write for choir, I'm being far too low-range dependent, probably Sibelius's fault.

RE: Life
have an interview today in Rick Rogers' office to discuss a little bit of online music promotion work, just a few hours a week I think but should be fun, and an education.

Just had come apple crumble and coffee

Yes you read correctly, I just emjoyed a delicous portion of microwave-fresh apple (and blackberry) crumble with cold, tinned custard. Perhaps I should explain. Saturday is fish'n'chip night. I have to make Neil a pudding once a week to avoid the afore-promised dead arm. Fish'n'chips sends me to sleep (alongside my weekly bottle of dark ale). I feel asleep as the crumble cooled. I had to eat my crumble for a very early breakfast rather than a dessert. And like all Americans, I cannot enjoy anything with sugar on and in it without a tall mug of black gold.
RE: CEP
We know have two, count um', two comments on the myspace. They are a little vapid but I'm not complaining. The forums have yielded nothing special but I can't say I'm surprised, the world of discussion forums is a closed world where nothing happens beside in-joking between nerds, nothing of outside discussion. Perhaps if the comments continue to be vapid I might write to the individual commenters and ask them to comment on how the music makes them feel. Yes, I might just do that.... (sly eyes).
RE: Zombie Wedding
Surprise is better, there is still that missing chord that's annoying me, perhaps I will just shoot myself with a minor 6th and admit mediocrity. It's a good song but when R.C. asked to hear it yesterday I quickly put together a recording with me singing all the choir parts and it sounded pretty poo, probably because all the parts where in the same register and the piano was down in the mix, but it inspired me to spend all day fiddling with the first minute of it. It will be good. ish.

My Precious Saturdays

Okay, have discovered Sketch-up and you can make houses in it, like the sims but actually grows with fun as you go rather than drags. I'm desperately going through google trying to find castle/theatre plans to make. Yes thats right, I'm a waste of dump.

RE: CEP
Got about three six new people but no comments from them, I did however get a message with the comment and the person said they couldn't be bothered to add as a friend (this is on myspace). Fair enough, maybe I will post it on the myspace page anyway. Yes, yes I will do that. Also about twenty or so new views overall. I have no idea how many people have visited the personal websites because it resets the counter every time I change something on the site but I think its in the few hundreds.

RE: Zombie Wedding
Just got an updated script with Surprise and scene six. RC has changed my title for the scene six song which will change the song but never mind, I didn't have any ideas for the song anyway. I've spent ages fiddling with Surprise today so I haven't looked at how the scene has been changed, I hope it has Cat being stressed and thus would appreciate a surprise. Oh my head. Oh oh, on no. I mentioned it yesterday (about Thrill Night).

Friday morning.

RE: Dartington CEP





So far a maximum of around a hundred views from the various pages and two youtube comments. Apparently online traffic multiplies rather than steadily expands, so two today might be four tomorrow and eight the next day. If it's true its good news. I not I might have to extend the yester-mentioned invitation to take part in the investigation knowingly to a wider public.


RE: Zombie wedding
Got the first post-first-reading revisions through for the first three songs. No manger changes but I'm majority overhauling one of the songs. Deb's verse of 'Dream Wedding' is now a kind of Madonna groove rather than bouncy pop groove, a little slower and a more original way to show a feisty character than dirty blues or rock or any other lazy musical theatre composer trope. I ridiculously spent a good eight hours on Dream Wedding today and it's noway near complete. Also had an idea about how to fix Thrill Night, put in a lead break then chorus rather than a third line of dialogue. The character can act in the break. My god it will be stupid.




RE: Daniel Sturman.
Considering, in fact drafting a how-to in putting together a piano score, it will be epic because it aint easy or fun. Also added a resources page to Danielsturman.com to post musical theatre related information, maybe i'll become a hub one day of good information. Or not.

Nothing Yet

Profile views are expanding but yet nobody has commented on any of the artist's myspaces' or youtubes'. I'm thinking that if i get a comment emailed to me, facebooked or messaged (because commenting requires friend adding and makes the whole rigmarole quite longwinded) then I will repost it on youtube or myspace respectively. I'm also going to (perhaps today) start oiling the wheels of this baby by actually being upfront about what we're doing. I will just do it on one forum to see if there are people who would be interested and maybe would get their friends involved, friends not under the guise.
Here's what I drafted...

An Indie Music Investigation?

Hey everybody,

I'm posted here as a shout out to see if anybody on the indie forums would be interested in being the eyes and ears for an investigation about the context of the artist in Indie music. If you would be interested it would take no more that ten minutes of your time. 

All I would need you to do is pick out one of the three artists below and listen to their song, check out their webpage and just get to understand what they are about a little bit. Then I would need you to comment about what you think of the song considering what you know about the artist. 

The conceit of the investigation is that the video and the song are the same for all three artists. Doing this will mean that any conflicting opinions from you good people about any of the artists' song will be a product of the context of the song in relation to the personality of the artist rather than the actual notes and lyrics; and that's what I'm looking into.

Cheers for reading this far already...

The artists are:

Jack Lynde who's myspace you can check out at www.myspace.com/jacklynde, his webpage at http://www.jacklynde.com and his youtube account at http://www.youtube.com/jacklyndemusic. 

Evan Drake who's myspace you can check out at www.myspace.com/evandrakemusic, his webpage at http://www.evan-drake.com and his youtube account at http://www.youtube.com/evandrakemusic.

And finally Vancouver who's myspace is over at /www.myspace.com/thebandcalledvancouver, his webpage at http://www.vancouver-music.com and his youtube account at http://www.youtube.com/vancouvertheband.

You can comment on the artist's youtube video, myspace page, myspace personal message or webpage email. Do check out at least the webpage before commenting as there is bio information and other business that might help you get to know the artist a little better. 

This is most sincerely not an inventive piece of spam or band promotion, this is a real investigation I'm undertaking for a university project. If you would like some more information don't hesitate to message me. 

concerning concerns

Concerns concerning my CEP

Okay so the sites are up and look pretty good. We have put made up three artists of similar musical genre, with contrasting non-musical personalities.

Jack Lynde is a confident, well marketed, well photographed singer with a site shop and an iTunes account. I would expect him to be met with either a distain for the commercial from people who like folk/indie and perhaps be more attractive to people away from that demo, people who might need a more commercial veneer to legitimise their enjoying the music.

You can check out Jack Lynde's website, his myspace and his youtube account.

Vancouver is a music project by a Canadian folk artist, its more low key and I imagine will be met more favourable by people interested in folk because it takes on the aesthetic. You can check out the website, the myspace and youtube account.

Evan Drake is a weird one. We don't really get information about the commercial/indie aesthetic of him, only that he's dead. I imagine the response to Evan will be supportive, emotive and maybe even a little spiritual. How that will inform our CEP I don't really know. You can check out Evan Drake's webpage, myspace or youtube account.

Any who, concerns at this early stage in the gestation period of the Cep are thus; what if people just don't write, listen or give us the information we need. I don't mean give us information counter to our expectations, just not tell us about the music. Would that be a bad thing? How are we going to write this up, how are we going to convert this anecdotal information we get from people into a talk about music in context with the context being the personality of the artist?

I believe that its easier to remember, enjoy and relay your feelings about a song when you know more about an artist. That much I think interests me most in the Cep.

Back after a break

So I'm back posting on my blogger account, for a while I was blogging from my own website but that has so many contingency issues as well as google spider issues that I'm jumping off that island and I'm back in the boat. How's that for a weighty analogy?

There have been several major upheavals in recent times and since I'm not sure when I last blogged, I will just blabber away a bit.

Right now, as in this very day/week/month I am writing/promoting/arranging a musical that I had long abandoned when it was merely an acorn. I watched a one star movie from the eighties called 'One Of The Guys' one night and was inspired. The acting and writing wasn't really terrible, in fact it would have been more than passable as musical theatre dialogue. I didn't watch the film and think it would be a great show to musicalise at all, in fact the way the film dealt with music was what had inspired. The music in the film was, like all teen films, pop music. The difference is that unlike music in great 80s teen films like 'The Breakfast Club' that frames itself rather prominently, this music in this film was badly cut, ridiculously quiet and not really adding anything except overlaying the low frequency buzz of super8 camera footage. Anyway I took from the film a desire to make a musical in which the songs were badly placed in the plot and non plot specific. This idea I thankfully took into the direction of musicalising a one star 80s movie. More than that even, a musical of a film with the pop songs used in the film sung by the characters, as lyrically un-intergrated as possible. All this as well as a script full of antiquated 80s dialogue and Gremlins/Ghostbusters high concept situations. I called this abomination Zombie Wedding.

I put a small script together and wrote about four songs (I had mapped out maybe eight songs in the whole show) and then hit a snag when I felt I had muddied the script with farce and a slow burning ark and left it. A long time later I advertised for a collaborator for a different idea and R. C. responded (via Mercury Musical Developments). He didn't like my new idea so I mentioned Zombie Wedding and we went on from there. He came up with a new plot that included the characters, general tone and songs I had already written, and a whole lot more. That happened a few months ago and right now we are nearly half way through writing this show and its going good so far.

PTO

my day with my new book

The Frustrated Songwriter's Handbook

I was too bored to do anything yesterday and haven't been well today but during a session of toilet-magazine reading i noticed in a Sound-on-sound article about The Doves new album they mentioned an intensive songwriting program they got from a book called...

The frustrated songwriters handbook.

Check diz shiz out.

I've ordered it and will be starting it rather soon.

Sunday Night

I'm afraid nothing has occurred today, I wi.l have to be and extra busy bee tomorrow.

Nevermind.

Saturgay?

Apologies for no Friday update, I did little for some reason, probably the 'getting back into it' jitters that I read about in that book 'The War On Art" which was cool until it got to the strange spiritual bit. Anyway worked some more on the mix, secured the melody and even began the... ahem, lyrics. While walking the Doogle Dog I wrote in my head the song Harry Potter would sing when he arrived at Hogwarts for the first time, as if it were a Stephen Schwartz musical, it had key changes and mid sections while Harry got on the train, met the ginger one and Hermione Granger. It got me thinking, if you think of every line of melody as one new thought or one addition to the story then that would be a good way to write cohesive lyrics. Banal lyrics (like those that I write) tend to wool around one sentiment for a whole verse, which has no movement whatsoever and is totally crap. Keeping said Harry Potter rule in mind I will set out to write the lyrics as best I can for this first song.

Since I didn't write one for yesterday or Wednesday and might not do a good one for tomorrow, I will try and get more done and post another blog in a couple hours (which will technically be tomorrow anyway).

Toodles.

Good Thursday

Write the music to 'Tease' today, a soft rock song more in the vein of an American, funky Maroon-5 of Justin Timberlake singer, but I'm sure I could make it sound more rubber soul James Blunt with a little redrumming.

Also put together the lead chord-riff to 'Get Through The Rain', the token sad/love song.

Neither have lyrics yet as I'm trying to write these songs like a big pop producer, laying the tracks rather than worrying about the narrative.

A good day, certainly worth the one I wrote off yesterday in which I got up late, did a half day at the far and went to Norwich for a comedy gig. It was really good, and everyone drank Speckled Hen.

Tuesday does not a good day bring

Got nothing done today I'm afraid, but did install some nice digital arts friendly programs for later in the year.

I did come up with some nifty titles and think up some structural ideas, or scaffolding, but nothing more than that I'm ashamed to say.

I have an evening seeing comedy tomorrow so I will get up extra early and do loads of work to pay for my evening treat, perhaps I will write 'Coca-Cola'.

I watched the BET awards (American R&B awards) today and realized that James Blunt uses R&B instruments. I also realized that my inbuilt internet browser spell-checker is american and Im not sure how to fix it so until then, get used to loads of zeds.

Need To Finish This Quick

Okay, I only have fifteen minutes to send this before its tomorrow and I wont have a clean day-to-day diary.

One of my band/brands it to create a solo male singer in the vein of James Blunt or Will Young.

I wrote a song today called 'My Heart Reaches For You'. After a little distance from it I feel that it probably sounds too much like an existing James Blunt song so it probably wont surface, but it was nevertheless good progress to write a song today.

More tomorrow. Bye.

The Start Of A New Era

And so it begins, the birth of a new stage in the musical development of Daniel Sturman. It begins, or I should say will begin after I have finished this highly significant blog. I intend over the next four or so months to to document daily my progress through my upcoming project as to assist in the documentation later. Also writing a blog means having enough accomplished in a day to fill a blog, so should be as good a reason to up my productivity as document it.

But now onto the actual project.

This project is my third year, first term project. It is called a C.E.P, a cep. A cep is a Critical Enterprise Project or something like that. Basically it is an opportunity to take an extended period of college time and focus it at something that will help you as a creative person understand an environment, grown and learn (or none of those). Since I would like to compose programatic and writer popular music, I have chosen to spend my cep living and investigating the role of a popular songwriter. I will also assume other roles later in the project since there is much more to it than just writing songs. I am doing what is called a hybrid cep, a cep which I bulk up with my digital arts minor. Add to that that I am working with Neil Coppin who's interest are close to mine (he is interested in popular music production) in a joint cep what I am left with is a massive project.

The initial idea was that Neil and I would become a songwriting 'house', churning out songs at a high rate and see if we could sell them to some publishers, satisfying our music lecturers with

our music input and our digital arts lecturers with online profiling and other computer magic. Our digital arts lecturer had another idea. He suggested that rather than just writing and sending off songs, we might create some artists and see if we could create some hype about them via the internet, incorporating all our digital wizardry. This idea seemed far more fun so we went along with it, realising that the songwriting would be shoved to a corner in favour of making music videos, touching up promo photos and creating profile pages.

If we have any hope of doing all this I would need to have the songs, the first part of this long journey, ready as soo

n as possible and that is why I am starting the songwriting part of my cep fairly early.

While my sister is on holiday I am using her room as my songwriting office, as well as using the groaty old family piano for a change of scene now and then.

The digital piano is a Korg SP250 midi'd up to a new iMac with Logic Pro.

More later.

The Incident Criticale

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The incident that, for me was critical came not from music, like it probably aught to for a music student. Instead it came from the music video crafted part of the project. Let me explain.

Pick up a camera, pick out something to shoot, shoot it for about ten minutes and then edit it down to about three minutes is no attitude to music video direction. I'm sure I always knew that but somehow I it all slip in favour of a robot suit. The suit was made of brown cardboard and Matt wore it and talked around like a robot, and that was our entire concept. Like the very costume itself, it had a weak atheistic structure with no brain behind it.

Let me start at the beginning.

I was away when the finer details of the music video were explained as well as for the digital arts lecture in which Tim Dollimore went through the various ways to inexpensively produce a music video so from the very start, I was in the dark. Matt and Jade who were at both lectures had put a string of ideas together involving stop-gap animation (think Aardman) and a sort of hand-puppet realisation of the lyrics to the song. I initially thought it was a bad idea since a lot of the ideas they had involved being outside and if there is one thing I know about making videos on the cheap (and possibly the only thing) is that if you film outside then the uneven natural light makes the film look like a home video. The idea of theirs I really did like was the stop-frame animation and I bargained keeping that if we replaced the hand puppets with a pop-up book that played out the lyrics. My reasoning was that if the world was on paper, we could do it inside under controlled lighting conditions. So I then went about thinking of how I might make a pop-up book. I had never made one before so first things first I went on the net and learned how to make basic pop-up parts. Once I was relatively confident with the engineering involved I took the first lyric of the song and planned a two page, multi-faceted pop-up that could be choreographed to the music. It took about two long days. And there were three more verses and two chorus' more. I gave up pretty sharpish.

It wasn't as if I was giving up on the whole process however, I had a plan. A plan in which I wouldn't spend all my waking hours cutting and gluing. I was going to put Matt in a robot suite, film him messing around the place and then edit it together into a charming, quirky video. So I spent that night making a cardboard robot video. I'm no tailor I admit.

The next day was a Monday and we had to have something to show for Tuesday so we had to work our socks off to have something ready. We raced to college to pick up a camera, anticipating that we would get the camera early and do some rehearing for the dusk/evening shooting schedule I had envisioned. We of course were informed once we got to the technology department that digital cameras were only being allowed out until five o'clock rather than the usual nine thirty the next morning. My idea was shot in the air and we had to show something. We went home with the camera and over a cup of tea decided what we could shoot in the limited time available. Since we only had about four hours and Jade could not get to use any time before three of those were up, we told her not to bother coming and that we would make do with just the two of us. Matt had an idea of going into the woods and filming something like Big-Foot footage. It was ridiculous but it could work, or so we thought.

Without any plan in our minds whatsoever we went into the woods and filmed about half an hour (in the space of a few hours) of Matt as strange, cardboard forest-bot, a Sasqubot if you will. Within moments of returning home and loading our footage up on the computer I think both Matt and I were struck with a heavy dose of reality. Our video footage was awful. Really really rubbish. I would not have it shown at college even with the arbitrary “work in process” disclaimer, this was terrible.

I wasn't quite sure how what we had did had become so terrible, we had been filming for hours and everything that people with cameras usually do. Then it hit me; we hadn't really done any work at all. What I had totally neglected was that the filming process is not a creative process at all, in fact it probably requires the least time of any of the process one has to go through when making a video. We had set aside to film something but speaking in terms of content, we had nothing to film. We had no narrative, not time line, no concept and no sign of any effort. For the Tuesday lecture I explained all this to Rick and to my surprise Matt produced from his bag my pop-up book that I had abandoned. Everyone in the class including Tim and Rick thought the idea was cute and conceptually strong and when I explained that it took ages to do the consensus from the group was “so?”. Them saying that spoke directly at me and made me really think about how I had gone about the video and probably many other projects in the past. It made me think that if something is dauntingly hard to do, it will probably have a better result than something that is easy to do, and it's not as if I'm ever too busy to cut out paper.

That weekend I spent all my time (free or not) making more pop up stuff and even planned a little shooting schedule. Because I had planned it all, the filming took about forty minutes and the editing took about an hour. Hard work had paid off.

So for my critical incident I have to say it was the time I, thought lazy workman ship, made a poor video which in turn taught me to plan, organise and put in the work behind the scenes. In the end it was more fun anyway. 

The last post proper

At around 100 view of our video is, I would say, peaking at the point in which all the people I have contacted have seen it. If I were a performing act, I could expect that for every gig I did that number would increase, then once it had reached a critical point it would become large enough to catch passing internet trade. Like the old you need to have money to make money, to get views, you better have some views brother. 

How do I feel about the end of this lecture series? Lets just say there is no six more weeks of winter for me. I will be there for the 3rd year series held in the Rogers room (I think I might make a plaque) bith brass knobs on (the plaque that is). 

I can and have taken so much from the past weeks, I think I might even break it down and say a little but about how each area has inspired and informed.

Careers.

I don't know why but I always have said "when I'm rich I will...". I can't say I ever had a stratergy to get said wealth but I'm certainly sure it didn't involve working long hours every day for years and years before you get anywhere like so many bands and lower level industry people have to. But you know what, I'm ready for it. I've started to really beleive that although that which you desire might seem really far away, and it always is, the way to get there is to start walking now. And you know what else, I'm not thinking about the rediculous "when I'm rich" senario, I want to work hard and see what I can get done. I'm coming around to the idea that those who create the greatest stuff are creating all the time, not to reach a specific goal. I'm want to be like that. 

I can't imagine I will ever be a portfolio musician, I'm not a good enough performer nor do I really enjoy performing but I would really really love to be a promoter, venue type person or something involving promotion. 

Legal

Self-post your music. Done. 

Visibility

Regularly updated websites and blogs are the king of promotion. I think that blogs are the way forward since you can use them to host content, are simple and very easy to update which is the big thing. Oh and a myspace. And a youtube account. The trick is to be there should somebody want to find out about you. I really love this stuff anyway so to hear that engaging in the ownernism that is blogging is actually good for your vision is great. 

Professionalism

I have a suit. I think that a t-shirt with a tie looks kinda cool. But professionalism is so much more than that; it is being pleasent. Punctuallity is a given but being nice?, who'd have thought it. 

Hard Work

This is the daddy. This is not only doing what needs to be done, and then doing it the next day and the next, it is also making work for yourself. This is the thing that has really stuck with me, that the work that is asked of me isn't half of the work that has to be done. For example, just because I have finished my assignments doesn't mean I shouldn't be writing a new blog, composing, doing piano exercises or writing the next email send-out. Or looking into what possible venues would be right for said event and getting information together. Then getting back-up information together. I have a cool idea that I am going to see through (I hope); make a 'rubber' business plan than I can add things to, but never take away from (i.e miss a personal deadline), this way I will never not have some work to do and hopefully, sometimes too much to do. 

Listen to me planning too much work, blogging, wrapping white blue-tack around my thumb, why I'm halfway there already. In fact, I'm already think about something. Imagine an events organiser for all the lower level venues in a town. Woudn't that be really smart? So I represent maybe the twenty or so smaller Norwich venues that have live music. I'm not sure how I would be paid though. Alas. 

But look Rick, look. I'm thinking. 

Bye. 

After the Rain, I mean the A&R man

as of writing this blog our YouTube view count is somewhere around eighty views. Hardly time to retire I'm afraid. Now is that time in the young music promoters week when they sit back, safe in the knowledge that their job is (for now) over and it's time for the slow burning word of mouth to spread like a wildfire. Who knows, this time tomorrow I might have one hundred views. Think of that with me, one hundred views. 

I know I know, slim pickings in the real world, but I do see exactly what this exercise has tried and to be fair, succeeded in doing. Assuming that Giraffe were a real band, out there touring and promoting ourselves tenasticaly, our viral campaign would really have wings. I'm not really convinced that one can actively create a viral sensation. I mean, I know they happen, but only now and then and they are never (or seem never) to be deliberate. For music promotion the viral option is something to give the 'I want it now' generation something of you they can enjoy at their leisure once they have heard about you. But one thing hasn't fallen by the wayside; you still have to perform live. You need a real fan base before anyone will forward your embedded YouTube videos to their work colleagues. I'm not dissing what we have done over the past month with Rick, it has been the best thing we have done at college this year, but it's best to think of it as a complement to normal ways of getting music heard rather than an alternative. It's digi-ready, it's the fax machine, it's 'thanks for coming to see us and check us out on myspace'. 

Tuesday last we had a guest visit in the shape of a gum chewing black jacket, grey before time who really gave it to us straight in terms of would he as an A&R man listen to our stuff. He said my chorus wasn't grand enough. I understood. Tim liked my video and I don't remember what Grizzly and Joe had to say. I told the guest people about how I went about writing in a style that I wasn't really that well wed to and they seemed rather impressed with how I was able to dip into a style. 

It got me thinking about what music I am wed to. This year I have been composing piano music for my free compositions and did some kind of Nino Rota stuff for the film music project. Last summer I tried to write a musical called Zombie Wedding and stuff it with 80s pop music and am planning another one with a mix of Jerry Herman and more gritty 80s stuff. But none of that is really what I feel like I should be doing. I have no interest in neoclassical piano music or pastiche Jerry Herman or Depeche Mode. I think I thought I wanted to write for musical theatre because I like drama told through song, but it's not really a style of music; just an application of music. 

Neil had an idea that he and I should (for our CEP) work together and see if we could make a go at being a songwriting/demo producing house. It was probably for the first time in ages that I actually was excited about something involving music (writing 10 minute pieces for piano do not inspire me at all, which I am discovering half way through my degree course). I have a feeling that this course has really fired me up. I feel like I'm getting excited about music again. I really want to write pop songs. I really want to go down into the 'shed' and write a song, then walk back up the garden to the garage and record the song, then burn the song onto a CD, put it in an envelope, lick said envelope and then send it off to some sheeny corporate building. I'd love to do that. I certainly am not loving what I thought I should be composing. 

Everything in the Working The Context lecture series has inspired me. In practically every session I was writing down little ideas, like a magpie. I'm sure when I read back those ideas, some might be not so great, some might be Polo wrappers or a discarded spoon, but I'm sure there is enough silver jotted down to keep me writing. 

In bullet point form here is Working The Context (for me). 

• Exist Online
  
• Work very hard
• Be Patient
• Be Charming
• Look Professional 
• Be Visible
• Update

Something that probably is easy to misunderstand is that the music industry, like the plumbing industry or the taxi industry, is run by people. And people are human. People can forget to call you or get pissed off when you send them nineteen emails a day. People can go on holiday for three weeks. People also like a beer now and then and generally like to hear how nice people they have met along the way are getting on. So make contacts and keep people up to date. Send Christmas cards, tattoo their names across your forehead and mention them favourably in blogs. 

Now if you will excuse me, my fondu is just about ready. 

Cheers Rick. 

read on from previous post

I'm not sure if this will work but i am trying to post this blog as a part two to the 'Have you got any cream' blog, so if this is the first blog on the subject of a video on YouTube you have yet read, you might want to read the older post first. Or not and totally trip yourself sideways. Rock on.

    [Oh and the other post has poor spelling]

Now where was I...

Right so anyway we drummed up some visually pleasing content, filmed it with an HD camera, edited it together in iMovieHD (a nice Mac application) and added some subtle video effects. Then Popped it on my new YouTube profile; Giraffe Music. [Youtube.com/GiraffeMusicUK] with a little information about the persons involved and a suitable amount of tagging. That was easy. But now the work begins. 

Next I will have to put up a Giraffe Music (the organisation I have made to represent us musicians) Myspace for the purpose of Working The Context, and maybe even some other promotion things like Facebook pages. I will say though that in the interests of preventing spam and advertising taking over, Facebook is hard to promote music on. It's only really usefull if you already know the band and then seek out their page. 

On the other side of the Working The Context fence, we had a guest speaker in the shape of a lady called Helen Searle who is a top brass music industry lawyer. The main thing she had to say was 'self-address your music to copywrite it' and use formal if not legally-binding 'paper' agreements with everyone you work with. And date them. Always date the paper. 

Have You Got Any Cream?, the Viral is Spreading!

Have You Got Any Cream? The Viral Is Spreading!

Let the viral disease spread 

across the laps of the discerning 

youtube perouser. Two items to 

mention before I get on with the 

blog proper; one being is it me 

or does viral sound rude? The other is why doesn't blogger.com have an 

intergrated spell-checker rather than a check-at-the-end option? People of my 

spelling capacity could do themselves a miscrack under such a regeime.

Anyway you might have noticed 

that at the header of today's 

installment there is a handsome 

window. That, blogfans, is the 

youtube.com video for our music 

project. Only about eight or nine hours ago Jade and Matt and myself filmed the

carefully coreographed documentation/video of the cute pop-up wonderstuff 

that I and a little of Matt had spent this weekend and a little of the previous 

putting together. The idea was 

not mine to go in the direction we

have ended up in, I have to admit,

it was alway's Matt's idea to do

something in which you can see 

the hands moving whatever the contents are, so cudos to him. I can however take

credit for the eyes that open up from the white page while the line "But you would 

have seen me there" is sung and again when the shoe becomes a bird and flies,

I feel the former has a simple, charming power. 

But todays drivvel is not about to whom credit is owed and blah blah, it is the 

common celebration between all free men who have put a video up on youtube, 

shine on you crazy Youtubs. 

Something mental has happend to the formatting on the blog's page so I might 

start on a new blog page...

Blog Four. Or how to fail at musical video making.

So this was the weekend that 'We' the people of our group of three sought out to make an amazing video, the best video in fact, in the whole world even. Sound arrogant?, well we were. We thought we were like the gods of making videos. But don't take my word for it, just read ahead and see how wrong we would become; read on traveller.
My original idea was a cutesy pop-up book that would have an animated feature for each line of duologue, the reasoning being that the amazing spectacle would be a hot seller on the web. As soon as the idea had surfaced you can bet I was down Totnes craft shop (this being last Friday afternoon) buying card and colouring in pens to realise the endeavour. As Stephen Sondheim says; It's not enough to have the vision, it's all about the execution. By which I mean it took AGES to make the first page which would represent just four lines of a song of six verses, and I mean from getting home after going to the shop to going to bed that night ages. Phewey.

I'll admit it, I was flying too close to the sun that evening and I feel, I feel fast and hit the ground hard. More that that we couldn't get a camera out that weekend so not only did we have to do another idea, we couldn't do anything about it until we got a camera on Monday. Days away.
My next idea was getting Matt and Jade, dressing them up as robots and then filming them at dusk, romantically (in Robot form) interpreting literally the narrative in the lyrics of the song. We hit a wall; unfortunately we could only get a camera out until five and Jade could not get to my house until three. This meant that for one we could not film at night and whatever we did, we had Jade for no time once we had dressed her up in tin foil and then loaded our work onto my computer and getting the camera back to college by five. Instead we told Jade not to bother and just filmed Matt in his cardboard robot costume, skateboarding and such. It was rubbish. Absolute dung. We went to class the next day with nothing to show, heads bowed, egos tarnished. Especially Jade.
At class, or support group in our case, we explained our predicament and that our Robot idea bore no fruit at all to which I identified a weak idea that was not planned and limited by time. Matt to my surprise produced my pop-up book and showed it off. Everyone liked the idea and it gave me (and Matt and Jade) a renewed energy to improve it. I already have some more brilliant ideas about how to improve it more. In case I forget after writing this blog I will jot them down now...
Drawing the pop-up book as it it opened!
Colouring in the book as it goes!
(Yorkshire Tea is amazing! I used to like Twinnings but not anymore!)
Involving lights and colour and other, extra-pop-up-ial stuff!
Adding some stop-motion animation!
Letting the camera see the strings (or more accurately seeing the hands)!


To understand what I mean by seeing the hands I am taking inspiration from the opening of Napoleon Dynamite and the really cute stop motion from an artist called erm... Oh I forget but maybe the below link will mention her.
Here is the Napoleon Dynamite opening scene...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjAK-o9W73Q

Here are some amazing if short examples of cute stop-motion art that I would like to use in the music video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8G5AkXdNi4

and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhdKCQfYptg

The tricky second album. I mean blog.

Right. I have been pretty slack about doing a blog, mainly because I have been doing the actual 'working the context' work and my own composition work, oh and having to pop home for a family thing. Before I get up to date I will post a picture of a guy called Alex Lee. <<<<

 Mr Lee is a guitarist and producer based in Bristol. He is very cool and has worked with many a band and toured many a far off land. Big thanks for coming and giving us a talk about promotion, existing as a portfolio musician and the art of production Mr Lee! 

For his second trick (the second half of the day's lecture), he listened to the popular music compositions that we in groups had composed and gave us feedback. I'm not sure if I've even explained this in the blogs so far so I will quickly sum up the last two weeks worth of work that led up to the above situation.  

Rick Rogers is the head honcho for this lecture series called 'Working The Context' in which we as musicians who wish to enjoy an income are taught how to self promote, self produce and basically make a product of ourselves. Rick recognises the impending shift in the music industry that will favour the working musician. At least I think so. 

Anyway, He put us into tidy groups of four and gave us a play list of genres of music and told us to pick a play list (or audience) and write and produce a record for next weeks lecture. Now a non-Dartington student might find that is typical request, 'do something for next week' but we soft bellied, lazy, fat art students are not used to practical deadlines, so we had to cut our twelve hour lie ins short and remember how to play our instruments. As it happens I was put in a group with my house mate and guitarist Matt, Jade the saxophonist who is probably one of the best musicians in our year and some girl who never turned up. We decided pretty readily to do a Radio One play list style song and then went our separate ways to find out what was currently playing on Radio One. 

The list for that week was mostly R&B and dance music so I looked a little further down the list to the b list where there seemed to be a few more guitar based song. It became a toss between the new Greenday toss and a typical Snow Patrol power ballad. My personal feeling about Greenday is that they are more than their bouncy music and even if I could write in their shape; it wouldn't sound like them. So then its Snow Patrol's time to be copied. Its not hard, in fact its really easy because Snow Patrol have a tight formula and I think I quite like what they do. Anywho I wrote a song called 'I Need To See You' and played all the keyboard parts into Logic, including some sweet airy, wispy synth bits to get some magic happening. Matt sang the two vocal parts and played in the guitars and then the next day Jade played some long, breathy sax parts. We had a song. 

Alex Lee and Rick liked our song and really had no comments except that we might tone down the sax. I agree as it happens; sax makes things sound like supermarket instrumentals. 

The Big Opening.

First lesson ever is a talk to a portfolio musician. A portfolio musician is always in the employ of different means rather than exclusively involved with a band. 

The nice man we get talked by is a Bassist called Kev Sanders.

And so begins the talk about being a portfolio musician and what can be learned from it. 

He says;

Focus and hard work are the constant in being a musician, like being an obsessive compulsive; why else would you push yourself so hard into such strange business?

Do it if you have to do it and you can't do anything else. 

Opportunities arise by getting yourself around so you have to do it before you ever get to do it. 

Theatre playing (pit musicians for musicals) is good for long term work, possibly the best. 

Hotel work pays.

Cruise ship work pays.

Interpersonal skills will get you further than talent; be nice. 

From the start you must make yourself know, poke your nose in and offer yourself, for free if need be. 

Teaching fills is in the troths between the peaks of gig money. Teaching is guaranteed money as there are always people who want to learn music and private teaching is the most profitable form of teaching and requires no qualifications. Teachers have to be inspirational characters so to be a part time teacher means you are actually doing what you are teaching and will in turn inspire.

Session musicianship.

Gone are the days when you can just bus around London getting a gig. You will never ever get tab so forget it guitarists you lazy people. You are fallible and will not get it first time and for the most part there will never be time for you to do you master work, as a session musician you are one of many just in to do a job then get out. Like everything else you have to slowly nudge yourself into session work, now and then doing what the big boys don't want to do until you are up there with them. 

Arranging and writing for people pays.

Sell your own stuff at gigs; CDs and stuff. 

Do it if you want to, because you have to want to. 

Don't do drugs. Being healthy will make you a better musician. 

At the end of the day you have to be a good musician sure, but you have to work hard, for the rest of your life.