U2’s manager, Paul McGuiness, has been fairly outspoken, and a little cracked, about music file sharing on the internet.

Ars Technica detailed his latest rant at Music Matters 2008.

In it, he proposes that ISPs share their revenue with the music industry. Why? Because the ISPs reap all their great service subscription revenues from people wanting to illegally share music files. That’s why people are on the internet, he says.

Guess ol’ Paul’s never heard of porn.

Tags: internet, music business

Currently, I have five songs started. Nothing completed. Nothing even close. I’ve got some good ideas, but haven’t yet hit upon that inspiration spark that sets off the flurry of songwriting.

Two are potential Boggards songs (maybe Rogues’ Reefe songs), two are Celtic Squall songs and one is either a Squall song or an MWOW song.

Have to see how things flesh out. I’m going to try some free-form, stream-of-consciousness writing and see if anything hits.

Only three weekends left.

This is my fifteenth consecutive season of Faire. Starting to suffer some burnout. But it’s not just the fifteen years — the Boggards have become (and have been so for a few years) a year-round endeavor, and that’s eating up an enormous amount of time.

I already told the band that I’m taking a hiatus starting immediately after Faire until sometime in October or so. I may take off even longer. The band’s a lot of work and takes up a lot of time, and it’s crowded out a lot of the things that got me to start it in the first place.

Like songwriting.

I’m lucky to get one or two songs written a year. That sucks. Back when I had my rock band after college, I was writing a song a week.  And I want to expand my songwriting horizons a little. I’d like to write some songs that don’t have to do with drinking or f*cking.

I’ve already got my plan of attack for my songwriting from Derek Sivers’ blog. I’ve got a stack of index cards and I’m writing myself a bunch of songwriting “assignments” to complete this summer and fall.

I’m also going to concentrate more on Celtic Squall. It’s very exciting being in a new band. Yeah, it’s some of the same old people, but it’s different: a different kind of music, different audience, different vibe, different sound.

It’s very different starting a band today, knowing what I now know. I’ll probably write more on this later. When Bill and I started the Boggards, we barely knew what we were doing. Today’s different, I think.

Stu’s First Law of Online Recording Forums:

“Avoid them.”

Not really. At least not entirely, anyway.

Here’s the problem: there is a lot of very accurate, yet useless information out there. It will distract you. It will divert your attention from the thing that matters with recording: competently capturing a competent performance.

We all know how quickly a discussion on the internet can lose any relevance. I remember years ago, back when there was only USENET, I was on rec.audio.pro. A discussion started about the mechanics of compressors. Each side was so deeply entrenched in its own definition of a compressor that a flame war began, completely with ASCII schematics of compressor circuits.

The whole thread probably started with some poor guy who was trying to use one and didn’t quite understand what he was doing. Perhaps he was hoping for some sort of preset he could start with. Maybe he was looking for some rules for when to use it.  Did he get any of that? No.

The thread got quite lengthy.  So much so that if the original poster had spent his time experimenting with the compressor, rather than reading the hundreds of posts in the thread, he would have had a much better understand of what a compressor is used for.

I can point to dozens, maybe hundreds, of examples like this.  Some people just like to argue, I guess, but they’re sure as hell not making any music while they’re arguing.  At some point, if you have a recording setup and you want to record music, you need to close your God-damned browser and make music.

And now, like any good blog posts, I have a couple of lists:

Four things that will improve your recording quality more than logging on to a recording forum:

1. Go find your most recently written song and give the lyrics a thorough editing. Few of us write perfect poetry with our first effort. So take some time to actually read your lyrics. Can you phrase things so the scansion’s better? Maybe you can work on that one problematic verse that’s not quite as good as the others.
2. Write a new song. Don’t have any current music to work on? Write some! The best way to improve your songwriting is to write more songs.
3. Record a demo. Maybe you’ve got a song or two that’s almost finished — or maybe it is finished. Lay some tracks! If the song’s not finished, maybe hearing it as a demo might inspire you to finish it. Maybe you’ll hear a part that can be improved. Don’t study recording — record!
4. Practice an instrument. ‘Holy Christ! That’s crazy talk! Actually work to become better at my craft?’ you say. That’s right. Run scales, arpeggios. Practice difficult position shifts. Work your technique. Hone your sound. Practice expression.

If you must frequent recording forums, may I suggest these:

1. The Womb. This is the mixerman.net forum. You know, the Mixerman Diaries? That’s right, those hysterical accounts of a recording engineer, working with the now-legendary “Bitchslap.” You’ll find some of the usual recording forum fare, but you’ll also find a lot of insight about the music business, from people who work in it.

Oh, I guess that’s it. Can’t really think of a better one.

I love conspiracy theories. The more outlandish, the better. My new favorite is the mysterious Majestic-12. Majestic-12, or MJ-12 to its friends, is supposedly a top secret organization created by Harry Truman to cover-up, manage, or otherwise handle the presence of extraterrestrials roaming about and around our planet.

The biggest smoking gun in this conspiracy is a supposed memo,  dated 24 September, 1947.

This memo may very well be a fake.  According to the Wikipedia article on Majestic-12, there are several things to indicate this letter is not genuine (probably the most telling is that the typewriter used to write it didn’t exist until 1962).

Here’s the thing: even if the above memo is real, it doesn’t mention a god-damn thing about space aliens!

But it’s still a fascinating story and part of me hopes it’s true. I just like the idea of a bunch of super-secret spooks running around battling space aliens.

Warren Ellis has included a rough mix of a song from our upcoming CD, Anchor Managment.

The 4am #8

Every night for the past two weeks or so, I’ve made a point of writing song lyrics. This was my routine:

1. I sit down with a pen and an empty writing tablet and come up with random song ideas.
2. Then I start writing lyrics: verses, choruses, etc.
3. I don’t really think about the quality of what I’m writing, I just write what comes to mind.
4. I keep writing until I get stuck.
5. Then I abandon the idea, come up with another and repeat the process.

Last night, I finally wrote something worthwhile. Once I have it polished and the music’s written, I’ll throw a version up on the podcast.

I only write two or three great songs a year. The rest of the time, I write junk — horrible lyrics, horrible concepts, bad melodies. Seems like a waste of time, but it’s all part of a process. Here’s how I approach my songwriting:

1. Keep writing. According to one of my journalism professors in college, Ernest Hemingway once said, “Your first millions words are shit.” You aren’t going to write great things right off the bat. Songwriting employs skills that must be practiced and honed. You’re practicing rhyming, scansion, meter — all the things you need. So when that great song idea comes, you’ll have the skills to keep up with your muse.
2. Write Every Day. Even when you don’t feel like writing. Even if you think (or know) you’re not going to write anything worthwhile. It’s like going to the gym.
3. Record Ideas Immediately. I only actually get down about half of the ideas I come up with. But if you don’t make the effort to write them down, you risk losing your ideas to the ether.
4. Don’t Throw Anything Away. Keep everything. Every scrap. One day, you might look through a collection of your old, crappy ideas, and one of them engenders a great idea. All creative effort has value, even if only to its author, so keep it all.

Here are a few links to more creative tips.
Lifehack: How to Boost Your Creative Output – I love lifehack.org. Lots of articles to help you become more organized, efficient, creative, etc.

Get Creative: Part 1 and Get Creative: Part 2 – Although I can’t imagine how to write songs in a hot tub — not while keeping the guitar dry.

10 Mental Blocks – I like these kinds of articles. Rather than tell me what to do, tell me how I’m screwing up.

I am constantly amazed by how screwed the music industry is. It seems that everyone in the industry who isn’t actually making music is trying to figure out how take money from those are. It’s stunning.

Here’s an article illustrating just how screwed it can be. Here’s the most relevant part: it shows a typical breakdown of the net earnings from a successful band:

This is why I’m a strong advocate for do-it-yourself music. Why settle for .5% of the gross from your music earning when you can have all (or nearly all) of it? I’m a big believer in educating yourself. Learn to record yourself. Learn to promote yourself. Learn to book yourself.

Here are a few music industry sites I frequent.

newmusicstrategies.com – I strongly recommend this blog to anyone in a working band or aspiring to be a recording artist. Andrew Dubber teaches about the music industry at Birmingham City University, and his blog, newmusicstrategies.com, features articles about how the music industry is changing and how to find you place in the new and constantly changing markets. His site also has a free e-book, entitled “The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online.”

cdbabypodcast.com – CDBaby is an online consignment house for bands with CDs to sell. Their podcast, CD Baby DIY Musician Podcast, is an awesome, authoritative and informative show about all aspect of the music business for the unsigned, independent artist. Don’t miss an episode.

projectstudionetwork.com – This is the premier home recording podcast. There are several others, and many are very good. But if you’re only going to listen to one, this is it.

It’s a 3/4 double bass, manufactured by Hora in Romania. I purchased it about a month ago at McCabe’s in Santa Monica.

I’ve had three lessons to date. I found an instructor in Glendale and I have a lesson every Wednesday. Last week he introduced major and minor scales. This week, it’s arpeggios.

The double bass is much harder to play than anything I’ve ever picked up. It’s a much more physically demanding instrument than e-bass, zouk or guitar.

My double bass playing will make its small debut on Anchor Management.