Thursday, July 22, 2010

The Rainbow That Ruled The World

For some reason concerts lead me to wanna write in this blog. I guess being there and watching the musicians play on stage super loud inspires me to want to focus on nothing else in life than music. The show was actually Headlined by Iron Maiden, with Dream Theater acting as the opener in a place called Bristow, VA (although some websites said the concert was in Washington, DC). It was a a fantastic show. Iron Maiden wasn't the highlight for me though. Probably because they had THREE guitarists. Is that really necessary? The world wonders... Dream Theater's hour or so of playing was dampened only by the very heavy rain showers that consumed our pockets. My ticket got soaked, which was quite unfortunate. There was a rainbow that unveiled itself during Pull Me Under, which was kinda cool.

On the car ride home from DC, I spent hours focused on reworking and mastering the songs I've been working on recently. Another thing I did was research the idea of submitting my music as production music (tv shows, commercials, movies, ect.).
Many people that listen to my music say things like "wow that sounds like that could be in a video game!" or "I feel like I'm in a movie." So I figured I should start really considering that as my main focus instead of writing full blown epic songs that no one will really end up hearing. Before I go to far, I'm going to lay out a PRO/CON list of choosing production music over trying to make it as an independent electronic artist. Here goes:

Pros of becoming a touring electronica artist signed to an independent record label:
-Possibility of making a good amount of money
-Touring around the US or world if things work out to their potential
-A record label behind me to help promote my music
-The ability to play my music live in front of other people
-I would retain 100% of the rights to that song and also make a larger percentage of the revenue

Cons of becoming a touring electronica artist signed to an independent record label:
-Always out doing live shows, promotional stuff, and basically just being super busy
-Relearning all my music live and teaching it to other musicians who would play live with me
-Being able to rely only on my Macbook laptop to run my sounds through live (not a great idea)
-The music biz
-Depending on the label, I could have complete freedom over my music or I could be molded to fit their style, which would not be good or acceptable
-Inability to have any kind of family life and only live at home for brief periods at time
-Instrumental music is extremely hard to market and not usually too successful

Pros of creating production music from home or at an advertisement firm:
-Home: I could be at home all the time and do what I love and make a good amount of money from it
-Advertisement firm: I would be working with other people but doing something I love and still have a life outside of work
-If something of mine is used repeatedly in a tv show or video game, I not only would receive the money from the production music library for buying my song, but also the royalties from the per-use basis
-The style of music I write well is music you would hear in a video game or movie score (or so I'm told at least)
-I could live a normal life and have a family in the future while still making a good amount of money possibly by doing something I love, which is writing and arranging instrumental songs.
-I recently purchased something called "Writing and Recording Production Music" and have been reading it front and back since I got it. Apparently the chances I'll make money and a living off of it are MUCH higher than attempting to make it as a label-signed artist. Included was also a 10 page list of production libraries I could submit my music to.

Cons of creating production music from home or at an advertisement firm:
-If a production music library purchases a song of mine that's 5 minutes long, with a great number of cool parts and a song I consider to be amazing all the way through, may see it's life span decrease to around 30 seconds
-I would no longer hold the rights to my songs and only receive 50% of the revenue that each one makes
-I would have no chance to play my music live or go out on tour (which might actually fall under a pro because of the difficulty of recreating electronic music live)

Just from writing out that list, I think I've decided to pursue a career in production music, whether that means I'll be submitting my stuff to production libraries and hope it gets heard by the right people (while still making money for selling the rights to the song), or eventually getting a job at an advertisement firm for something more steady, where I can still just work on writing and arranging music.

It's crazy how one concert can make you question the rest of your life and your career choice. Thank you Dream Theater and that technicolor rainbow!

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Summer vs Spring Fall & Winter

I've realized since starting this blog how difficult it is to consistently keep up with it. I don't understand how there are people out there who are busier than me can possibly keep up with it.

School is finally over so this summer will be more focused on working on my music, hanging out with friends who are back from college this year, and unfortunately working. It's nice though that on my days off from work I can focus on music and fun activities as opposed to feeling like I should work on a paper or some homework. Lately I haven't worked on my music as much as I would have liked because I've been working so much. As expressed in previous posts, this is quite an inconvenient but necessary task (work that is). I'm hoping that one day music can be my full time job, but I'm willing to work my way up to that.

I always found it interesting how Fall through Spring is the big time for all my favorite TV shows, the NBA regular season (which is really the only sport I follow consistently), school, colder weather, and work. While Summer there is no TV shows, no NBA, no school, hot weather, and a lot more free time, which usually equals out to more work and free time to hangout with people. I know this is an obvious statement, I just think it's crazy how different Summer feels compared to the other three seasons.

Well I'm heading out to the YMCA to fall asleep in the steam room and workout a little. There's supposed to be a big storm coming later on, so my happiness level rose to 9.3.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Rearranged room/studio

So a couple nights ago I spent a few hours rearranging my room to accommodate my musical needs. By this I mean I turned my walk in closet into a homemade vocal booth with it's very own blanket nailed to the wall to act as that sound foam that costs hundreds of dollars to buy. There are many other things I did with it to make it a lot better to record vocals. Let's travel into the actual room: I moved the furniture and electronics in such a way that now I'm able to hook up my Mac to my 42 inch TV so I can work with Logic on the big screen. I think something that's been an issue with my recording process has been the fact that my 13 inch computer screen just isn't doing it for me. Plus if you look in any professional studio, there's always a nice HD TV that's showing the DAW software, and that seems so much cooler than a stupid little laptop screen.

I also wish there were 32 hours in a day instead of 24. I think everyone would agree that we would need those extra 8 hours to get stuff done. I would probably be done with 2 albums by now if there was more time in the day... Sadly though I spend 30 hours a week at work while taking 4 classes at community college. This does not leave for much time to spend on music, which is quite unfortunate. I'm hoping that the coming summer will allow for more time to spend on music.

-Adam (Odyssey Aquatic)

Friday, April 23, 2010

First Post (Day after seeing Owl City)

So after 20 years and around 200 odd days of living, this is my first blog post ever. Words can many times be just as, if not more effective than anything else, so I hope I can exercise that here.

Right now I'm currently working on Hazel Balloons, mostly working on the beats because after starting every one of my 7 or 8 songs with nothing but Garageband loops, I decided to stop using that crutch and actually lay out my own drums like a legit musician and not just a kid in his room playing around in Garageband. And yes, I'm still in Garageband... I do own Logic and read the manual and watch tutorials ALL the time, but cannot seem to get a tight grasp on the program yet. Fortunately, however, because nearly all of my music other than vocals recorded with the microphone, is recorded through the ever amazing MIDI, the sound quality is very very good. My plan is to get a good amount of songs completely finished in Garageband and then later go into Logic and tweak things a bit in the songs and work on the mixing, but Garageband is so much more user friendly and easier to get the main songs down. Logic, to me, is more of a shoe polisher and Garageband is the shoemaker.

Anyways, enough about that... I just got home from the Owl City concert in Washington, DC. The show was swarming with screaming 15-17 year old girls, which was quite expected... I almost thought about going outside during Fireflies in fear of having my ear screamed off. I didn't check out the setlist beforehand though, so by the time it came on it was too late for me to escape unfortunately. The opening band, Paper Route, from Nashville, TN, was pretty good. Definitely a louder, more rockier band than I expected at an Owl City-type concert. Every one of their members played different instruments, which is always cool because bands with the ability to do that are fun to watch live because they are all over the stage. The highlight of the show for me though was Lights... AMAZING stuff! Check out her album The Listening and the title track from that album if you're into indie electronica type music. Very good show she put on. I have mixed feelings about Owl City. The highlights of that part of the show was the way Port Blue was mixed into the show, and songs were interwoven together and all of that. It was also cool seeing Matt Thiessen from Relient K playing with Adam Young. The reason it wasn't all amazing was because some of the songs were SO different that it was almost hard to enjoy it because you hear a song a certain way in the studio and then live it's like totally different. I love bands like Dave Matthews and Phish and how they make their songs extended and different live, but with a band like Owl City, it should really stay true to it's sound live I think. Also, Adam was a bit overdramatic live, considering he is too shy to conduct over-the-phone or in-person interviews. He did sing through his shoe though, which was pretty cool. I admire mr. Young greatly though, and he is actually my greatest inspiration for writing music because he, like me, really started when he was 20, writing and recording songs in his parents house. So I have more than 100% respect for him and knew that I needed to see him live at some point in my life, through all the screaming girls and fireflies flying into my ears.

Well if you read all of that, congratulations, you've survived blog post #1...

-Adam (Odyssey Aquatic)