May 23, 2004
Apparently selling ringtones for cell phones has everyone flipping out. Nearly every recent musikbiz seminar has a panel on ringtones as an additional revenue stream for artists — or, uh, their major label overlords. Seth Godin points out that interest in ringtones is so keen it even has its own magazine. Yes, a magazine dedicated to ringtones: The Ringtone Magazine (now in its 10th issue!).
Now some in the music industry are pitching a fit over Xingtone, a $15 program which allows anyone to make their own ringtones from existing audio files. Which strikes me as perfectly acceptable fair use, assuming the source audio was legally obtained. The article doesn't focus much on the big barrier to entry — namely, a computer, and the ability to create the source audio files. Just guessing here, but I'd bet there are more cell phone users than iTunes and MusicMatch users.
Back when I first started tinkering on the Web, my computer's startup sound was the opening chords of "Under" from Filter's first album, Short Bus. I didn't even know what MP3s were at the time; I just pulled up the Windows Sound Recorder. I can't imagine paying money for that, and I can't imagine anyone expecting to make much money from that. To me, charging for ringtones is, I dunno, like charging for Windows startup sounds or little animated email icons from 1996. Cory Doctorow mentions that there are already phones on the market that can play MP3s and more are probably on the way. Maybe the convenience of having a CD-quality ringtone (maybe an exclusive, ringtone-only pre-release? Hmm.) beamed directly to your phone via your provider and having it show up on your phone bill will generate enough revenue to keep the business viable.
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May 13, 2004
Hey look, a last-minute show! I'll be at The Hideaway this Saturday opening for alt-country "punkgrass" pickers Luther Wright and the Wrongs. Tis' that not the bees knees? Advance tickets are available here if you're so inclined.
Still waiting to hear if Mike the Mandolin King will be available to share the stage with me that night. Fingers crossed.
We all knew this was coming, right? Movable Type was too popular — and frankly, too good — to remain free forever.
Tim Appnel nails it: MT 3.0 is for developers and larger organizations, and not for the casual blogger. I'd agree that new restrictions on number of weblogs/authors is arguably a downgrade for existing MT users. It's a shame that MT 2.x and not 3.0 is the end of the free ride.
But, whatever. When I donated a few years ago, I gave way more than the $70 personal license fee they're asking for now. I think I got every penny's worth, and then some. I doubt there's much more I could possibly want from a weblogging tool.
As to the much-ballyhooed mass exodus of indignant MT users, I offer this ancedote:
I saw Ani DiFranco speak at SXSW this year, and she mentioned something worth repeating. Or, worth paraphrasing.
When it first became known that the openly bisexual DiFranco had gotten married to a man(!!!), there was more than a bit of shock and outrage from the core of fans that regarded her as a spokesperson for gay youth.
When asked about how this affected her, Ani admitted that although the majority of the fan response was supportive, there was still the ocassional sting of invective: traitor, liar, et cetera. In the end she shrugged it off, saying "at some point you've got to let that go, and focus on the people still in the room."
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It's always strange when my music geek and computer geek worlds collide. Derek Silvers is going to be rebuilding CD Baby from scratch, turning 91K+ lines of PHP code into something lean and mean. And he'll be blogging about the process at the O'Reilly Network.
Meanwhile, NPR's All Songs Considered is looking for songs about the cicada invasion (otherwise known as "Brood X" — gotta love that), in an event aptly titled "All Cicadas Considered." Sounds like a job for the Songfight! regulars. I have to admit that I was sufficiently inspired to write about a dozen lines of big purple insect couplets this morning.
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May 11, 2004
VH1 is streaming the new Morrisey album You Are The Quarry in its entirety. I've listened to the first three tracks and it's great so far. Venomous, venomous lyrics.
May 9, 2004
Daunted by my (most surely temporary, surely) writer's block, I gave myself the past week off, opting instead to sip beer and watch lots of television. Including the finale of Friends. I dunno, for a show that became such a pop culture staple, they sure punted on the wrap-up. The hourlong "retrospective" was not much more than yet another clip show, and I thought at least they'd save the last minute or so for a tearing down of the fourth wall, pulling the cameras back to reveal the audience, introducing the cast for a final goodbye. Instead, it's like they couldn't rush into E.R. fast enough.
Anyway. This past weekend I got to write about a minute and a half of outro music for one of the teams participating in the 48 Hour Film Project. Here it is: Tohubohu 256 (3MB). Not folk rock. Not particularly better than your average A-Team montage music or anything Jan Hammer came up with for Miami Vice (hey look, Jan's got a site), but I got to mess around with Reason and Sonar via ReWire, and I'm kinda proud of my overdriven, Chris Squire bass guitar sound.
Goh Nakamura, whom I've mentioned before on this site, has released his new album. Yay!
Edie Carey plays the Conor Byrne Pub in Ballard on May 31st.
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May 3, 2004
Every once in awhile someone asks me about the songwriting process, and how I do it. I've been doing it enough to know two things: 1) there's no right way to do it, and 2) despite common roots, it's not "just like" writing prose, or poetry, or anything like that. Songwriting is songwriting. (You might as well say filmmaking is "just like" photography.)
The eternal debate: music or lyrics first? With me, it is always, always the music. The chord changes and overall feel of the tune has to be interesting to me before I'm inspired to fit words to it. I have ocassionally written lyrics and music at the same time, but rarely. I don't think I've ever written lyrics prior to music. I'm a lousy poet. It's not unusual for me to have an entire song structure completed, from intro to coda, without a single lyric. Probably not a good thing.
When I do write lyrics, the chorus comes first, always. If I wanted to be cold and analytical about it, I'd explain that the chorus is my thesis statement, and the verses are supporting arguments. But mostly, I just like choruses. Big, exploding ones that stick to your brain. I don't think I ever consciously set out to write a big hook but I'm awfully pleased with myself when I manage to do so. If you look at how Shannon and I wrote our first collaborative song during last year's Blogathon, you'll see that the first thing I contributed was a chorus. And for the second song, another chorus, which Shannon further refined.
As a result, I paint myself right into a corner when it comes to the verses. I hate verses. They're no fun to write. If I had my way, all songs would be nothing but choruses. Anyway, to aid the process, I carry around a little notebook. When I hear, read or think of an interesting phrase, I jot it down. I keep collecting phrases and keep re-reading them until they spark an idea. A random sampling:
maybe I'll replace you
a good problem to have
rich people zoo
there is no strange thing here
I can't remember the last time I came up (I used this one already)
the patron saint of lost causes
one end to the other
I keep doing this for awhile, then I'll try to cherry-pick the most interesting ones and see if I can twist them into a chorus or verse idea. If I get stuck for a rhyme, I usually hit up a site like rhymezone.com to find unusual words which not only fit rhyme-wise, but might also suggest an altogether different path for the lyric to take.
There's no approach that I've found to be especially successful or productive. Some songs, like Holding Back and Cut The Wire were written in one sitting, music and words together, bang, just like that. Others, like One Sure Thing and In Harm's Way were pieced together from older song ideas that went nowhere. Other songs are like stalled cars on the freeway. I have a song that, for the want of one line, would have been finished back in 1997. (I blame the song. It's the song's fault! It doesn't want to be finished!)
Anyway, I wish I could tell you that it's a wild, passionately creative process, that every morning I retreat to my special songwriting nook where the words and music just pour out. Sometimes it's like that. Most of the time though, it's long plateaus of frustrating, wall-punching nothingness, punctuated by sudden, brutal brain bludgeonings from the muse. One thing's for certain: it's not something I can make happen. When the muse is silent, no amount of cajoling can get her attention.
Do you write songs? How do you do it?
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I had planned on attending the Seattle Weekly Music Awards showcase yesterday, but decided to stay in and force myself to write lyrics. A mistake. I'm totally, hopelessly blocked, helplessly waving my flippers in the air. I could've used some inspiration.
A history of the heavy metal umlaut.
April 30, 2004
ScottL: so here's something I didn't know:
ScottL: http://www.mp3licensing.com/help/enduser.html#5
bradsucks: hey yeah, that's news to me too
bradsucks: i'll just lie and say i earn less than $100,000 off my music if they ask
ScottL: yeah, cook your books like a major label
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April 29, 2004
Happy birthday to my little niece Olivia, my sister's daughter. And by birthday, I mean literally. She's several hours old at the moment.
