I thought I’d share with you an article on my new album from the wonderful notreble.com. I was contacted by Kevin Johnson who asked a few questions and posted this lovely little write-up. I’ve had lots of great feedback on the album via Twitter. Many of you are asking about the physical CD, which I’m working on right now. Had a photo shoot on Monday with my friend Ary Vidot and have decided on which company to use for replication. I’ll be having the CD produced in ‘Ecopaks’ made from 100% recycled card and no plastic parts so the packaging will be as green as possible. Hoping to get the run in production whilst I’m in China next week with Duke Special. Anyway, here’s the article…
Bassist/composer Simon Little has released a new solo bass album, Mandala. The ten tracks on the album are all live improvisations, utilizing the Looperlative LP1 looper.
“When I was 17 I was listening to the Weather Report live album 8:30 and heard Jaco perform his solo live-looping piece ‘Slang’, it changed the way I thought about playing the bass and so began my obsession with making music using the bass as a solo instrument,†Little explains.
Simon used his Warwick Thumb VI throughout the album, as well as a slew of effects pedals, including a Lexicon MPX G2, Boss Super Octave, DD-6, and EMMA DiscumBOBulator. He also tracked the project by himself, but has advice for all the do-it-yourselfers out there.
“Having the album professionally mastered made such a difference to the sound and was an incredibly important stage in the process. I would recommend anyone starting out with DIY recording to look into professional mastering if they can. And I cannot recommend Bandcamp.com enough. It has allowed me to get my album out independently on my own schedule and the site is so user-friendly and above all, honest.â€
Preview Mandala
Visit Simon Little at his website to download the album.
Mandala Track Listing:
1. One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor
2. West of Eden
3. Sometimes it rains in august
4. Calling out
5. Gil’s glass harmonica
6. The happy wanderer
7. Light & shade
8. Ohm is where the art is
9. The redemptive powers of temporary insanity
10. …And then suddenly nothing happened
Now, firstly an apology for not updating the blog for a while now. I’ve been all over the place with Duke Special, The Duckworth Lewis Method and Clare Teal and haven’t had much time for bloggery. I’ve also been spending a lot more time working on the solo bass project, which is really starting to come together now.
Anyway, this post is really just a tester to see whether my Feedburner rss feed is still working. A couple of days ago I started putting together a ‘proper’ website, ie: somewhere I can tie together all my various online odds and ends and focus on the blog (and my solo music when it’s ready for public consumption!). This has meant that I’ve just transferred my original feed from the old Blogger site to my new address at WordPress, but I’ve had a few technical issues.
Basically, if you’re already subscribed you should receive this okay. If so, and if you wouldn’t mind, drop a comment to say hello on the original post and let m know how you subscribe (ie: via email, Google Reader etc).
Of course, if it hasn’t worked, nobody is going to see this anyway and I shall bang my head against the wall for a little longer.
Thought I’d draw you into the conversation with that provocatively titled post…!
I made the decision last last to finally upload one of my solo bass tracks (the most recent post on my Solo Bass Podcast, Calling Out) to my MySpace page. Until now, I’ve used MySpace purely as a promotional tool for my work as a session player, ie; the bulk of the work I do playing for other people. My music player therefore featured tracks by various artists I’ve recorded with over the last few years, including Clare Teal, The Divine Comedy, A Girl Called Eddy, Chris Difford and Ian Shaw. I thought it was time to introduce more elements from my solo project. I’m getting closer to wanting to start work on the actual finished album, and once I have a product to sell I’m going to need as many people to know about it as possible.
Which brings me to my first dilemma. I have quite a few ‘friends’ on MySpace (3,452 is todays count). My current music profile has been active for almost two years now. Most days I get a few friend requests from various bands and solo artists who seemingly have no relation to what I do and more than likely have never heard me play. Very occasionally they attach a message introducing themselves, or saying how/why they found me which is always appreciated. I make a point of sending these folk a little thankyou message/comment, as I believe these are the people I’m really aiming to engage with online.
I’m guessing that most of the MySpace ‘promotion’ tools that other bands use to contact their friends are via the blogs and bulletins. I stopped using my MySpace blog a few months ago in favour of this Blogger site, which is both far more interactive and has myriad sharing/subscribing possibilities thanks to Feedburner. I found that virtually nobody would read the blogs on my MySpace profile; but the minute I posted the same blog on Blogger, various people would start subscribing and leaving comments. Which is the whole point of blogging; engaging in a conversation. I seriously doubt whether the majority of people that visit my MySpace page actually hang around long enough to read the blog, let alone listen to all the music.
The bulletin system is fundamentally flawed as a promotional tool. Once a user has more than 1,000 ‘friends’, they no longer receive bulletins. Which is entirely sensible. Before I got to that stage, my MySpace home page was something akin to my junk mail inbox, littered with a variety of messages inviting me to “Come listen to my new song” or “Check out my new video”. Frankly, I don’t have the time and if I was that interested in your band, then I would have made the effort to check your page under my own steam. I do make a point of visiting several key MySpace profiles regularly to see what new projects are on the go. In fact, the ability to receive updates from selected users only (starting with your top friends as default) has been incredibly welcome navigationally. Thus, if I was to send out a bulletin on MySpace informing my friends of a solo show or a new release, chances are that 90% of them would never see it.
This is my main issue with MySpace. It’s complete lack of interactivity and flexibility. My Reverb Nation page has become the hub for all my various social media dabblings. My blog is imported straight into Reverb Nation, as are my status updates via Twitter, which means that the page is kept alive and vibrant without me even having to log in every day. The music player behaves exactly as it should, making sharing my music clear and simple. Unlike the MySpace music player…
Last night’s uploading was a fiasco, let me tell you… My good friend Eddy was on the phone to me last week in a panicked state over the demise of her music player on MySpace. It had disappeared entirely. A little investigation concluded that her page was not the only one to suffer this glitch. As I uploaded Calling Out, I had the distinct feeling I was in for trouble. although the track uploaded properly, the associated artwork didn’t (and it seems still hasn’t, despite two subsequent attempts). And the fact that I designated the track a free download has been totally ignored. Nearly 15 hours later, the track still cannot be downloaded and plays with no artwork. Rubbish.
The plodding user interface is a nightmare to navigate and frankly I’ve had enough. My most recent gripe with the site (and judging by the plethora of similar exclamations on Twitter) is it’s insistence on plaguing users with drop-down banners which completely obscure the page you’re viewing. And more worryingly in the last few weeks it seems that several of the links you click on to navigate around the site suddenly transport you into another page entirely, loading up some promo clip. Now, this is really not something I would have expected from a ‘social networking’ site. Over the last few months MySpace has been almost entirely overrun by corporate nonsense and it is undeniably getting worse every day. I give it another couple of months before all those bloody awful ‘Adult Friend Finder’ type ads start encroaching on MySpace. Seriouly, it wouldn’t surprise me. We’re 3/4 of the way there already.
A few days ago I sent a MySpace friend request to a band called Nohno, a fantastic industrial-electro/ambient duo from Newcastle. I don’t remember how I came across their music (although I suspect they cropped up on Last.fm), but I really liked the sounds they were creating and wanted to know more. I received a message back from them yesterday asking me to let them know how I found them and basically to confirm I was not some kind of MySpace friend-gathering machine. So I replied and the conversation began. This is a rare occurrence on MySpace and I took the opportunity to point Dean in the general direction of Reverb Nation.
I don’t think it’ll be long before more musicians become as disillusioned with MySpace as I am, and will start to investigate other avenues to engage with their audience. And I think Reverb Nation will provide the most effective template.
Anyway, enough of this ranting. As Stephen Fry says in his last excellent Podgram, an angry article writes itself. And I shall duly leave it there.
So how have the changes in MySpace over the last few months effected your perception of the site? Have you, like me, been forced to migrate elsewhere? I’d love to hear your thoughts…
