Textures, Pt. 2

Last week I started writing about using textures to take your playing to a new level of musicality. For starters, we should always look for the inner voices in a piece of music, and then adjust tone and timbre through slight adjustments to our playing techniques.

That first part is very important because it's about using what you have before relying on effects or other equipment to manipulate your sound. For most of us, money is going to limit what kind of equipment we'll have, so we may never have exactly what we think we need to get a certain texture. But even for those with huge bankrolls, there will be plenty of instances where you can't bring along all your gear. Therefore, it's always important to learn how to find the simplest solutions first, and build from there.

Now that we all know how to use the Force for good, let's talk about some of the stuff money can buy.

I'm a guitarist; my people are known for our smoke and mirrors tactics usually associated with effects. But many guitarists' signature sound is due in part to their gear, so it's worth investigating. Let's review the basics:

Acoustic guitars are made from different tonewoods and come in different body types or shapes. Knowledgeable salespeople usually match a guitarists playing style to certain types of wood and body styles because it balances out their sound. But if you're a well balanced player that can manipulate the sound with your fingers or pick, it's usually worth shopping for guitars with different tonewoods and shapes that will expand your sonic possibilities.

Electric guitars capture sound with pickups. The two basic pickup options are single coil (found on Fender Stratocasters or Telecasters) and humbuckers (found on Gibson Les Pauls and SGs). Popular opinion describes single coil pickups as having a bright, clean tone while humbuckers have a fat, warm tone.

Secondary to the pickups, wood and body type can also change the sound of an electric guitar. Archtops and hollow bodied guitars allow the top to vibrate, similar to an acoustic guitar, but with humbucking pickups. These produce a woody, warmer tone usually used by jazz or blues guitarists. Different types of wood can affect sustain and ultimately tone.

Look at some pictures of classic rock bands like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones and you'll see a variety of guitars on stage. Before digital effects became widely popular, using different guitars created all the tonal textures they needed.

If you can't afford a new guitar, sometimes a cheap, used guitar that's been beat up a bit can give you a unique sound. I have a few in my collection, and while I don't use them live, they've been very handy in recording situations.

Next, you've got amplifiers. Most people are going to tell you tube amps are the way to go. Frankly, the only time you can argue against that is when a solid state amp can do well enough to save yourself the trouble of dragging a tube amp to the gig. I recently spent a good amount of money on a Class A tube amp, and while I don't understand all the technology behind it, I do understand the wide range of tones I can create. In general, I'd recommend a simple but well built tube amp over any digital amp simulator. Nothing tops the genuine tube sound, and if you put a decent EQ between your guitar and amp, you can mimic most classic amp sounds.

Everything other than your technique, guitar, and amp is just details. But textures are often created in the details.

I've always considered myself a guitar-to-amp guy, but I ended up with a decent collection of effects pedals. My favorite effect is the vibrato on my amp, not pictured below, but here's a rundown of what you see on my pedalboard: Jim Dunlop Crybaby Wah, Electro-Harmonix Mini QTron envelope filter, ProCo Turbo Rat distortion, Boss Giga-Delay (with an FS-5U pedal I use to tap tempos), Boss Flanger, Boss EQ, Ernie Ball Volume.
I can create more sounds than I'll ever use with this rig, and when I use it, I use it sparingly. In most live situations, I'll change my tone by switching channels on my amp, changing pickups, adjusting my tone and volume knobs, and picking closer to the bridge or neck. But with my trio, I often take it a step further using my pedal board. The wah-wah and envelope filter pedals allow me to quickly sweep a wider EQ range. The distortion and flanger color the tone. I usually only use the EQ pedal when I'm dealing with a house amp. The giga-delay lets me program four different pre-sets. I'll use some light delay during some solos, and then I've got some wacky settings for taking things out. Psychadelic jazz doesn't happen without some enablers.

The trick is to know when to use these options. Django Reinhardt made legendary music without any of these effects. Jimi Hendrix practically played effects like they were an instrument all their own. Yet if you took everything away from Hendrix, he still sounded like Hendrix. Jazz guitarists Pat Metheny and John Scofield both have very distinct tones on electric guitar. Yet both have recorded acoustic albums, and their playing is immediately recognizable. In fact, every great artist has at some point recorded or performed acoustically and maintained their unique sound.

The point is to use your textures to suplement musicality, not replace it all together. Learn how to manipulate your sound organically first, and then introduce some other effects to alter your tone even greater. Used tastefully and with a strong musical purpose, textures will add new depth to your songs.

What I Learned at My Record Label Job

There's a new website in the works, and it'll be the future home for my blog. I've been working on an in depth article about what I took from working at a record label. It's pretty long, so I might not be writing too much more on 'Between the Music' this week.

What I Learned at My Record Label Job

After you're done, take a sneak peak at the site. If you're a musician, you can participate in the forum or even contribute an article yourself, simple read this post by Dave Hahn, my cohort and the true evil genius behind this adventure.

Playing Rests

In jazz folklore there's a fable-esque story where John Coltrane comes off stage after playing one of his legendary long 'sheets of sound' solos during a set with Miles Davis' band, and tells his boss something like, "I just don't know how to end my solos." Miles response: "Try taking the horn out of your mouth."

We're not all blessed with the endless ideas and technical mastery of Coltrane, but this is good advice for everyone. I remember a guitar teacher once forcing me to allow a bar of rest every four bars in my solo. It was hard, because letting go and knowing how to end your phrase before you begin takes concentration. But with this exercise, my improvisation grew by leaps and bounds.

Playing rests typically means NOT PLAYING. But for guitarists or pianists, it can also mean comping for yourself between phrases. Listen to Wes Montgomery. He is almost constantly playing, yet he throws repetitive riff-like chord patterns between phrases, as if a big band horn section is playing backgrounds to his solo. Or listen to Bill Evans play solo piano. He might play a long line with his right hand, but as soon as he ends his phrase, his left hand drops in for a chord or two before the next line begins.

Here are just a few exercises you can do to get better at playing rests:

1) Transcribe. Along with learning how to play over chord changes, learn when to not play.

2) Trade fours. Get with a buddy and play call and response. A great way to limit your phrases to smaller chunks of music.

3) Record yourself. Nearly every time I hear a live recording of myself, the first thought that comes to mind is, "Man, I need to play less!" It's a lifelong quest to find the right balance.

Emulating Other Instruments

In a college improv class, the professor played us sound clips of various musicians' tone minus the attack. Turns out if you cut off the initial attack, it's difficult to tell what instrument your listening to. Great artists tend to have less attack and a stronger tone, which makes their sound more pleasing to our ears. Their distinctive sound comes from the nuances in their vibrato, timing, and general feel. These are things that can't really be taught. The best way to learn them are through transcribing. Internalizing other's solos gives you the experience of knowing what you're going to play and perhaps more importantly, how you're going to play it, before you do.

The best way to develop your own sound is by transcribing other instruments (this goes for great vocalists as well). I find that when I transcribe other guitarists, I'm comparing my sound to theirs. I'm trying to figure out how they got that sound, what kind of guitar they're playing, what fingering they're using to play that difficult passage. But when I spent some time transcribing tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, I was focusing on his feel. If you're familiar with Dexter Gordon, you know that he was known for his extremely laid back phrasing. He would play deep in the pocket, and then finish off the phrase laying way behind the beat. One of the greatest lessons I took from these transcriptions was how he started solos. Often times he'd sit on one note, and just play rhythm and tone. Turns out time and tone are the most important characteristics of a great solo. In other words, playing the right notes don't really matter if they don't feel right or sound good.

Think about your favorite musicians. What is it about them that you love?

Reading Music for Guitar

Despite the fact everyone and their dad plays one, the guitar is not an easy instrument. Thanks to the Guitar Hero video game, there was a brief boom in the guitar lesson market. Yet once all those people realized steel strings hurt your fingers more than plastic buttons, and hitting the correct string or two is a lot harder than flicking a light switch, those of us that try to maintain a few students had to go back to drinking PBR instead of those delicious microbrews.

One of the biggest challenges for most guitarists is reading music. Many great guitarists don't read music. They just don't have to. Either they have great ears or play in the type of bands where it's not needed. There are also many that do read music, and exploit that skill to get a lot of work.

Learning to read music seems like a chore. There is tons of great music that can be played without reading a single note, and thanks to more intuitive notation methods like guitar tab, it can even appear cumbersome.

Even if you can read notes on a treble clef, you can play the same note on several strings. This gets confusing, especially if you're trying to articulate a passage properly. When a guitarist comes across an E in the top space on the staff, they can play the open top string or, working the way down the lower strings, get the same pitch on the 5th, 9th, 14th, and 19th frets. Each has a different sound and can influence your next move. It's confusing and causes a lot of guitarists to freeze up or get delayed when sight reading music.

My own excuse for being a poor sight reader is that I rarely see properly notated guitar music any more. Most people don't know how to write for guitar. The other night I played a gig where I had a few guitar charts, most with the notes written in the wrong octave (note to arrangers: the guitar sounds an octave lower than written, so if you want to hear middle C, write the C in the staff), and with a lot of cluster chords without a chord symbol notated above. Most of the time I was reading over the piano player's shoulder, looking at a bass line and then a few bars later back to my music stand trying to double the lead trumpet part. The next day I'll be working with somebody using a capo, and while they're telling me it's a C chord, in my head I'm transposing up a minor third to Eb to compensate for that capo on the third fret. When somebody finally puts actual guitar music in front of me I never know what I'm going to play.

However, I strongly encourage guitarists to learn to read. Being able to read and notate music properly is the best way to communicate with great musicians. There are more gigs for guitarists that can read. Even if you don't gig, there is a wealth of music to learn that been arranged and notated for guitar. Combined with a great ear, you'll find yourself not only being a better guitarist, but a much better musician.

Thoughts on Leaky Music

There's been a lot of talk lately about unfinished music leaking across the internet, and I think the conversation started up again after some of the Guns 'N' Roses tracks from Chinese Democracy (their new album) got loose. At first I thought, "Who cares?" But after seeing some reaction, I began to think about it more, and from the artists perspective as well as the fans.

Let's start from the fans' perspective. If you really love a band, chances are you want to know what goes into making their music. Where do they get those ideas? What would it be like to hang out with them? What are they like in the studio? Hearing unfinished music gives you a piece of that. It's like the bonus features on a DVD that have outtakes or commentary. You get to humanize the artist. It's pretty cool, right?

From an artist's perspective, I would love to share the process with you, but within context of my vision. You have to understand that making music is HARD. When I practice, I'm either messing up a lot going really, really slow 99% of the time before I get things right. I also write or play a lot of bad ideas to get them out of my head before I get to the good ideas. I don't want you to hear this stuff, at least not without my consent. So let me show you that I can get it right and then I'll reveal the painful part. Then I know you understand the context, and no matter who hears me messing up, I know they have probably heard me getting it right. This is why outtakes are shown at the end of movies. They're funny because you know the actors eventually said their lines correctly.

Technology plays a big part of this discussion. Advances in recording techniques can fix about anything. Because of this, the quality of talent has dropped. Clearly, if an artist can't really sing or play like the finished product, I would expect them to freak out if the public hears it. On the other hand, it is pretty amazing to hear an unfinished vocal track of somebody that can actually sing. I heard an unedited David Lee Roth track, vocal only with a little bleed from the headphones, and I had new respect for the man. Even more so, listen to someone like Etta James. You think they had to auto-tune her vocals?

In general, recording is a lot less romantic today than it used to be. Music used to get picked up by a microphone and hit the tape pretty close to how it would sound on the record. But today stuff gets recorded very, very raw. Where studios used to use the acoustics of a room to capture natural reverb, today it is a lot easier to record very dry and add reverb later, by running the track through analog or digital processors. Almost every instrument can sound awful in a rough mix. It's very easy for people to perceive ugly sound for lack of talent. Even the best A&R guys can have trouble hearing talent through a poor mix.

Ultimately, this should be an artistic decision. The public does not have a right to hear whatever they want. Many fans believe they have this right because of the transparency of the internet. People, including many artists, share a lot of themselves on blogs, social network sites, YouTube, and personal websites. In fact, doing just that is a GREAT way for artists to reach more fans. I know several people who do this successfully. But at the end of the day, they have artistic control over what is released because they know context is key.

File Under Jazz

Years ago I was asked to write an article explaining jazz to the novice listener. Below is the result, formerly posted on an e-zine, then on my website before I decided to scrap that section. Enjoy, and please add your thoughts and perspectives as comments:

WHAT IS JAZZ?
The largest hurdle for this discussion is to define jazz. To classify any genre of music, certain common qualities must be present. What qualities do we find in jazz? Improvisation and syncopated rhythm seem like obvious answers. Some definitions characterize jazz as having polyphonic ensembles (several instruments playing in harmony) and “deliberate distortions of pitch and timbre” (Merriam-Webster). But the umbrella of jazz now covers many different kinds of music with virtually nothing in common except the jazz section of a record store. Listen to any Glen Miller greatest hits album followed by Miles Davis’ On the Corner. Miller, a popular big band leader in the 1930s and 1940s, wrote some of the most memorable big band charts from the Swing Era, including “In the Mood.” On the other hand, Miles Davis, known as one of the most influential and experimental musicians of the 20th Century, recorded On the Corner in 1972 when his musical influences included Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, and James Brown. These two albums, if not for the two artists themselves, differ in a myriad of ways but are still filed under jazz. There is an explanation for this, both in the way the music is played and its history.

A PROCESS NOT A STYLE
Pianist Bill Evans said it best when he described jazz as no longer being a style but a process. In other words, it is a way to play and treat existing music. For example, Cole Porter wrote many great American songs in the 1920s and 1930s such as Night and Day, What is this Thing Called Love, and All of You. These were popular songs of the day, many from Broadway musicals. In the 1940s and 1950s, jazz musicians began playing the tunes in jam sessions, using only the chorus and repeating them over and over again taking turns improvising the melody. (Today, these tunes are part of the standard jazz repertoire.) This process has been part of black music ever since slaves were brought to America, when spirituals were sung in plantation fields. The words might have been taken from the Bible, but the way they were sung came from the African traditions of call and response, vocal style, tone quality, and pitch flexibility. As blacks moved north and into urban areas, they kept these aesthetics and applied them to other types of music. In rural areas black musicians had little access to instruments, but in the cities they could play pianos, saxophones, trumpets, and other white or European instruments and played those using rhythms and tonal qualities from African music. For instance, boogie woogie was a blues based piano style popular from roughly 1920 through 1945. Jazz historian LeRoi Jones wrote about the piano in Blues People as “one of the last instruments to be mastered by Negro performers” and boogie woogie “succeeded in creating a piano music that was within the emotional tradition of Negro Music” (90). And unlike European classical traditions, this music making process has no formal rules. The only rule is to make music that gets your foot tapping, makes you cry, or evoke some kind of emotional response from the audience. This is the essence of jazz, and as far as the listener is concerned, the only quality that matters.

HISTORY OF A PROCESS
If jazz is more easily explained as a process to make music as opposed to a defined style of music, then we have to understand how the process differed through history. Then we can justify the Glen Miller and Miles Davis albums being filed under the same category.

Early jazz, prior to 1928, was a spin off of the New Orleans style brass bands, now known as Dixieland. These bands played tunes from ragtime, the blues, military and religious music, and the popular tunes of the day. In the 1920s trumpeter Louis Armstrong emerged as the first great soloist and entertainer in jazz. He was the first to play with a modern swing feel.

During the Swing Era (1935-1945) big band jazz and popular music were one and the same. From big bands, smaller groups formed consisting of one or two horn players and a rhythm section (piano, bass, and drums). With a smaller band more emphasis was put on the soloist and musicians could improvise longer. Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie’s small group began playing bebop in the 1940s and removed jazz from the mainstream. Bebop musicians considered their music to be art, not entertainment. The music was still based on popular tunes, but the melodies were rewritten and played at faster tempos.

The 1950s saw the beginning of cool jazz, modal jazz and hard-bop. One style of jazz did not stop when a newer one began, they all existed together. The 1960s saw free jazz, post bop, latin jazz and the bossa nova craze, plus the beginnings of jazz-rock fusion that persisted through the 1970s. Also during this time, contemporary or smooth jazz gained popularity, mixing easy listening and R&B with jazz improvisation. Many artists played many different styles as they developed. Miles Davis, for example, began playing at a young age in big bands around St. Louis, then played bebop with Charlie Parker in New York, created the cool school, pioneered modal jazz, led some of the greatest post bop groups, recorded the first major fusion album (Bitches Brew in 1969), and played pop jazz in the 1980s. His last album, released after his death in 1991, was a collaboration with rapper Easy Mo Dee. In many ways, Miles Davis’ career outlines the history and process of jazz from the 40s to the 90s.

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE
Jazz intimidates a lot of people because it appears so complex. Yet it is not an exclusive club reserved for intellectuals and beatniks. Jazz is a language, an unspoken line of communication between the musicians and the audience. It is an active process that requires the listener’s participation. If you avoid listening to jazz because you think it is all the same, I beg you to reconsider. There are many styles of music called jazz, and there is at least one everybody likes. Once you stop trying to define it and really listen, you will realize that nothing I have written in this essay is required to enjoy jazz; the music will speak for itself.

The New Singles World

We're not talking about the dating scene.

One of the major reasons Napster and subsequent file sharing services became so popular is that they allowed people to cherry pick hit singles. If you think about it, that is probably the root of file sharing. Give me just what I want and not the other baggage (now this is starting to sound like dating). Up to roughly 1999, you had to buy an $18 CD to get the one song you really wanted. So file sharing was never solely about getting that song for free, it was just about not spending all of your beer money to get that one song. If it had been easier to buy that song for $.99, or even half that, I bet a substantial amount of tracks would have been sold. It would still be eclipsed by the free downloads on P2P's, but a lot of people will pay a little for some convenience. I'm one of those people. Enter iTunes.

iTunes is a huge force in music retail. I believe it makes up about 30% of total US music revenues, and according to at least one source, is the top music retailer in the US. One reason is the deep catalog and long tail economics of selling less of more. From personal experience, I can report over 80% of my revenue from music sales is from iTunes, with the rest being physical albums and all the other digital service providers.

Ok, I've said nothing new so far, so let me get to my point.

There are still holdouts at iTunes, perhaps the most notable being The Beatles. Here's a Wall Street Journal article that does a decent job discussing "why" bands do this. In short, these artists want to stick to selling their music in the album format and avoid letting people choose one or two tracks. Even so, their music is easily found across torrent and P2P services for free.

Holding out seems like a noble thing to do and all, but come on guys, you're missing the point. For starters, your real fans are still going to buy the whole album. While your tracks will still be traded freely on the internet, you might pick up a few sales from people willing to pay for the convenience of iTunes.

More importantly, there's the artistic debate. The artist wants you to buy the whole album and listen to it start to finish, in order. Well, here's where it gets tricky. I see albums in three categories.

First, there will always be pop acts that play the singles game, and those singles usually get released on an album with eight or nine "filler" tracks. Filler, in this case, means phoned in pieces of crap that should be an embarrassment to all those involved. These are usually the kinds of acts major labels got in the habit of using to support themselves. Once there was an option to avoid the filler, the focus was shifted back to the single. Only today you can exploit it with with mobile products, videos, etc.

At the other end of the spectrum there's the concept album. The first band that comes to mind is Pink Floyd. Sure, they had some great songs, but in the context of the whole album, holy shit, it was a whole new experience. Why would you want to miss out on it? Fact is, most people don't. Go look at The Wall on iTunes. It's $24.99. Originally released as a double LP, it's now just 26 tracks (you can tell it's on two CDs because it's numbered 1-13 twice). A bunch of the tracks are under two minutes, and there are maybe just two or three songs people would actually listen to outside of the whole album. Yet the "filler" tracks here are functional pieces to a larger concept, and to get the whole picture you gotta buy the whole thing. If you look at that graph in the WSJ article, you'll see that people are buying as many Pink Floyd albums as they are digital tracks.

Finally, somewhere between the pop acts and the concept albums are simply great albums. The Beatles would be a great example here. So many of their albums are loaded with songs you want, you just buy the whole thing. One of my favorite albums by an independent musician is The Hill by Mike Stocksdale (you can get it for free on his site but I STRONGLY encourage you to go buy it and support this guy). Mike just wrote a bunch of great, tasty songs. A few of these could be singles, but quite frankly, you're missing out if you don't get the whole thing and listen start to finish.

The bottom line is either your album is either good start to finish or it's not. Not selling your tracks as singles makes no sense to me. Your fans are allowed an opinion, and in today's climate they expect to be able to buy a track or two first before deciding your new masterpiece is worth their time and attention to listen start to finish. Look, I understand that many tracks are Album Only on a variety of services based on length (see any jazz album), licensing (see any soundtrack), and occasionally publishing (which makes little sense to me), but those are not artistic decisions. If you think your album so great that it MUST be listened to start to finish, which ought to be the way we all make albums anyhow, then throw it out there and let the fans figure it out. Everybody wins.

Craziest gig, ever.

Summer of 2002. The last summer I spent in my parents house in St. Louis. I was working as a waiter and trying to find gigs wherever possible. With the amount of running around I was doing, I figured a cell phone would help people reach me for gigs, and within 24 hours of activating my first cell phone, while shooting pool and drinking beer at a friend's house, I got the call.

Me: Hello?
Unidentified Voice (w/ heavy Italian accent): You play guitar?
Me: Uh, yeah?
UV: You know some jazz chords?
Me: Yeah?
UV: You gotta suit?
Me: Yeah, who is this?
UV: How long will it take you to get to the Hill? You gotta car?

The Hill is the Italian neighborhood in St. Louis. Sort of like Little Italy in New York, but less touristy and in my opinion, a lot more authentic, so probably more like Arthur Ave. in the Bronx.

Me: Maybe an hour and a half. Wait, who is this?
UV: It's [not named to protect myself], I'm a jazz singer that sounds like Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Dean... you know, I'm a jazz singer. Meet me at [unnamed restaurant] in an hour. I need a guitar player. I've got all the music.

And so I asked a couple more questions to make sure I'd get paid, got something that resembled directions, and went home to get my suit. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

While sitting in traffic headed downtown, he called back to tell me that he and the sax player were running late (Ok, now I know there's a sax player), and he needs me to cover for them until they get there. In 2002 I could play about three competent chord melody solos on guitar. At least, there were three I felt comfortable performing. So I crossed my fingers that they weren't running that late.

When I got to the restaurant, a rough looking man in a suit named Guy showed me where to set up. "Where's [the singer]?" he asked. "Oh, he'll be here soon. Traffic. I'm going to play some solo guitar in the meantime." Gulp.

Nearly an hour later, they showed up. It was just the two of them. That meant I was the entire rhythm section, and would be playing plenty of chord soloing whenever the saxophonist laid out. After setting up the small P.A., a binder of music was thrown in front of me. Opening it up, I didn't recognize a single song. These weren't jazz standards, these were Italian songs. Half of them were written for mandolin! I was a goner.

The scariest moment in my life happened a few tunes later, when he called Mi Amore. Finally, something I sort of knew! Before I had a chance to look it over, he was counting off the tune. And by counting off, I mean he was doing some weird foot stomping, fist swinging motion while singing what I imagine was some sort of trombone part from the arrangment stuck in his head, "Bah, Bah-Dah, BOP!" As soon as I started playing my best boom-chick-chick waltz pattern, he got right in my face and while playing air mandolin, starting singing some high notes, wanting me to play that, doing some tremelo picking, at the same time. I don't remember the next couple minutes, but things seemed to settle in place. But then it all fell apart. The key changed or something, but not in my music. Wait, where's the final barline? Where's the rest of this lyric? I'm missing a page!

And that's how I fucked up Mi Amore in front of an all Italian audience in the most Italian neighborhood in St. Louis. I was pretty sure my car was going to blow up when I turned it on.

Yet ironically, Guy and everyone else loved my solo playing at the beginning that they forgave me, and just teased me about it afterwards. Plus, once we did get to the jazz standards, I more than made up for it. Literally, I played like my life was on the line. After the gig, which went until the last customer left a little after midnight, the chef made an amazing pasta dish for the three of us. The owner broke out a few bottles of vino and we kicked back, smoked cigars, had some lemon dolce, and shot the shit until about 4 am. My car started without incident and I felt successful.

Physical Formats: General Thoughts

When I signed up my first album through CD Baby in 2004, they were just beginning to distribute to digital service providers. Even though selling digital formats was very new and basically untested, it seemed like a great opportunity for independent artists. Manufacturing physical copies is expensive, and nobody sells as many as they order (see the unopened boxes of CDs in my closet. And bedroom, and I think there's one at my parents house). And since we're all used to barely selling anything, why not barely sell any downloads too? CD Baby even explained how you could create a digital only album to sell through them but warned that 90% of album sales are via physical formats, so do you really want to pass up those sales? Over a couple years though, it became clear that indie artists generally sell much more music digitally. It's a combination of having a greater reach through the internet and the shifting trend of people buying more music as downloads. I also believe that the type of person that goes exploring for good music by relatively unknown artists is the same type of forward thinking individual that would consume music in digital formats (such as the a la carte or subscription services that were starting to pop up at the time). Fast forward to today, and many popular acts sell more than 30% of their total sales via digital formats, and iTunes is arguably the largest music retailer in the US.

But despite the growing digital trend, there is still a lack of credibility surrounding a digital only release, or perhaps it just doesn't have the same amount of respect as something critics or customers or radio progammers that want to hold a tangible CD, even though they will likely rip it to their computer and transfer it to their MP3 player with the rest of their collection. It's also harder to sell downloads directly at a show, when the crowd is high on your music and their wallets are open (in theory). Even so, indie artists are highly unlikely to get a decent physical distribution deal to sell any meaningful amount of product through mainstream, national retail. In the end, how many physical CDs will you actually sell? Does that make it worth the cost to produce them?

I say it depends heavily on the act and their audience. Clearly a younger crowd probably cares less about a CD and just wants a few of your songs. Older audiences and niche oriented music might be more inclined to buy a CD either out of habit or because the full album is best experienced as a whole. The music and artists I tend to listen to usually don't shoot for the hit single, and I much prefer an entire album (keep in mind, I'm 27 and Napster was in it's heyday while I was in college). In high school I used to buy jazz albums and comb through the liner notes and pictures to learn as much as I could about everyone on the album. When I bought rock albums, it would be to learn every song on guitar, and this ranged from Hendix to Alice In Chains to Led Zeppelin and back again. I'd like to believe there are plenty of people that look at music the same way I do, and so as long as I want to buy full albums, somebody else will, too. I write this knowing fully well many people I know probably haven't bought music since 1999, and to people under 20, spending money on music is unheard of.

Even so, I've been able to create some profit from the music I sell. In fact, that's the bulk of my income. The vast majority (I'd guess 90%, but I don't have figures in front of me) is from digital sales, and almost exclusively iTunes. I've only manufactured CDs for two albums. I'm now sure what I'm going to do for the next album with my trio--maybe a short run of CDs and some vinyl. CDs are good for mailing to press or for the few people that still want CDs. Vinyl is gaining in popularity again but is still a tiny slice in the pie. However, I think a big chunk of that slice is made up of people that could be fans of my music. But the bulk of my focus will be on the digital release because I know that's how I make my money back so I can record more music, pay my band, and ultimately make some kind of living. The physical formats are simply for credibility. Perhaps this is a new form of paying your dues.

New respect for Bob Dylan

Yesterday I got the idea that I would play a little chord progression I wrote on mandolin while playing a melody on harmonica. Not easy. I can do either one perfectly fine on their own. I can even pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time. But it's going to take some serious shedding before I can execute this together. And I need to figure out a better way to hold the harmonica, because that metal neck contraption that Dylan used is a piece of junk.


But let's face it, Bob Dylan sucked at harmonica. Now I know why.

Free Jazz

I love free jazz. At least, I love the idea of free jazz. The basic concept is to freely improvise whatever you want. Ultimately, it's an open conversation between musicians. There's little, if any, preconceived notions of what is going to be said, but when done well the end result will speak volumes. The problem is many musicians don't really know how to listen and you get the equivalent to one of those conversations where everybody keeps changing the subject back to themselves and talking over each other. When you consider that most people don't even know how to listen to jazz when it's played straight ahead, never leaving the form and rarely going too far outside the chord changes, it's a wonder anybody ever decided to take things further.

Socks

Sunday and Monday I recorded all day and well past midnight. Thursday is going to be another marathon session. This is all tracking that is easily done in a quiet apartment on home studio equipment, but if you heard the end result you'd have no idea this was the scene vs. a polished studio. At least not for the kind of music we're recording right now.



There are a few things I'm noticing about myself now a days. I wear socks less often. I also eat less. As new music comes to mind, I stop whatever I'm doing to write it down. That's been Rule #1 since quitting the day job--treat every new bar of music like it's an investment in my imaginary 401k. Of course, this interrupts whatever routine I'm trying to piece together for myself, including getting completely dressed or making a sandwich, but I think it's ok. This is what I do now, and I can do it with bare feet.

Print Advertising... does it sell CDs?

I recently took out a 1/3 page ad in a jazz magazine. Like any jazz mag, the circulation isn't huge (22,000 or so), but it's going to a niche audience. It makes more sense to me to focus on your audience than to throw spaghetti at the wall. I got a deal too, or at least that's what I was told, and it seemed like something I could afford. Anyway, I looked at the SoundScan DMA sales (broken down by metro areas) and saw NO SALES in any of the major metro areas where the magazine circulates. It's also worth noting my trio has never played in any of those areas, so it's not like anybody knew who I was before they saw that ad and the album review.

I'm still reflecting on the value of advertising. I've never been a fan. It feels like a lazy strategy. If you have money, you can advertise. And there's so much of it out there, we're all desensitized. Even though I sold no CDs, was there value in placing that ad? Does it put my name in the back of people's heads? Does it give people the impression that I'm somebody they should know?

I'm not convinced, but I don't regret my decision and appreciate the support of the publication.

Music Major?

A few high school musicians have asked me if they should study music in college, or pursue some kind of "practical" major. I've talked to a few of my friends that make their living playing music, and we generally all agree higher education helped us in two areas:

1) Networking. The world is pretty small, and you're bound to run into some of your classmates down the road. And for that matter, the competitive environment you'll experience in a college music program all but disappears in the real world, so be nice to the people you might not think are very good. They might be hiring you for a gig someday.

2) Intensive practice time. There will never be another time in your life that you get to practice eight hours a day and have a handful of experts trying to help you get better. While you'll continue to develop your individual style and sound well after school, most of your post-college woodshedding, when you find time to do it, will probably be to maintain the techniques you honed at school.

The Album

Today I'm working on a new covers album. Years ago my friend Matt Ketteman and I recorded one that is now available on iTunes, called Follow Through. It was fun to record and a few tracks have sold moderately well. We always wanted to do another, and recently on a visit to Brooklyn, Matt recorded vocal tracks for 11 songs. Now I've got to do all the music.

But before I start, I do my daily scanning of a few blogs, including Seth Godin's. One of his posts mentioned how some companies build their business to get people to spend more money. For a musician like me, that's the equivalent of getting people to download the whole album on iTunes instead of just a song or two. Think about any Pink Floyd album, or Led Zeppelin IV, or Coltrane's A Love Supreme... even in the digital age you don't buy single tracks off those, you want the whole album!

I don't know if this can be truly achieved with an album of cover songs, but I'll see what I can do. More importantly, this is going to be THE focus of my next trio album. I've already started writing the music, and the goal is to make it a cohesive work, start to finish. There will be individual songs of course, all worthy of their own listening, but in the context of the whole album each piece becomes stronger. This is an old concept, but it's been abandoned by many artists and producers over the years. I'm not aiming for commercialism though, I want artistry.