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

Sometimes you have to sharpen pencils

It's an old adage not to waste your time sharpening pencils as an excuse for not doing whatever it is you bloody well ought to be doing.

But sometimes you need to sharpen pencils - you need to organize and prepare, so that you can work smarter and faster in the future. It's been pencil sharpening time!

TX to TN

I've moved from Texas to Tennessee - the call of Music City could not be resisted!

So this meant....

• much packing, cleaning and so on
• grabbing the fragiles (guitars and computers and paintings) and driving the 9 hours from TX to TN
• getting the keys to the new place and moving in the things in a box marked frah gilly
• sleeping on an airbed for a week
• driving 9 hrs back to TX to let the movers in and give the old place a final clean
• driving 9 hrs back to TN
• getting the stuff turn up from the movers
• buying some new furniture to replace stuff that was abandoned due to being broken (or just upgrading some of it)
• then organizing all of that so that the place is ready for me to be creative

It all sounds very non-musical, but it's all in the name of music!

Amongst all that, I did manage a trip down to Broadway. Did you know I've never even been to Nashville before? Had to play the tourist! And it was very inspiring.

And a trip out to a songwriter rounds night, thanks to Randy England who I knew from the Frettie group of songwriters. That was cool, and of course I plan to play at some of those in the future (starting with open mics though).

I'd joined the NSAI a few months back, in preparation, so I had a trip down to the Thursday night workshop. Something that I plan on making a regular trip!

But mostly, it was all about sorting the place out so that it is a good, positive work environment. It started off like this:

Well, to be honest that corner doesn't look much different... but that corner was about all there was! Now it's more filled out, I won't have to sit on the floor (soon), and have all my capos, writing pads, pens and plectrums easily to hand. Plus the energy in the place feels good!

So, it's been a long delay to actually writing and recording, but a necessary one. Foundations have to be laid - and sometimes pencils need to be sharpened!

Cheers!
   Tommy

Multiple personalities become one

Multiple Versions of Me Become One

I am a strange sort of fellow, especially in the music I like. You see, I like Steve Earle, and Tom Petty, and Del Amitri, and some country (especially alt and outlaw!)... but there's more. I also like The Dogs D'Amour and Social Distortion and The Levellers, who have almost a punk sensibility. But it goes on! I also like Motorhead, and I like Hawkwind with their space rock. And I also like instrumental music like Mike Oldfield, and electronic stuff like The Crystal Method, and Ladytron.

I am not sure who else listens to all those genres and styles with equal love, but I do. And, as a musician, the side effect is I also love creating that range of music.

Up until now, I've kept that separate, with Tommy Grimes III for the guitar / rock / country / blues stuff, and Faol Glas for the instrumental stuff.

But I have grown somewhat tired of that, it's a lot to maintain, and I'd rather be making music than maintaining websites and blogs... so, I have decided my instrumental and electronic will all just go under my own name. If people get confused, or can't fathom how one person can create such vastly different types of music, well, I guess that will have to be too bad!

In terms of being a songwriter, well, I also write melodies, so the instrumental stuff remains valid if you want to assess me as a songwriter - it tells you about what I like and how I write in terms of melodies and harmonies. So going forward, it will all be under just the one name!

The Five Sisters

So, the piece responsible for that was the draft from this weekend of The Five Sisters - part one of what should be a longer five-part instrumental of varying styles, inspired by the Five Sisters of Kintail, a mountain range in Scotland.

An odd piece as it wanted to be in 5/4 time (or 3/8, 3/8, 4/8 if you prefer), and it's been on the go for ages! And also it has a lot of layers to it compared to what I normally do. Still not finished, but close. Now just the other four parts to go :)

This also came about from wanting to do some guitar-based instrumental pieces, so expect to hear some of those too soon. These will be less synth-heavy than my other instrumentals, keeping the guitar as a main focus.

Stopping Automatic Folder Type Discovery

Windows is always so "helpful" - whenever I create a folder with audio files in it, Windows decides that I want to see "Artist, Album" etc as the file details. For a musician, that's a pain in the arse, as the files are most likely drafts, tests, or even individual audio files for tracks in the DAW.

When I look at those folders, I usually want to know "is this file too large to email?" - I don't need to know who it's by, it's by me, I know that!

Thank goodness then for this article on stopping Windows from doing that kind of malarkey.

Laten.....cy

This dual Xeon system has always been a bit crappy with latency. It is prone to drop-outs while I am listening / recording (though these don't affect the recording itself; but it is very off-putting while trying to get lost in playing along with your music!)

It reared its head again as an issue when I revisited the instrumental pieces, as they have lots of synths and effects. Even the Focusrite, which addresses the worst of it all, didn't help out here.

I did find LatencyMon which very helpfully gives you some idea on anything that might be causing latency. The test results give the very interesting and I-would-never-have-thought-of-that step of turning off my network adapter while working on particularly heavy songs. Cool.

And the other thing I always have to remember - turn on "Multi-processing" in the Bazille synth, else it just never works!

Cheers!
   Tommy

BIAS FX and more

BIAS FX

Always a sucker for a sale (when it comes to music software at least), I went and demo'ed and then purchased BIAS FX from Positive Grid.

My reasoning would be considered pretty strange I guess - I found I was able to get a "super compressed Strat sound" like I'd been looking for in my other amp sims, and that I really liked the Tele played through (of all things) their Acoustic Sim amp, as seen above.

Oddly, I wasn't taken with BIAS Amp, it didn't do what I needed, mostly because I was after the compressors in BIAS FX which seemed to do the super-compressed sound really well when I chained two different ones together.

Compound Capo Capers

As part of recording "The Spirit of Country" I ran into a problem - the Tele has a 9.5" to 14" Compound Radius, and my Kyser capo was not working on the second fret, leaving the guitar out of tune. Sure, could just retune it when I put the capo on, and retune it when I took it off, but I figured there must be an easier solution. There was.

The D'Addario / Planet Waves Tri-Action capo has adjustable tension, and presto I could tweak it so that it worked down here where the neck is fatter. Very happy with it, and can heartily recommend it, and it's price!

Death and taxes (without the death)

Whew, spent this weekend mostly working on all the documenting of taxes for 2017. I want to get that in to the accountant early, so I can figure how much I am due this year, and then I can plan ahead for the move to Nashville that I'm considering!

I also made a video demo'ing the iDea, which I am going to put up for sale now that I have the Elite. Recorded the footage, and chopped it up into parts, and took some photos, but haven't yet put it all together.

Will be kind of sad to see the guitar go, since it has been on every song (that uses an acoustic) for the last 10 years, and I've done a lot of writing on it - but, I can't give in to GAS as they call it! Guitar Acquisition Syndrome, that is. To me, no sense in having more than one sort of guitar that does a similar thing to another. However, it will be like saying goodbye to an old friend, and this one did come with me to the very first Camp Copperhead, so it has sentimental value!

Cheers!
   Tommy

Ovation Elite Plus Contour overview, and finally found lyric video software!

Weekly update time! When shopping for a new Ovation recently, I couldn't find the information I needed - how much difference does the contour back make vs the traditional Ovation round back? What is the new Op-Pro Studio pre-amp like, and what do the Drive and Expressor do exactly? What does it sound like?

So, I made my own video now that I own one:


The guitar arrived on Tuesday, and is quite a stunner! Always been a huge fan of Ovations, and this one is by far the best one I have owned.

As yet haven't recorded anything with her (except for the video above), but will be doing that in the coming week. I got some great feedback on "Long Time Coming" from Brent Baxter of frettie.com which is a great place to share your songs and get feedback, and based on that I am going to rewrite it some, mostly restructuring and removing rather than adding. That will give me the perfect opportunity to put the new Ovation (named Spirit :) ) to good use.

-----------------------

I mentioned last time I was searching for software to ease the time involved in making lyric videos, and I found it - under the unlikely name of YouTube Movie Maker.

The beauty of this software is it will import your lyrics in text file format (.txt), and then your mp3, and as you play the mp3, simple presses of a key on your keyboard will define the start and end point of each line, et voila, your lyrics are done in time with your music!

I will be putting this to good use in coming weeks, and getting some simple lyric videos done and uploaded. Using video sites to listen to music is an increasingly common thing, even if the video is just a still photo, so it's good to have the music available on those sites too.


Cheers!
     Tommy

New Year is on its way!

Whew, 2017 was one busy year!

I just spent 3 days in Moscow and 2 weeks in Prague, not music related mind you - with that, plus the preparations for the trips, I was unable to do anything musical for the last month or so, but getting back into it now.

Moscow, view from the hotel window

I also managed to pick up a persistent cough, so not sure how that will impact my plans to do some recording over the Christmas vacation, but we shall see! I can still write and work on the instrumental side of things of course, so it won't all come to a complete standstill.

Prague, one of the smaller Christmas market areas

It's a good time to be thinking of plans for 2018, and for me I plan on doing some co-writing rather than write it all myself. I am also contemplating a move in May or thereabouts, and may move to Nashville for a bit, because Nashville. I think it would be fun to live there at least for a year or two!

I am also considering working less on production, arrangement and mixing, and more on just writing - there are so many songs I have in progress and if I stop to play around with them all in detail then that will slow down finishing writing them. After all, everything I create is just a demo or showcase of what the song can be, the plan is always that someone else will pick up on a song and record or perform it.

So what are your plans for the year ahead? Whatever they are, may they come to pass, and here's to it being an awesome year!