Practicing

This past week I've been practicing at least twice as much as my usual average. This is for a number of reasons: 1) I'm trying to learn more music. 2) Recordings of a couple recent gigs really kicked my butt. 3) And I'm just trying to force a dedicated practice schedule into my routine.

The last few days I've been working on some new concepts. Ideas that keep popping in my head while performing, but I'm never able to execute them (see #2 above). The first three days of working on these concepts was like pulling teeth. My own teeth. The patterns were somewhat awkward to play on guitar, there are countless variations that confuse my brain and my fingers, and it has to be played really fast to sound right. It's just supposed to be a flurry of notes--something I hardly do when I improvise but want to have in my bag for the right moments. I stopped and asked myself everyday, "Is this worth it? Will it even sound good?"

This morning it all just clicked, at least after priming the pump a little. I could throw it into the right spots during a solo and it sounds great, exactly how I've been hearing it in my head.

The lesson here is an old one. Don't give up. I talked about it with my buddy Dave today, and he described practicing music as a set of stairs, not a ramp. It's a series of walls and plateaus. You bang your head against a wall for a while and then one morning, if you've stuck to it long enough, you'll get up to the next plateau.

If you're a beginner, you face the same obstacles as somebody that's played for 20 years. We're just in different places along an endless staircase. Whether your victory is finally getting that bar chord to sound right or you've finally mastered your melodic minor modes, we can all relate to each other. Keep putting in the hours.

Head Down, Plowing Through

I've started another recording project, this time with vocalist Erika Lloyd, who fronts an indie rock band called Little Grey Girlfriend. We're doing a set of cover songs. While we haven't scheduled a formal release date, I think we're on pace to finish recording by the end of May, so it may be available by early July.

Erika and I met in Bloomington, Indiana. We were in the same music theory class at IU. She also lived down the street from me, just off campus. We got to be pretty good friends, and then she moved to NYC shortly and me. Her boyfriend also happens to be Brad Whiteley, who plays in my trio and appears on a couple of my albums. It sometimes makes me feel old to think about having "couple friends," but Brad and Erika are definitely one of Jill and my best couple friends. It's nice to have such talented friends, and even nicer to be able to work with them.

So far we've tracked for six songs:

"Creep" by Radiohead
"Heart of Glass" by Blondie
"Hey" by The Pixies
"Nobody Home" by Pink Floyd
"One Caress" by Depeche Mode
"The Fool On The Hill" by The Beatles

On deck we have:

"Everything Means Nothing To Me" by Elliot Smith
"Faith" by George Michael
"Soul Love" by David Bowie
"Alabama Song" by The Doors
"Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing" by Stevie Wonder
"All I Want" by Joni Mitchell
"Cherry Coloured Funk" by Cocteau Twins

Once we get into the mixing phase I'll start posting the works in progress for preview. But so far things are sounding pretty good and we're having a great time in the process.

Twitter CD Giveaway, Spring Cleaning

The other day I woke up and looked at my cat sitting on top of a stack of six unopened boxes of CDs. She climbs up there first by hopping on a bench, then stepping on a stack of four unopened boxes of CDs before reaching the summit. These boxes have been sitting there for nearly two years, long enough to blend into the background and become cat furniture. There's almost 1,000 CDs in those boxes.

The nice thing is I actually got rid of just as many. I ordered 2,000 digipaks of Life Is Loud back in 2007 with the thought that a few hundred could go to press, radio, booking, and any other promotional purpose a good looking, physical package might give you an edge. I mailed a ton of freebies, and sold hundreds of others.

Initially, I wanted to sell these myself--taking orders through PayPal or accepting checks by mail. I made many trips to the post office, and in Brooklyn that gets old really quick. I started sending traffic to my album's page on CD Baby, but believe it or not, I've only sold a measly 46 through them. That's not their fault though, it's simply a matter of less demand for CDs by the time I started sending traffic that direction.

Nearly two years after it's release, Life Is Loud sells about 7 albums a week, mostly digital downloads. That's not a lot, but if you look at the facts, it's still pretty damn good. I'm not really doing much to directly promote that album. I play mostly new music at gigs, which are less frequent because I'm getting ready to record a new album. Most of my efforts online are simply to raise awareness of me, Cameron Mizell, the guitarist. The musician. And oh yeah, and I have some albums over here you might be interested in checking out.

So how can I get rid of a few CDs and get people to notice me? I have a bunch of people following me on Twitter, I wonder how many of them would like one?

I've been using Twitter since last summer. I don't use it to promote or sell anything. Actually, that's a lie. If you know me--if you've been reading this blog or my articles at MusicianWages.com or even following me on Twitter--you know I can't help but try to use the internet to bring people to my music. But it's really a form of pre-selling. I might get into that another time, but not now.

The point is, I've got a fairly sizeable group of people that I interact with on Twitter. I like them, and they put up with me pretty well. The next step was to engage them in a way that would:

1) Teach me something about them.
2) Help them learn something about me.
3) Get rid of some of those CDs.

My solution? Trivia!

Every day at noon I ask a question about anything I find interesting. The first person to answer correctly gets a free CD. So far one question was about Bootsy and Catfish Collins, another about Take Five being the first jazz single to be a million seller. Finding out who knows the answer helps me learn a little more about them. And the point is never to stump everyone, rather to just get them to play the game. While the first correct answer is technically the winner, if somebody answers correctly every day but never gets their answer in first, I'll probably send them a CD just for playing.

After asking some general questions that tell me about you (mostly, are you interested in the same things as me?), I can ask questions that tell you about me. Since any of these questions can be answered by doing an internet search, why not create questions that will ultimately drive people to my website looking for the answers?

This will only work if people care to play. If you use Twitter to constantly bombard people with information about what you do professionally or try to push your product on them, everything you say is just noise.

Chris Brogan recently wrote an article that you might have already read: Promoting Without Being That Guy. His article gave me the final nudge I needed to actually try this trivia promotion. I had been afraid that it would come off too pushy, or as a blatant marketing scheme. But in his article, Brogan lists '10 Ways to Build Relationships Before You Ask for Anything' and I realized I'd been building these relationships for many months.

Lucky for me, it's worked so far this week. I've had some fun coming up with questions and conversing with the people that come up with the answers. I've even had some nice notes from people that aren't playing but are definitely noticing, and they love the idea. I only planned on doing it through Friday, but I may bring it back in a couple weeks. Maybe somebody else will pick up the idea and give me a chance to help them clean out their apartment.

New Article @ MusicianWages.com

I'm writing a series of articles on the self-released album over at MusicianWages.com. Today we posted an article titled The Self-Released Album 101: The Basics. If you're planning to release your first album yourself, I recommend reading this. I'm trying to dump everything I know from my own experiences releasing about 200 albums, from my own self-released titles to large budget albums for the Verve Music Group.

Irony, and the Small World of Jazz

Almost a year ago, Life Is Loud was placed in the "New Releases" section on the iTunes jazz page. This section displays eight albums at a time on the home page, and then you can click over to the next eight, etc., for four pages of albums. As new albums are added, the older titles slide down the ladder until they fall off the last page.

Life Is Loud sold fairly well for a self-released album, reaching #31 on the iTunes jazz chart. Around that time it was added to a new feature they stuck in the middle of the jazz page, called "Major Releases." It's been there ever since, but as you can see in the picture above, it's about to get bumped.

The word "Major" can mean several things, but in the music business it typically means having to do with one of the major labels. I worked at a major label, but my album was released on my own. In fact, if you browse this small corner of the iTunes Store, most of the albums in the jazz Major Release section are not on a major label.

There are only two types of jazz I really see being released on major labels now:

1) Crossover Jazz/Vocal. These are releases that are perhaps made by artists that can play jazz, but the music on their albums is a watered down version of what they can really do. Diana Krall, who's new album was just released by my former collegues at Verve, is a great example of this. The woman can play some great jazz piano, but how long has it been since we heard anything that really turned our heads (as far as jazz musicians are concerned). There are plenty of male crooners that fall into this category as well.

Typically, if people use the word "jazzy" to describe your music, it's just another way of saying the music is "jazz-like" which is another way of saying "not quite jazz."

2) Jazz Legends. Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Sonny Rollins... these guys can release albums on major labels because they are iconic figures among the jazz populace. People still take note when they release albums, even if their albums don't make much money for the label (though they can also make plenty of money for the label because of the relatively low marketing budgets associated with these albums).

Of course, for every jazz icon that releases an album on a major label there are many more that go the independent route. Similar to what we saw with Radiohead and Trent Reznor, these are artists that have well established reputations and large followings, so they're going to sell records even if it means fans have to go to their garage sale to buy them.

There are exceptions to both these rules, of course, but the majority of cutting edge jazz is being released on small labels or entirely independently. Jazz has been a niche genre ever since the '50s when big bands (of the swing/dance variety) started to decline in popularity and the rock'n'roll generation started listening to, well, rock'n'roll.

I'm not trying to blog a music history lesson, I'm just trying to make the point that in terms of market share, jazz has long had a small but dedicated fan base. And it gets divided even amongst the fans to even smaller sub-genres. I'm sure there are plenty jazz police who would never consider my music to be jazz. That's ok though, because there are plenty of people who like it, at least enough to sustain a dozen or so album sales every week.

Jazz used to be a bad word, but I think the current shift in music consumerism is going to change that. It turns out people are willing to listen to almost anything online, try new kinds of music and form their own opinion. Genres have always been labels given to music to help record stores organize their bins, but stores like CD Baby have been expanding their genre and sub-genre listing to help people explore very specific types of music. To most people, music is just music. Everyone is influenced by everything else, and artists shove all their influences into their heads for a while in hopes of making some kind of music that's completely unique and recognizable.

So perhaps the word "Major" will start to take on new meanings in places like the iTunes jazz page. Instead of having something to do with an album's means of release, it'll be more about the impact of the music.

Another kind of grind.

This is a busy week for me, perhaps the busiest since quitting my day job last May. I have a handful of gigs and rehearsals, but I also have some writing to do and a lot of office work. I need to come up with an organized system to track my income and expenses, rather than just jotting it down and putting receipts in a folder to sort out at tax time next year. I'm also still catching up on emails after being out of town last week.

Perhaps I'm just feeling reflective this morning, but I'm beginning to settle into the routine of not really having a routine. I try to practice guitar consistently, and I make time to write music every week, but it all must remain flexible to work around whatever else comes up. I don't think there's a way to create formal structure around a freelancer's lifestyle, and I'm perfectly happy with that. I feel very comfortable in this new role.

Now I just need to keep building revenue streams so I can keep it this way!

Small Town Love

Here's a video from the set Lauren and I played on the Cayamo Cruise last week after she won the open mic contest.