Collaborating on a New Song

Over the past few months, I have had the pleasure of writing new music for a vocalist and lyricist I have not collaborated in years. Dave Gruis, a friend of mine going back to the late 80s, originally we discussed plans for his upcoming wedding and somehow that evolved into creating a new song.

The initial idea was for a basic hymn structure... Something simple.  "Can we do a similar progression to a hymn? Something like 'The Old Rugged Cross'?" he asked.  That is where it began, the first attempt immediately took on a life of its own and I shared the idea with Dave over SoundCloud, from there he ran with it.


Dave wrote the lyrics and laid down the scratch track for the vocal melody. Sent it back and I expanded the guitar.


The next version added in more piano to follow the vocals.


At this point Dave and I have been working online, passing ideas and versions back and forth via Google Drive, Facebook, and SoundCloud. For the vocals, I traveled to his home in northern Minnesota for a recoding session using Garageband and Blue condenser microphones  (Yeti Pro & Snowball). Once home back home in Saint Paul, the song was mixed in Garageband and mastered in Adobe Audition.

The next step was to create some promotional materials. First, the video -  the tools I used were Adobe Premier and Photoshop to piece free stock footage from Pixabay and Pexels. Since my computer is small, I would frequently save exports in Premier and Photoshop to save on processing time. After that, I would assemble the exports in Premier under a new exported version.
(click on the image to the right for more detail)


A few weeks later the final version of the All to God video was uploaded to YouTube under Dave and my accounts released Sept 1.

Dave has been writing songs under the name Generation Echo, and I have been under Ants and Ostriches. We decided to release this song under a combined name taking the first part of his and the last part of mine and flipping it.

The result is 'Ostrich Generation' released on Bandcamp.

Visit Ostrich Generation on Bandcamp

Current Status

It has been a little while since I put anything out. Lately, my time has been put towards work and random designs. Although in the past months I have been writing some new music, just not as dedicated as before. I am still working on a song that has been stuck on for months and decided to take a new approach.

It also is a deviation from free - my personal site has a lot of functionality hosted through Wix, highly recommended if you want to focus on the creative and not IT. I carved out a page and created a request for help... sort of.

The page allows for uploads to Dropbox, that is a free account, and uploaded individual tracks for remixing.

The idea is to share what I have and see what folks come back with.

We'll see how it goes... The page is called "The Stuck Tune"

The image above was created for the landing page requesting help.

Upcoming Single

Last month I was working on a single for a song to be released this month, November. Contempt. Unfortunately, I hit a bit of a writers block and decided to shift approach. That single is now called Losing Time.

Music, and anything creative for that matter, works best when emotion is leveraged more than logic.  At least for me - or perhaps better put, don't take it too seriously.

For the song Contempt there was a lot of study into melody and structure - it didn't match with how I was feeling and is stuck in a mental block. At least for the time being. 

So I decided to take a different approach and play with the song Contempt at a later point. 

The direction to a new single was light and enjoyable. It tapped into how I felt more than the notes of the song specifically.  "Losing Time" was originally a song I wrote years ago called "Snort in Time" and focuses more on guitar and just enjoying the music without thinking too much.

The lesson I have learned here is: Taking things too seriously, just turns into crap. Or something like that.  

New Music Tuesday

Although I had created a web page and iTunes picked up my EP on September 3rd - today is the official launch day for Wait.

List of some of distribution channels hit today.  SmartURL.IT is a really neat tool for musicians.

Overall, a bit of a mess with the process... But all's well that ends well? If I could do it over I certainly would change a few things. One is setting my launch date out one month or two or not setting one at all. So, what am I talking about?

At the end of August I looked into distribution companies. There are a lot of them out there and good reason to go with different ones.

Here is a great article that walks through the big ones out there.

Ari's Take: CD Baby, Tunecore, DistroKid, AWAL, Ditto...Who is the Best Digital Distribution Company for Music:  This is the most comprehensive and accurate digital distribution review comparison piece on the web. By far.

Now, I didn't find Ari's article until after I made my selection. But the reasons for me were the same, so no regrets here. For me I wanted broad distribution and not pay anything. Routenote is who I chose - although I am curious about Amuse too.

When I was first using Routenote I wanted to go as fast as possible, don't do that. I submitted my tracks, I mastered them in a day and was clipping. Stopping the process took another day and a few emails.

What Is Audio Clipping and Why Is It Important?

Did I learn? No. Once I got it stopped I remastered and resubmitted for two weeks. If you set your release date too soon - a couple weeks out, Routenote will blank the date and tell companies to release immediately - 4 weeks is the minimum. Apple is on the ball and picked up the EP on right away. I know most won't have this problem because who the hell tries to release an album within a few weeks? Well.. if you do and use Routenote this is important to keep in mind.

It is also important to allow time for marketing and promotions - so take your time. You do not need to spend money, use social media and other wonderful sites and resources out there - be curious and see what others are doing. Bandcamp has some wonderful hidden treasures and tools to build great sites. https://antsostriches.bandcamp.com/ Bandcamp is free and has fantastic articles.

There are some brilliant folks out there that offer up a lot of insight too. I found a great channel on YouTube for DIY musicians. MRSTEJ

What I would do differently.

• Set the release out two to three months or not at all.
• Write 3rd person bio articles.
• Be mindful on track placement - the songs that get downloaded most are the first song.
• My first song is not my best tune - I think it is the worst.
• Get more engaged. Be curious and take more time. Although being in a hurry is fun, it is more disastrous than productive.
• Make artwork vinyl ready. 12 x 12 inches - you can always scale down - not up.