It has been a minute, but there are new things in the works.

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I know I am an infrequent poster on my own blog, over the course of 2 years I have only really managed to pull together 20 posts and only kept 14.

I will begin to make every attempt to post at least weekly to share what I think is important, not just for me, but for those people that I work with in the local music scene.

Today will be a sort of weak one right now. It is sort of about me and a few friends. My band is kicking it into high gear once again, because now I’m no longer holding the band back from a learning the music standpoint, we are able to focus on getting ourselves ready from a business standpoint. So those that are interested, prepare to see DDM doing more things more frequently.

I personally will also be writing more tunes and whatever does not make the DDM cut will end up being put towards my solo project where I will be responsible for all music and instrumentation with guest vocals from my friends in the local music scene.

In the meantime, I will be searching for a better paying full time job so I can begin to accumulate the gear necessary to make my job as a bassist easier. And once that is complete, I will begin to accumulate more studio equipment and hopefully get things ready for the future.

More info soon and later, I will be doing gear reviews/opinion pieces on currently existing gear to equipment in the works.

Copyright and lack of balls…

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I’m sitting at home trying to read some random humor site and all of the videos are not playing.

Not because of my terrible internet connection, but because each and every one is owned by some sort of company that does not allow the playing of this particular video on any site but their own, or those that temporarily had the balls to post the content are suddenly dead or sissies.

If you didn’t consider it, this act is really messing with my entertainment. I guess I never considered a time where even the simplest, most useless videos being blocked from my view would anger me so much.

I know copyright is a huge issue when it comes to money for big companies, but most non big company entities are more than happy to share what content they have that appears to be share worthy from their users. Content is everything, and the inability to share just makes you appear like a spoiled child that wants more than they deserve.

Think about that, Big Companies, as your company goes under for being unbearably controlling in all things that DON’T make you money because you decided to be an idiot.

So today was a perfect example of successful-ness!

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The good boys of the band Reflections showed me a great time in MasterMix Studios tonight with some amazing guitar and vocal performances.

Young Patrick Samoulay laid down some amazing guitar solos while Charles Caswell laid down some very solid guitars and vocals along with Jacob Wolf.

I was a little bummed at first to know that I was not recording a Fractal Audio Axe-Fx but my attitude was quickly revived with the two guitarists’ amazing performances.

They spent a very short but productive time finishing off the guitars and vocals for the song “Picture Perfect.”  I am not totally sure of the goal of this particular recording but we are quickly finding it to be release worthy.

I will be posting the final mixes on the Audio Engineering Projects page of this very site after I get a chance to edit everything to perfection and do a few mixes. We used a Line 6 HD 500 for all of the guitars, all the presets set by the band. I took the balanced outs of the unit into a pair of API 512Cs. We then used an EV RE 27 for vocals into an API mic pre then into a Distresser and we found that even the dry vocal takes are sounding extremely pristine. We even found some time to do some gang vocals at the very end of the session to round out the shenanigans, using a pair of AKG 414 ULSes at a distance into yet another pair of APIs.

I really look forward to hearing more from this young band with so much potential to excel in the metal scene.

http://got-djent.com/band/reflections

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1840505817#!/reflectionsmn?sk=info

Add these young badasses if you have the chance and keep an eye out for some great tunage.

Successful weekend of playing music and recording

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Lucky me.
I spent the entirety of my weekend with my head in music.
First my band Debbie Does Malice played a great show with Do As The Romans Do, Reflections, and Vessels for Our Ghosts to celebrate a huge amount of birthdays. And second, I spent all of yesterday in the studio with Reflections to track drums and bass. Tonight, I’ll be recording guitars and vocals. I even get to try a fractal audio axe fx. More info tonight.

Even when you feel you didn’t do too great

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It is the listeners’ impression that truly matters.

On the show my band had this past Saturday, I was feeling pretty crappy and under the weather. I felt that I messed up too many times and that the people listening were going to think poorly of us.

Strangely, everyone seemed to like us.

People that came for the other bands liked us enough to buy a considerable amount of our merchandise that night. And if it weren’t for everyone in my band, including myself, doing our very best regardless of any issues we may have had that night, we might not have obtained the interest of the first time DDM witnesses.

The true key to this result is just putting on a good show. If you give the people attending something to watch, they will forgive small tech issues from bad cables, messed up pedals, and the occasional wrong note. You go to a show to see a “show!” Once other bands figure this out, the live music scene will be bombarded with high energy shows that will be really fun to go to.

—-BTW, don’t let a high energy show make the music suffer, play it right, play it loud, and enjoy yourself.

PreSale Tickets are a curse for bands

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You never can seem to sell all that you need to even though you know the interest is there. Most people don’t want to buy tickets that far ahead because, in all honesty, those folks don’t know if they will be busy around that time. That is the sticky situation that arises for newer bands. Most of your fans are younger and don’t have a 9-5 job with entirely free nights and weekends so selling a set number of tickets feels like a gamble to them. I remember only buying presale tickets for bands that were huge and were not likely to be playing around my city for quite some time after that particular show. It’s because I knew that if I missed a band that I wanted to see from around town, I just needed to wait a few weeks and I will have another opportunity.

Now on the band side of the equation, it is extremely frustrating to sell tickets to people that may not even know your show is coming up or even know the bands you will be playing with. It is understandably difficult for those people you speak to make their mind up right then and there and even more unlikely that those people will have the money with them on the spot. I have been in those shoes before when I knew a band I liked was playing a bigger show soon and I couldn’t get my hands on presale tickets and I was usually left waiting in line for my ticket at the door.

This way of setting up a show is also understandable. You want there to be some guarantee that the show you are booking as a booking agent will actually make a return on your part. It is a risk that you have to take and presale tickets help alleviate some of the stress you may be feeling all the way up to the day of the show.

Now this all brings me to my end point. It is a rough thing on bands that play frequently to sell presale tickets. The average fan will go to as many shows as they possibly can, usually burning their money reserves in the process. Then when a big name act comes into town with a $10+ price tag, most of the fans will be hesitant because they could save a few bills by going to the next, lesser priced gig. It isn’t something that is easy to consider for the average fan because, even if the show has bigger acts on the bill, they may be unfamiliar to you and your normal selection of the awesome local acts.  So even if you have a substantial fan base, you can’t get all of them to go to every show. Fans need to make their money and the shifts they work are usually on the nights that you play. It’s why fans ask for days off for an upcoming show, they know it will be an awesome show and they usually work at those times.

I’m mentioning all of this because my band has an upcoming show with two very awesome bands and getting people to buy the presale tix is extremely difficult. Most of the people that I talk to say they will get paid the day before the show so I either wait until then, or they will just pay at the door. And because of this, you feel like you aren’t doing good enough on the sales.

In the end though, you are promoting your show and whether the people buy the presale tickets or if they pay at the door, the most important part is putting on a good show for those that do come.

So if you are in the Minneapolis area on Saturday, February 12th – my band Debbie Does Malice is putting on a show at the 400 Bar on Cedar with national bands, The Memorials and Just Like Vinyl. The Memorials is some sort of amazing experimental funk rock with former drummer of Mars Volta, Thomas Pridgen, and Just Like Vinyl is a hardcore rock/metal band with former member of Fall of Troy, Thomas Erak. Email me at RonaldJEllsworth@gmail.com if you want to support us and some other, very amazing music. It’s only $8, quite a steal if you ask me.

Keep annihilating

In a World Where Being Connected Is All Too Important…

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Having USI wireless is really terrible. I can’t watch movies without long and annoying buffering times and it takes a ridiculous amount of time to check out music from musicians I am looking into.

Do yourself a favor and opt out of government internet. It might technically work but when other options of similar price exist (DSL) with twenty times the reliability, I’ll choose the more reliable service anytime.

I need to be connected at any moment of the day, not just on days it is NOT snowing. Or only during the day.

Many colleges and businesses are moving into a completely digital and networked world and they would no doubt deny a service that only works some of the time, so why would the average person?

Alright, mini rant over.

Attracting Attention From NonFriends to Become Potential Fans

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When most people start or join a band, there is a stage when most of your “fans” are your mom and assorted other family and friends. At some point during your tenure with said band, you are going to want your “fans” to include more than just the folks you know personally and actually have fans that don’t necessitate quotations around the word defining them. What goes into building an actual fanbase?

There are many factors that aid in this fan gathering, one of these factors that is surely the most influential is sounding not bad. This should be obvious but many people overlook this factor and inevitably get themselves a record deal and become multimillionaires. The sorry sorry saps…

Another large factor is doing things that will make people familiar with your name and spark interest in your band. A common way to do this would be to perform live shows with more recognized bands of the same or similar genre. You want to sound exactly like everybody else because this will cause people to mistake you for bands of a superior stature.

And finally, one often forgotten factor that will help your friends lists numbers and facebook likes is keeping in touch with the people that already like you. Word of mouth is a very powerful tool for bands. You want your fans to tell the world that you are the best and all music is simply an ant compared to your amazing-ness because fanboyism does not cause any annoying results to listeners.

But in reality folks, you do want to sound good, you want to play shows, and you want to satisfy the people that do like you, because building relationships is extremely important to success – whatever that may be for your band or group or solo project. Don’t step on toes and reject potential fans because you feel your group is better or somehow playing to the wrong crowds. People are generally filled to the brim with various tastes and likes. I know I, personally, like all sorts of music. I’m not simply limited to listening to metal. I do like to play metal and heavier music a lot because it gives me a way to vent any angers and frustrations in a constructive and creative way keeping me cheery and fun at all other times, but heavy music is in no way my only outlet.

I think playing these songs that help me enjoy my life substantially more to a crowd of people that actually want to listen is another way to justify all the time and energy that goes into being a musician. The fame and money of years past are long gone for most but it isn’t for those reasons that I play music. It’s simply because I enjoy what I do and having the opportunity to make a positive difference in other people’s lives while at the same time making a positive difference in my own life is worth any and all of the struggles – including doing all that I can to share my creativity with more and more people every day.

I hope all the musicians reading this feel the same way I do.

Now get out there and make some good music so I have something cool and new to listen to! I’ll do the same for you!

Standing, shaking, frightened and rocking?

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I have always wondered what the sensation of being in the spot light and being the focus of attention would be like when I was a youngin’. I thought it would be so awesome to have everyone look right at me and actually desire to see what I have to offer. I always played guitar because it seemed so cool to be able to create things that people actually enjoyed hearing, so naturally, I wanted to play in front of people after getting better.

The first experience playing in front of people that were not friends and family was an extremely scary one for me. I did not expect that I would be so worried about standing in front of a bunch of people and doing something I’ve practiced thousands of times before.

But I did…

My knees shook and my hands began to sweat. I could not look away from my guitar and up at the staring faces. I played and winced as if I were in physical pain for every mistake I made – which made me make more mistakes. The whole time I felt like just leaving mid song and never come back. But I didn’t want to let down my band mates, I was the only guitarist and the music we played would not be the same.

So I suffered for the entirety of the first two or three songs. But something happened.

I started to ease up on the terrible feelings I had. I looked up and saw people jamming their heads and moving their bodies. I loosened up and started moving around a bit more and the feeling turned into something different.

I can only describe that feeling as the ultimate bliss…

 

Years later, this feeling of fear has turned into a form of rush that actually turns my energy up several notches and leads me to playing more aggressively and more eccentrically purely for entertainment. What was once an almost debilitating fear is now an adrenaline rush.

No more stage fright.

The basic feelingdoesn’t go away but with some conditioning, you can turn the jitters into something positive that will end up making you perform better. The real issue is making it past those first few frightening shows, because you can’t avoid it, you just have to make it through them.

There is not a wonder solution to the issue, you just need to change your own mindset, which may be extremely difficult for some.  But the reality is that the key to a strong stage performance is to convince yourself that you are amazing at what you do.

I can tell you that after just getting up on that stage and telling myself that people want me to play that I have become more and more capable of having fun doing what had initially intrigued me as a kid. Sharing the things you create with others is an experience I hope everyone gets to have at some point in their lives because it is unlike any other. Stage fright is a real issue but it isn’t something that has to stay forever. You can essentially choose to be without it, you just have to know how to believe.

The quality of streaming video!

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I’m so happy that the quality of video being streamed is of much higher quality than it once used to be when I first started watching videos online. Back whenever that started to be a cool new idea, I remember that even stuff that was DVD quality before it was thrown on the web somehow manage to turn into three or four color squares that covered 90% of the play window.

Now on youtube, you can see stuff in HD!? I know this happened a while ago, but I’m just starting to recognize its worth to me.

Now, whenever I’m flipping through the millions upon millions of useless videos, I can easily spot the crap and avoid it. That has always been my problem…

Sometimes you wont know it is crap until it stops and starts suggesting more videos of the same kind to watch – NO!! I don’t want to watch any more like this because they apparently decided it was a good idea to not make “shitty video” one of the tags. So I waste hours of (arguably) valuable time to get maybe 10 minutes of entertainment.

I’m also glad that when I get on youtube and want to listen to a song, it is usually really easy to find and there are some good options for the official and live videos of the artists’ performances.

I still run into the usual garbage like some guy putting a chopped video of his cat playing with a ball of yarn put to the soothing sounds of cannibal corpse.  But it is becoming rarer to see that sort of thing. I don’t think I ever see those crappy cell phone videos of some band that an idiot apparently felt was worth sharing with millions of people that don’t care.

To celebrate, I shall link to a video of Paramore performing a song called “Careful” from their album brand new eyes through the youtube channel of their label, Fueled By Ramen.

Just want to make a comment on the video itself, it reminds me of that old random saying that fads repeat themselves, simply by the presence of skin tight animal print pants. But I have a feeling musicians have been and always will be huge fans of animal print tights.

One final word: Custom picks are in!