GarageSpin

Interview With DIY Rocker and Coder, Scott Andrew

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Scott Andrew, DIY rocker and web designerOnce again, I am inspired by DIY greatness.  Scott Andrew is both creator and coder, rocker and designer, lyricist and melodist. (I think that’s a word, right?)

Seriously, the guy’s got skills.  Musicians and music fans will dig his beautifully written and played songs, web designers will appreciate his website’s elegant design, and new media junkies will apprciate his creative use of viral marketing to promote his stuff.

With several mini-CDs under his belt, 100s of fans subscribed to his blog, a video contest currently under way, a newly opened music store with multiple file formats available, several articles in different media, and an active demo club where fans get access to locked SA content and goodies, Scott’s got it goin on.

I had a chance to throw some questions his way the other day.  Check it: 

GARAGESPIN: Since posting your music online, you’ve amassed quite a following.  What was the first song you ever posted online?

SCOTT ANDREW: That would probably be the Walkingbirds stuff. I had a CDR of the original ADAT tapes, and I ripped them to MP3 somehow — I don’t remember the program I used, I was a newbie — and put them up sometime in 2001 or 2002. I’m pretty sure it was shortly after September 11th — as with lot of people, existential dread forced my hand :)

GARAGESPIN: When you start a new song, what hits you first?  A lyric, a melody, a chord progression, a solo lick?

SCOTT ANDREW: Probably a little of each, although I would say interesting chord progressions. It’s different every time. Recently I’ve been messing around with different guitar tunings; that seems to spark new ideas.

For me, lyrics are the worst. I usually write the chorus first, then everything else is a struggle. I know people who can fill notebook after notebook with lyrics — I secretly hate them. It can take me months to finish the lyrics of a song.

GARAGESPIN: Your tagline, "scruffy, lo-fi DIY pop" is wrong, wrong, wrong — your music just sounds too darn good.  What software and hardware do you use?  Do you record/mix/master everything yourself?

SCOTT ANDREW: Most of my stuff is self-recorded, although I’ve got Jim Santanella working with me on the next record. He’s got a home ProTools studio, a Mac-based setup, excellent, expensive mics, and the patience of a saint. We have a blast and IMO it sounds WAY better than most of my own recordings.

At home, I use Cakewalk Home Studio with Windows, with Shure and AKG mics running into a Behringer mixer. I have some nice multiband compressor and EQ plugins for mastering, but I don’t spend a lot of time on it. I’m into doing songs fast and cheap.

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Kompoz, a New Collaboration Workspace for Musicians

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Kompoze - online music collaborationInteresting.  Kompoz released a beta version of an online workspace for musicians to collaborate in the creation of new recordings.  Think Apple’s GarageBand audio recording software meets MySpace Band pages, where the social network revolves around song projects.

Basically, anyone can start a new "song project", choosing project attributes such as song key, beats per minute, and an appropriate Creative Commons license.  Kompoz members can then add parts to the betterment (or detriment) of the project, and the whole work in progress is both streamable and downloadable by everyone, both as a whole or in parts.  Features include:

  • Artist profile pages with list of started projects, projects you’ve joined, and favorite projects
  • Individual project workspaces for each collaboration
  • Project-specific discussion forums (multiple topics/threads).
  • All tracks/audio uploaded to and hosted by Kompoz
  • Uploaded files automatically encoded for fast streaming playback. (Original format is preserved for downloads.)
  • Uploaded files are organized into tracks and versioned.
  • Support for MP3, WAV, and WMA formats.
  • Download a single file, an entire track, or an entire project with one click.
  • Search for projects by genre, artist, tags/keywords, license type, and more.
  • Choose from multiple licensing options when creating your projects.

There’s also a "Private" setting, where only invited musicians are able to participate and collaborate, but it doesn’t seem to be enabled, currently.  This will be key, as many musicians will want to work with a set group of co-writers or band members.  Perhaps it’s a post-beta feature, or part of a ‘paid’ version of the service?  I’m also wondering if there will be a way to "mute" parts of the track…  If 50 people contribute parts, it could become a tad messy unless you’re able to select which tracks are being played back at any time.  Would a Creative Commons audio archive "search" module make sense here?  (I’ll add an update soon with the answers…)

It’s definitely a cool concept, and a nice feature set considering it’s free.  I’d love to give this a whirl, and have y’all join in…

Update:  Ralph at Kompoz confirmed that the "Private" function is currently disabled, but may become a paid feature.  More features are being added in a couple weeks.  We’ll wait and see…

How Not to Produce Amateur Recordings

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Home Tracked - home recording techniques blogIf you’re new to the home recording scene, and want to avoid some classic pitfalls of an amateur recording, avoiding these top ten recording pitfalls is a great way to start.  Uneven  or muddy vocals, and especially acoustic bleeding caused by a small room, are some of the most common problems bedroom-based rockstars face.  Des at Home Tracked provides a bunch of tips for avoiding the biggest pitfalls — check it out, as well as his daily recording tips.  Great stuff.  You can tell he knows his stuff by checking out his music as well….

Updates to GarageSpin.com

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This weekend may have been one of the most active and surprisingly productive in a while for me:

  • Worked on my next song, "Take a Stand", and now have the chord progression for a pre-chorus and chorus.  Chorus lyrics are still in the works.
  • Added a flash player to most pages of GarageSpin.com that plays "Spinning Daydream".  To avoid annoying the heck out of you, I only turned on "auto-play" on the individual post pages.  (Hopefully, new folks arriving here randomly via search engines will hear something they like.)  Mind you, as a non-web designer, that’s quite a feat.
  • Added a "Add to MySpace" button.  (woo-hoo)
  • Set up a podcast hosting account using Podomatic, and a podcast aggregation account through Odeo, per Ryan’s suggestion (from Orbitcast).  The idea being, it might be cool share guitar licks and song ideas periodically as I work on songs.  Podomatic has TONS of features, but its embedded player is uuuugly.  Odeo’s, however, is nice, so I’ll be creating podcasts through the former, and posting them with the latter’s player.  (Assuming I find time to do any of this, of course.)
  • My lovely wife and I went out for dinner twice, and even bought furniture.  (Don’t hate me out of furniture-envy.)  A big thanks for her patience this weekend while I flailed about in HTML and Java codes.

What were you up to this weekend?

Recording Studios Adapt to Home Recording

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While some big-time recording studios fall in the wake of do-it-yourself home recording project studios, others have begun to adapt, and even cater to, the home recording artist.

Check out Talmage Music, a recording facility which positions itself as an extension to home studios.  Artists are encouraged to manage Pre-Production (tracking, basic instrumentation, MIDI production, etc.) and Post-Production (editing, mixing, mastering, etc.) at home, while taking advantage of Talmage’s excellent recording space, amazing gear, superior instruments, and professional expertise during key recording phases.  If you live in Gilbert, AZ, you’re in luck.

It’s a potentially lethal combination of DIY independence and strategic outsourcing (gear, space, or talent) to produce killer audio. 

SpliceMusic Offers Free Online Music Mixing Software

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SpliceMusic's free online music mixing softwareI’m impressed.  SpliceMusic has created a free, online music mixing program that enables any user to mashup loops of music and sounds licensed by Creative Commons.

The interface is smooth and clean; every track has volume, pan, mute and solo control.  Searching for sounds is cake (though the library needs to expand a bit), and uploading sounds equally easy.  Add a little recording piece, and you have a simple, online, and very fun, substitute for GarageBand.

SpliceMusic doubles as a social network, including user profiles, rankings, messaging, and all that jazz.  The coolest feature?  You can download ANY mix on the site as an mp3 file.  Groovy.  Web 2.0 / DIY / Open Source Audio at its finest…

(Thanks to Roger at XLR8R for the tip. Btw, I just checked out his album Dark Side of the Cop — very good stuff, solid electro pop. Check it out if you get a chance.)

Fans Fund Band Album Production Through Sell-A-Band

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Sell-A-Band.gifI love novel business ideas like this one. SellABand has developed a model allowing fans to finance the production of a band’s album, and benefit from the album’s (hopeful) success thereafter. It works like this:

1) Band creates a profile on SellABand.
2) Fans (called “Believers”) invest $10+ in a band they like.
3) Once $50,000 have been raised, the band records a professional-sounding, full length album.
4) Fans get a free copy of the new CD.
5) All the music is offered for free download on the website.
6) Advertising revenue on the site is split between SellABand, the band, and the believers. CD revenue is split between the band and the believers.

Pretty cool, no? Now, mind you, it’s not easy. If believers only invest $10 each, 5,000 believers are required to fully fund a band’s album. Developing a fan base of that size often requires a label’s attention in the first place. In other words, a band will have to be seriously motivated to market its own music, as well as have good music in place for this to work. It’s quite a challenge, but then, that challenge is about on par with the challenge of making it at all. SellABand just provides the tools that make it all possible WITHOUT a record label getting involved, and without the risk of a large, upfront loan taking place. (And, of course, believers can invest more than $10, hopefully reducing the total required investor count.)

Currently, the band Nemesea has $9250 in funding; the tenth most funded band only has $490 of funding in place. Not bad, since SellABand has only been live for a month or so. There are a lot of great comments regarding that model on the TechCrunch post about SellABand. Your thoughts — will it work?

Jonathan Coulton, and the Thing A Week Project

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Jonathan CoultonJonathan Coulton is an awesome DIY musician success story — if you haven’t yet, check out his stuff.  He writes, records, mixes, and masters his own music on his PC home studio, and does it all friggin’ extremely well.  His lyrics are genius, and his chord progressions meanderingly wonderful.

Most impressive, however, is Jonathan’s Thing A Week project.  Every week, he cranks out yet another clever, hi-quality track that he posts on his website.  The man’s a machine.  Classics like "Code Monkey" (which techies can’t help but love) and "Baby Got Back" (a folksy cover Sir-Mix-A-Lot must be proud of) have made him famous in certain circles, and now he’s even got a fan base that devoutedly creates illustrations and music videos for his songs.  Geez.

I had the opportunity to fire a ton of questions his way…and JC fired answers back.  Check out the full scoop tomorrow…

Update: The interview is up, and can now be found here.

Interview With DIY Artist, Brad Sucks

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Brad at his home studioAs I mentioned yesterday, Brad (of Brad Sucks) is a successful one-man-band that writes, records, mixes, masters, and sells his own music.  He’s managed to build up a huge fan base by encouraging fans to "steal" his music and musicians to remix it.  I got a chance to chat with him the other day; without further ado, let’s get into the interview:

GARAGESPIN: You’ve created quite a following since moving your music online in 2001.  What was the first song you ever posted?  What was the first song you ever recorded?

BRAD: The first song I posted was "Gangsta Love" which was some goofy rock thing I did back when I was trying to figure out my recording setup.  The first song I ever recorded though, that’s a tough one as I’ve been doing music since I was around 15 with trackers on the PC. I’d have to dig around through some CD-Rs and then I’d just wind up embarrassed.

GARAGESPIN: A lot of your fans compare your style to Beck.  How would you describe your jams?

BRAD: Depends on the song. There are tracks like Making Me Nervous that are dancey sorta deals and then Dirtbag which is more of a rock thing and Overreacting which I guess is a ballad. I don’t know what one term you use to summarize all that. Magnatune calls my stuff "ironic electro-pop," but I don’t even know what that means. 

GARAGESPIN: What do you think of as some of your biggest "break-through" moments that helped get your music heard?  Any not-so-successful promo attempts you wish you could do over?

BRAD: I don’t feel there have been many "break-through moments" really, it feels like it’s been a slow and steady gainer. I’ve had some things like the Outside the Inbox project and giving away the source to my songs that have attracted attention, but despite the occasional peaks it’s a slow process of small gains.

The one thing I’ve noticed though is that print media and radio are basically worthless to me. A lot more will come out of a link from Penny Arcade than will come from being mentioned in The Economist.

GARAGESPIN: Giving away the source to your songs is huge.  I’m always amazed to see all the remixes that grow out of your work.  Discussion on the BradSucks Forums seems to revolve around both what you create and what your fans create.  What an awesome community, it’s like a karma/Zen/altruistic thing, something revolutionary representing a larger movement taking place.  Trent Reznor did something similar…  Do you ever feel like an explorer/conqueror?

BRAD: Only when I put my safari outfit on. I do feel like I’ve been a very early adopter in a lot of things for musicians. Blogging, P2P, giving the source away, not caring so much about copyright, using the Internet for promotion. Certainly the explorer part applies as I love the internet and am constantly looking for interesting music angles.

Conquerer, eh, not so much. Maybe if I make some decent money somewhere down the road I’ll consider it.

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Brad Sucks, The One-Man-Band With Tons of Fans

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BradSucks, DIY incarnate...Brad is my hero.  If you haven’t heard him yet, you should check out his stuff.  This guy is a DIY musician poster child — he writes, records, mixes, masters, and sells all of his own music through his home studio.

And his stuff is all over the net.  There have been hundreds of remixes of his music, and hundreds of podcasts and radio stations have played it.  His style is often compared to that of Beck’s, a sort of electro-pop-rock that gets your head a-boppin.  All of his songs are available for free download, yet fans still buy his first CD, "I Don’t Know What I’m Doing."   (The professional manufacturing of which was funded by his fans.)  There’s even an entire forum revolving around this guy’s music.

How does he do it?  I recently had a chance to interview him to get a full scoop on the Brad.  Tune in tomorrow for 100% pure, liquified "indie-ness"…