Monthly Archives: January 2007

Recording demos

Music

Monsters are not Myths headed into a pint-sized practice space to record some demos this weekend.  We could barely move, but we got some good stuff I think. 3 songs in 5 hours is pretty impressive considering we’ve played with this drummer (Nate Brown) about 8 times total.

It’s always a bit weird for me to go through the first round of recording; aside from some keyboard work, I basically just give the rest of the band signals when we hit the chorus (choruses?  chorii?).  I didn’t do any singing…the bulk of my work lies before me. I don’t look forward to trying to recreate the energy of a live experience while listening to the tracks on headphones.

For those who’ve been to shows lately, you’ve heard the songs we committed to tape: Sunday Morning Nightmare, Stop (Singing Those Songs), Bits of Sins, and Addiction (which still needs to be renamed, if anyone has any ideas…perhaps I’ll post the lyrics later).  We miced the amps, put one mic above the drums, and then set up this cheap mic we got at a garage sale in the middle of the room.  We didn’t expect much of it (when we’ve recorded vocals into it before they come out scratchy and quiet), but it actually gave us a great ambient room sound.  When we took it out of the mix everything became a lot duller.  Who knew?

As vocals still need to be recorded, these tracks probably won’t surface for a few weeks.  In the meantime, check out the photos on my flickr.

-Evan

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Amie Street

Music, Tech

Amie Street, as reported on techcrunch, seems to be taking the high road in mp3 sales.  This is an amazing system designed to help independent bands sell their mp3’s.  Here’s how it works:

-Upload your songs
-Encourage people to download them for free
-As your tracks (hopefully) gain in popularity your prices are driven higher (with a 99cent cap).
-You get featured with other popular indie bands as your popularity grows even more.
-You keep 70% of revenues after the first $5, which is more than even the most popular bands get via record sales OR iTunes (though I think as an indie band, my band makes more like 60% from iTunes).

The greatest part about all this is that these are DRM-free mp3’s, which means you can upload to and play them on anything (unlike those pesky iTunes mp3’s, which only work on your iPod and start at 99cents).  I’m a firm believer in this, and so are most indie bands (we want that whole “viral” thing to work for our music…it’s not worth 99cents to deny someone that).

This isn’t to say that I don’t love my iPod nano. My band has it’s songs on iTunes; it’s where the business is. Do we get many purchases that way? No. This system definetly has potential. Will I put Monsters are not Myths‘ tracks on Amie Street? Not yet.
I think this is a great system, but for a very small and independent band like mine, I’m worried that our tracks never reach a popularity/price where we can make a profit. And with that alternative, we’ll get 0 downloads on iTunes. The alternative is selling mp3s on MySpace, which kind of makes me feel dirty inside (considering that MySpace is notoriously unstable and unsafe).

I’m not happy with our current situation, but I’m not convinced Amie Street is right for me (though I think it’ll be great for a bunch of indie musicians). I will be keeping a close eye on Amie Street and MySpace and returning to this debate in time.

-Evan

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My first blog, Ma!

Misc

Here we go.

I am officially Web 2.0 now.  Awesome.  I feel different.  I feel sexier.  I feel more enlightened.  I feel slightly light-headed…that might be the heater leaking.  I should tell maintenance about that.

I feel lame for not starting a blog until now, but to be fair I’ve always been two steps behind the trend makers and innovators in internet technology.  Not big steps, but small steps, like the kind made by a baby or a man with a wooden leg.  Or a Cormorant.

So here I am.  Blogging.  Who am I, you may ask?   Aside from the future best-blogger-of-the-year award winner, I am just a man.  A man named Evan.  Details follow.

My name is Evan Hamilton. I was born on January 5th, 1985 in Grass Valley, California. I’ve always lived in California; I went to college in Santa Cruz and currently live in Oakland (yes, 109-murders-a-year Oakland. I live in the nice part.).  I’ve always been creative. As a kid I wanted to draw comics for a living.   In high school I led a mapmaking group for the game Myth II and tried to make a computer game with that group.  In college I designed theatrical lighting and started my band.

Now I work for Flock, a software company that is building an amazing web browser that defies one-sentence explanation.  And the band is still going strong.

So why start a blog, aside from that obnoxious pride that will come from saying “oh yeah, I blogged about that last month” before casually flipping open my iPhone (once I sell a kidney so I can afford one)?

I guess I’m tired of limited self-expression.  I love writing lyrics and music for the band, and my bandmates don’t care if I rant drunkenly to our fans through MySpace bulletins.  But I want a place to be Evan Hamilton, jack-of-many-trades.  I’ll blog about Flock, the band, my life, cool things I’ve found, music, and whatever the hell I feel like.

I guess that’s what Web 2.0 really is: whatever the hell I (you/we) feel like today.  Cool…I like that.

-Evan

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