RootMusic takes the “bandpage” to a New Level

::Originally Posted 6/30/11::

If you have a Facebook page for your band, you’re probably aware of many of the applications available for enhancing your page. Some of them provide your fans with an ability to listen to your music, buy your album on iTunes, view upcoming tours, etc. The Reverbnation band app has brought a lot of these features together into one tab, however a newer application called RootMusic is taking that model to the next level.

RootMusic provides a free Facebook tab that is almost entirely customizable. Think Myspace page, without the html, all in one Facebook application. The app, called “BandPage ^TM,” makes customizing your page incredible simple; almost anyone can create an awesome page if they have photos and media to upload. The BandPage^TM taps into already existing Facebook tools to pull your photos, videos, information and more into the app, and its integration with Facebook allows fans to post your songs directly to their Facebook walls. Basically BandPage^TM incorporates all the functionalities you could ever need into the tab, so your fans are never directed outside Facebook unless you want them to be.

This allows bands to direct their audience to one location, rather than spreading their attention to multiple points of reference. “Find us on Facebook” is all you have to say, and that’s all they need to know. They’ll find everything on your page. Other features that stand out include a free mailing list sign-up and “listn.to,” a link-shortener like bit.ly to use on Facebook and Twitter. Speaking of Twitter, you can also hook up with your twitter account and even blast particular Twitter lists if you own the list personally. Soundcloud? Vimeo? YouTube? All of that is integrated as well.

RootMusic combines the sharing power of Facebook with the customizable element that made Myspace so attractive. Pilar Vree, RootMusic Community Manager says, “A few years ago it was pretty difficult to represent yourself professionally on Facebook without spending a bunch of cash. When we first started building RootMusic, MySpace Music was the standard for musicians who wanted to share their music online. But MySpace Music was simply a medium for listening to music; it wasn’t the powerful sharing tool that musicians and fans needed. On Facebook, there was no way that musicians could share their songs, photos, videos, and shows the same way they share links to internet content. So we decided to build an app that would allow musicians to both represent themselves and share their music on the social network that all their fans call their online home: Facebook.”

BandPage^TM Basic is already revolutionizing how people share music on Facebook, but BandPage^TM Plus takes it even farther. The extended version allows users to create incentives like “Join the mailing list,” “Send a tweet,” or “Like us” in order to unlock exclusive listens or free downloads. The appearance of your BandPage^TM Plus can change whether a viewer is a fan or not, and it gives the owner advanced editing features for the page’s appearance that allow you to add fonts, customize headers, and more. Their $1.99/month rate is standard for anyone who uses RootMusic, and all subscribers all have access to the same features. “We believe in helping musicians at every level,” says Pilar Vree, thus it’s no wonder why over 200,000 bands are now using BandPage^TM , from your local indie band to artists like Rihanna, Katy Perry, Selena Gomez and more.

The most exciting part? RootMusic has integrated with TopSpin Media to allow fans to purchase merchandise directly from your BandPage^TM. Vree says, “It was something a lot of our users had asked for and this is was first step in that direction. We worked with TopSpin to link into their API and automatically pull users’ store info to the BandPage. Users only need to copy and paste their API key into the store section to add songs, t-shirts and what not to their store on the BandPage.”

BandPage^TM launched in February of 2010 and by their first anniversary the application claimed 20 million monthly active users. As of June 2011, RootMusic has more than 30 million monthly active users, 1.3 million of which are active daily. We asked RootMusic about the original goal when creating the BandPage^TM, Vree told us, “We believed there was a better way to do music online. The Internet is an excellent tool for musicians, but too many musicians are bogged down by the technical rigmarole of coding to know how to maximize its potential. We have already seen the Internet revolutionize the way that music is consumed by listeners, so we knew there were some answers out there for musicians as well. We wanted to create a better way to let musicians interact with their fans, book shows, talk to labels, make money, and connect their music to the people who want to hear their songs.

“We aspire to give musicians the tools they need to optimize their online presence, and our users are the ones who inspire us to make RootMusic better. As our company continues to grow, our users are telling us what they need to succeed in the music industry. They’re always sending us their ideas, and we’re always here to listen and act on them.”

Get to know RootMusic better by watching their product tour video below. If you want to know more, visit www.rootmusic.com.

Photos and video courtesy of RootMusic and TopSpin Media.

Patagonia Apparel Launches Music Collective

::Originally Posted on MI Blog 7/15/11::

Patagonia, the outdoor apparel company, has a long-standing reputation of advocacy for the environment. Their latest move to support the environment recruits the help of musicians worldwide to create an online music collective that raises funds for select non-profit environmental groups. The funds are raised by the sale of donated tracks and the funds generated by specific purchases go to the organization of the artist’s choice.

Musicians such as Pearl Jam, Bonnie Raitt, Ziggy Marley, Maroon 5, DeVotchKa, Toad the Wet Sprocket, John Scofield, and Jack Johnson are just a few of the many who have donated tracks to raise funds. The Patagonia Music Collective comes with the help of Seattle-born GIST Lab, a company that combines music and marketing to produce social results. Sue Devine of ASCAP spoke with Geoff Stanfield of GIST to gain more insight on the Patagonia project.

She asked Geoff several questions, one of which was about the mission and goals of the project.

Geoff answered, “The mission of Patagonia Music is to generate revenue and awareness for grass roots environmental non-profits through the sale of music. We also seek to engage and educate music fans on the environmental issues that we face as a community. Let’s face it, with current budget cuts that affect the EPA and other organizations, there is no more crucial a time for people to learn the issues and support organizations working in the environmental space.”

He also commented on how the project will assist Patagonia is achieving it’s goals as a company.

“From early on, Patagonia has made enviro- giving a core element of its business practice. PatagoniaMusic is both easy for the artist to use and a great way for fans to hear new music. One artist and his or her fan base focused on a single issue is powerful on its own, but when that equation is multiplied by many artists and many fans, it has an even greater impact. Patagonia may be a collection of climbers and outdoor enthusiasts, but they are about as punk rock and DIY as they come. The independent spirit is alive and well there and it runs through all the employees from front desk to CEO.”

When asked what the platform will achieve for the artists involved, Geoff said, “I believe that at the core of every artist is the desire to have an effect on something. That may be a person, an idea, a cause, or a movement. Artists are leaders and have a great deal of influence, able to provide direction to the people who choose to listen. Giving is not solely for the established rock star. If Patagonia Music can provide an opportunity for an artist, large or small, to do the right thing while making it reasonably streamlined for them to do so, then we have done our job.”

Marketing Music Through Non-Linear Communication: Bas Grasmayer for Music Think Tank

::Originally Posted on MI Blog 7/20/11::

This morning Music Think Tank posted an interesting article contributed by Bas Grasmayer, head of online communication for official.fm and contributor to @techdirt and @hypebot. The article is a summation of his thesis “The Answer is in the Ecosystem: Marketing Music Through Non-Linear Communication,” which offers excellent insight into the changed ecosystem of music marketing that must account for the way the internet has changed the way music is shared and sold. He claims that one of the main motivations for his thesis was the piracy debate, “I found it a waste of time,” he writes, “Partly because I’m a so-called ‘digital native’ who grew up with the internet and I’ve never really seen piracy as a huge problem compared to the massive opportunities the internet created. When I recently interviewed French electro-producer Para One, he echoed my opinion about the internet: ‘it would be unfair to hate it.'”

His skepticism over the piracy debate led him to investigate the topic further and speculated that the issue of internet piracy had to be a symptom of a larger problem. He says,

Graph Courtesy of Bas Grasmayer (basbasbas.com) and Ryan Van Etten (ryanvanetten.com)

“The web has allowed for non-linear communication through networks on a massive scale. The music industry’s first introduction to this was probably Napster (oh yes I said the N-word). To me, Napster symbolizes the music industry’s near total loss of control over the distribution of their product. The industry’s unwillingness or inability to adjust to this new reality of non-linear communication only made things worse (perhaps a lack of understanding has been the problem).

Other symptoms of the web’s non-linear communication are social networks (including the music industry’s darling MySpace), ‘word of mouse’, music like water and there are even people who say it has changed young people’s thought processes.” See the ‘Problem’ section of his thesis for a more detailed explanation, this is very much an abbreviation.

What Bas wanted to figure out was how artists and labels could fully adapt to this changed reality.

So the solution? Well, I’ll direct your attention back to the title of the thesis: the ‘answer’ is apparently in the ecosystem, but let’s investigate this assertion a bit further. Bas says thinkers like Derek Sivers and Mike Masnick gave him ideas about “do’s and dont’s,” but it wasn’t until he had coffee with Dutch music manager Niels Aalberts that he was able to get a glimpse of the bigger picture. Aalberts described his artists’ fanbases as ‘ecosystems,’ which gave Bas the insight to make the following conclusions:

“To me, fanbase suggests a certain distance between artists and fans. It comes from a more linear age where one-to-many was the norm. You would communicate to fans through your music, interviews in magazines, appearances on the radio, music videos and perhaps you would return fanmail every now and then. Now the artist can be placed at the center of the network and is the unifying factor of fans who can now get interconnected. One of my favourite examples of this is deadmau5’ Minecraft server, where fans and artist literally immerse themselves in a world composed of fan art.”

He hypothesizes the formula for the digital age to be explained this way:

“Be remarkable: whatever you do, whoever you are has to be a story worth talking about. Without that you’re never going to be able to leverage non-linear communication. There are a lot of very skillful musicians and artists out there, but how many are really worth talking about?

Be easy to discover: pretty basic, but you’d be surprised. Be on YouTube, be on Facebook, be on Twitter, have a homepage that unites them all. Publish in as many different places as possible and let your content be your marketing. If your content is truly remarkable, you should make it easy for fans to let it go viral. My favourite example here is The Ugly Dance.

Turn your fanbase into a party: this is where you will really start witnessing the ecosystem’s dynamics. We’ve all been to house parties where everyone was bored, standing around, waiting for the host to come talk to them whilst figuring out an exit strategy and how much food and drinks to consume to make the trip to the party worth it. What a huge difference that is with a great house party where the host makes sure everybody’s connected and having a good time; the type of party where people wouldn’t really notice if the host went for a 30 minute walk. The internet works the same way!

Connect: at the same time, one needs to deepen their connection with fans. Fans have to feel involved with you, make them care. People are more likely to buy music after connecting with them.

Listen: your fans listen to your music and you should listen to them. If you’re really interconnected with your fans, you can more accurately pick up the non-linear communication and jump in whenever people want something. From this listening the business opportunities arise. They go way beyond selling digital or physical copies of music. People want to spend money on music, truly, but you need to give them a reason: don’t offer them something you want them to buy, offer them something they want you to sell.”

“Be remarkable, be easy to discover, turn your fanbase into a party, connect, listen.” It’s that simple. You can read the entirety of Bas Grasmayer’s thesis here. For the article posted on Music Think Tank, click here. To stay up to date with other writings by Bas Grasmayer, we suggest following him on Twitter: @Spartz.

Photo Courtesy of Bas Grasmayer (basbasbas.com) and Ryan Van Etten (ryanvanetten.com)

“Native Wayne” Jobson Shares His Thoughts on Reggae, Songwriting and More

::Originally Posted on the MI Blog 8/3/11::

“Native Wayne” Jobson is a Grammy Award-winning producer and one of the leading authorities on all things Reggae. Born in Jamaica, Wayne grew up listening to and performing with some of Reggae’s most legendary names. An artist in his own right, Wayne and his band “NATIVE,” was the first Reggae artist to be signed to Clive Davis’ Arista Records in 1978 and were produced by Lee “Scratch” Perry in his legendary Kingston, Jamaica studio Black Ark.

Since then, Wayne has built an extensive career as a musician and producer working with artists such as Jimmy Cliff, Toots and the Maytals, Gregory Isaacs, 311, Thievery Corporation, and was an executive producer for No Doubt’s Rock Steady album, which won him two Grammy Awards. Well-known in the world of radio, Wayne hosted the show “Reggae Revolution” on KROQ-FM for many years. The show helped break many American rock-reggae artists such as Sublime, 311, Slightly Stoopid and others. He currently hosts the show “Alter-Native” on Indie 103.1, which airs online on indie1031.com and on local radio stations nationwide.

Wayne’s knowledge of Reggae has been consulted by music historians around the globe. Wayne was both a writer and producer for the film Stepping Razor- Red X, a documentary on the life of Peter Tosh, which was nominated for a Prix Genie in the category of “Best Documentary” in 1993 by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television. He has also produced two episodes of “VH1, Behind the Music,” one on the life of Bob Marley and another on the life of Peter Tosh, among many other pieces about the history of Reggae both on film and in print.

“Reggae,” Wayne says, “really all came out of a place called Alpha, Alpha Boys School. It’s where they trained all the Jazz musicians. Every great musician in Jamaica learned how to play there. There was a Catholic nun who was the head of the school that trained them and disciplined them and made them into really great musicians.

“It’s relatively poor in Jamaica now, and the kids don’t really have instruments. With Dancehall, they just have the rhythm so they just go into a studio and rap over a rhythm and get a number one song. Kids nowadays say ‘Why would I spend years studying music to become Bob Marley when I could just rap some foolishness and get in the top ten?’ Dancehall has set a standard where the kids aspire to become rappers and they no longer aspire to become great musicians, they’ve stop learning keyboard and guitar and all the great music.”

This modern scene is contrasted with the 1970’s when musicians like Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff and others like them were writing songs that would define a generation.

“At the time,” Wayne says, “they were really hungry as they were writing those songs. Bob Marley and Peter Tosh didn’t look at themselves as ‘musicians,’ saying ‘Hey I’m a musician and I want to ‘make it,’ and I want to get number one and get some girls.’ For them they saw themselves as messengers, for them this was like church. When it’s much more larger than life for you and you’re writing it like a sermon, rather than a hit – when you look at it like that, then you write the song much more seriously than you would sitting down with a record company who sits you down and says, ‘Hey we need to write another hit.’

“The problem with Reggae today,” Wayne says, is that “Bob Marley set a standard so high, that it just makes everything else sound like a joke. The difficult thing is that some of the songs coming out today are good, some are very good, but they aren’t songs that people want to cover. When you hear a song like ‘Three Little Birds,’ it’s not one of Bob’s best songs but how many people have covered that? Hundreds of people have covered that. How many people have covered ‘I Shot the Sheriff?’ He set a standard there that just nobody in reggae is writing right now. We have a few people in reggae like Jah Cure, Richie Spice, Taurus Riley and all of them have good songs, but we need somebody that’s going to write another Redemption Song.”

Wayne explained that listeners are looking to American Rock-Reggae for what they can’t find in Dancehall or other music coming out of Jamaica these days. These bands are inspiring an interest in the genre among listeners to go back and discover Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff and others. Reggae is coming back to life in these bands and turning on a whole new generation to classic Reggae that would have never known about it otherwise.

“The blueprint for American Rock Reggae was Sublime. Nobody is writing songs like them today. I got to help break a lot of those bands on KROQ: No Doubt, Sublime, 311, Sugar Ray… Now there’s a whole new generation of Rock Reggae with some amazing new bands, Slightly Stoopid, Rebelution, Iration, Soldiers of Ja Army, Aggrolites, Phoenix Rose. It’s what the kids what to hear because nobody from Jamaica is giving them that, there’s just getting the dancehall – now they’re looking to America to give it to them.”

On Production …

Wayne related an anecdote of the first recording session for Barrington Levy’s “Vice Versa Love.” Perfect the minute it was recorded, he said Barrington has a pure voice unlike any other in Reggae. “It was one take, he said, “Barrington just went into the studio, the keyboardist just sat down at the keyboard and Barrington just sang it. That was going to be the demo for them to bring in the band and all. But when they finished the keyboardist just couldn’t believe he didn’t make any mistakes, and Barrington couldn’t believe he didn’t make any mistakes. And they just released it like that. And it’s the best song ever. No punch-ins, no auto-tune, no nothing.”

Tracks like Barrington’s “Vice Versa Love,” teach producers an important lesson about learning to recognize when they need to let a song speak for itself. “Another song like that,” he said, “Is Jimmy Cliff’s, ‘Many Rivers to Cross’ – the classic. Jimmy once said to me, ‘I wish I could re-do the vocal on that song’ and I said ‘What? That’s the greatest vocal of all time.’ One thing I’ve learned from producing is that if a song is good, if it stands up on its own, you have to leave it alone.

“Chris Blackwell at Island Records told me that Bob Marley came to him and played him ‘Redemption Song’ on acoustic guitar and was like, ‘OK now we gotta get the band, the horns, etc’ and Chris said ‘Don’t touch that, record it right now, just the way it is.’ So they took it into the studio. In three takes they had ‘Redemption Song.’ If the song is that good, you don’t need anything else on top of it.”

On Songwriting…

“I often tell people, when writing songs; the most important thing is the opening line. You have to open the line and just kill them, when you finish the opening line they should just go ‘OK, I can’t take anymore, it’s just too genius you’ve killed me.’ Probably one of the best opening lines of all time is ‘Hello Darkness My Old Friend…’ from Paul Simon’s “Sound of Silence.” I mean how are you going to top that? You know exactly what the song is about, he’s already destroyed you.

“What I always tell songwriters, the greatest set of opening lyrics are from “The Year of the Cat,” by Al Stewart. ‘On a morning from a Bogart movie in a country where they turn back time, you go strolling through a crowd like Peter Lorre contemplating a crime. She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running, like watercolor in the rain, don’t bother asking for explanations, she’ll just tell you that she came – In the Year of the Cat.’ How are you going to top that right? It’s genius. Coming up with clever opening lines and capture the people right away is what you have to do.

“Nowadays you hear so many songs of people singing, ‘I’m so lonely: Listen to me, Life’s so lonely, the world is so lonely.’ Paul McCartney didn’t say that life is lonely, he said ‘Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been.’ Could anyone be more lonely than that? ‘Father McKenzie writing the words to a sermon that no one will hear.’ Can anyone be more lonely than that? ‘Look at all the lonely people.’ Eleanor Rigby was absolute genius, but the song isn’t called ‘Lonely, Lonely, I’m so Lonely’ and the chorus doesn’t go ‘Everybody’s Lonely,’ No. You have to paint a picture with the songs and create images. That’s how you write a good song.”

Here’s an extensive list of the music Wayne suggests you should check out. The list highlights not only the original groundbreakers in Reggae, but also the musicians who are taking the genre in new directions today.

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1. Pure Reggae, Compilation	“The album was number one on the pop Hawaii charts for about three months. For a compilation, that’s really rare. It’s a good place to start.”
2. Til Shilo, Buju Banton.	“If they’re looking at modern day reggae, you still have reggae going but then you have dancehall. I’m not a big fan of dancehall. Buju Banton has some good reggae and some dancehall. If you want to buy one dancehall album, the best dancehall album is Til Shilo, by Buju Banton.”
3. Ultimate Collection, Jimmy Cliff.	“You really have to study any Jimmy Cliff song.”
4. “Longing For,” Jah Cure.	“In modern day reggae, the artists that are happening now are Jah Cure, their song “Longing For,” had a great structure.”
5. “Vice Versa Love,” Barrington Levy.	“Barrington has a truly pure voice. Probably one of the best singers in Reggae.”
6. “She’s Royal,” Tarrus Riley.	“Tarrus Riley’s song ‘She’s Royal’ is really great,” he also has an amazing version of “King of Pain” by the Police.”
7. Dub Side of the Moon; Radiodread;   Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts,  Easy Stars All Stars.	“Another album out there you should definitely get and study is by a session of musicians out of New York called Easy Stars All Stars. Check out the album Dub Side of the Moon, the song “Money” and their second album called Radio Dread, Citizen Cope does “Karma Police.” Modern Heritage does “Electioneering,” it is as good as Radiohead version. They have an album called Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band … check out “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” with Frankie Paul. I play that like every week on my show. They do “A Day in the Life” with Michael Rose and Menny More.”
8. Richie Spice
9. The Aggrolites
10. Rebelution
11. Iration
12. Soldiers of Jah Army
13. Slightly Stoopid
14. Phoenix Rose

UK Responds to “Hargreaves Report”

::Originally posted on the MI Blog 8/2/11::

Katherine Rushton reported for Telegraph.co.uk yesterday that Vince Cable, UK Business Secretary, gave his “broad backing” to a review by Professor Ian Hargreaves of copyright law, claiming it would stimulate innovation.

“We are removing the barriers to the intellectual property system to encourage innovation. We need a legal framework that supports consumer use rather than one that sees it as regrettable,” he said.

Rushton reported, “The changes are expected to pave the way for Google and Amazon to launch ‘cloud’ music storage systems for UK consumers – although there was still some confusion over whether this could run into conflict with European law. A government spokesman said any conflicts would be dealt with during the consultation period, but Mr Cable said he was ‘confident’ there would not be problems.”

Richard Smirke for Billboard.biz commented that “the most significant decision made is the scrapping of the government’s plan to block copyright infringing websites. The blocking of filesharing and other copyright infringing websites was a key provision of the Digital Economy Act, but that has now been scraped as is it ‘not effective’ and ‘extremely complicated to implement,’ according to Ofcom.”

Smirke says, “The government’s decision to scrap web-blocking has, however, been criticized by sectors of the music industry,” quoting Geoff Taylor, chief executive at U.K. music label trade body BPI, who said, “Every day blatantly illegal foreign sites flout our laws, rip off consumers and musicians and wreak huge damage on our creative sector.

“Government has recognized that blocking such sites could help to reduce levels of infringement, but that there needs to be a more effective framework that enables speedier action than would be possible under the relevant DEA provisions,” Taylor continued, urging the government to “act urgently to put in place effective means to protect consumers, creators and UK jobs from the impact of illegal foreign sites.”

Smirke listed the following points among the ten proposals outlined by the British government as the most notable:

“•The creation of a cross-sectoral Digital Copyright Exchange, thereby easing the process of selling licenses for rights owners.

• Legalizing the currently outlawed practice of copying content from a CD or DVD to a computer or portable device, such as an iPod. In addition to legalizing ‘format shifting’ this reform would also have important ramifications regarding the introduction of digital music lockers in the U.K.

• Copyright exceptions to allow parody to be introduced. “Newport State of Mind,” a take on “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, which caused a viral sensation in 2010, has been cited as a parody work that would be allowed under the newly proposed laws. Although the track is still accessible on many websites, EMI initially fought to have it removed from streaming and video services.

•Licensing and clearance procedures for orphan works (material with unknown copyright owners) to be established.

•The introduction of an exception to copyright law for search and analysis techniques known as ‘text and data mining,’ thereby by-passing the need for permission from copyright owners. Research scientists and medical researchers were identified as the core beneficiaries.”

Vince Cable has predicted that the U.K. economy would benefit by £7.9 billion ($12.9 billion) in increased revenue resulting from the proposed changes made in copyright legislation.

“The government also revealed the next steps in how it will deter internet users who repeatedly access copyright infringing material – another key provision of the Digital Economy Act,” reported Smirke.  “Beginning in the second half of 2012, infringers will be sent a warning letter telling them their internet connection has been identified as linked to unlawfully shared copyright material. Consumers who want to appeal will have to pay a £20.00 ($32.80) fee which will be refunded if the appeal is successful.”

Read Katherine Rushton’s article from The Telegraph here.

Read Richard Smirke’s article for Billboard.biz here.

Darryl Jones – The Art of Active Listening

::Originally Post on the MI Blog 8/16/11::

“Listen … do you hear that?”

These were the first words of Rolling Stones/Miles Davis bass player Darryl Jones when he addressed students during his clinic last week in the MI Concert Hall. The crowd of road-case carrying students listened awkwardly, wondering if he was referring to feedback in the audio system. “No, I mean really listen,” he said.At that these students got the picture that he was hinting at something deeper.

“I want to talk to you today about how to really listen. There’s a difference between the way you listen to music in the shower, and the way you listen to music when you hear a thud in your house in the middle of the night. In order to interact with other musicians, you need to really listen, actively, to the people you’re playing with.”

Darryl discussed his first major gig, playing with Miles Davis. “Miles,” he said, “Would tell us to ‘follow him.’ He’d go somewhere in a groove and hang there for a while. I would ask him, ‘Miles, how long are we going to stay there?’ He said, ‘Go there when I go there.’ I had to listen to him in order to find that feeling. When he was going to go, I could feel it, I was able to anticipate it just by listening to him intently.”

“A lot of people think, just because we’re playing music, we’re obviously listening, but that’s not always true.”

Darryl invited three student drummers from the audience to “follow him.” In the first exercise, he asked the student simply to follow his pace. Darryl laid down a base line which increased and decreased in tempo, allowing the drummer to follow the changing pace. The second exercise asked the student to lay down a Latin beat and a Jazz beat and transition with Darryl from a Latin groove to a Jazz groove, by listening in on the direction he was looking to take. The third exercise asked the student to play straight beats and swing beats and follow Darryl’s bass groove to match him when he was playing straight or swinging. “The best circumstance is when both musicians are totally listening to each other — together,” he explained.

Watching the students interact with Darryl in these three exercises explained Darryl’s point. If musicians listen a bit deeper, they can hear more than just a general melody and harmony, they can key into the direction their partner is trying to take and understand their musical goal. “When I work with a soloist,” Darryl said, “I first listen intently and try to figure out what they’re trying to do. Then I do what I can to help them get there. That’s why people want to play with me, not because of the way I play the bass, but because of the way I listen.”

But it wasn’t until MI drum instructor and longtime friend William “Bubba” Bryant stopped by unexpectedly that the audience really began to really grasp Darryl’s point. Bubba jumped on stage to play with Darryl and their chemistry was suddenly obvious. They were connected, listening intently to one another as they built their groove, both giving and taking mutually – laying down their own solos when the timing was right. After Bubba resigned the stage Darryl added that this was the first time the two had played together in nearly 20 years.

Prior to the show, Darryl took the time to chat with the blog for a bit. We asked him about life as a touring musician and how someone can prepare for that kind of career and maximize their potential to do well. He said the trick was learning several different styles, and learning to play them authentically.

“I would say, depending on the kind of career you want to have. If you want to go out and have a career as a working musician, I would stress learning several different styles. What I mean by that is being able to play authentically or as close to authentically in these different styles as much as you can. If you love heavy metal but you play blues music like you’re a heavy metal player, you’re not going to have much success.”

With such a varied career playing with some of contemporary music’s greatest artists, we asked Darryl which gigs he had learned the most from. “I would say Miles Davis,” he said. “One of the main things I learned from Miles was how to really listen.” He obviously expanded upon this point in his clinic, but in the green room during our interview he told it to us straight.

“I think it’s something that often goes unstated and we don’t really talk about it, but it’s something that’s so very very important to everything in music. It determines whether music is mundane or magical, whether you are a requested musician valued by the musicians you’re playing with, whether you want to branch out and be a producer…

“It’s incredibly important, it’s also very important to how you develop as a musician. If you can hear well and use your hearing and your listening ability to go a little bit deeper inside the music, than you can learn these idioms more deeply. It’s a tool that kind of goes unsaid. A lot of people think, just because we’re playing music, we’re obviously listening, but that’s not always true. I think we need to zero in on those kinds of things, the kind of listening in the same way you are when you’re really paying attention.”

To close, we asked Darryl about his inspiration. Where did he find the inspiration to build his career in music? He attributed it to Miles Davis, Jimmy Hendrix, his teacher Angus Thomas, but to a broader note he said, “I take my inspiration wherever I find it. It comes from a lot of different places and I think it’s important to continue to be inspired and keep that inspiration throughout your life.”

————————————————————————————————————-

Born in Chicago’s South Side, Darryl Jones picked up the Bass guitar as a teenager and attended the Chicago Vocational High School where he took theory classes and played the electric bass as well as the string bass in the orchestra. Darryl’s first major gig was with Miles Davis in 1983. Since then, Darryl has performed and recorded with Sting, Herbie Hancock, John Scofield, Madonna, Spike Lee, Peter Gabriel, Eric Clapton and many others. Darryl joined The Rolling Stones in 1993 after Bill Wyman’s departure and has continued to tour with them since. For more information about Darryl Jones, visit his website.

Stage Collapses at Pukkelpop Festival in Belgium. 3 Dead, 70 Injured

::Originally Posted on the MI Blog 8/18/11::

Tragedy has struck the Pukkelpop Festival in Hasselt, Belgium today as a massive wind and hail storm caused a stage collapse, killing 3 and injuring nearly 70.

Chris Irvine reported for The Telegraph that the festival’s “Chateau Stage was apparently destroyed when bad weather caused trees to fall over. A second stage collapsed but it is not thought to have fallen on any concertgoers. Some giant screens also fell down.”

According to the Associated Press, three people were killed and more than 70 were injured at the three-day festival hosting nearly 60,000 people today. The Chateau Stage collapsed shortly before Chicago-based band The Smith Westerns were about to perform. None of the band members were injured, but their equipment was destroyed.

AP Reports, “The headline acts at the festival, about 50 miles (80km) east of Brussels, were Foo Fighters, Eminem and The Offspring. Its organiser Chokri Mahassine said today ‘we have for now put the festival on hold until we understand the situation completely.'”

The news of the stage collapse comes nearly one week after a similar incident occurred at the Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis, IN on Saturday. Winds reaching 60 mph hit the site, causing a stage to collapse, killing 5 and injuring dozens more.

Turntable.fm Launches iPhone App

::Originally Posted on the MI Blog 9/13/11::

“Social DJ service” turntable.fm released an iPhone application today that will allow users to engage in the service from their mobile device.

Mashable’s Chris Taylor downloaded the app today and wrote:

“Visually, the Stickybits team has done a great job of packing everything in to the small screen. It actually seems easier on the iPhone to scroll down the list of rooms people have created (the list loads as you scroll). Step into a room, and it looks exactly like a Turntable room should. Even packed with avatars, it’s not significantly slower. My iPhone 3GS was able to render a 200-avatar room with no problem; the music didn’t skip and the head-bobbing was smooth.”

But an app “this complex,” isn’t without it’s bugs.  “The first time I tried to spin, the app booted me off when it came to my tune. (Anecdotally, I heard a few stories of iPhone DJs getting booted; it’s easy to tell, because the avatar is holding a phone instead of a laptop). The second time, nobody could hear the music — despite it being a track I’d played successfully many times in the web client.”

Chris has no doubt, however, that Turntable will iron out these bugs shortly.

“With a $7 million round of funding led by Union Square Ventures, also announced Tuesday, the company now has a lot more resources. We can’t wait to try the (as yet unannounced) Android and iPad versions.”

Read more from Mashable, VentureBeat, & The Wall Street Journal.

Joe Satriani Delivers Commencement Speech at 2011 Fall Graduation

::Originally Posted on the MI Blog 9/21/11::

Last week Musicians Institute was proud to present legendary guitarist Joe Satriani with an Honorary Doctor of Music Degree at our Fall commencement ceremonies at the Wiltern Theater. In acceptance of the degree, Joe said, “Wow, this is really something. I gotta say, I’ve never actually held one of these before because I was too much of an ornery rock n’ roll kid to attend my high school graduation and I never lasted more than a semester and a half at college. So this is like I’m finally legitimate. Thank you.” Truly a game-changer in the world of guitar, we were happy to be able to honor the career of such an icon whose achievements have legitimized him as a master in the eyes of so many.

After accepting the degree, Joe continued with an inspiring message that drew from his own personal journey as a musician which began when he was nine years old. “I started out as a drummer,” Joe said. “As a nine year old kid I loved music, I knew I wanted to be a musician, I had the fire to go out and there and try to figure out what was the secret to music.”

Joe related to the audience of graduating musicians the first of three incredibly important lessons, which he learned from his father, and has carried with him throughout his varied career.

“One of the best lessons I learned from that period didn’t come from my drum teacher, it came from my dad. He came home from work very late one night, around eleven o’clock and found out from one of my older siblings that I hadn’t practiced the drums that day. So he woke me up, marched me down to the basement in my pajamas and made me practice the entire lesson. He went over it with me very carefully and listened to everything I had played and when I could barely stay awake any longer, he said – ‘Joe, if you want to be a professional musician, you have to practice every day.’

Now I know that sounds really simple, but that is the strongest and most elegant piece of advice I ever got from anybody that has sustained me through all those moments in a career where you’re wondering ‘What should I do now? What should I do next?’ Now my father wasn’t a musician, he wasn’t talking about practicing your rudiments every day, or your scales, what he meant was to ‘practice being a musician every day.’ That has stuck with me.”

Joe’s second lesson for the graduates came from a reality check he received from his Advanced Music Theory teacher in high school. “He gave us a lesson one day, a very interesting lesson. He said, ‘I want you guys to spend a half hour every day with some manuscript paper and write music away from your instrument.’ Of course, being the rock n’ roll kid I was, I said, ‘Now why would I want to do that? I just want to play my guitar.’

At that, he took me aside and with all respect he said, ‘You know Joe, when you turn 20, 22, 25 it may turn out that you’re not such a good guitar player after all.’ This was great advice. He went on to crystallize it by saying, ‘The musician in your head and in your heart really is limitless, it knows no bounds. You can continually improve that musician throughout your life no matter what happens to your body.’ That became my second mantra, which I condensed into always improving the musician in your head and in your heart and in your body.”

After high school, Joe took lessons while he was living in New York from Lennie Tristano, the father of cool jazz. “He was the first musician to compose, to perform, to record free-form jazz. He was probably the greatest musician I’ve ever met in my life. He gave me a lesson that is perhaps one of the most profound I’ve ever learned. It came from a day where he had asked me to do some improvising. He came back and asked me what I thought of what I had played. So I gave him a little critique of what I thought and he got a little fired up about it.

“He said, ‘The problem with you kids from the suburbs is that you’ve got the subjunctive disease. You’re always worried about what you would’ve played or what you could’ve played or what you should’ve played, and you never play what you want to play.’

“Only play the notes that you want to play, the notes that come from inside. Lennie wanted everything to be fresh, alive, and straight from the heart, he wanted the real Joe to come out. That became one of those lessons that you never stop working on, I don’t know if you ever accomplish it, but it’s one I put with the other two: practice every day and never stop learning, develop the musician in your head your heart and in your fingers, and only play what you want to play.”

Joe described how those three lessons have carried him throughout his career. A career of successes, of failures and of the unexpected. “Things happen in your life and they’re just going to be so random. They just sort of arrive at your doorstep and it’s how you deal with them that really makes the difference.” Joe shared several stories about unexpected occurrences in his life where he had to stop and wonder about what step he should take next. When Joe received a call asking him to audition for Mick Jagger’s solo band, he said he had doubts like anyone else would, but that didn’t stop him from achieving what he knew in his heart he had the ability to do.

“Now, this was one of those moments, it may happen to you, where you get a challenge that’s also an opportunity and you ask yourself ‘Can I do this?’ And of course you know that there may be doubts you might have, but back when I was a kid I figured the only thing you can do is to always answer in the affirmative, so I started to train myself to always answer to myself with a ‘Yeah, I can do this.’”

Throughout the many unexpected challenges and opportunities Joe has encountered in his career, he said that he managed to always remember to counter any doubts with an affirmation of his ability and his aspirations. He encouraged the graduating class to do the same.

“All these challenges you know, they will make you better, they will make you stronger and I wouldn’t worry about failure because sometimes failure is a good option. I think you can learn a lot more from a fantastic and wonderful failure that you would ever have learned from a string of a few minor successes.”

He reminded the graduating musicians to always play from the head and the heart. “It’s so that people can hear who you are. If you don’t play what you want to play, no one will actually hear you. They’ll just hear somebody like you playing what everyone else plays, so think about those lessons and remember when that little voice in your head asks you, ‘Can I do this?’ You have to train yourself to say ‘Yeah, I can do this.’ I bet you can, as a matter of fact, I’m looking out at you guys right now, here at this theater where I’ve played so many times, and its extra exciting just to be here and to be able to talk about how strange my career has been, how lucky I’ve been, but most importantly about all the preparation.

But I’m wondering what unique challenges and opportunities are going to come your way and what are you going to say when you ask yourself ‘Can I do this?’ — I’m hoping that you’re going to say ‘Yeah … I can do this.’  I know you can.”

Viacom vs. Youtube – Round 2

::Originally written for the MI Blog 10/18/11::

A second round of the Viacom vs. Youtube battle moves to a Manhattan appellate court today as Viacom appeals a June 2010 U.S. District Court ruling in Youtube’s favor. The case has been boiling since 2007, when Viacom originally sued the Google-owned internet media website for nearly $1 billion in damages for copyright infringement.

Variety‘s Ted Johnson wrote for the publication’s website on Friday with the prediction that this case “could define the rules of the road for the Internet because it centers on where YouTube’s liability lies when users post infringing material, massive amounts of it, on its site.” He wrote, “The ‘safe harbor’ provision of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, written many years before YouTube was born, shields Internet service providers, website operators and others from liability for infringement by their users when they meet certain conditions, like promptly responding to takedown notices sent by content creators.”

Johnson quotes journalist Robert Levine, author of the new book Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, who wrote recently, “The suit could go to the Supreme Court, and its outcome will define the future of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and perhaps the Internet itself.”

Viacom’s case definitely appears stronger this time around, especially in lieu of the many amicus briefs filed by other media companies like Yahoo and Facebook in addition to numerous artists with much at stake in this case.

About the case, Robert Levine said, “The idea of YouTube being responsible for everything on its server would be a disaster for the Internet business, and the idea of them being responsible for nothing would be a disaster for the entertainment business.”

More Information:

Variety

Bloomberg Business Week

All Things Digital