We have ideas What to do when your natural inclination is not to broadcast every last aspect of your life on a social platform….YOU HAVE NO CHOICE!!
Twitter, facebook, youtube, Instagram, snapchat…. Yadda yadda…I spend as much time on this as any slave to tech in the 21st century…but god I have struggled with CC’ing and group messaging and larger than life and impersonal communication…. It is not my natural way to have a roaming 24 hour update-athon. This is something all of the guys in the band have in common.
On a general level, I feel too many people over-step the mark with social etiquette when it comes to updating life. Treading a careful line is key, if you have a lot to say all the time, set up a business page We must find our peace with this beast either way,it’s the new equilibrium.
Social media being as it is, we have been thinking of a unique and or interesting way to use the opportunity. There needs to be momentum! Couple these social issues with the fact that Tom is about as naturally inclined to tech as a mouse is to sleeping in mouse-traps or even a polar bear to a two week break in Barbados. One is always in a fight close to home or further a-field. This can hopefully synopsise where we’re at :D.
Videos & singles
All these thoughts of promotion are clearly aimed at promoting the right song. Seen as we don’t know what that is just yet and we are still waiting for the finished product we are speculating as to We have been preparing ideas for 3 or 4 videos that will accompany the upcoming singles. Deciding who to work with is with the ever present compromise between: budgets quality and time…WE are also pondering quite a bit for we have a lot of ideas, but not much in the way of video direction experience/interest. Under which rock do we begin looking for this….which reminds me of the font/design issues we confronted.
Music industry, where it’s at, ahead or behind
Speaking of this packaging, we are like most bands and musicians of the past making an album…a format/concept may be long dead but it’s still something we follow blindly as a means to get “in the game”. The future is uncertain and which way to walk is a question that comes to mind. The increase in popularity of subscription for both music and tv/video is changing the landscape at a rapid rate. Only three years ago it was Apple’s golden cash cow – Itunes that ensured it’s standing at the forefront of the modern consumption of varies forms of media. Now however, we saw in the last few weeks that they just bought beats by Dre, which helps to confirm the switch and the highlighted importance of this online community.
Following this path so certainly does leave a few questions. Most of the advice I got off insiders within the industry have suggested that we do not pursue an album to begin with, instead choosing to promote our sound with singles and hype. Without question this approach would have been the most reserved.
Other aspects
Album name – All of this talk of promotion and no offering in sight!!? We think we have settled on a name we are happy with which should hopefully make the packaging of the offering perfect for our theme. This was one of the least painful of choices which saw a decision made within a few days. We believe we have selected a name that can help us stand up to the year ahead and help reduce the amount of visuals we will need in the initial sense, meaning we can just focus on the right font for lettering and our name….then we’re laughing 😀
New band members – This has been one of the more trying aspects of the last few months and is still ongoing. We have been holding intermittent auditions for interested parties when we had the time and we were lucky to meet a great deal of talent through a variety of platforms. We still haven’t actually selected anyone that works for both parties equally. We did come very close during the auditions but put the operation on ice to focus on completing the cd correctly.
It’s been great working as a three piece for now, the grass is always greener and we could have always done with an extra member for sound, but in reality it’s been nice working within this system and it will be very different to change it(when we finally do). We need another member or two, the number will depend on the overall finished product of the cd and what we will be aiming to replicate live.
It has been tough for the best work we have recorded in terms of quality is the existing CD we have online(recorded 3 years ago by me alone). This either brings in potential members who liked that band and sound(something we have developed beyond a great deal), and when we play live we’re a bit heavier too….so with both inconsistencies it has been hard to offer a fair depiction of what we’re about. We are hopeful to have snippets up in the next week to recommence.
Rehearsal space
We have a few pictures of the rehearsal space up, a little before and after in some pics…so basically this has been the objective for the last 5 years and thankfully it happened just shy of the 5th anniversary.
London is an amazing place! I could digress again and indulge in a few too many words and verbs, but as much as I appreciate the City…it’s not really for me! But life is here, and opportunity, so I will be here until I feel my chance, health or my time has passed.
The key to making this City work for me was to find a band and find somewhere to rehearse that would require as little set up as possible on a given day(for working is such a consistent part of London life and takes up such a disproportionate amount of time). I knew a house would be the answer, where I could build a soundproof room or at least a decent room to practise in that wasn’t going to have me in trouble with the Po’lice.….
It is certainly the answer for the immediacy(now that it is finally done)… That’s 2 and a half years after I started looking for somewhere appropriate every weekend, a year after I bought it, nearly a year since the planning and design and the rest is history.
There are still a few small jobs to be done that will assist, but without question it will help us become a much more professional and productive band.
Ultimately it again relates back to empowerment. This is the first time that we have been using all of our own gear. We have been rehearsing in differing spaces across North London but now that I am using the amps and pedals I invested in, it is saving so much time and energy when it comes to getting set up along with justifying the great expense we all endure for this passion.
New Guitar set up
2 amps – I bought an Orange Thunderverb some time ago and only truly got to use it in the past 3 months. Due to the setup of this amp it only has distorted inputs (which suits our music), but we need a good clean tone too. I am now hooked up to two amps with an intuitive switch between them to change. Now we have the Marshall for clean and the Orange for Dist. It’s insane! And delightful! I have a third channel I use a distortion on too to give an extra level for leads. We used the Thunderverb on some tracks on the album but it was dwarfed by the MESA and Hughes and Ketner which had a plethora of choice with tone.
Pedals – using amp settings and distortions but for a TUBE SCREAMER on the ORANGE channel to dirty it up some more.
Guitars – My favourite guitar to play with is my Gibson Les Paul custom and has been a loyal companion for the majority of the TSC journey…Failing that it would have to be my Fender Tele custom. Both of these guitars were used in numerous gigs, both active with EMGs and pack serious signal for output. When we hit the studio I had these two demons at the top of the list and strangely, it was the in-active new ESP LTD 2000 that we used on the majority of the recording and now live.
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