Updates, Dirty Pots, etc

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

Spent most of the day going through updating some press contacts & looking for new ones.  Now my eyes are a little sore.

I was messing with my guitar rig & I found one of my audio problems was being caused by a dirty potentiometer.  It was on the Lexicon with a knob I though was digital so I haven’t cleaned it in ten years (I take most of my equipment apart & clean all the pots before & after each tour).

Contacted a bunch of folks about doing some remixes for the Remora song “My Brother’s Guns & Knives.”

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Promo Updates, Twitter, Dreams

Posted on May 30, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

I am doing some updates to my promo list.  Takes longer than expected.  I also finally found something I can use Twitter for that is useful as far as making new connections.  I can find bloggers that would be into Silber by finding bloggers who follow pier labels.  So I’m trying to get going on that before Twitter gets so dense that it’s useless to try to go through it by hand.

I think I’m getting close to done on the first commission song as far as the audio (still need to do the video).  So at the rate of $1 an hour, it still makes a ton more than the average Remora album!

Recent Dreams:
I’m having an in depth roundtable discussion with a bunch of other label owners about at what level of targeting does something stop being spam & become info-mail &, surprisingly to me, no one but me does any targeting & just spams.

The girl I’m going out with has five heads.  She switches them out to perform the different tasks they’re designed to specialize in.

I am at church & I think I’m in a communion line, but it’s actually a laying on hands thing (strange how some 2000 year old traditions seem sensible & others freak me the fuck out).  After the laying on hands I get such a massive headache that I can barely make it back to my seat & in fact I don’t make it back to my seat; I sit down in a random pew feeling like something is about to burst out of my head just above my left eye or maybe I’m going to have another seizure or maybe I’m going to start gibbering in tongues until I pass out.  The guy kneeling next to me puts his right hand on my left shoulder & asks, “Hey, what is there that you think is really scary?” I look at him, confused by him talking in church & in particular talking to me; but finally answering, “That none of this is real.”  “Oh, that the world’s all in your mind.  Yeah, I hear you.”  “No, none of this religion.”  He looks at me like I’m crazy; then says, “What are you doing here?”  He gets up & walks away.

I joined the revolution because the government killed my family.  We’re at the wedding of the president’s daughter to commit assassinations hiding in the rafters of a large gazebo & I realize the only other person here that’s part of the revolution is the leader of it, Dustin Hoffman.  I realize there is no revolution.  There’s just a nut I’ve been following around.  Then Dustin drops out of the rafters, AK47 in one hand & a machete in the other.  He’s not killing indiscriminately in that he first takes out anyone with a gun & then just keeps firing until he has used up all three clips he brought with him.  Smiling, he takes the machete & cuts off the hand of a man still clenching a gun & picks up the gun & hand & squeezes on the hand to pull the trigger.  What is this going to fix?  I wish I’d died with my family.

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Piracy Give Up, Russian Pop, Apparel/Swag

Posted on May 27, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

Okay, so I’ve been using PCs since 1984 (my dad was a computer dude, so we were pretty early adapters on that).  My first 25 years using them I got two viruses (one in 1999 & one in 2003).  A couple years ago I started using Google Alerts for all the releases on Silber & I’ve been going to sites of ill-repute that are offering free downloads of Silber music to ask them to stop.  Yesterday I got my fifth virus related to this & it has been a little bit of a bitch to fix (Had to remove my anti-virus & run Combofix & then re-install the anti-virus.  I’m assuming it’s fixed now, we’ll see.), so I’m giving up on fighting all the piracy stuff.  Which I suppose I should’ve done before.  From now on I’ll only work on the piracy where I can tell it’s a safe URL.

Did some more work towards the Remora Russian pop cover.  A little more work to go on it of course.  I think I have the vocals done.  Need to decide if I’m going to add extra drum machine, bass, & guitar.

I was talking to Sarah June the other day & she’s talking about making some apparel available.  Like fancy gloves & such rather than t-shirts.  It’s an interesting idea.  It reminds me of when Michael Gira made the Angels of Light thong underwear.  What was that about?  & did they sell well or did he just use them to pay the ladies who were in the band at the time?  I remember seeing Captured by Robots & he had a couple different styles of underwear for sale & they were outselling his t-shirts for sure.  Meanwhile I’m still here debating the bottle openers & box cutters.  Or maybe I should make a “random swag bag” for sale that has postcards, stickers, bracelets, temporary tattoos, balloons, & buttons inside.

So far I only have about five interviews in for the QRD Father’s Day special.  If you know anyone I should interview for it, let me know.

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4 Responses to Piracy Give Up, Russian Pop, Apparel/Swag

  1. GoddakkATTACK says:
    May 30, 2011 at 5:29 pm

    well now you can just think the way i do. People that are using these piracy sites probably never were going to pay for your music any ways.

USB mic, Music Supervisors, Remora Remix, Dream

Posted on May 24, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

So I tried out the USB mic I got the other day & it doesn’t work as I thought it would.  I thought it would act as it’s own input device, but instead it still goes through my soundcard & still has the hum problem caused by my replacement power supply.  At least I got it for $5 instead of $50.  I did think it was interesting looking at it’s physical design & seeing how it’s noise cancellation works with a second tiny mic that I presume is intentionally out of phase with the main mic at 90 degrees off of the main angle.  Interesting.  Of course who knows how well something like that operates on a $5 mic in the first place.

So last week there was this song placement place that got in touch with me about taking in the Silber catalog & I talked to them for about an hour on the phone about making it happen & I was like, “Email me a contract stipulating everything we said & I’ll start getting songs for you tomorrow.”  Three days later I get the same email from them that sparked the phone call.  Umm, not the level of professionalism I need in a business partner.  Meanwhile I found a music library service I could join for free through BMI & put up a dozen songs.  I feel like those things might be a waste of my time as I have stuff in four or five music placement libraries yet the only placements I have acquired have been through me personally being in touch with people working on a project.  But I guess maybe they work for some people & what else am I doing with my time.

Started doing some stuff for getting together things for a remix kit for the Remora single & wow are the files huge.  1.5 gigs for just one song?  28 tracks?  Huh, I guess I’m not a minimalist anymore?

From Peter Aldrich:
Last night Brian John Mitchell was in my dream. Very detailed zombie dream, he ended up getting bit.  He looked sort of like one of the monsters from Carnival of Souls. He was a full on zombie, but still had his human conciousness. I assumed this was because he was so smart or had such impulse control. Still, he was very gracious & asked that I kill him right away. I didn’t, because he is my pal. I was concerned about his imminent transformation, though. Eventually he disappeared from the dream as I became more concerned about zombie hordes & crumbling earth.

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Remora Art & a couple other things

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

Did some work on the Remora artwork. Not sure if page 2 should be gridded instead of placed randomly, let me know what you think.  But I’m getting close to sending it for manufacturing – http://www.silbermedia.com/remora/remora-scars-cover.pdf

The  air conditioning is broke in my house & it makes me feel exhausted.  Not sure when it might be fixed.

Got a message from Melissa Gardner (XO) that she’s going to some comic convention & I got her out a package of 50 comics or so to pass out while she’s there.

Getting a couple requests for the commission series.  Pretty excited conceptually.

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Black Cat Moan & boring stuff.

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

So I got the wah pedal I was looking for.  It’s a Rocktron Black Cat Moan.  It sounds pretty nasty & I really like it a lot.

Still working on the promo for the new releases.  Did some more physical assembly for the Azalia Snail.

My grandmother woke up at 1am last night & didn’t want to go back to sleep & I missed a sleeping period & it made me pretty useless today.

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2 Responses to Black Cat Moan & boring stuff.

  1. Peter says:
    May 28, 2011 at 12:48 pm

    Glad you like your wah pedal. I was gonna lend you mine indefinitely.

    • Brian John Mitchell says:
      May 28, 2011 at 7:40 pm

      Well, I tried a Crybaby (I think that’s what yours is) at the Bird Noise Studio & if I hadn’t also played with the Snarling Dogs pedal I probably wouldn’t have bothered getting a new wah. I actually have that Digitech one that has a switch that it can be a wah or volume pedal, but it crapped out sitting in the basement unused & it was always pretty crappy in a non-good way.

Commision, Promo, End of the World

Posted on May 21, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

So I started working on my Russian pop song cover.  I ran into a problem that I was trying to get some samples off the original song & I couldn’t get the file to open in my ancient Sound Forge.  It ends up the problem was the file title had non-recognizable characters.  Took me about 45 minutes to figure that out.  Anyway, I might try to do some stuff with adding vocals & such to it using my recently acquired from Hong Kong $2 USB microphone just because then I don’t need to turn on my music computer.

I talked to my son Andrew a bit today.  He’s throwing together a last minute tour because his Texas summer fell through.  I think his ability to throw a tour together somehow relates to how improvisational his music is compared to mine.  I like to have everything planned.  Even my most experimental & noisy & weird bits are controlled.  The only thing that makes that non-apparent is my lack of decent fine-motor skills.

Sent out more promo messages today.  I’m holding out a little while on the radio contacts & I haven’t done the webform contacts yet.  I have this idea that I’m not actually going to institute where I would only send out one promo per disc sold.  So if I only get 5 orders, there are only 5 promos going out.  That way I don’t feel like I’m losing so much & giving so much away.  Of course then I turn Silber into an even tinier label than it is, even if there is less money lost.  I’d rather Silber run properly & just die than bleed out slowly like it seems to be doing.

I was kinda looking forward to the world ending tonight, alas it didn’t seem to happen.  I guess there’s always December 21, 2012.  Hoping for giant ants to come down from the moon for it & I hope they come to party (which is a joke that would make more sense if you’d heard a remix I’m working on about party aliens).

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2 Responses to Commision, Promo, End of the World

  1. GoddakkAttack says:
    May 23, 2011 at 8:24 am

    are you doing a TATU song? I hope so.

  2. Brian John Mitchell says:
    May 23, 2011 at 11:03 am

    I don’t know who TATU is? The song I am doing is here – http://youtu.be/q8Il2rhe3MI – they won’t let me embed it because you know how Russians hate music piracy.

Promos, Music Networks, Remora Art, Clang Quartet Interview

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

So I read this article over at Music Think Tank about how to run your free MP3 promotions.  Not sure if I should actually change things around to fit it or not, but it’s probably worth any musician reading.

I’m not trying to say MySpace is still awesome or anything, but I was looking at webstats today & I noticed MySpace is still in the top 50 most popular websites in the world while Reverbnation is around 2000 & Bandcamp is at 3000.  A far cry from being the next big things that people want to say they are.  Soundcloud however is at 600, so they look like they are a real possibility to be the next thing.

Still working on the Remora artwork.  For whatever reason my own artwork seems to take longer to fool with than someone else’s.

Here’s an interview with Clang Quartet from No-Core.

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2 Responses to Promos, Music Networks, Remora Art, Clang Quartet Interview

  1. GoddakkAttack says:
    May 21, 2011 at 11:32 am

    How do they rate the sites?

    I’m sure Myspace still gets a lot of traffic but i’m thinking that it’s all people using it to spam one another and not legitimately in use. Considering what a pain in the ass it is for pages to load etc. . … I have a hard time believing an average person could be bothered. Which is why i think a lot of people went to the FB.

    In regards to RN & BC, i don’t think that it can be used the same as Myspace and therefore can’t really be judged the same. Both of them are more or less a place to put music and info and then direct people to it, whereas Myspace had more of a community approach, with people collecting, networking etc.

    You don’t really log onto Bandcamp and hope to stumble across bands you might like. You go there to check out bands you already know via links you find. Not to virtually hang out. the thing with myspace is that it was a place for people to pretend like they had friends and send messages and post goofy shit like FB today. Neither BC or RN are really for that, they’re more or less music driven. Sort of the same with most marketing campaign’s you gotta get the attention of people that really don’t give a shit about music and make them think that they do.

    Soundcloud is a good tool but for some reason i don’t like using it, i think it’s more the feel of the site or possibly the look. I should mess with it more.

  2. Brian John Mitchell says:
    May 21, 2011 at 3:00 pm

    They’re rated by hits (not pageviews or time spent on site) & I know that MySpace has a lot of images on a page (more files is more hits), but so do Reverbnation & Bandcamp so they should be comparable. Soundcloud is the thing that really surprised me. Because if anything they are the most music centric of sites & it seems like they are the one with the least buzz. Then again, they are also the only one of those three that I think works with major labels & that probably is what all the traffic was really caused by for MySpace. Before MySpace worked with all the major labels you didn’t see housewives & businessmen excited about it.

Silber Commissions Project, Promo Work

Posted on May 19, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

So some of you might already know about it, but I’ve been talking about doing commissions where I’ll cover any song of your choice for $20 up to & including “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” theme.  I asked around to see what other Silberians might be into it & it seems that most of the folks thought it was funny, but not for them.  Those who said they were interested in participating are Andrew Weathers, Brian McKenzie (Electric Bird Noise), Michael Wood (M is We, SAVAS), Evgeny Zheyda (Thorn1), & of course me (Remora, Small Life Form).  Not sure exactly how it will work, but for now just contact me & I’ll try to find out about setting it up & if the artist will actually do the track.  I’m supposed to do a russian pop song as the first excursion, which sounds way more difficult & interesting than anything I’d anticipated.

Today’s big event was making the digital download page for promoting the new releases.  So over the next few days I’ll be doing a few thousand emails trying to get the word out.  My fingers are crossed on it.  I guess I’ll just have to sit around & see what happens as far as will their be reviews & will they lead to sales.

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Remora artwork

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Brian John Mitchell

I spent most of the day working on the artwork for the new Remora.  It’s slower than I anticipated & I’ll still need to lay it out in a program a printer will accept.  But I still hope to get it out for manufacturing this week.  We’ll see what happens.  Hopefully I’ll get that done & be able to work on other things pretty soon.

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