Lunch: Wednesday, June 9

[Brock]

Food:
Papa Murphy's pizza (Toppings: Chicken and Beef). it's take-and-bake, so you're buying an uncooked pizza, and then when you get home it's time to cook it in the oven. My daughter went with me, and I actually documented that trip. Here's a picture:

...and an article...
http://www.rickshawseason.com/pizza/

Of course, that was yesterday. Today, some of the leftover pizza was microwaved. Brew some Brooke Bond Taj Mahal tea to keep the pizza company, and it's a meal.

Computers
The Home and End keys: Anyone else use these often? Are you annoyed by laptops which tend to not have them directly accessible? I bought my mom a new X100e Lenovo Thinkpad, and they're on there directly (no function key needed), and there's also trackpoint too. Neat little computer.

G&L
Here's another patent from the GbL gallery. Let us dream of a bold new world where necks of different fretboard widths at the heel all fit into the same sized route on the body:
http://www.guitarsbyleo.com/GALLERY2/ma ... temId=6056

The adventure of self-publishing and promotion on a larger scale
So what do you do with an excellent concept album in late 1960's-70's style from an unknown musician, unknown lyricist, and no live support whatsoever? I'm not sure, but I'll have to figure it out with "Traveler".

Any tips on promotional work that has worked for you and/or your band?

Oh, and here's another "Traveler" demo, this one is for the song "Followers and Falsehoods":
http://rickshawseason.com/MP3/Followers ... dsDemo.mp3

That's all for this report. Tomorrow: Another day, another report...

-Brock

[sirmyghin]

No help other than commenting on the computer keys. I just don't use laptops, and I am lost without my network pad, home and end keys etc. I spend a lot of time in spreadsheets so the whole key board thing is kind of valuable.

[Brock]

What's a Network Pad?

[replyman]

I think he means a separate numeric keypad and keyboard attached to a network; just the keys and a monitor. As for me, they just don't make them like the old Commodore 64...

[zapcosongs]

Really enjoying the Traveler stuff, Brock. Keep it coming!

I intended to ask this yesterday, but what input did you (as lyricist) have with respect to the instrumental cuts? - ed

btw, we have a new Indian Grocery store in town, and I'm intending to stop by to see whether they might have that Taj Mahal tea that you've been pimping for years now. Yeah, you've got me curious....

[sirmyghin]

What's a Network Pad?

the network pad is the number block on the far right of most standard keyboards (at least thats what I've always been told its called) Guess it would normally be called the number pad or somesuch.

[zapcosongs]

What's a Network Pad?

the network pad is the number block on the far right of most standard keyboards (at least thats what I've always been told its called) Guess it would normally be called the number pad or somesuch.

If anybody here needs one of these, I've got one new in box..... Seriously - ed

[Aussie]

Food:
Any tips on promotional work that has worked for you and/or your band?

Hey Brock - If you were here in AUS I'd direct you to a few local record shops that specialise in stocking discs from self publishing artists. Some good music/entertainment magazines are produced locally and given away free through record shops, music stores, bars etc - and they are always on the look out for local artists to promote. There are a few good radio stations here that are also happy to help give artists a break. We have a national youth oriented radio broadcasrter (http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/Triple%20J) that has as part of its mission to "unearth" new artists (http://triplejunearthed.com/). Maybe you have similar oportunities through college radio(?)

cheers, Robbie

[bassman]

Cool rickshaw, Brock. I really like how you fit that car seat in front of the regular seat.

The newly created Town Square in which my library is located has lots of condos for sale, which due to the poor economy are being rented. The company handling the rentals has a rickshaw chained up outside of their offices supposedly to show potential renters the area. I have not seen anyone use it so far.

Non-performing band promo- See if you can get a gig to perform and sell CDs. Do it for free as long as you can sell stuff. You do have to put together a performance of your stuff. This is hard if you have spent months recording it track by track and never played it live but it can be a cool experience to put it together.

Other than that, there is YouTube and sales of CDs via a website.

[Brock]

Non-performing band promo- See if you can get a gig to perform and sell CDs. Do it for free as long as you can sell stuff. You do have to put together a performance of your stuff. This is hard if you have spent months recording it track by track and never played it live but it can be a cool experience to put it together.

Not gonna happen for a lot of reasons. Matt's not wanting to do live performance, but beyond that, doing Traveler would be very demanding. Lots of very talented people would be needed.

It'd be fun for me to see it performed live, but due to budgetary and technical limitations, I don't see it. I was originally going to do vocals on this, and I'm a mediocre vocalist, and Matt wrote way outside my range. There's also string sections. Matt has some unusually believable fake strings working, but live I'd sure want to see the real thing.

If you've seen the video for Brian Wilson Performs SMiLE, it's a challenge of similar (but different) scale. You'd want a small orchestra, maybe three to five vocalists, a horn player, and multiple keyboard players. You wouldn't need multiple percussionists, but outside that, the roster needed would be similar.

Other than that, there is YouTube and sales of CDs via a website.

I'm hoping to get some video for youtube, and the current plan is free music downloads plus CDs. I anticipate losing money on this project. The goal has been to make the best work we can from the beginning. We've done that. We'd like other to enjoy it too. That's the goal. "Here you go world, enjoy".

[Brock]

I intended to ask this yesterday, but what input did you (as lyricist) have with respect to the instrumental cuts? - ed

Just purpose. I basically go, "This is a musical journey to the great beyond" and that's it. Past that, I might veto a song if it's off from intent (that actually happened twice during the Traveler demo stages). Other than story consistency, Matt does whatever. I've worked on lots of tech projects over the years, and this is how I like to work on projects. Have great people involved and let them do what they do. Sometimes you need to steer things here and there, but again, great people tend to do great things. Better to be encouragement than confinement.

"Thirty-Eight Steps" from Traveler has very specific notes on both where there's a narrative and also when a fade that ends the song starts and ends. I don't normally do that, but its' important to the story, so there it is. I have a hunch there'll be more about these sorts of things in today's lunch report.