On a shoestring project part 39

  Sweeney's basement on Dame street tonight every one! We're pulling out all the stops for this one, it's going to be a rocker.

  The King Kong Club was great fun as always, the Village is such a great venue to play in! The sound is just to die for, and the lighting system is top notch. It makes you as a musician think, this is what you want it to be like! As to the competition, it all comes down to how big (and loud) crowd you can bring in. On the night there were bands with much bigger following and they deservedly wont the night. But we made new friends, built up our mailing list nicely and we are dying to see the video.

  It would have been nice to get to record our album in a top notch studio with a top notch producer, but it was not meant to be. The day after a competition like this can be bit of a downer, and I could see this in the faces of my band mates. I have been around the block long enough to learn not to get your hopes up until some thing really is happening. We did pull out all the stops to bring in our supporters, but it just wasn't meant to be. And this is such a good point, there are ups and downs in music business, and very often lot more downs. You need to build up a tough skin, get used to rejection and most of all, never to give up! But I have been planning things bit further a head anyway. It is good to have always something in the future to look forward to. So usually day or two after a concert we take a break, but then it's back to rehearsals and start preparing for the next show. We had the Sweeney's to look forward to. We could get focused on something new, not dwell on the past. I came across on the net this concept that what you are going through in music business is actually past, or more so, its the fruits of your work from weeks, months or even years a go. True, but bit deep...

  Anyway, we all know and/ or use Facebook. It is a great tool to promote bands, events, companies etc. But also great way to keep in contact with old and new friends. I have talked about Facebook promotion in the past, but let me go back to it for a minute. I am pretty patient man, but came across something I personally think you should never do to promote your band. There is certain event organizer, not very active and this is why I have been patient with them, here in Dublin. If they have an event coming up, what they are promoting, they post an poster image on Facebook and tag all the people on their Facebook friends on it. As a result this poster turns up on everyones wall... I would highly recommend against this. If you do so you will only annoy all your friends, for example this organizer is the only person who I have canceled as my friend on Facebook. You can Email the link to them and ask them to post it, but it should be everyones own choice, what do you think?

  Next week Sebastian is going for a short trip back to Poland to charge his batteries:-) And of course we will stuff his pockets with E.P.s for some serious networking. It would be great some day in the future to go and play some concerts in the guys home country. Speaking of which, for our Polish friends, check this out: http://www.terazrock.pl/user.php?UserId=10141 And for those of you (me included) who don't understand Polish, it is a profile of our band in Poland's main rock music magazines website. Europe is full of music magazines, so Google for them and send emails asking if they review independent artists. Its never too early to start spreading your bands name. And very often the readers of these magazines are targeted audience, priceless!

  Our new video “Everybody dies”is doing well, 600 views in youtube. Its also getting some views in other sites as well, for example Metalireland.com. I also submitted it to BlankTV, if you like your punk rock, you need to check this out:-)

  So thats our updates and tips for this week, we'll be back for more next week:-)

  J.P.

On a shoestring project part 31

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I've had a good look around in the past six months of the music scene in Dublin. I looked in to venues and promoters who put up shows for independent and up and coming bands, I looked in to local bands, what they do, how they promote them selves, where they play, how often they play... And I have found out few things that might need attention, and I will try to do my best to help this situation.
  First of all, we all know there are few cool venues around the town, where you can get a gig with an indie band. But I would like to see a list of venues and band nights online where any band could go and try their luck. But of course this is not as simple as just set it up and every one is happy. First of all, if I would post every venues promoters contact details, I think they would be ready to lynch me after a month of mail boxes full of not so great music... Second thing is that this list should be informative as well, there is no point trying to push your reggae band in to a heavy metal club. And if you just want a venue list, that’s what the Hot Press yearbook, is for. So what I will try to do is going to take me a long time and probably lots of help from musicians and music fans. As you know jpkallio.com started a 100 concert challenge, where to build up following, mailing list and social network lists. With in this challenge we will perform in quite few venues. So as we go along, I started a page on the blog where I will post the venues we played, and with the venue promoters permission I will share their contact information and some details of the venue and what kind of music they are looking for. I will work out the details of this page in the next few weeks, but the start up is already up. One-way or another it will be a free list, but again I do worry that the list will be abused by musicians who just waist promoters time... So be nice people:-) I also want to get a bit of a conversation going, where other bands and artists can share their experience of the venues and submit other venues. So first of all, let me know what you think of this idea, and also if you have any venue suggestions for the list you can send them to jpkallio@hotmail.com, or the comment section on the Indie Venue List page, that way they are there for every one to see.
  Second, I was very surprised how few up and coming bands have website! For the love of all good in the world, this is not that hard to do! There are loads of services on the net where you can get a template for a website, and I would be very surprised if you did not know any one in your friends who knows a bit of HTML. I started from the bottom... I think it was an Web design for Dummies, or something like that, about 12 years ago. But being a musician, I know it is sometimes hard to manage your time, and it feels like another over whelming task. I would like to make a web design guide for musicians, but to me right now that just seems more than I can take on. But maybe in the near future. Do you think this would be useful? And would you use it? For now, try it your self, there are endless amount resources online. If this fails, try to find some one who is willing to do it for you just for fun. Remember, it does not need to be the best website in the world. I believe that just an ok website is still million times better than no website. If you can't find any one, then try contacting some colleges and see if they can put you in contact with some students who might want to do this just to build their portfolio. The next step up from here would be getting a professional to do this, but be careful with your hard earned cash, shop around wisely. If all else fails, contact me. I am a musician, not a web designer, but I have done quite few sites so far and for a small fee I can get your website up and running.
On top of the website you need to have presence on as may social media sites and music sites as possible. I talked about compiling a list on them way back in one of the earlier blogs. But for now on our websites link list there is a links to our social media sites. Not all, but the ones that seem to be working for us. So just click on the link and sign up your own band up, and when you do, make us your friends :-) I will be tweaking this list almost weekly so keep an eye on www.jpkallio.com/links.html
  And hey, don't forget about our next concert! 31st of March in the Captain Americas on Grafton Street. The show starts at 10 with a support band and we'll be on right after them. This will be number two in our 100 concert challenge. I will leave you this week with a new video from our first concert :-) This is a song called “News” Back for more next week.

On a shoestring project part 30

  There is so much talk about the state of music business on the net at the moment; it's even making the news. Being a musician it is important to keep up with the new trends, and follow where the business is going. I heard during the week an interesting point about the internet's role in music business in the future. It was compared to Radio. I can some how see the point here. I found my self listening songs posted on Facebook by journalist who is Running a Jukebox show on Facebook. And I've seen lots of other people do this as well. You are doing your work, and on the back you play tunes posted by other people. It is an interesting concept. I also read a statistic that most people prefer to see a video while listening to a song. I suppose it is a natural progression in the times we live in. Everything is Sensory overload. We want our movies, sports and even games in 3D. It's all about stimulating as many of our scenes as possible. Of course I sometimes miss the more simpler times, when I first got my hands on the Guns n' Roses Appetite for destruction LP, and the artwork on the cover and the actual music was enough to take young boys attention for hours and hours. But at the same time, all the new technology has its advantages. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably know about the video we made for our band jpkallio.com few weeks back. I will use this as an example here for a second. After the actual recording of the song, we decided to make a video for it. It was Tomeks, the bass player’s brain child. He went out on the streets of Dublin to do some filming first. Then we hung up few white sheets in the wall of our rehearsal room, set up few lights and filmed all of us playing the song. If you would put this in to time frame, we probably spent about 8hours altogether on the filming. Then Tomek spent fare bit more time editing the video. The result was really stylish black and white music video. In its first week we got over 700 views! And this already in my mind is phenomenal. For an unknown band to be able to reach to that many people in one week would have been unheard of 20 years ago. But this can be all very “virtual” and bit hard to grasp. But when bit over week later we played our first concert and I knew for fact that at least 30 people in the audience had heard the song already before we ever played it live, that’s when the power of this new music business format did hit home. So we will be embracing all the tools of this new music business available to us and I would encourage all other bands to do so as well.
  But lets not forget probably the oldest promotion you can do, playing live. How many times have you heard band talking about “making it”? Still today in many musicians minds this involves getting signed to a record label, getting a manager, a booking agent and what ever else. First of all, no record company would have interest in your band unless you have a substantial mailing list; second, if your only goal in music is to get signed to a record company I would encourage you to do some serious reading about the state of the music business! Record companies will only sign you if they know you will sell records, meaning you have existing fans who will buy records, not meaning they put the magical wheels of music business in motion and you will be on fast track to stardom. So I ask you: If you have enough fans/ followers/ people subscribed to your mailing list for a record company to want to sign you, would you not be better producing the record on your own and keeping 100% of the profit, rather than 40% down to anything as ridiculous as 1% of the profit? But one way or another, it comes down to one thing, getting people to sign up to your mailing list/ Facebook page. And still today by far the best thing for this I have found is playing live shows.
  We have implemented an action plan, well... more like a guide line. Every one knows that new bands WILL NOT get paid for gigs. Yeah being a musician is a skill that we worked hard for and it should be appreciated, but before you get ahead of your self, you need to be able to provide value. By this I mean: You need to be able to bring people to your concerts, fill venues night after night! Before you can do this, you do not have value in the eyes of the booking agents, venue promoters, and bar owners. Yeah your music need to be good, but not for the promoter to like it, but for the possible fans to fall in love with it. I mean do you honestly think that the head of Aiken promotions (One of Irelands biggest booking agencies) really is a big Justin Bieber fan? I don't think so! But he knows Justin will fill the O2. So to start of our plan is 100 concerts. First one is done, so 99 to go. The idea here is for the first 100 concerts to just concentrate on:

1. Playing in front of as many people as possible
2. Clock in the hours of playing live as a band
3. Get people to sign up for mailing list and all the social media sites
4. Build a name for the band
5. Have lots of fun :-)

 During these first 100 concerts we are not trying to make money. In fact, as long as we won’t be loosing too much money, we'll be just happy to play. So any venues who would like to get on that 100 list, just let us know ;-)
But is not just a small gimmick, it is something I would recommend for any starting band.

  So the number two in the 100 concert plan will take place in the Captain Americas on Grafton Street on Thursday the 31st of March 10pm. If you were at the last show, you know it is going to be a rocker of a night again :-)
  Oh yeah, and one more thing. As Twitter had its fifth birthday, it would be only fair to share our twitter here.
http://twitter.com/jpkalliomusic

On a shoestring project part 10

   I survived the Halloween weekend, hope it was ok for you guys as well. Once again it is upwards and onwards. I am getting closer and closer to the start of the actual recording of the album. Rehearsals have been going great, the songs are taking their shape, but more so I can hear an album. I think sometimes people forget this, I have made this mistake in the past... When rock music started to become more and more available in LP format, artists started making albums. Now when home recording has become so accessible for most people ( what used to be a price of a studio for one day, now you can buy a basic home recording equipment), The market has been exaggerated by millions of CD's or download albums ( Not a bad thing in my humble opinion, makes every one work harder to stand out). I did the mistake once thinking more is better. An album that had 14 tracks and a running time of over an hour. I must say, listening back to the album is hard work. Don't get me wrong, individual tracks are good, lots of great moments. But as an album it is little bit disjointed and too long. The standard running time of LP was 45 min. And I still think that best albums are around about this length. Also the collection of songs need to work as a unit, making a good album is little bit like making a film. Set of scenes that put together makes sense, keeps you interested and leaves you wanting more. This is very much what I want to achieve. And dare I say this loud? It would be nice to be able to release it as LP as well some day...

   As the idea of this project is to achieve a professional quality CD with a minimum budget, the home recording rout was always the first option. But let’s look in to this for a minute. The direction that the music has taken in the past few months is pretty solid rock album, drums, bass, electric guitar and vocals. And lot of the tracks would benefit from really classic sounds. I have considered in the past few weeks whether or not I should try to get to a professional recording studio for some, if not all of the recording. But this would blow the budget well out of portions (and possibly bankrupt me). I don't think I would benefit from spending my money on mediocre or budget studio, but the top studios still have some of the "toys" that create that exquisite in the sound. So what would they have? Well... Good studio would have great sounding acoustically treated rooms (never under estimate acoustics!), they would have a selection of microphones that I could not even dream of, and I once had the pleasure to record my own voice for one track with AKG C12. This is probably my favourite vocal microphone; at least I haven't got my hands on a better one yet. This I must say was magic... The detail was just out of this world, it was warm, clear, listening back felt like being in the room during the performance. But this microphone comes with a big price tag... in Thomann it is currently going for €3599... The other great industry standard is Neuman U87, Neuman certainly knows how to make rery nice microphones! The next thing in the signal change would be the microphone pre amp, maybe some nice Neve, Avalon or TL Audio. The smoothest compressors in the world, maybe a good old fashioned analogue tape machine. Selection of studio monitors, and of course an experienced engineer that could take all the stress of recording out of my hands... But as mentioned above, this would come at a big price... Even with the dreaded “R” word hanging over our heads, the studios of this standard would be charging anywhere from €500 up to €2000 a day... And let’s face it, if I had that kind of money to throw around, this blog would not be about recording an album on a shoestring budget.

   So I have a laptop, nothing fancy but OK, Acer aspire 5738Z, I have a Shure beta 57 a, a very good industry standard microphone, I have matched pair of Octava MK 012 small diaphragm condensers and I have access to pair of Shure SM 58. I also have friends who could possibly borrow me more microphones for a short term. I've been doing lots of research in the past few months on recording equipment, trying to figure out what would be most suitable for my needs and what would be the best value for money, without compromising on quality. And this is what I have in mind: I would need enough inputs to record drums, and hopefully something to spare. So minimum eight, and I would need XLR microphone inputs, and at least few with phantom power. And a silent operation would be a bonus. So the winner at the moment is Zoom R16 (follow the link for manufacturer’s site) It works as individual unit, as an interface for computer and also as a controller for your recording software. I think it is a genius of a device, and the feedback and reviews have been great. But obviously I will not know for sure until I get my hands on one. In Thomann they are priced at the moment at €345, Waltons in Dublin are selling it for €385, and for my friends in the states side Sweetwater are selling it for $399. But there is a great little store here in Dublin called the Goodwins, on Capel Street. I have bought lots of equipment from them over the years, and their service is brilliant! About year an half ago I bought a guitar amp from them and it had a problem in the valve sockets, and they ordered a replacement straight away and gave me another amp while I waited for the replacement. And I do like supporting a local shop especially if they try to compete with the internet giants. The list price in Goodwins is €359, and I am sure they can negotiate few Euros anyway, and if there is any trouble, the shop is with in walking distance from me, and I don't need to be posting stuff back to Germany while the project gets delayed by weeks, if not even months. Also I need some sort of studio speakers for mixing. And I have my eyes on ESI Near05 active speakers, in Thoman for €175 for a pair. I haven't found anything in Dublin to compete with them at the moment, but I am also keeping my eyes on Gumtree for second hand studio speakers around that price. Also I would like to get an large diaphragm vocal mic, and as the C12 is out of question, AKG has a budget range of microphones that are supposed to be great value for money. So the microphone in question is AKG Perception 120, and again in Thomann for €85 which I think is a bargain. If I was to invest more money on it, I would recommend looking in to Neuman TLM 102 (€555 in Thomann), Or TLM 103 (There is a second hand one on Gumtree at the moment for €500, a bargain!)

Anyway, that’s enough of window shopping for now; Let me know your thoughts and suggestions on my shopping list.