Tag: songwriting

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For anyone still thinking streaming is worthless, catalogs are semi-quietly being snapped up by all sorts of equity. No longer a one time purchase, if your song catches on, it keeps paying and paying, even if there are no ads associated with it.

Live?

In what seems to be an emerging fact, the long game is putting it out there to stream. Not playing live, but 9-to-5’ing it at your desk. Sat in front of the computer to get eyes and ears on it. Trade the glory of the stage for the glory of ‘likes’ and a lot of small but growing checks.

What if people, now off the road, put the effort into listens? This is happening, and I can tell you from my own experience, it works.

Bob Dylan Sells His Songwriting Catalog in Blockbuster Deal

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The mighty Zoom L-12! Thoughts below.

  1. All the Sub mixes.
    Send the drummer a click? Yes. Hear my vocals dry and in all their pitchy glory but with plenty of reverb out front? Yes (I guess.😬). 
  2. Save a bunch of mixes.
    I have a playing-solo mix, an in-the-studio mix, a playing-with-a -drummer-only mix … 
    If you use tracks or loops live you need to be looking at this mixer.
  3. It’s a really great DAW interface.
    Seriously. I was not expecting this. Real convenient. I actually just put my UA Apollo in the drawer/ to-maybe-sell pile. I use it with Ableton.
  4. Sounds great.
    It is very transparent, and it will only sound great IF you spend some time with it. And not even that much time. 
  5. It’s light.
    If you are a gig’ing pro or you rearrange your home set-up a lot (daily?), which should be everyone reading, this is huge. Real livable.
    Easy-to-manage wall wart. Etc.
  6. Bonus:
    Record every show and roll tape the next morning. How was the the gig really?
    Great for practice too. 8 gig cards hold a lot, and how many of those do you have sitting around? 
    **Also, you can go semi-old-school and occasionally step away from the DAW.**

I shopped around for a year. Real satisfied. Please ask questions etc. 

-jd

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What a great, breezy book. Jeff Tweedy emphasizes the writing-of is the thing, not necessarily the One Song itself. Love of the process, which is its own reward, is more important than the goal.

How to Write One Song reads universally enough so that anyone can ape this do-your-first ethos for whatever it is that you want (but have yet to).

Before 2016, I’d written maybe 5 or 10 songs total, but I definitely (ridiculously) considered myself a songwriter, even though I would never have told anyone. But luck intervened, I randomly joined a song writing group, and now I’m in the 100’s. It took me over 45 years to start in earnest.

I needed a push. This book is a great push.

A total delight.