Life lessons found in the RPM challenge (T-minus 2 days)

I've been "preparing" for the RPM challenge by pulling out old, familiar, favorite albums and listening to new music on sites like Reverbnation. Not like I don't have enough to do anyway, but working on the challenge is something of a "must" for me. I'm not sure why I'm so excited to start (in two days) nor am I sure why it is a must to participate this year, other than I really did miss it last year.

There is a wonderful sense of accomplishment associated with writing a song and telling yourself, "it is okay". It is okay for someone else to hear this song. It is okay for other people to not like it or for it to not be everyone's favorite. It is okay if it isn't one of my favorites. It is okay if it isn't as developed, complex, or musically mature as songs I typically listen to. It is okay...(insert any excuse here). There is also a fabulous sense of accomplishment when you finish - even though you finish tired and grumpy without any desire to even look at your instrument(s) for a while.

This challenge is really a terrific life lesson (when used as intended) which teaches to enjoy the process. I've always struggled with "enjoying the process" in school, work, life, etc. I tend to focus on getting to the final outcome...only to realize that that is just part of the "bigger" process. However, for some reason I do enjoy the RPM challenge process. Perhaps because the only potentially negative outcome is that I don't finish - I feel disappointment in myself for not following through to the end. There are no other negative consequences - not everyone will dig my tunes...okay; there will be someone out there who does though...okay; and I will, more or less, like the tunes - I'm satisfying a need (to write music), following through on a task, making something, and having a lot of fun enjoying the entire process.

Two days and counting...not listening to my own advice about enjoying the process - I have two days to enjoy!

Groove Armada and Bacardi Pyramid Scheme

I recently read that Bacardi and Groove Armada (GA) partnered in a social networking experiment to, "embrace free music while giving it value", according to a GA band member. Music Ally, a blog I try to follow, is fond of the experiment.
Here's the dirt: one may download Track One of GA's new album entirely free. In order to download subsequent tracks, one must pass Track One on to other people via any number of methods including widgets on Facebook. To get Track Two reach must be 20 people. Track Three requires reach from Track One to be 200. Track Four is 2,000; presumably track five is 20,000. Oh, and there is a time limit - forty days - after which I presume you can just buy the entire album (but I don't know). Music Ally loves the idea and is working hard to build up its reach (see update).

Let's do some math:
I have a lot of friends on Facebook with friend densities of 35-100. I also have a few friends who are in the 300-5,000 density range. Let's be generous and say that the average is about 200 Friends. Let's also assume that one in every four friends likes GA or Bacardi rum and thus wants to try to get some tracks off the new album. Then these 50 people send it to their network, which consists of 200 people. Let's assume that everyone that receives track one tries it (big assumption). Let's also assume that the networks do not overlap (also a big assumption).
10,000 people get Track One free.
50 people get Track Two and Track Three free.
Then, if each of those 10,000 send Track One to 50 friends who try it, we're at 500,000 free downloads of Track One.
10,000 friends get to try Track Two.
All in forty days...like Lent.

If this is going to work, Track One and Track Two better be spectacular! There is a big difference between getting something for free and choosing to buy it without a sample - even if it is less than a dollar.
I bet this is the longest forty days of Bacardi's and GA's life!

There are a few reasons I like this:

• It's a new approach to giving value to free downloads; it's sort of creative and it's a start.
• If done properly (partnered with sponsors (Baccardi) holding lots of cash) it can really build a buzz.
• This could work really well with an entire catalogue - either artist's catalogue or label catalogue, but that would require a music search engine that bases searches on something relevant, like...music (like Hounds to the Music is creating).
  

And more reasons that I don't:

• Pyramid Scheme. GA is the Amway of music.
  
• If you're going to have a timeline for such a promotion, you've got to have a lot of launch momentum to get the word out - the first fans to download Track One are key and there better be a lot of them. This is tough for budget-conscious independent, emerging musicians trying to make a buzz.
• What if you don't like Track One or Track Two? If you don't you won't spend much time trying to get Track Three for free.
• A better idea is to have your choice of next tracks to download after track one, provided you meet the "reach goals". I'm not sure why this was not an option - maybe it was too challenging logistically.
  
• GA can put all the great tracks at the top of the album and leave the let's-just-finish-quickly-songs after track four. Did they do that?
  
• Is coaxing your 2,000 best friends to download music so that you can benefit with another track really the best use of your time? Or would you rather spend the $3 for the first four tracks? If you really dig GA, you'll probably spend much more than that to get your choice of songs from the album.

And your thoughts?

Developing Taste

I'm a new blogger on Hounds to the Music. If you're like me, you appreciate knowing where writers are coming from before you subject yourself to their strong opinions (musicians always have strong opinions). So it's only fair to share a little about my music interests before I dive into things.

I grew up playing piano and french horn (my mom was a piano teacher and my dad a band director) so I have a classical background. My parents listened to New Age piano music like David Lanz and George Winston, so when I first started writing my own songs on the piano, that's what dripped out of my fingers. It drove me crazy. I didn't venture out and start listening to my own music until junior high and high school, but I still didn't have my bearings. It was a matter of switching on the car radio and playing the top 40 because I was young and didn't know any better. (But let's admit it--the 90's was a pretty decent era, wasn't it? REM? Counting Crows? Blues Traveler? Cranberries? Ah, the memories...)

Luckily by late college I had finally formed a solid list of likes and dislikes. Like most musicians, my list of likes is a lot longer than the dislikes because variety is what makes the world and my ears spin:

Likes
Acoustic
Rock
Alternative rock
Pop
Punk
Hip-hop
R&B and Soul
Electronica
Jazz
Folk
Celtic
Latin
Classical
Musical Theatre (that is, if it can be a genre of its own. I'm a sucker for it)
some Emo (but not the whiny kind. Trust me, non-whiny Emo exists)

Dislikes
Opera
Country
Smooth jazz
Some rap (too much gets old)

Some favorite artists right now:
The Hush Sound: alternative rock/pop
Mates of State: alternative rock/pop
Iglu and Hartly: 80's hip-hop
Ben Folds (will always like him. Love piano rock)
Neil Cowley Trio: jazz
Greg Holden: acoustic/folk

Now I prefer to listen to indie music if I can wade through all the sites online that claim to have it. But it's difficult to find artists who have both good music and lyrics (although like Carl I'm a music person more than a lyrics person). It's difficult to find the kind of music that matches my mood at that particular time of day. It's difficult to find truly talented artists who know anything about music beyond the standard chord progressions, and who aren't just in it for the fame and money. But now, with this website on the horizon, no worries. Hounds will be the one-stop site that will match visitors with the perfect music.

Until then, maybe you have a better story to tell about your musical upbringing. What influenced you? When did you start listening to music you actually liked?

Yo-Yo Ma Contest Winners announced

I hadn't heard of the contest that Yo-Yo Ma had collaborated with NPR on earlier than when the winner was announced yesterday. Ma had asked musicians of all ilk and sort to listen to and collaborate with his version of "Dona Nobis Pacem" and upload them to Indabamusic.
He picked two winners which are highlighted on NPR music, Toshi and Kevin McChesney. I wasn't familiar with Toshi, although he really can wail on the e-guitar. However, I have been familar and fond of McChesney, having played handbells for many of his arrangements. His are some of the most exciting arrangements our handbell ringers have played under the direction of Music Director, Scott Kamman.

Take a listen and don't forget to check out the runners up on Indabamusic.

RPM Challenge 2009

I got my first email from RPM HQ Monday morning of this week announcing the RPM Challenge 2009. The RPM challenge has occurred since February 2006. The challenge is to write, record, and mix an album that is minimum 35 minutes or ten songs in the month of February. Participants had it easy last year (leap year) with an additional 24 hours of time. The first year participants were sparse and not much publicity had surrounded the event other than local media and artists in New Hampshire. The following year the participation was quite intense with something like 800+ bands finishing albums in the specified time period and approximately four times that number were attempting. My brother, wife and I participated in 2007 as the band Astronaut Aardvark Attack and had a terrific time; although we were getting pretty punchy there toward the end. Four songs from our album contribution is posted here. I'll post the entire album later and provide a link to it (it's HERE now, along with a bunch of other stuff)

The nice thing about the event is that musicians from all over the world participate and they communicate with one another over the RPM website. It is a modest social networking site that allows users to upload their music tracks as they come together and provide feedback. At the end participants from all over get together and host listening parties where in they log into the RPM HQ website and listen to the radio stream from completed albums. One can also go to specific places on the the site to choose specific tracks or bands to listen to (go here for last year's jukebox). I didn't keep track of it last year, but intend to monitor the RPM airwaves this year (and may contribute again). In 2007 there were some really great tunes, but there was also a lot of noise that seemed to be just buying time (35 minutes of screaming and beating on aluminum pans will count as an album...and did apparently).

To be sure, if you are trying to make an album, it is nice to have a deadline. The best part of a deadline for the RPM challenge is that everyone else has the same deadline and is under the same self-imposed pressure and therefore provides support. Who knows, you may get ten RPM challenge songs, of which two or three are good enough for your debut, sophomore, etc album.

Check it out! It can be a lot of fun.

Signal Patterns Music Survey

Yesterday I found a link to a music recommendation function on Signal Patterns which is kind of neat - similar to MoodLogic. Daniel Levitin, PhD, a former mentor and friend I've since lost touch with, but has been and continues to be uber successful, participated in MoodLogic's founding and participates in the scientific board of Signal Patterns. His home page is here. I suspect that the music recommendation tool is at least partially his brainchild. It's a really good idea, and I suspect that for some people it works. I would encourage people to give it a try - it uses 40 song samples of about 15 seconds each and asks the user to rate on a scale of 1-9 whether the sample is liked or disliked. Let me know whether you like it or not.

The recommendation tool didn't work for me. I could take it again, that option is always available, however I suspect that part of the reason it did not work is that some song samples do not go anywhere: the meat of the song was not chosen as part of the song sample. If the meat of the song is absent, how can it be an accurate representation of the "music type" being evaluated? Signal Patterns uses Imeem and its social networking platform after the survey. Once I was switched to the Imeem site through Signal Patterns, I was asked to include my favorite artist. I don't really have a single favorite, but I wrote McCoy Tyner, and was then prompted to check off tracks of his that were favorites. None of the Tyner tracks listed were my favorites, so I backed out and entered Jethro Tull. This then led me to check off "Teacher", "Bouree" and "Locamotive Breath" as my favorite tracks (at least of those listed). (For the record, I also input Snake Oil Medicine Show as a favorite band and they were not found.) From these tracks and my evaluation from Signal Patterns I got the Imeem playlist that you can visit here. You can take a listen to the tunes that were recommended and see if those songs would be recommending the songs on this list. You can also take a gander at my Signal Patterns Music Survey Results below.
I'm really not sure whether the generated recommendations are determined from Signal Patterns (what I suspect) or are Imeem influenced (less likely), but the playlist doesn't work for me for the following reasons:

1) I've listened to the list and there is no new music - everything is already familiar, if by no other means, it is by popular names.
2) There are several songs by few artists; this cannot be all that exists!
3) I'm not keen on more than two or three of the songs.
4) I usually cannot stand ballads, sad songs or romantic songs, other than Sonatas. So much for these survey results...
5) I like up-tempo tunes, as a general rule (perhaps not the ones that were played, though).
6) I'm the king of complex tunes - I dig complex rhthyms, time signatures, layers, instrumentation.
7) Relaxing music is hard to identify - what really is relaxing? Easy listening?
On a positive note, I will offer that I'm usually not interested in lyrics, but would rather hear a nice hook or groove and someone justing singing "La la la"- the music survey may have gotten that right.

In general, all automated music recommendation tools I've evaluated are hit and miss (and probably more former than latter). Thusfar I still think Pandora is the best "automated" tool, although as I've said before it still has a lot to be desired, but it is at present successful. This tool by Signal Patterns is a neat idea, just like MoodLogic was, but I'm not convinced the approximately five minutes I used to take the survey were beneficial other than to give me something to write about today that didn't have anything to do with "Happy New Year". I may be a snob in this regard and this tool may be very valuable to others, afterall, Compete had Signal Patterns at ~16K unique users last month. That's pretty impressive. As alwasy I'd appreciate feedback on whether readers of this blog have better experiences with these music recommendation tools.

It is my sincere hope that Hounds to the Music, LLC will be able to add that "something" that is to be desired by music recommendation and discovery tools. We're working on it and anticipate that the launch will be this summer.

By the way, Imeem needs to significantly increase its bandwidth...I'm just saying.