Perhaps that should say “projects”, as there are quite a few in the oven.
Putting together an album is always a very tedious process, since the creative (fun) part of it is finished… well, for the most part. Mixing and mastering and mixing again and mastering again… and listening and then… mixing it again… and then adding something and mixing again… for every single track. I don’t think I’ve ever slaved over finishing an album like I did with this one. And, in doing so, I still have some complaints. All in all, however, I’m fairly happy with it.
I’ve been very pleased with the reception of it… the decision to sell high quality versions didn’t come easy, but I felt the compromise of giving away MP3′s was fair enough… or at least I hope it is. To me, the business side of music always comes with great hesitation and discomfort. Growing pains, I hope… though I don’t think I’ll ever be fully comfortable selling my music to just regular people like myself.
When a big company with deep pockets has a budget for a project and they need music, I have no problem asking for money. They’re certainly going to make much more than I am. Regular people like me are the reason I make music. It thrills me whenever someone says that they listen to a certain album on their train ride or a certain song always takes them back somewhere (or forward). Moments and feelings like that are what make these albums and “Curriculum Vitae” is no different… in hindsight, anyway.
The album is available pretty much everywhere at this point… now it’s just a matter of promoting it. This is (and has been) where my buddy (and new manager) Nicholas Young of Original Machine comes in. It’s been a bit strange having a “manager” in any conventional industry sense… if for no other reason than that there’s someone else in my business – quite literally. It’s clear that trust is a big part of it – and the entire reason why I signed the contract. I’m excited to see where that takes things from here.
Side note: Jamendo literally just launched their new user platform today and featured yours truly on the front page!
To compliment the album and my general intent behind it, very soon I’m going to begin doing screencast video presentations of the project files of the tracks in Ableton Live and Reason. The logistics are just about figured out – it’s just a matter of cleaning up the projects enough to present them.
Other projects in the works include a collaborative project between myself and Doug Lofstrom (where things are going to get very weird), a score for the forever-in-progress web series “Kung Fu Jonny“, and another project that I’m not at liberty to discuss. : )
I’m also onto my second month in residence at The Elbo Room here in Chicago – probably my favorite venue to play. Learning to DJ in the traditional sense has been challenging, but that’s half the reason I enjoy it. Using Traktor live with the S4 has been really interesting and a lot of fun! It’s the last big expenditure I’ve made for myself before I begin paying back student loans… which is going to be a bitch.
Always fun to learn a new piece of gear... and software.
In case you’re here in Chicago and would like to check out said evening of music, next month’s theme is going to be “Music I Learned To Walk By” – check out the event page here on Facebook if you’re interested!
Thanks for reading and study hard.
To anyone looking at this who was curious as to why all of my work is down from Jamendo, here’s why:
You all know that I use samples… I don’t really try to hide it. It’s not as shameless as a lot of hip-hop artists can be today, but they’re still there – about as shameless as Fatboy Slim, The Dust Brothers, Beck, any one of my heroes. This music wasn’t made with the idea that it was going to be sold or put on a mass market. However, that seems to have changed. I’m going to have to start being very careful now, especially with the success I’ve garnered from Jamendo, the success that Jamendo has garnered for itself, and how quickly things can happen over the internet these days. The full albums will be made available through other sources and not under the CC license. I’ll be putting together a compilation of “clean” tracks, that is, without obvious samples, and then put it back up on Jamendo with a description explaining why this happened.
Patrick Haour from Jamendo brought it to my attention today, and while it was a tad upsetting at first, I’d much rather hear it from him than someone at a massive label or a lawyer.
So don’t panic. Everything should be alright. I’ll keep you folks updated. Thanks again for the all the support.