Thinking Metal Music

03-Jan-24 : A staggering discovery

Last month, CD Baby celebrated something of an anniversary - 25 years of helping musicians reach a wider audience.

Hurrah. Wonderful. Good for them.

And, by way of a Thank you for our continued support, they sent us a small payment for a small number of lost licenses that they had discovered in the course of one of their tidying up operations. In other words, someone used our music and CD Baby were not able to collect a royalty payment. I don't know how that happened. I don't know who was responsible. I'm guessing that someone inside YouTube dropped a ball...

I went through the usual statements and... Err... what? How many? CD Baby had miraculously discovered around fifty four thousand unpaid usages. Read that back slowly. Fifty four thousand. Wow. That's a lot of dropped balls, there...

How much did we earn for those fifty four thousand unpaid usages? Just seven dollars. Yeah, seven dollars.

Do you get the impression that there's something wrong with the streaming model?

11-Dec-23 : Electronic Music Open Mike Night at The Ship Isis

I'd been offered at slot at the Electronic Music Open Mike Night at The Ship Isis pub in Sunderland last week but decided against appearing. Nothing wrong with the group or the venue. I just decided that the music I'd planned on playing wasn't ready for a public performance. It wasn't good enough.

Nearly everything I've done for the last eight years has been written in-the-box using softsynths and plug-in effects, and whilst this approach does serve up a huge sonic banquet, a performance featuring just a guy and a laptop isn't (for me, at least) all that exciting. It's a personal thing, I guess. I like to see real musicians playing real instruments delivering a real performance.

Instead, I went along with my camera, took some pictures and just listened.

And there's always next month... But first, I need to work out a set with some proper kit...

10-Dec-23 : Psychosis Series

Eagle-eyed readers may have spotted that I've started releasing music again. The Psychosis series are a set of on-going experiments available on Youtube and intended to get my creative juices flowing again after an extended period away from both live performance and actual releases.

Whilst many of these pieces are a bit basic and definitely very minimal, they represent various compositions as Work-in-Progress items. They are NOT the definitive article. That said, I still kinda like them.

Psychosis 1 did well with around 200 plays, probably because it sounds a little like Vangelis on an off-day. Psychosis 2 did less well but Psychosis 3 keeps on growing. I'm optimistic that as the quality of the compositions improve then the audience will grow. My goal at this point isn't a huge audience. I'm just trying to find a new set of tools, a new workflow.

07-Aug-23 : Open Music Night at Independent

Thursday night - I took punt and went along to the Electronic Music Open Night at Independent in Sunderland. Umpteen acts, largely unknowns with one notable exception - Ian Boddy.

This was glorious. No flash. No pomp. No introductions. The whole set-up was anything but polished but... this was fun. This is the way music ought to be. Hear something new. Hear something fresh. Instead of the listening to the same old, same old, take a chance. Maybe something will start the creative clock ticking. Maybe the experience will get you back into the studio. It’s an approach I tried a couple of months ago with Organic in Whitley Bay and that ended up re-igniting the whole Uranium Saints project, which had stalled badly.

I stuck around to the end and, even though the last act was very difficult to get into, I shared his pain when nothing, absolutely nothing, seemed to work in his favour. I did smile when the poor guy just lay down on the floor and waited until his penultimate piece had played out. I've flopped (utterly) on stage a few times in the past so... yeah. I know how it feels to die in front of a crowd. At least this guy didn't go scream at the sound guy.

So, it’s an Open Music Night. Turn up. Set up. Play. Anyone can join in.

Sixty four million dollar question - will I?

Come along and find out.

I won’t be posting any more updates on the subject until after the performance and neither will the set be uploaded later. This will be a once-only performance. All the information you need will be available here. Nowhere else.