It's summer time, and usually around the time I get my yearly bout of Insomnia. Admittedly it's usually bearable, and ironically I get allot of work done & despite the disorientation, is usually enjoyable.
I haven't blogged in a long time, but in all honesty, who bloody reads these things anyways?
Anyways, I've been working on and off, mostly off, since I cannot seem to find the energy or motivation to finish what I've started. It's a very unusual feeling, to be completely unexcited half the time about ones own musical endeavors. I guess it's the sign of the times, and more importantly, the inevitable wake up call of the reality of the situation.
I've been doing the "DFZ" thing since late 2007, and it's nearly hit the 4 year mark. One would think in that space of time, things would evolve, move forward, expand, etc etc, but they really haven't much, or I should say not in the way that I've intended. I find myself for probably the 5th or 6th time in my life at a Crossroads, and as per usual, am standing there, waiting for the right path to illuminate itself.
A foolish person might misconstrue my mental commentary as bitterness, but alas, I am a realist, and as such, have no negative feelings towards the outcome of the situation, or my chosen profession. This is a business, and as a business person, I've neglected all the points of smart business approaches, in favor of a "lets just avoid the marketing B.S and just throw it out there and see what happens" approach. I chose not to sell myself and just let the music do it's own thing...
Naturally, in this day and age where everyone and their cat is a recording "artist", with a Youtube page & Myspace with their own songs available for $.99, so it's no wonder really that there's a need to grab peoples attention from the overly saturated online music store shelves. "2035" will be the first time I take "smarter" approaches to actually marketing a product & making a big deal out of it. "Silent Echoes" was more of a collection of "good" demos, hence my releasing it for free, and "Failure To Adjust" was a completely different sound to my previous works, hence my own confusion in how to market a guitar instrumental album which hardly had any guitar hero moments on it... but with 2035, things are different, it's not your run of the mil DFZ album by any means... Anyone looking for ambient or spiritual sounds would be better off checking out my earlier works, anyone who wants to have their ass handed to them... 2035 is going to do that & much more..
So that brings us to the burning question, when the bloody hell are you going to finish & release it??!
Well, believe it or not, I have been working very hard on it, and I think it was the insomnia, because I hadn't realized until recently that it's mostly finished... I thought it was at the 50% mark.. whereas it's closed to 75 / 80%, and with my recent works on a new song (the title track "2035" for the album), it's actually closer to the 90% mark. Not much guitar left to track, just afew things here and there, some re-doing of some minor things, and mixing, but otherwise, it's more or less there...
BUT! Like I said, I have no intention of finishing it and just hastily throwing it out on iTunes in the hopes of getting listeners, oh no.. we've tried that... it just doesn't BLOODY work now does it... We're going to play hard ball... Marketing! Promotion! Caffeine! Unicorn Stickers!....umm....wait...
Tacky humor (admit it...you love it) aside, there's the other aspect of 2035 which I've been lax on. The prologue is done, but I intend to get more work done on that side to promote the album more. I don't want to spoil anything, but lets just say in a month or two, things should start to get interesting.
For the whopping 2 of you whom have nothing better to do then read the ramblings of a crazed individual, I salute you, and recommend A coffee and a plate of Bourbon creams next time you decide to waste 10 minutes of your life reading my insanity.
Yep... I'm Done. Now bugger off....
2 comments:
Waiting for the path to illuminate itself? As a zen thought, perhaps it's the waiting that's the problem? By waiting for something to come you miss that which is inside waiting to be.
I found your site looking for more info on Kokin flutes. If you dont mind, as a fellow musician, I would like to offer my own thoughts as parallel suggestions.
DFZ could continue as a more spiritual art and promoted as new age / meditation etc. While your new direction could have a new name and be free to express itself untied to the constraints of old hats?
Also, I would suggest looking at bandcamp.com and soundcloud.com as a means to promote yourself.
There are also ways to get your music sold on iTunes and Amazon as digitial downloads. For those later two options, you need to get digital distribution and there are two companies that accept individual submissions and they are; www.cdbaby.com and www.tunecore.com, There may be more, but those are the ones I have found.
I kinda feel the way that you do, forget about the greedy corporate biz side of things and focus on the music, put it out there and see what happens. Yet as outlined with all the various paths of distribution that I have mentioned, it seems you have yet to really put it out there? Is there something holding you back from truly trying to get your stuff out other than just a blog site? A man who casts his net in shallow ponds catches few fish.
Other ways of doing this would be to setup a last.fm account and having your music played there as well as on pandora.com. These are all awesome ways to get your music heard. I read somewhere once that music isn't really music if it's kept to yourself. If it means something to you, others will feel it too.
These are my own personal thoughts and ideas that I struggle with myself. Perhaps our paths are not so different and my finding your site is our paths crossed for a chance to share our thoughts over this campfire and green tea.
cheers.
Hi Batty... My stuff is released via tunecore indcidentally.
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