Song Talk with Morry Campbell

Songs in the woods...and maybe bears too!

If you're up for a mini-Woodstock experience with a lot of talented indie-musicians in a pristine, beautiful setting, check out Out in the Woods, the first annual LGTB Music festival at Easton Mountain. (August 13 and 14th, Easton Mountain, near Greenwich, NY, events starting at noon on the 13th. Check the website for details). I'm going to be there, along with some of my best buds and fellow musicians: Dan Manjovi, Roger Kuhn, Terry Christopher, Norine Braun, John Small, and Susan Souza, to name a few. Should be a great event. Easton Mountain is one of the most beautiful places east of the Mississippi, and coming from a Montana boy who grew up in the Rockies, that's saying something. I hit the stage at 5:45 on Saturday.

If you want to contribute to a great cause, you can support the festival with a little cash infusion, and you get some cool prizes if you donate. More bootie the more you contribute. Check it out here. Hope to see you under the open skies in the mountains.

The Goddess Annie Lennox Speaks On Reclaiming Feminism

Yeah, it may date me, but I think Annie Lennox is still one of the most amazing voices in popular music (hence my designation of "goddess"). And she's also an activist for women's issues. Below is a post that Ms. Lennox penned and is posted on Huffington Post. It's a sobering read. And deserving of attention.

Annie's words start below. Clicking the link will take you to the original article.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

It shocks, disappoints and angers me that in a world where man has traveled to the moon and where we can connect to people anywhere on earth instantly online, men and women are still not equal.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

Have a Roger Kuhn Christmas!

Every year around Christmas time I find myself wondering what new Christmas music is going to come out so I don't have to listen to the same old songs over and over again. Luckily for you and me, my good friend Roger Kuhn has finished his own holiday CD, Every Year Around Xmas Time. Full disclosure, I recorded and/or produced or co-produced four of the 7 cuts on the CD. But setting that aside, Roger has written 7 original Christmas/Holiday songs, and every one of them is an enjoyable listen.

 Roger's take on the holidays is at once rooted deeply in tradition of what has come before him (Under the Mistletoe, Xmas Joys), while at the same time pushing the boundaries of what we expect to hear on a holiday album (December, Oh What a World).

My favorite cut on the CD changes as I listen, but my favorite cut right now is the deeply moving Oh What A World, which chronicles the story of a homeless gay boy beaten to death on Christmas Eve (sadly based on true events).

I'm singling out one song in a whole collection of terrific songs. You can download Roger's Holiday album through iTunes by clicking on this link.

Also contributing to the musical and production talent on the CD are James Erickson (December), Robert Urban (Every Year Around Xmas Time, Under the Mistletoe, Xmas Joys), and my good friend and masterful musician Dan Manjovi (I Heard There Was A Star).

Report from the field: New Logic Pro Studio

On Tuesday, I attended the "Pro Studio World Tour" event that Apple is sponsoring to promote their pro video and audio applications, Final Cut Studio Pro and Logic Studio Pro. Amazing stuff. Well worth checking out. One of the most impressive new features of both applications were the time manipulation tools. The time manipulation tool in FCP (Command + J) has been expanded, with a lot more control on how it behaves in the timeline. And in Logic, you can now quantize audio regions in much the same way you quantize MIDI regions, and the "flextime" feature has to be seen to be believed.

I'm going to keep this short, because I know not everyone who reads this blog does this kind of work, but this round of upgrades is a dramatic step up. Avid/Digidesign have cause to worry.

Apple and the Music Biz

Just keeping y'all informed...

More fuel for copyright thought

Here's another article, given attention by ASCAP in their daily brief, on the whole vexing issue of copyright protection, and by extension, piracy. Because ASCAP is promoting this article in their brief, I can only assume that I'm being asked to take it seriously. And perhaps the article's author, Willem H. Buiter, makes some good points along the way. But some of his points, and in fact one of the big, particularly "scary" points he makes, is patently ludicrous.

MySpace and Facebook and Twitter: Oh my!

Under the umbrella of Outmusic, there was a workshop for musicians this last Monday at the Center. But the kudos go to the industrious, bottomless-pit-of-energy Jed Ryan for organizing it and making it happen. Thanks, Jed.

The guest speaker was Phil Putnam, who has done very well for himself in the Indie music world, and was kind enough to offer up some of his hard-earned wisdom. Thanks, Phil.

Johann Sebastian Bach: plagiarist and copycat (and Handel too)

It happened a lot. A composer would take a line from another's work and use it in their own composition. Bach would borrow from Handel.  Handel would borrow from Bach.  Sometimes entire sets of variations were done on another composer's theme. Variations on a theme by Paganini comes to mind, Brahms being the guilty party. It was actually considered an act of respect to quote from a known piece and make it into something else. I guess they didn't have lawyers around then.

Somehow, somewhere, some lawyer got hold of some musician or composer and convinced them that this "borrowing" was actually stealing. Instead of being honored when someone else uses a part of our work to make something new, we're told, we should be incensed that they are stealing from us. And so the legal profession brings down hundreds of years of musical tradition and creativity. For hundreds of years musicians were able to look to past works as an avenue to inspiration. No longer.

One more reason you shouldn't steal music

This is pretty wild. Someone downloaded a file sharing program on their company computer at a defense contractor in Bethesda, MD, and it allowed someone in Tehran (yes, the Tehran in Iran) to download detailed plans for Marine One, the President's helicopter. Boback is the CEO of the company.

Someone from the company most likely downloaded a file-sharing program, typically used to exchange music, not realizing the potential problems, Boback said.

"When downloading one of these file-sharing programs, you are effectively allowing others around the world to access your hard drive," Boback said.

I guess for an indie musician, there are certain plusses to outweigh the minuses of peer-to-peer and file sharing networks. Yes, it's possible that it may help you build a fan base and get your music into the hands of some folks that would not otherwise listen to your music. But if the cost is that your potential fans leave their hard drives open to anyone that wants to poke around there, it might be cheaper in the long run for them to just buy the song. It might be not only dishonest to download free music, it may be dangerous.

Maybe CDs aren't quite dead yet

According to an article at appscout.com, CDs might not be ready for the dust bins quite yet.  It seems that around two thirds of the folks out there still paying for music buy CDs exclusively. That's nice. Well, it's better than nice, it's good. Good for us independent musicians still trying to sell our product. Although it has become cheaper over the last few years, it's still a pretty hefty chunk of change to get a CD together. This is good news, if it's reliable.