Carded

Did you know

So long as your sound recording AND the music and lyrics have the same copyright holders, you can submit to the U.S. Copyright Office and cover both in one application, as a Sound Recording application. Can save the time, paperwork and cost of two submissions. See this document for details.

Frettie

It's been my pleasure to help out recently with some videos for the awesome songwriter community, Frettie. In this case, I've been making some videos to show how to sign up and get the most from the website - if you are a songwriter, be sure to check it out!

If you want to know the kind of thing you get access to, then there are two awesome "Know The Row" events coming up this month, which you can join if you are not a Frettie member - but if you are a member, you get access to those for free (both live and in recorded form if you can't make the date and time).

I also had the pleasure of meeting up with host and mastermind and owner of Frettie, songwriter Brent Baxter, earlier on this month too!

TuneSmith

If you're like me, and you write melody or chords, you'll likely find yourself firing up the voice recorder on your phone and recording a snippet of a tune, some words, or some chords. The problem is, how do you keep track of all that stuff and find the things that are worth actually continuing work with?

I'm trying out TuneSmith, which so far seems pretty awesome! I move the files off my phone (or tablet), and then I get a list of files that usually just have a date as their file name as they never got far enough to have an actual title or subject.

I can then just create a new song on TuneSmith, drop the file in there, and add my notes in the lyric section (and the lyrics if there are any, of course). I then sneak in an "R1" to "R5" where R5 is "Ok wow that sounds really cool" and R1 is "Hmm yeah what was I thinking when I recorded that?" - then a quick search of the lyric field will highlight the songs at that rating.

With audio, notes, lyrics, chords, and rating all in one place, it makes looking through those scruffy notes much easier.

And of course TuneSmith goes further, and you can add your co-writers, publishers, track when and where each song was submitted, whether it got cut and so on, which is really what it is for - but hey, it turns out to be great for organizing your notes too! PS, it's free, though if you want to use Rhyme Genie you'll have to pay for that side of it.

Carded

Now I'm in Nashville, where there is a thriving music scene, it was time to create some business cards. They came out rather nice I thought, good to see the logo worked well there! I used GotPrint if anyone is looking for printing their own cards, the price was good (I didn't go for any fancy options!) and they turned up really fast.

Songs

Thanks to TuneSmith, I've also been able to find a couple of other interesting audio notes and have started developing those to see if they turn into something.

Paperwork

A busy week, had to dive in and sort out copyrights and registration on BMI for a co-write. Would be easy enough, but slightly complicated by the fact that this was a song that existed before and has been rewritten in the co-write, so had to untangle how that works! As part of that, finally registered with BMI as a publisher as well as a songwriter.

Cheers!
   Tommy

Still alive!

No, not the awesome Jonathan Coulton song! Just a comment that despite the lack of posts here for the last 6 months, I am still alive and kicking (no not the Simple Minds song!)

I've had a swirl of activity - initially my freelance work was occupying almost every available hour, and the hours that were left I had no energy to be creative. Then I was blessed when in March my dream job became available - I applied, got the job and started in April!



The good news is, following on from the transition period, as a result of the new job I will have hours in the day where I am not working / exhausted from working, and I can create some music again.

I've started out just playing for the sake of playing to get back into the swing of things. Today I had a lot of fun with a not-so-serious song, nothing to share as yet but was great working on it! Once again I found myself looking for "old" sounds, something harking back to the 50s or 60s, something not squeaky-clean sounding, which is quite a trick since I do everything digitally these days.

It was interesting to find out how fast I could write and lay down piano, electric rhythm, electric melody, bass, and attempt at getting a synth female voice to do a "doo-wop" part, all while also coming up with some mixing for all those parts too (as I just can't write without mixing - how it sounds is critical for me even when recording demos, it is all part of the final piece). I found that very reassuring; I haven't lost the knack!

What all that adds up to, then, is expect updates more often going forward as I will be writing and recording again!

Songwriting Log

So have seized some time off over Christmas after one heck of a year! Had hoped to get to 20 songs in the catalogue before the end of the year, but looks like I'll get to 18 (got 16, and two on the go.)

It's Christmas Eve, so....

Can't have alcohol without having songwriting, so that's what I've been doing this Eve!

The sun will rise

Whew... life has been exhausting and hard for the last few months, which is why no new music. Major upheavals that were beyond anything I could ever have foreseen, such that it all seems like some bizarre unreal dream.

One facet of that has been a move at short notice, so am just settling in and setting up and getting used to a new normal. There are challenges ahead - with new rent to pay, and changes to my financial situation, there is much uncertainty. But on other scores, more stability. In the end, I will accept that uncertainty as it is at least primarily under my control!

After months of barely touching an instrument, today was the day I played and wrote some for the first time in ages! In part, getting things ready so there is a "routine" to be able to follow to get to the point of getting songs done on... well not paper, but digital storage!

Whatever adversity you yourself may be facing (if any, and I hope there is none!) do remember that the sun will rise once more, bringing colour and warmth back to life - persevere, and have faith!

All the best,
   Tommy

Whew!

Still on hiatus! Life has been consumed one way or another by work, which is no bad thing as even songwriters have to eat!

3D and video editing (self-employed) is my "day job" and I did invest in more computers for rendering, but work has grown faster than the network, and that still sees this computer tied up in renders more often than not - and of course, this is where I do my writing and recording.

So just the other day, I invested in what must be about the cheapest laptop ever, the HP Stream. Tiny solid state hard drive, tiny memory, but nippy enough processor wise (all my other laptops were ageing, and so were slow, with a battery life measurable in minutes rather than hours.)

I upgraded it to Windows 10, installed Cubase 8 Pro stripped down (no big sample libraries and the like), found an old USB hub, and presto, I can record even when the main PC is tied up!

Had to track down some light and simple drum software, and ended up going with Divine Drums.

With that and the Cubase drum editor, I can lay down some very simple beats in order to write to.

For the guitar, just using the inbuilt amp sims that come with Cubase. None of this is about getting finished quality tracks, just so I can write, get structures laid out, chord progressions found, guitar soloes practiced, bass parts figured out, etc.

Since it is Cubase, with a quick move of the licensing dongle thingy, I can just move the exact same project from machine to machine, and pick up where I left off. And old 500 Gb external hard drive will do the trick there. An ideal set up!

Well, almost ideal except for moving my Audiobox USB back and forth between two computers - not the end of the world, but a little inconvenient, especially when I want the main computer to ding when renders are done, or work if a Skype call comes in!

To resolve that, have purchased and am awaiting delivery of the Lexicon Alpha, so that the HP Stream has its own dedicated audio interface.

Now if the mood takes, I can set to writing and recording with just the move of a dongle.

And all of that (well, except the purchase of Cubase itself) for less than the cost of a 4 track tape recorder back in the day! Any of these images will take you to the relevant product page, if you want to know more or get one yourself.

Now the only issue that remains to be solved is having the brain power left over at the end of the day to get creative - and technology isn't going to help there heh!

Sad Songs

There's a thing about the songs I write - many are sad, or at least bittersweet, tinged with a touch of melancholy.

Yet I fully believe in being a positive person, so these are not a "celebration" of sadness. So why write them?

So there is the answer. We will all experience sadness at some point, probably many times. I am a positive person, and trying to be more positive all the time, but I have had my run-ins with sorrow, and I do mean big, terrible, will I even make it to tomorrow what is the point of going on sorrow.

And in those times, music can help. Music can be the thing that makes you feel less lonely in those darkest hours. A happy song may just grate at those times, salt in the wound, but a sad song is a hug from the songwriter to let you know, soul-to-soul, that they've been there too.

This means that my reason for writing sad songs is a positive one - it is to help people feel better, to help them get by, and to do so in a way that is not patronizing (and so often the words we say in regular conversation just sound that way; songs let us say those things in a way that avoids that.)

So I have given it some thought - I want to be making the world a better place, not a worse one. I have no desire to be a doomsayer, a rain-on-the-parader (I made that one up.) But in the end I have followed my heart - music and songs have helped me in those bleak hours, and I hope mine can do the same for others now in return.

No magnets, no music

Interesting thought - without magnets, we wouldn't be surrounded by music.

My Fender Strat, my Audio Technica headphones and mic, the old platter hard drives there on the ground, my Fender Cybertwin amp, and who knows what else in this picture, would simply not work without magnets.

Cubase update

Updated to  Cubase 8 from 7.5, since it's not much and there was a special offer. The main appeal - better floating windows for my dual monitors!

Got it last night, and got all the VSTs pointed at - I think.

Too Many Verses - plus noise reduction talk

Finished up "Too Many Verses" in rough n ready form, have a listen and download if you like: http://www.tommygrimesiii.com/music/TooManyVerses.mp3

A bit of irony when you listen to the lyrics, as it has been waiting about 7 weeks to finish, but I've had too much work! As ever, it's not really meant for me to sing, but for someone else who likes the song (let me know if that's you!) Personally I think a bit of The Dogs D'Amour crept into the sound of this one!

The other part of this blog is about a new addition to the stable of stuff, in this case new noise reduction tools.

Sure, the songs are meant to be drafts, but that's no reason to have lots of hums, buzzes, clicks and more hiding on there to distract someone from the song itself.

The bass is the worst for this, it likes to pick up a lot of buzz from the monitors and PC, though the electric guitar can get the same way and fed through the amp simulators with distortion, they can be noisy in the silences.


The vocals are a problem as well, the PC is a bit of a beast (it does video editing and 3D work too) and so has a fair collection of fans, so it is far from silent, and I don't have a vocal booth of any form.

I have been using ReaFir for that, which was free and pretty good but had one problem - as soon as I added it to any track in Cubase, I got latency - hit a note on the guitar and it was heard a teeny fraction of a second late, but that is enough to throw off the playing!

And sometimes that noise is a pain while playing, distracting, so that was a problem - and although I could get good results from ReaFir, I sometimes got artifacts - enter Acon Digital!

Having looked around at the big expensive noise reduction plugins, I just couldn't justify that kind of price. The Acon Digital Restoration suite was only $99 though, and a test of the demo showed it did not have the latency problems (and if there was some, simply disabling the plugin but leaving it in the chain would resolve it) and it didn't create the same issues with artifacts.

"Too Many Verses" was one of the noisiest tracks I've created, with two electric solo sounds, the electric rhythm, the vocals, and the bass all having their addition to it, so that prompted me to take the plunge. Very glad I did, very impressed with it - easy to use, and good results, and I have many uses for it in some of the video editing work I do too!

Go try it for yourself here!

Rough n Ready

I have about 80 songs in various states of beginning or completion.

Now, for me writing always involves some arranging, I can't help it - the song has a version in my head that includes the whole feel to it, the way the guitars should sound, the bass, how acoustic and electric should work together, little notes and phrases that would be multitracked.

But what I am working on is doing that, but still treating it as writing - not as making a song ready for a CD. After all, I want to be a writer, not a performer. My hope is someone else will love a song of mine enough to go ahead and record it!

So no more agonizing over every detail. And heck, I'll sing the songs myself too. Because I need to get those songs finished, and let the world hear them, even in "advanced demo" form. Wish me luck!


Different This Time

It always appalls me that people think getting free of an abusive relationship is easy - oh, you just walk out! Actually, for hundreds of reasons, it can be very very hard indeed, and takes guts and bravery to break out of a cycle.

I dislike the scorn that people pour on others who are trapped, or who were trapped for years; I dislike the "blaming" that goes on, with they made themselves the victim. And so I wrote this song.

It should of course be sung by a woman, but in the new spirit of rough n ready as noted above, it's just me delivering it - use your imagination! At least, until someone picks up the song to do their version.

Meantime for those trapped in abusive situations - may you find the support and help you need to be freed from that situation, and yes, it is not as easy as people make out.

Arranging Addict!

A current in-development song in Cubase

I just can't seem to write without arranging!

It's not enough for me to lay down the chords and sing over them, because I always have more in mind than that.

I have an impression of what the drums ought to do, what the bass should sound like, what kind of solo or instrumental there might be, for how an electric can sit on top of the acoustic, and so on.

So I find that whenever I write a song, I can't stop at just laying down the bare bones - though maybe I ought to learn to do that.

Thing is, I am a writer, not a performer, but the downside to having so much in my head for how the song should sound is that it takes time to do all that extra stuff.

That slows me down in terms of getting my songs down in a listenable form rather than just in my head. But, as a writer, I really ought to show that I have a lot of songs.

So I am thinking it's time to take a different approach, and "scribble down" the songs. After all, it's not my plan to release them, really I want someone else to take them and run with them! All I really need is something that sounds good enough to get the point of the song across, to let listening ears hear the possibilities in them!

We'll see how that goes, when I refuse to give satisfaction to the arranging part of me, or to the perfectionist part of me that wants to tweak and twiddle with the effects and settings and more - wish me luck!