I love harmony vocals, the thicker and more layered, the better. I've been listening to a lot of older mixes as I clean up my recording computer, and I thought it would be fun to post some snippets of isolated harmony vocals. Some of them sound really weird floating by themselves like that.
A lot of these are yeeeaaahs and whoaaas and stuff like that. I compiled them into a single track here:
Also, Matt Leung at Vassar College interviewed me last week for his radio show The Technology Beat. We talked at length about Creative Commons, the role of "free" and alternative licensing in music. You can listen online (it's Episode #2) here.
I forgot to mention that Save You From Yourself was on the Top Sellers list at CD Baby all last week, thanks to the Demo Club members who picked up advance copies there. I've gotten a ton of extra traffic as a result, so if you get it from CD Baby maybe it'll get back up on that chart and hang awhile longer.
Well, today is the day, people. Today we push Save You From Yourself out into the big, wide world. Good luck, little album!
CDs are now available at Amazon, CD Baby, and directly from me via Paypal. You can also stream all ten tracks in the Store and pick up different digital formats there, too. (iTunes and the rest are running late, sorry.)
Demo Club members can get a big discount by logging in. As always, let me know if something goes wrong and I'll try to fix it ASAP.
The bonus goodies for buying more than one copy are still in effect! Amazon is not going to give up your email address to me, so if you purchase from them, you'll have to email me a copy of your receipt (just delete any private info first). CD Baby usually notifies me within a day or two.
Done and done. Thanks everyone. Time to get started on the next one!
On the eve of my new album release, I'd like to share something special with you: my first hate mail!
"I herd [sic] a few songs. What is your goal in music? Was not impressed. Another guy who plays guitar and thinks he is the next big thing. Is there anyone out there with their own unique style? You sound like to [sic] many other commercial artists. Stop cluttering the web with your junk."
"Some love em', some hate em'! Ugly? Maybe. Unique? Undeniably! Collectable? Unquestionably!! Read the acounts of how people felt back in 1958 about the original flying V, be honest now, don't you wish you had one of those?!? New, Unused Condition. Mahogany body, set neck, unique headstock shape, (2) 57 classic pickups, one volume control, a three way pickup selector switch."
Save You From Yourself is back in stock. In case you missed the email I sent out last weekend, I've put up a link on the Store page. Log in with your Demo Club email to reveal the link. If it happens to go out of stock again (which it looks like it might), use the instructions on that page to be notified when it comes back.
I'm happy that my CD is selling, but I still kind of feel like a doofus.
Some people have asked about MP3, FLAC and Ogg Vorbis formats. Those are coming next week when Save You From Yourself becomes available to the public. iTunes, Rhapsody, Emusic and the rest will probably come much, much later, so your best bet is to grab 'em from me, DRM-free. (Plus, nothing against iTunes and such, but I get to keep more cash that way.)
The first copies of Save You From Yourself went on sale to the Demo Club on Friday night and were sold out before the next morning. Normally I'd be all "yay!" but actually I'm a bit embarrassed since I totally underestimated the demand and now there's an order backlog. More CDs are on the way, and the discount and bonus items will be available through Februrary, so nobody will miss their chance. But still, ack, sorry about that.
On Saturday I attended my first Democratic caucus ever. I don't know if you heard, but the Washington state caucuses were off the hook this year. The WA Dem primary isn't determined by ballot but by the number of delegates each candidate earns during the caucuses. So if you wanted your vote to count this year, you had to caucus.
With no clear Dem frontrunner following Super Tuesday, Washington's primary suddenly became really, really important. 3000 people were turned away from Barack Obama's appearance at Key Arena due to overcrowding. Our little precinct in south Seattle saw a turnout of several hundred people, so much so that I think the organizers were overwhelmed. Jim described his precinct's caucus in north Seattle as a "madhouse." Crazy representative government all up in here.
Caucusing was cool except for the part where we stood around for an hour waiting for things to get started.
Then that same night, Jim and I performed an extra-long set at the Trabant in the U District. They're recently remodeled so there's a brand-new upstairs lounge area overlooking the stage below, and new wall-mounted PA speakers meant we didn't have to block tables with the huge speaker cabinets they used to have. Overall, the sound is much improved.
There are a few songs from Save You From Yourself that I'm not entirely comfortable playing live yet. "Not The One" is the hardest because I always get the lyrics backwards. Gotta work on that. But I also did a whole mini-set in DADGAD tuning, which I rarely do because I really hate re-tuning during a live set.
Oh wow, a 