John Mayer at Berklee

Read This: http://www.berklee-blogs.com/2011/07/john-mayer-2011-clinic-manage-the-temptation-to-publish-yourself/

Now I’ve never been a huge John Mayer fan. Not that I don’t like his music; I just haven’t listened to it too much. After reading this, I think I may start.

The blog post is from a clinic that Mayer gave at Berklee. Sometimes I wish I had pursued that… But it’s too late and I’m happy to have music as a side gig, so let’s not be sentimental.

Getting to the post, a majority of the it is geared towards social media – Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and the like. Mayer urges students serious about their music to not let self promotion be distracting. Interesting. So often these days you hear about the next new thing in social media, how it can help your band, how every musician is doing it, etc. Hardly ever do you hear Mayer’s approach.

And I couldn’t agree more. Social media serves two purposes for musicians – getting more fans and keeping them updated. Occasionally social media is used for collaboration, like a lot of what Matt Stevens has done, but that situation is an outlier.

So you have two goals of social media. However, as Mayer puts it, “

This time is a really important time for you guys because nobody knows who you are, and nobody should. This is not a time to promote yourself. It doesn’t matter. This is the time to get your stuff together. Promotion can be like that. You can have promotion in 30 seconds if your stuff is good. Good music is its own promotion.”

Sure, it’s good to put a word out for yourself, but so many artists are dwelling on that. Trolling the web for potential fans should never be a concern that interferes with your music. When it does, and IT DOES, there’s a problem. Mayer goes into more depth, explaining how he lost sight of the music through social media promotion.

My favorite quote of the post:

“I remember playing the guitar through the amplifier facing out the window of my house onto the street in the summer time – that was social media in 1992.”

Try being good and get recognized by that. Play until your fingers bleed, your hand cramps, or until you’re late for whatever less important thing you’ve got afterwards. Don’t be distracted by anything. Sure updates on upcoming gigs are fine, and so is the occasional facebook campaign. But the second that that takes away from the music, you’re doing it wrong.

I’ve noticed this social media phenomenon a lot lately. Over the last two years of school I didn’t play too much outside of gigs. However, my social media presence and promotion was pretty decent. Now that my evenings are free from homework, facebook and twitter have taken a back seat and I’m playing and progressing like I used to.

Now, my social media presence is a twitter post here and there, occasionally a facebook status, and blogs that I write at work on my lunch breaks. I’ve got a second album to be thinking about, bigger gigs to plan, and some new instruments to learn. I don’t need to be trolling for fans. It’s not a numbers game, it’s about the music.

The Kaki King Effect

She’s doing it all right. Kaki King has delivered good music to the masses. It’s a little bit experimental mixed with a little bit of radio-friendly. It’s nothing that you are supposed to like; she’s not being inflated like Gaga. It’s something that you happen upon and it draws you in.

Kaki King isn’t about flashy. She’s about music. And she understands it in both a musical sense as well as a commercial sense. That’s how you can hear her music on the radio (though not mainstream radio …more like Echoes or college stations) yet you can analyze what’s there and not be bored. There’s a healthy mix of the technical and the typical. On any record of hers you will find both some technically dazzling acoustic work as well as some accessible melodies and harmonies.

Her albums are a multi-faceted single entity, disguised in some manner to all. To those of us who seek musical excellence and complexity, that’s what we hear. Yet, at the same time someone who doesn’t know anything about music can appreciate and enjoy it as being similar enough to what they are already familiar with. She’s doing it all right.

So what exactly am I referring to when I say “The Kaki King Effect”? It’s how listening to her music makes you want to listen to more of her music …exclusively.

I noticed this sometime while driving this past weekend. Now my personal preference for listening to music is to listen to an entire album, start to finish. I rarely ever do shuffle or even an album out of order. It bothers me. After listening to the whole thing, I will find a different album to listen to.

In the case of this past weekend, I started by listening to Kaki King’s latest album, Junior. Afterwards, when it was time to choose the next album, I couldn’t think of anything that I cared at all to listen to. Scrolling through the vast music collection of my iPod, I just wanted more Kaki.

So then I listened to another one of her albums, and another. It was a one-track mindset perpetuated by itself; a phenomenon I would like to dub The Kaki King Effect.

Here's the first song I ever heard from Kaki King, Playing with Pink Noise. It's a little less accessible, but a good gateway.

Practice and Climbing

Everyone wants to be a rock star. You want to be able to strum out a few power chords, make it to the billboards, and be rolling in the dough. If you don’t want to be a rock star then you most definitely want to be a professional athlete. You dream big because that’s how we do it in the land of the free.

And that’s alright. Dream big. Just make sure that you know how you’re going to get from point A to point B.

I’m a very goal-oriented person. I set a goal and I reach that goal. Those are my dreams. But as soon as I reach one of those goals, it's not basking in that glory, but moving to the bigger and better. There is always a goal beyond the goal; miniature dreams that help to shape the overall.

On multiple occasions I’ve heard people exclaim of how good I am at guitar. Immediately following that, they say something like “I’ll never be as good as you.” Those people should be hit. They don’t get it. While I know that I am a decent guitarist, it is seldom that I am satisfied with where I am at. My ability isn’t good enough and it never will be. I'm not saying that that will make me famous, but I'm saying that that's what it takes to be good.

I try to practice a couple hours a day. On top of a rather busy schedule and many other hobbies, that's a lot of dedication. And it's constantly pushing forward, not backing myself into a creative rut. That's how I get better. When you’re intentionally writing and learning at your skill level, you can’t get better. You have to push yourself every day. If I see a new technique that I want to learn, then I write a song that utilizes that technique. Then I practice for hours until I can use that technique at will.

See, the problem is that no one in music wants to work at music. Music has never been, nor will it ever be, straightforward. You cannot hold your skill to a scale to see how good you are. Consequently, not too many people seem to ever see their ability on that scale. There is what one can play and what one cannot and that's wrong.

In addition to playing guitar, one of my many other hobbies is rock climbing. 3-5 nights a week I go to the gym to climb for anywhere from an hour to 4 hours. The motivation I see with people who climb far surpasses those in music. I believe it’s that people have lost the ability to push themselves to do anything uncomfortable and uncertain.

At a climbing gym there are different taped climbs that you can do of varying difficulty. The scale at Reading Rocks runs white through black; easy to hard, respectively. People can see how good they are doing and everyone seems to be driven to climb bigger and harder.

And on your way up, you may fail. If you’re not falling at some point, you’re not trying hard enough. It’s great to get to the top, but if you get to the top of something you had previously fallen on, you can say that you have gotten better. Time and time again I see kids in the gym beating themselves up working on one move or on one climb. Until the make it. Then they move on to something harder.

No one in music wants to do that. They use the same 4 chord progressions, the same time signatures, the same keys, and the same bag of tricks every time. Nothing new.

So you wrote a new song? What makes it anything more than filler? The radio is full of filler and that's why it is dying. If you’re thinking “that song’s great!” then you’ve got it wrong. It’s only subjectively great when you give up trying. 

New to the Family

A few weeks ago, I embarked on yet another craigslist deal. As you may recall, months back I traded my Crate BV300 – a 300W all tube head. It was way more than I ever needed, especially with acoustic gigs. After trading that I was left with a Marshall 1960A 4x12 speaker cabinet. Sure, it sounds great and is a bit of an industry standard, but when did I ever use it and when was the last time I was looking at anything regarding the rock industry?

So it was time to give the cab a new home. I had tried many tactics before while trying to sell it on craigslist, but this time I posted it as a trade rather than for cash. And it worked.

There are now three new additions to my musical instrument family.

A cello that had been rescued from a school, a 1970 tele-star short-scale bass, and a 25 note chromatic wooden bell set. The plan is to be able to incorporate more instruments into my next album.

Note: the cello is missing a string because I may have been trying to tune the wrong string… A replacement is on its way and that will NOT happen again.

Perhaps I'll implement them into gigs as well? It’ll be a while before I can hack it as a cellist, but I can play bass and the bells wouldn’t be hard to do simple stuff with. I’ve got some piezo pickups that I can throw on the cello and the means to mic the bells. I’ll just have to check the response of my amp to see if it can go as low as a cello… Otherwise I’d be looking at a multiple amp setup …not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Dynamic Pricing

A recent Bob Lefsetz article brought of the topic of dynamic pricing.

 

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-dynamic-pricing-20110706,0,2760675.story

 

This LA Times article touches on the subject quite well. Basically, the idea is that the faster tickets sell, the more they will cost. The slower they sell, the lower the price. Supply in demand. It's like oil prices ...well kind of.

 

According to the article, this has been implemented in a number of theaters for theatrical productions and is seeing some success. It's only a matter of time before this model is adapted by the music industry.

 

With dynamic pricing, you're not just making more money. For larger shows, yes, it will bring in more revenue. However, for smaller shows, this will also bring in more people. In theater, I would imagine that would land some sort of word of mouth respose where you tell your friends after you've stumbled upon some show. Maybe they'll see it ..someday. But the opportunities this can bring to music have greater potential, as the impact of word of mouth can lead not only to others seeing live shows, but also listening/buying the music, buying merch, etc. Fans.

 

Similar things are already done at some music venues. A couple years back I saw Dream Theater somewhere in Jersey. They had 3 or 4 openers, from what I remember. However, due to rather ridiculous prices, many of the front seats were unclaimed. Front row tickets were nearing $200 a pop. Rather ridiculous. The tickets we had were a lot closer to $60 - nosebleed seats. However, since there were a lot of open seats in the beginning for the openers, people who showed up early were moved to fill in the seats. It gave the impression to the bands that they were playing to more people and gave more people the "real" experience. We were moved to 5th row, center. From that experience I got to fully experience what would end up as one of my favorite bands, Zappa Plays Zappa. I told friends. And I saw them again.

 

As a young artist myself, one of the most rewarding statistics from a gig is the number of people present. Money is nice, but if 100 people see me as opposed to 50, I have a much greater chance of having my name spread around. Playing to a packed house is a great feeling.

 

That goal of playing to more people is often coupled with making more money. Dynamic pricing could bring both back to music; making people care and putting more capital into the industry.

Hits

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/05/137530847/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-hit-song?sc=fb&cc=fp

 

http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2011/07/02/story-of-the-day-3/

 

Deep down, every musician wants to have their song(s) be a hit. I've heard people humming the melody from my song Phoenix after a gig and it feels good. Still a long way away from a hit but it's that feeling of acceptance.

 

I read the npr article after Lefsetz posted about it a few days ago. According to the article, it can cost upwards of a million dollars to produce a hit. And even at that, nothing's guaranteed. And nearly all of that money is spent on the "song roll out" portion that's primarily marketing-esque schemes.

 

Where is the value in that? Sure, it has a cash-back value. The people spending a million bucks to put out a song/album are generally getting it back. But beyond that? You're paying to be put in front of people so that they notice you. It's basically a listen-to-my-music-because-I-have-lots-of-money strategy. Would the same artists be famous if they didn't have the money? Sure, some marketing can be justified, but if you have a hit, it should be able to break on its own, through good 'ol word-of-mouth (social media).

 

Of the categories listed, I can see justification for 3 of them: producer, vocal producer, and mix/master. And it really seems like a lot of the production could be eliminated as well.

 

Here's where to start: write your own songs! In their estimates, $33k is spent per song for people to do the work for you. Beyond that, $35k is spent on production. Some of that (recording) is necessary, but it should be your own creation. For a producer to say "play/sing like this because this is what I want it to sound like" is kinda ridiculous... Take suggestions, but don't be a puppet in your own creative endeavor.

 

A good friend of mine, Caleb Hawley, once told me that for one of his albums he went all-out and spent $11k to produce it - the entire album. All of his albums are great and I recommend him to friends all the time. He's not getting filthy rich off of his work, but he's gotten some decent recognition and has continuously been real with his music. He's got the ability to write hits and definitely the talent.

 

So what would happen if money wasn't poured into advertizing? If "advertizing" went back to word-of-mouth? Or if there were a limit as to how much you could spend on a campaign? It's used with politicians so that no one can "buy" their way in ...so why not with musicians? I think it would dramatically change the musical climate of America. When you're not seeing a million dollars worth of Rihanna's marketing to tell you to buy, would people maybe start to make their own decisions about music? If radio producers weren't bought out by artists, what would they play and promote on their stations?

 

Radicalize indie.