Digital Distribution of Music

I have spent the last few days looking into the options that a musician has for distributing music digitally. There are a lot of options, and many of them are similar. I came across the following useful article on 7 Ways to Sell your Music on iTunes, which proved to be quite useful.

Some of the sites also have promotional tools, their own network of musicians, and other means of helping musicians to market their music. Having tracks on iTunes does not make a musician rich, and they know it. It's so good to see this kind of support for the music industry.

For now, I plan to release my solo stuff for free, but I also want fans to have the option to pay me if they so choose. The easiest way to do that is to get my music on stores such as iTunes or Amazon Mp3. I hope to settle on an online distributor by next week.

I have added another solo track on my music page, and have uploaded the commission work that I did for the upcoming iPad game from Monoclesoft, entitled Notepad Command. You can find the soundtrack here.

In the Beginning...

I have wanted to get a blog going for years, but have always felt that I didn't have the time. Now that I am done University, I have been working on neglected projects. Digging through old lyric sheets and music journals, I have found a lot of musical and literary material from years past. These old projects will take up most of my time and efforts for a while, and will comprise the bulk of the content on this site for a good while.

When I sit down to write a song, I usually play around on my guitar, and wait til something comes to me. Sometimes it will be a series of chords, or a melody. Once in a while, though, it will be a melody with lyrics that I cannot detach from the melody. Even when the words don't necessarily make sense, or fit with the rest of the song that I wish to write, I cannot find any other words that seem right for that melody. I have learned that when this happens, I shouldn't fight the musical instinct to use those words.

The song that I am working on right now, entitled 'Damage Control,' is a combination of two separate musical ideas which had some embedded lyrics. Neither song was going anywhere, until I realized that they could fit together fairly well. Pairing them was the key to finishing the song writing process. I was unhappy with either piece on its own, and couldn't seem to change the lyrics without offending some internal musical sensibility. But they felt right in combination, so I went with it. The recording is almost done, but I still have to finish the glockenspiel part, and perhaps edit the organ part as well. I will post it here once I have it finished.