On a shoestring project part 16

  Once again I have come to a conclusion that there is some thing new to learn around every corner. The week 15 brought out my first single (Big thank you to every one who purchased the track!). Apart from being able to offer a track for purchase, I wanted to test the waters with promotion. I have kept it pretty basic still, all the social media sites and contacting individual radio shows at national and some local radio stations. But anyone who knows even a bit how radio works in Ireland knows I might as well be throwing rocks to the see and hoping to catch a fish... It is very much a business driven media, and that’s just the way it has been and probably will be in the future. And as of right now, I don't really have much of business value in their eyes. But this is exactly what I needed to find out for the actual album release. I am becoming to understand (well... more like accept what I already knew...), that I might need to spend some money on PR somewhere along the line. This is an area where I have no past experience, so again it will take lots of research, filtering through the net and lots of coffee! For some of you this might be an obvious one, but still needs to be mentioned: Hot Press Yearbook, the yellow pages of Irish music industry. This is good starting point, but at the same time I am pretty sure there are lots more out there that haven't listed them selves here. Also especially when the album will be coming out, in Ireland I will be targeting a niche market. There is a healthy hard rock / indie scene in Ireland, but it would not get much main stream radio time. When in other parts of Europe it would be completely different situation. What good PR Company has and I don't, is a relationship with the media. If they put forward a track, it actually has a chance to get played, or even in my wildest dreams end up on the play list.
  In the old model of the music business, a record company would spend as much on the PR as they did actually on the recording of an album. But in my case, being on a shoestring budget, I really need to get value for every single euro I spend. So my task will be to find suitable PR companies and ask quotes and what they can offer, and I am sure I will skip few beats when I get the quotes... Put I need to make a bit of a point here. I will not be looking for a company to promise me an ex-amount of friends and visits on Facebook, YouTube, MySpace etc. I can do that myself. What I need is good old fashioned publicity; believe it or not it still has its value.
  On the other hand, we are trying to brace the new model of music industry. And this is all about thinking outside the box. So maybe I should come up with some kind of incentive for people to download the “Glory to the world”. Free lolly pop with every download? Actually I do make a mean chocolate chip cookies ;-). So if you have any ideas on suitable or even just funny incentive I would love to hear them. Also from my past experience, one of the best forms of promotion still is a Live show. And we will be planning some concerts in the New Year :-)

  Oh yeah, and let me go back to the Zoom R16 for a second. I have tested it in the rehearsals few times, and it sounds great. But last week I brought it in and I used the built in stereo microphone in the unit and recorded some tracks, and I must say I was impressed! I brought the tracks home and uploaded them to Cubase LE 5, which is going to be my main recording software for now on for the project. The vocals were bit muddy, so I just doubled them and I ended up with really nice rehearsal demos.

And here is a bit of a song writing story. I was meeting the guys in town last Thursday to head for the rehearsals. Just before I got the “Outside the house in 2mins” call from the guys I was listening some tracks on YouTube, and I heard a chord from a song, it was the opening chord of a song and as soon as I heard that first chord, inspiration hit me. I paused the YouTube, picked up the guitar and song just spilled out. I wrote two verses and a chorus on the computer. But even I had to head for the rehearsals I did not want to loose the inspiration, so I took a picture of the lyrics on the computer screen, grabbed my equipment and ran out of the house. While still waiting outside the house I finished the lyrics on my phone. On a coffee break in the rehearsals I transferred the lyrics from the phone to a piece of paper, and went through the song few times with the guys, and at the end of the rehearsal we recorded a rough demo of the song. Now you can't really get hotter off the press than that :-)
  So where are we at? We have 13 songs that just need some committing to muscle memory. I think few more, and then we choose 11 for the Album and 4 for the EP :-). I am hoping to start tracking some drums next week, but we'll see how we get on. Christmas will put a break in to things for few weeks, but that’s ok. It's good to take the demos and just listen to them for a week or so with out playing them. Sometimes when you are in the middle of it, it's good to get some distance and look at things from different perspective.
So that's the ramblings for this week, thanks once again for taking the time to read this. And hope to see you here next week :-)