gonna write and record a bunch of demos this summer. will hand-pick the best musicians in my town (athens ga) to help me track everything at a good studio. not sure who i want to engineer or master it yet but will pay good money for the best i can get. after that i will get it on wuog 90.5 then pay some indie PR guru at a big PR firm lots of money to shill it nationwide and ideally put it on a relevant spotify playlist. will tour for a few months and see what happens. i just want a small following of listeners who appreciate and enjoy my art. that's literally it. no money no huge fame or glamour just a comfy fanbase like Omni or Chris Cohen or Wild Nothing etc.
if it crashes and burns i will never record another song again for the rest or my life, i will completely give up writing music forever and become a boring instrumentalist who plays jazz standards for 25 people eating dinner downtown. i am getting older. my friends are having kids. this is definitely the absolute last window for me. i won't get any better as an artist at this point. if it doesn't happen now it's never happening
I'm in the same boat. I just want to be able to make a decent living playing my music. Writing/recording and touring. I don't crave fame or fortune. I just want to be able to make music my career and have a decent amount of people who appreciate it. Anyway. I wish you the best of luck m8. But I wouldn't say you should give up if you don't achieve a decent amount of success off of one album.
If anything you could just release a few singles and an EP at first. I find lots of young and new artists on Spotify who only have a few small releases and no full albums but already are gaining a decent following. Don't go broke trying to produce some masterpiece and praying that it gives you success. You could record the greatest album of all time but that doesn't guarantee success.
Thank you based anons. I'm going to work tirelessly and obsessively over the next year. I saved up a lot of money and am taking the entire year off to focus exclusively on writing, recording, and performing this music. Hopefully it gets some traction.
Good advice. I think the music industry in general is going the way of singles now. I will definitely release a few of those before a proper album. That's one of the reasons I need to get with a PR group, so they can tell me how to approach that angle of it.
Good luck with your own music fren
Chase Wright
drop a clue so we know it’s you when you release it
Lincoln Murphy
Like what?
Ayden Cox
I’ll probably end up in your position eventually but right now I’m focused on studies so it aint too bad. Had a couple of my albums posted on here by other anons. One of the came out this year, it was an ambient side project but I want to put out something that is singer/songwriter/one-man band. I figure I should take my sweet time though.
Good luck.
Luke Perry
my advice user, Make the music you want to listen to. It’s all we can really do
Owen Howard
>will hand-pick the best musicians in my town (athens ga) >implying Olivia Tremor Control will wanna play with you
Charles James
John Fernandes would def play with me that's my homie, friends with his sons as well. The scene is a lot more tight knit than you'd think
Carson Clark
As long as you are consistently putting stuff out that's what matters. I fucked around too much in my early twenties hence being in this situation
Jack Hall
give it your all
Ethan Ward
Yeah I've finally found a somewhat unique sound that I like. It took me many years. I am the kind of musician who loves a lot of different styles and when I was younger I tended to bounce around from genre to genre.
Ayden Ortiz
Well, do you have a band name/artist name you know you're going to use? Or you could just make a thread about it here and mention you created this thread a while back and that you're from Athens. Anyway, it would be cool to know it's you.
PS. Feel free to share anything you have recorded already. I'm always looking for new artists to check out.
Oliver Lopez
That’s what I’m tryna say man. It doesn’t matter if it’s unique. It matters if you want to listen to it. The only path to others wanting to listen to it is if you yourself want to listen to it. If you cook something up and listen to it and enjoy it but have another thought criticizing you for it not being more out there or unique and you change it. You’re going the wrong way. All that matters is that you make shit you want to listen to
Ditch the high minded complex meme. Ditch the tonic pentatonic is dirty meme. Just enjoy it. Your music is unique merely by virtue of its being yours.
Don’t make what you want to make. Make what you want to hear. I think we get too caught in the process of music and forget the ultimate result is the only thing that matters. How does it sound and do I want to listen to that sound for what it is exclusively as itself. Not for what went into it
We are craftsmen, but all that matters is the result our crafting produces. Not the process of crafting
Also, you’re spending a lot of time trying to build a following/marketing right? The music and the audience both need to be made. And they’re entirely separate endeavors
Yeah i will post again when all of my stuff is finished and a single gets released. I'll dig up this thread from the archives and link to it. Might be a while though, this stuff takes time when you are trying to do it in a legitimate way with PR and stuff. I wish I could just finish the album and release it but I've done similar things in the past and it hasn't worked out at all, you lose traction almost immediately. There is nothing worse than working your ass off on an album only to see it rot on bandcamp because you didn't market it or engineer it properly
Good thoughts. I am trying to find my own sound and creative voice while not going off the deep end down into my own head. It's a balancing act. But you guys have helped me realize that good songwriting is good songwriting and nothing has to be the most unique or out-there shit to be quality music. That's very important to keep in mind. This project is definitely the music I want to listen to. It is much catchier and more approachable than the experimental shit I was making in my twenties.
As far as marketing i don't want to even think about it until the songs are done but yeah you have to cultivate an image and it's a totally separate process than creating the music. People underrate that angle. I know incredible bedroom musicians whose art will never see the light of day. My buddy is in Deerhunter now but before he was a completely unknown bedroom pop songwriter for a decade and only local athens scene ppl knew about him
Benjamin Perez
OP here. I dig the chord progression. It would make a good foundation for a tune or you could elaborate on it in an ambient way. I would try to focus your melodies a bit more and really think about note selection, some of your melodic ideas seem to fight with the underlying progression
David Ward
Hey OP. Not star musician, but photographer in Chattanooga. If you need some work HMU or if you play a show close by I'll come by and take photos.
Jace Reyes
word. i think we will be playing shows around athens starting at the end of summer
Samuel Parker
also do you do band/artist photos? got a portfolio online?
Robert Rodriguez
Anyway I can keep in touch? Been wanting to go to Athens for a while. Travel to Nashville a lot for shows and know someone down there I can crash with.
