Half A Year (Album Cover)

www.myspace.com/halfayear  

First of all, I have a new song on myspace called "Carry On". I wrote this tune ages ago and never recorded it properly till now.  I will make a little video clip for it shortly. But in the meantime let's talk about album cover art.

 

The point was to get the concept right. We wanted to achieve an album cover that could easily describe an artis

tic idea whilst not being too visually complicated and I think we did quite well for a first try. After a thorough brainstorming session on a piece of white paper with the help of the photographer Philippe Arnoux (www.philippearnoux.com) who I know "reasonably" well, we managed to move forward with a vision.

Album covers are extremely important. They make your CD stand out of the crowd and they give the customer a first impression of what your music is all about. You shouldn't judge an album by it's cover, but most of the time we do. With the digital market, cover art is now reduced to a very small format. On iTunes or Amazon music store main front pages for example the spaces for cover art is miniscule. Details are practically all lost leaving only the main features like color and structure to stand out.

 

There are many great conceptual album covers that have become iconic in the musical world. My personal top three must be ones by Nirvana for it's iconic concept, Keb Mo' for the shear simplicity and The Smashing Pumpkins for it's artistic value.

 

But let's not forget all the forgotten album covers which just make you cringe when you look at them. My top three worst album covers  must be ones from Abba, The Village People and The Singing Postman (what was EMI thinking?).

If you want to have your own album cover, there is a simple fun way for you to do just that in less then a minute. 

Get a band name!

Simply use the title of a randomly-generated Wikipedia article.

Get a band name!

Use the last four or five words  from the last quote on a page of random quotations. 

Get some album art!

Use the randomly generated image using this Flickr tool.

Make it look nice!

Using some sort of graphic software like photoshop or even paint and Voila!

Enjoy!

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Half A Year (In Marseille)

After spending some time recording new songs in my London flat using my brand new microphone, the weather started playing on my nerves and inspiration. When you look at the European weather channel and you realize that the big island hidden by the only cloud on the map is you, it enhances the chances of going mental. Why would anyone chose London as their summer holiday destination? Apparently Dorset has lovely beaches. 

With cheap airline companies, it's easy to take your suite case and go for a ride down south (no not Calais).  Marseille, the city of Pétanque, Pastis, the rap group IAM, L'olympique de Marseille, soupe au pistous and the count of Monte Cristo. It is also my city, my family is from there, I was born there, spent most my summers there, love the atmosphere and the people. It's just been voted European capitol of culture for 2013! This year it's the city of Vilnius so when you think about it doesn't mean much, but I assure you it is a city full of life and loves music. 

So, I packed my shorts, t-shirts, sandals, recording equipment and created my own little climate change. 1h45 minutes later its 350c, not one cloud in site with just a slight 90 km Mistral breeze.  

The room I am sleeping in is an old Library and one of the walls is still full of old dusty books (beware of sneezing!). I don't think I will spend all my time reading them, it would take me years of solitude, but for recording it's perfect! The books give the room an unusual acoustic by dampening the sound. I will have some new acoustic tracks out soon! Some could be in french like Francis Cabrel or George Brassens, or not. 

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Half A Year (Beautiful Days)

I don't know why

No body cares now

We want to know why

But the question is how

We are all here

Life passing by

Always so quick

Never can slow it down

That's what he said

Never Can slow it down

Keep it on the moving 

Always on the the rolling

Oh there I am 

Buzzin off the track

Oh there I am

Buzzin on the highway

My way

I like to stay

Little bit longer

All for the better

I never know what to say on these beautiful days

Give me some pleasure now

Running running running

I don't know why

No body cares now

We want to know why

But the question is how

We are all here

Life passing by

Always so quick

Never can slow it down

That's what he said

Never Can slow it down

Keep it on the moving 

Running running running

 

I never know what to say on these beautiful days

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Half A Year (the music industry)

It doesn't matter in which field you are working in, it is always extremely important to know your market. 

The music industry is the most competitive market out there, it is always rapidly changing and is known for it's backstabbing deals. So, if you don't watch out, you can easily be lost in the hay stack. I have always said that the music industry is an upside-down market. When demand is high prices are low, the main products (albums & singles) are mainly lucrative promotion items and just in general people tend to think upside down.

2008 was a bizarre year for businesses and the music industry in general. Although we have seen an increase in the fourth quarter on the year before, this was only due to a few big selling albums (Duffy, Take That and Now That's What I Call Music compilations). Six albums sold over a million copies, confirming that music is still central in people lives.

Digital formats have revitalized  the singles market and are starting to make an impact on albums as well, but it is apparent that we are  still in a period of major transition. Jupiter Research measures industry losses to illegal P2P file sharing at £180m. I am still not convinced this is a total lose and attempts to stop file sharing by punishment, like the one made by Nicolas Sarkozy's government are ridiculous.

Although bad news was heard when the Woolworths Group, Entertainment UK, the distributor Pinnacle and the retailer Zavvi were all to enter administration at the same time more independent labels, artists and online distributors have aroused. 

Another exciting thing about this transition is the diversifying ways to access music these days. I am not old enough to remember vinyl as the main format, but I do remember cassettes and still have copies of my old mix-tapes we used to pass around with friends. Throughout my whole life music players have been changing from the Walkman, to Cd players, to mini-discs, to computers, Mp3 players, video games and mobile phones.  The Internet allows consumers to access music in thousands of different ways. With Spotify, Datz, Myspace, Last.fm, iTunes, Amazon, 7digital, iLike and Facebook you can virtually find, listen and buy any band you want around the world, anytime, anywhere. How much more exciting can it get?!

Any suggestions on where you think the music industry will go next? Let me know.

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Half A Year (Importance of Image)

Image is highly important in an artist's life. One must keep a balance between original, trendy and a bit surreal. I don't really see myself in any of those categories to be honest with you. So, instead I wrote an original song called "Hair Do", went down to a trendy punk / electro / back- alley hairdresser on Camden high-street and produced a surreal home-made music video. Check out the do!

 www.myspace.com/halfayear 

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Half A Year (youtube introduction)

Everyone must remember recording their first answer-phone message? Take 1, 2, 3, 4....56, 57 

I must warn you, although it all looks easy and simple games, its much harder then you think to speak about yourself for 0.31mins without stopping.

I think everyone should try posting a video on youtube. If you have the guts and the equipment necessary why don't you have a go? Post it to me if you do.

I'm probably not the best speaker in the world and have more of a "radio face" than a prime time television presenter, but Youtube is open to everyone, doesn't have many boundaries and has a huge potential if used correctly. Let's see what happens shall we?

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Half A Year (Myspace)

I need your help please! I would love to know which of the songs I posted you enjoyed or loved? and which ones you were disappointed or didn't like at all. Please, please be honest or then this test is useless. By the way you can Love them all :-) or hate them all as well :-(

www.myspace.com/halfayear  

"One small step for a man, on giant leap for musicians".  In the exploration of social digital networks it is important to have some sort of Myspace page. Like many others I don't really like the way Myspace works and if I were to meet the board of directors, I would have a list of suggestions for improvement. Myspace is a bit like the moon for me. I see it every day, looks nice from far away and as an astronaut the urge to explore it's grounds is imminent. But when you get to the moon you realize it's gray, dry and has no real potential for life.

For the moment my page is very basic, I decided to mostly concentrate my actions on the music player and some artwork I made for the songs. Later I will probably decorate it like my year 2000 Christmas tree. 

Let me know what you think.

Enjoy!

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HALF A YEAR (sound engineering)

Open new project, add two audio tracks place the microphones in the correct position, tune the 12 string guitar, drink some water and press the red record button. 

There must be some kind of psychological explanation to the reaction of the human brain as soon as that red button is pressed? You can make anyone do anything behind a camera if you promise him or her the right things. Behind a microphone it’s different, people tend to freak out and think that their life depends on what they say or sound like. Either that, or they just become insane and start making weird noises, fart sounds and pretend to be animals. No one really likes the timbre of his or her own voice apart from David Attenborough. That’s a fact. 

Stop me if I’m wrong but I find it difficult to find recent recordings of artists who sing and record one take acoustic tracks without modifying the sound too much. Using all the production tools and software available to anyone these days, there are so many ways to make your voice sound “better”. If I was to use all of the effect plugins at the same time, I could probably make myself sound like Britney to the Spears or Hannah to the Montana. Might try that actually.

I understand the value if the recording is done in a confined professional studio, recording a pop, hip hop or rock tune. But when recording at home, on basic equipment the effects added need to be very subtle or then it quickly ends up sounding fake and over polished like Nicole Kidman’s face. I mean you can’t polish a turd can you?

Many sound engineers and producers will probably highly disagree. It’s just that, many of the times that I hear a track on an album and then listen to the artist live, the two are completely different. It makes me wonder where did this go wrong? and, how can people accept this fraud? Just an example for all you women out there, if you were to buy Johnny Depp at an actors auctions room (yes they do exist) and brought him back home and actually realized that his breath stank, he hadn't cut his toenails, he had the tinniest weewee, was thick, humorless and dull you would probably take the receipt back to the auction room and ask for a refund (which they don’t allow by the way). I am probably exaggerating a bit, but who cares I am just trying to put my point across. 

After spending long hours looking at the computer screen adding effects after effects to my voice and guitar to make it sound better, I ended up just recording five tracks completely acoustic. I don’t think it sounds fantastic but at least it’s genuine. I’ll probably regret saying this the day I record a multi-million dollar album, but for the time being, fuck it! I’ll stick to the art!

File, save project as…

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HALF A YEAR (finding gigs)

First of all, if you are by any chance the owner of a venue and you like what you hear don't hesitate to contact me, I am currently looking for gigs and will gladly come play for you.

It’s not an easy task for a band to find gigs and it’s even more demanding as a solo artist. To convince the owner or promoter of a bar / venue that you are capable of playing in front of his clientele is like going out trick or treating on a Halloween night, you knock at the door and ask the owner of the house if you could instead of having the usual hand full of sweets, go inside their kitchen and start cooking a roast dinner for five. In other words you better have guts and be prepared.

For the last couple of days, wandering around London trying to get some bookings was not easy. I figured I’ll just pop into the venue at a quiet time, ask where the owner was at, tell him who I was and what I wanted and play him a song with my guitar. If he likes what he hears he will take me on board. You're probably thinking yeah good Idea. Well the first guy I went to go see thought I was buskin, the second guy was a very busy man and had the musical attention span of a chicken and the third guy was drunk and he ended up speaking to me for half an hour about the Rolling Stones only to tell me in the end to leave a copy of my album on the counter with my details and he would get back to me as soon as he sobered up. Although drunk, the third guy gave me the best advice.

I figured I was going to need some decent recorded material very soon that I could pass around with some sort of press kit attached to it. Well, that is the way I used to do it when I was booking artists for a job. I just figured I could probably do it differently.

So, I woke up this morning, gave a phone call to a very good friend living in Guildford and asked him if he could lend me his home studio for the afternoon, the answer was yes!

His equipment consists of a Soundcraft 60 channel analog 
Yamaha 01V96, Pro Tools HD3 Accel + mountains of plugins
96 i/o interface, MOTU 2408 Mk3, Alesis Studio Quad FX x 2, TC Electronic M2000, kai S3000XL sampler and a Universal Audio 1176 LN. 

I'm just joking, actually he has a computer, two microphones, two speakers, headphones, a guitar and a variety of Mexican hats. So all in all it should be a good laugh.

Let me know if you want to hear some of the songs I've recorded, feedback would be great!

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HALF A YEAR (two gigs)

You know when you haven’t played a lot of sports for a long time and you end up joining the local football team as a new years resolution and after the first ten minutes of playing you end up doing a whitey on the floor, gasping for air? Well when you haven’t done gigs in a long time it’s very similar, apart from the shin guards and the all men’s showers.

Yesterday and today I played two gigs. The first one was at the inSpiral Lounge http://www.inspiralled.net/. It’s a very well situated eco-friendly bar on the Camden canal, which serves 100% natural vegetarian food (that’s what they say on the menu… what the hell would 70% vegetarian food look like?) and is mostly populated by 21st century hippies on crack. That being said, the atmosphere is very friendly and the music is great. I played third after a middle aged country singer who probably hadn’t washed his hair for eight years and an Indian “prophet” who spoke about eggs, china and donkeys if my memory is good.  I think I sang well, I got a loud applause and the audience asked me to play some more. I was a bit rusty, not that I made any mistakes, it’s just that when you haven’t been on stage for so long you remember how much matching pressure and precision at the same time is so difficult. When you’re on stage you start to think to yourself out loud, everything becomes a bit blurry, in slow motion and that’s when you start to get the shakes. Best choice is to look at the audience, smile and not think at all.

Today I played a gig at The Earl of Camden http://earlofcamden.com/ . This is a modern looking sport pub, frequented by the typical English crowd. Let’s be stereotypical: by that I mean loud, drunk and not very attentive to the music unless the girlfriend starts to enjoy it and says, “shoosh will you”. The girl organizing the show was the first one up to play and wow she could sing! I was so impressed I went out and got myself I piece of pizza to get over it (bit random). The moment I got back the second act had just finished and my name was shouted out, leaving me no time to wipe my greasy fingers. I felt much calmer on stage apart from the occasional burps in between songs leaving me to think that eating before a gig is usually not the best option, unless you want to cover your fans with digested pepperoni?

Well now I can say that I am back in the game, I got my “mojo” back and getting re-used to things that came so naturally before. I am ready to gig more, everyday if I have the chance. 

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HALF A YEAR (from Paris)

This is going to be a long one. (That's what she said)

The reason for my arrival in Paris is not nil, I am making my way down towards the Django Reinhardt Festival of Samois Sur Seine. I figured that if I was going to start this musical adventure, the need to resource myself with my Gypsy Jazz roots was important.  Also I will meet up with old music friends like Richard Mannetti or David Reinhardt and unite valuable connections in the industry like this guy I met called Rick Ross director of Delicious Records in LA who was filming a documentary on Gypsy Jazz for the past three years.

Like a scientist, I promote my idea around other scientists. Trying to find sponsorships or just interest in my plan. Most scientific experiments demand years of work, machines worth hundreds of thousands of pounds and millions of pounds of government sponsorship money.  Too many musicians just hold back and don’t explore the full scale of their art. In the UK only more than 30 000 professional musicians earn less than £1000 a month and with the recession this number is bound to get worse. So with this project I could potentially save musician lives and avoid a national pandemic of dying musicians. Although the musician lives for the art, right now we are surviving for the art.

I call the recession 'the global excuse". By that I mean everyone is now using the recession as an excuse for everything and most of the time it’s a “just in case” excuse. Major record labels failing to hold on tight budgets and paying out less and less royalties to their multi-million-pound artists “just in case” people don’t want to buy Pop music anymore. Music venues and bars practically not paying the artist anymore to come play “just in case” people decide not to go out anymore and sponsorships not willing to fund any original projects anymore just in case people decide not to listen to music anymore. I mean might as well just chop off my ears and feed them to piranhas and my arms to the tiger just in case they attack me in the London jungle.

Is this the Parisian dream? I get down from the Eurostar holding my guitar in one hand and a compact backpack in the other. I am carrying a heavy hangover on my head and the lack of sleep from last night gives me two black pockets on my face instead of eyes. It was raining back in London, and just kept on waking up from snoozes on my train seat, where I sat next to this man who just kept on talking to me about his life and how he used to love playing the yoyo when he was younger (the yoyo?) Nut Job. Don’t get me wrong, I love the game, great concept and can get very addictive, but you just don’t talk about you secret passion to your hung-over snoring seat neighbor.

Paris seems to be the sunniest city in the world right now. I make my way to the nearest café outside the main exit of Gare Du Nord. Before I have time to say say “Nicaragua”, I am served. Got to love the  French service. Slowly, I sip a black coffee to wear off the tired look and a glass of ice water to hydrate this deserted body. It only takes 5 minutes to be approached half a dozen times by someone asking for spare change, cigarettes and even chewing gum! The guy who asked me for the gum probably needed it really badly. 

Surrounded by tourists, some are leaving and others are enjoying the first glimpse of Parisian life. Everyone thinks I am English here. Each time one of them talks to me they speak to me in English with a very strong French accent, but I answer back in English and once the conversation is over they still think I am English. Have the Parisians forgotten how to speak French?

This is what us French are good at doing. Sitting at a café, staring at the walkers and trying to figure out the story behind each of them in the instance of a pass by.  Some I’d like to know better, especially her. I have to say the Parisian women are particularly beautiful today, I admire their fine aesthetic composure and their naturally glowing presence in the swarming crowds ( you know what I am really thinking about lol). The groups of people next to me are doing exactly the same as I am. This is a National game and it’s very addictive, even the tourists are hooked.

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Half A Year

It all starts here. This is going to be our little challenge.

I am going to be experimenting on my own self for the next six months. This examination will allow us to see how a musician who starts from the bottom can make his way in the music industry. Fulfilling my eagerness to become a performer and allowing as many people as possible to seek my music. Follow my daily moves, encounters and creations to understand the progression of a solo artist who starts out by only playing for his friends and family, to the preparation of small and medium gigs, the deals and processes involved, with the promotion and hopefully up to the release of an album.

I am not sure of the outcome yet of this. Like all experiments I have some sort of hypothesis, but the conclusion will reveal its self through time.

Everyday, I will be posting new pieces of content here and on various blogs and networks to keep you all updated on my musical journey and experiences. I am very open to new ideas and comments about my music and one of the reasons I am doing this blog is for you, the audience, to give me your advice on my works. I will be asking your help on certain things, for instance if I am stuck on writing a new verse for a song or not sure about a deal I make with a music entrepreneur you will be able to help me out.

This blog could also help you as a musician to avoid the same mistakes I will be making or use the ideas I have for your own benefits.

My name is Neil Erua and this is the beginning of Half A Year. 

 

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