This album is acoustic versions of what I consider to be the best songs I’ve written to date. I had heard from some people that they liked the emotion from my live performances and that some of the fully produced tracks were missing that. The album is called “human music” because I decided to record it in a way that included the small imperfections that are often produced out through the use of computer software, which is a practice that many people feel is making our music less expressive and more contrived.
On Sunday, Lila (my fiancé) spent half of the day painting so that I could have an awesome album cover for Human Music. I’m really happy with how this turned out! The album has now been submitted for digital distribution. If everything goes well you’ll be able to purchase this on Saturday August 2. I’ll also be getting some physical CDs of this, which is going to take another 4-6 weeks to get all of the artwork assembled and CDs duplicated.
If my inner child was writing this, he’d insist that I write about cool things like robots, jetpacks, and foiling evil plots to take over the world. The inner teenager would probably disagree since “nobody really believes in that stuff.” Admittedly, I’ve probably spent more of my adult life listening to the inner teenager and not enough time listening to the inner child. I’ve now resolved to remedy that situation. As a result, I am looking to build an army that will strap on jetpacks with me so we can fight the evil robots and foil their evil plot(s) to take over the world.
So are there really evil robots and do they really want to take over the world? Of course there are, and they already have! It’s been reported that six media companies control 90% of the media in America. That’s an amazingly small number of gatekeepers for a pretty big and diverse population. With music, these gatekeepers have proven that its more important for them to market image rather than music. The music they give us is often over-produced, over-compressed and lacks depth.
So how do we away control from the evil robot media corporations that control the music world? Talking more about music that’s made for the sake of the music and not for an image would be a good start. It would benefit us all to share more of the music that we’ve found outside of the influence of the big six.
Many of you reading this are long time veterans of the live music scene on Second Life, or perhaps other indie music scenes (like the former mp3.com). If you’re like me, you’ve heard a lot of really awesome music in these places that is considered unknown or obscure that deserves to be heard. The only way it gets heard is if people share this music with their friends and other folks. So get out there and blog about it, post about it on social media, and share links to your favorite indie artists websites, videos and other places that we share music.
So I’m guessing you wouldn’t expect me to make a post like this where I didn’t put my money where my mouth was, right? Right. So here are a couple of songs that I think you should listen to today: Frenzy by Lyndon Heart At Any Rate by Sean Kagalis
So who’s with me?
This album is acoustic versions of what I consider to be the best songs I’ve written to date. I had heard from some people that they liked the emotion from my live performances and that some of the fully produced tracks were missing that. The album is called “human music” because I decided to record it in a way that included the small imperfections that are often produced out through the use of computer software, which is a practice that many people feel is making our music less expressive and more contrived.
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It’s been 5 years and I’ve lost count of how many times (probably 800-900) that I’ve spent an hour of my day singing and playing guitar in front of a computer screen to an audience comprised of pixelized avatars. In that time, I’ve seen lots of ups and downs in attendance. I’ve seen some people connect with my music in a profound way, and have also seen those that give it less than a 30 second chance before teleporting off somewhere else. I’ve also seen a lot of other performers show up new to Second Life and get tons of instant recognition, while others (sometimes very professional polished performers with great songs) not get very much attention at all. I’ve also seen lots of debate around performers getting paid by venues, while noting that very few performers can make enough to make the money a primary motivation for playing. While these observations and debates all reflect some potential benefits and/or pitfalls of performing in Second Life, I think there is one other benefit that trumps them all.
I realized a long time ago that playing regularly in Second Life is FORCED PRACTICE. Because I hate backing out on promises I’ve made to someone else, if I’ve got a gig scheduled, I show up and play it no matter how good I’m feeling. After doing this for 5 years, I can honestly say that I feel there is a night and day difference between how I sounded when I first started in SL and how I sound now.
Case in point:
Here’s my song “The Reasons Why” recorded from my first gig in Second Life at The Old Barn in May of 2009::
5 years later, here’s my song “Caff-fiend” performed at the Hotel Chelsea on July 15, 2014:
To my ears, I hear massive improvements in lots of different areas, most notably my confidence, singing, production values, and my ability to interact with the audience. These are the kind of improvements that come with repetitive practice and lots of hours of critical listening. This just comes naturally by playing lots of shows in SL as well as attending shows by other performers. These skills have transferred over to my real life performances as well and I’m thankful for that.
I’d be curious to hear these comparisons from other SL artists if they have them. Give me links, people 🙂
Like anyone else, I’ve had my ups and downs in life. I’ve lived though times where I had the best life I could imagine, and also through tough times where I’m not sure how I survived. At times I’ve felt like I’ve had good friends and at other times I’ve experienced extreme loneliness. Sometimes down periods and extreme loneliness seemed longer than they needed to be, mostly because of a combination of bad choices I had made. my behavior, my unique life circumstances, or just general social awkwardness/anxiety.
Now I don’t think just having tough times should be enough justification for anyone to buy my music, because I get it…everyone goes through tough times. I also don’t think that I deserve any pity for the tough times easier for the same reason, and because the tough times helped made me who I am today. If anything else, what I really learned about music is that when I listened to music I could identify with, it made the tough times seem not as tough. Listening to music helped me with the emotional release I needed at times just to keep going. And even in the good times, listening to music seemed to make it even better.
I figure that by working hard at making music, hopefully someone else in the world will find what I make, identify with it, and even maybe it will help them get through some tough times, just like other music did for me. And I think that’s a great way of making the world a better place. I certainly don’t expect that everyone or even the majority of people will experience my music in such a profound way. But strangely enough, I’ve seen it happen a few times. For me, that’s enough encouragement to keep going…
I’ve made my song “The Reasons Why” available as a free download! This is a song with a bouncy chord progression and bass line that is guaranteed to leave you in a better mood than before you listened. Provide your email in the form below, and then click on the link that’s emailed to you to get your free download. It’s that easy!
Please provide your name and email address for your free download.
