"Nice" and "Not selected". Shot down in flames!

Not too long ago, I posted about how I was going to play a song of mine (Here Comes the Weather) for a record producer. Well, he and I never did meet up in person, but I sent him an MP3, and, uh, well, he said it was "nice".

Around the same time, I submitted "Money, Money, Money" to a sonicbids.com opportunity entitled "American Airlines: The Paste Beat Audio Channel". The response: "not selected." Just like the record producer, no explanation, no critique, just pure, plain old, unadulterated rejection.

I suppose I could drive to a Wal Mart, buy a gun and shoot myself, but no... I'm gonna persevere. After all, The Beatles were rejected in their first attempts to crack the biz, so how bad should I feel? I mean, I'm better than The Beatles, right?

Sigh.

Gear review: Digidesign Strike vs. Doggiebox.

If you're primarily a songwriter and know a thing or two about programming drums, you've no doubt fooled around with various drum machines. Take me for instance: For hardware, I've owned a Drumulator, a Linn Drum, and an Alesis SR-16. Lately, though, I've been using two software "machines": Digidesign Strike and the Doggiebox.

Given that Strike costs about $300 and Doggiebox costs about TEN TIMES LESS, this might seem like an unfair comparison. And if it had to do with pre-programmed beats, well, it would be no contest at all, since the Doggiebox offers only kits, no pre-programmed grooves.

But, if you're like me, and want to create your own drum patterns for demo purposes only, so that a real drummer can get a sense of what you're after, then the Doggiebox crushes Strike.

First, they're both buggy, but believe it or not, Doggiebox is less buggy than Strike. For whatever reason, Strike sometimes just won't play what you tell it to. IT'S EXASPERATING, and totally disrupts the creative flow. Doggiebox crashes every now and then, but just hit save regularly, and you'll be fine.

Second, the Doggiebox can programmed much, much faster than Strike. Sure, Strike gives you more control, but in the end, if you're just after a good feel, a lot of Strike's extra stuff isn't that cool.

Third, yes, Strike sounds better, but not ten times better, and besides, what good is all that extra sound quality if the programming experience just positively sucks because of bugs?

Fourth, Strike is massively CPU intensive at higher quality settings, causing my Mac Book Pro to choke regularly. Again, very disruptive.

Fifth, and final, the Doggiebox works without Pro Tools, so you don't have to worry about THOSE FUCKING iLOKs, or having your over-priced Digidesign hardware with you in order to use it.

Seriously, if you're a songwriter and you're tempted to buy Strike, DO NOT. Try Doggiebox first.

PS: This post was "inspired" during a songwriting session last night, near the end of which I was ready to fire a cruise missile at Digidesign. Pro Tools kept hanging, Strike wouldn't work, argh, it SUCKED. Finally, I shut down Pro Tools, fired up the Doggiebox and made more progress on my beats in 15 minutes than I had made in the previous two ours. I am not exaggerating, either.

Back in Madision for more brain tweakage.

Just over a month ago, I first headed out to Madison, WI, to take part in a trial for a new kind of brain therapy thought to help brain trauma victims, such as yours truly.

It worked.

In a big way.

My vertigo was reduced, my twitchiness went away, my headaches have all but vanished, my mood improved. Sadly, over time, the effects of the treatment have worn off a bit -- even though I've been using the Brainport regularly -- so I am back in Madison for another set of treatments. The theory is that this time, on returning home, I will be able to use the Brainport right away so as to maintain the benefits of the treatment, whereas last time, I had to wait a few weeks between treatments and getting my Brainport, which gave my good-for-nothing brain time to slack off and revert to drinking beer and watching TV (or whatever the hell it does when it's not BUSY HEALING ITSELF, YOU HEAR ME, BRAIN?).

Here's a link to an older post still located at my old blog site because I CANNOT figure out how to transfer stuff to this new site.

Sonicbids sounding much, much better.

A little while back I joined Sonicbids, an aggregator service for song contests and the like, as well as a service for connecting bands with promoters and licensing deals. I saw it as a kind of poor man's Taxi, a way to get my songs into the hands of playa's, without having to pony up Taxi's high fee.

Sadly, my early impression of Sonicbids was not very good. A "magazine" I had submitted to accepted my song right away, without even listening to it (I could tell because of Sonibids' stats feature), and after researching the 'zine I bit, I figured it was some kind of shell company set up for money laundering purposes. I wrote to Sonicbids to tell them of the charlatans that were exploiting the Sonicbids service, but the response I got was less than uncool. The Sonicbids team basically said I was responsible for determining whether an opportunity was legit or not. I wrote back asking ARE YOU KIDDING? What's your vetting process, can I get a refund, do you know WHO these guys are? The response: nada. I was on my own.

So it was a HUGE surprise and HUGELY impressive when I got the email below. Give it a read. It's clear, honest and to-the-point, offering an apology, a refund and a committment to improve the Sonicbids process.

THANK YOU SONICBIDS. I WILL BE A MEMBER OF YOUR SERVICE FOR YEARS TO COME. YOU ROCK.

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

Hi Jeff,

This is Tony from Sonicbids. I looked further into the hip hop magazine you submitted to.  I reached out to them to correct their use of the dropbox. They were unresponsive, and consequently, we shut down their listing.

Because of this, we will be refunding all bands who submitted to this opportunity. The site credit will show up on your and their accounts in three to five business days.

I also wanted to share our policies and procedures around promoter screening. We did have an initial phone conversation with this promoter, and required him to send us a copy of his magazine (as we require with all magazine listings) before we allowed the listing to be opened. For first-time festivals, we require copies of city permits. For compilation CDs, we require a receipt from the manufacturer and a copy of the CD.

We’re in the process of redesigning our gig listings so they provide more useful information to our bands before they submit. (In your case, if an opportunity comes with additional fees post-selection.) To better-communicate the improvements we’re making to the service, we’ve put up a Builder’s Blog at www.sonicbids.com/buildersblog. Meanwhile, we’d like to offer our thanks for alerting us to this misuse and an apology for not taking a deeper dive into it immediately.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me directly. My contact info is below.

(I didn’t want to intrude on your blog by posting this publicly, but if you’d like to share this email with your readers there, please feel free to. Thanks again.)

Tony

Why I’m meditating these days. (Attempted murder is only part of the story.)

For the record, I have always been deeply skeptical of New Age medicine. Energy work, pyramid power, cranial sacral therapy, they all just seem like variations on a theme, that theme being snake oil. However, a severe injury from which you just can’t seem to fully recover will open your mind to new ideas, and my mind is no exception. I still don’t buy any of the above, but stuff like yoga, acupuncture and meditation, well, I can see why these things might help.

Take yoga: it exercises your body and mind, and can truly help you relax, no question. Acupuncture? A little mystical, I admit, but when I did it, I felt better and feeling better is the right path toward feeling good. Meditation? Um, this one, I don’t think I can speak from experience yet, despite my many attempts to master it. However, given that using the Brainport requires me to stand stock still with my eyes closed for 20 minutes TWICE A DAY, I’d better get my om on. Not only will knowing how to meditate help make using the Brainport more enjoyable, but also I think it could help with my songwriting and guitar playing.

But there’s another reason I want to learn to meditate. I heard a story from Dad once that has me totally convinced of meditation’s healing powers. It goes like this.

Years ago, my Dad worked for a big investment bank here in San Francisco, and one of his co-workers, whom I’ll call Bob, was married to a woman known to be, um, intense. She and Bob lived is a massive seaside house filled with cats but no children, and one evening Bob came home, called out his wife’s name and… nothing. Mystified, he called out again, poked his head into the kitchen, the dining room, the living room. Finally, he headed upstairs to the bedroom, where on entering he saw his wife standing in the back corner. She had been silently awaiting his arrival all along, gun in hand. The details of their dispute aren’t material to the story I want to tell, but suffice it to say, she was upset enough to shoot him not once, not twice, not three times, not four times, but five times, saving the last bullet for herself. She died, he lived.

In the hospital, Bob awoke to learn that he was paralyzed from the waist down, which was weird because he could “feel” intense pain in his legs. The doctors said he was experiencing phantom pain, and there was little they could do to help. So when Bob was well enough to leave the hospital, he had one goal: to stop the pain in his legs. His quest took him all over the world, from Western practices to Eastern, from fancy drugs to herbs. Along the way, cost was no object; he was willing to pay any price. But despite having all the money in the world, he could find nothing that worked. Until he tried meditation. Only it -- this supposedly hippy/dippy, supernatural mental mysticism -- offered real relief, without the nasty side effects of powerful drugs. Bob was sold, and ever since, he has meditated for several HOURS a day, gaining roughly two to three pain free hours for every hour he meditates. (And I’m complaining about 20 minutes.)

Quite a story, no? Well, what made this especially convincing for me, is that Bob is one skeptical SOB -- just like I am. Yet meditation worked, and worked wonders.

My most sincere hope is that my attempts to meditate, coupled with the Brainport, will help me rid myself of vertigo for at least a few hours a day. Sadly, my mind has wanderlust and resists focus like a duck’s back resists water, so meditation is very, very hard for me. But I am determined to learn how to do it, not only for my overall sense of well-being, but also, as I mentioned before, for my songwriting and my guitar playing.

I think meditation will help my songwriting because one of my techniques for focusing my mind is to work on songs. I visualize a guitar in my hands, try to hear the tones it makes, work through riff ideas, try lyric ideas, think about rhythms and arrangements. I find that this exercise works best when I already have some sort of starting point, as I need a reference note or something to build on. (It’s like relative pitch, I think, which, unlike perfect pitch, means you can only name other notes once you’ve heard a root note, like an E or an A.)

As for my guitar playing, meditation is probably the next best thing to a genuine practice session. In fact, the last time I went in to the studio to do some guitar work, it was for a song I had ‘practicd” while meditating. Amazingly, the session went far better than usual, with me playing more rhythmically and with few muffed chords. Pretty cool.

So there you have it, the story of why I’m meditating these days and what I think I’m getting out of it. As an added bonus, if Catherine ever shoots me five times (and I live), I’ll have a good recovery technique!

Om.