The drama so far Emily White, an intern at NPR All Songs Considered, wrote an article saying “I never owned any of my music to begin with.” David Lowery, a musician and teacher, responded last week , saying recorded music has gone to shit, lamenting that listeners listen for free, and suggesting listeners should pay “penance” for all that free music they’ve been…
In one of my favorite videos from recent weeks , author Neal Gaiman explains how he was initially paranoid and “really grumpy with people” when they put up his poems and stories on the web. After some time, he realized that the “places where I was being pirated, I was selling more and more books, people were discovering me.” Why should a musician or author allow their work…
The sky is falling. This chart was recently picked up and published by Business Insider, Daring Fireball and various other places, often with melodramatic titles such as “The death of the music industry” . There are some major problems with this graph: 1) The numbers are not adjusted for inflation. This is a very basic tenant of graphing visual data. One must account for inflation when…
I recently did some music for the basecamp mobile video for 37signals. Jamie, who made the video and approached me about helping out, did a blog post about his process . Jamie asked me to write a bit about how the music was put together. When first approached, I assumed I would be composing something new for the video. Once we actually talked, Jamie told me he wanted a piano arrangement of Dance…
Late last year, Graham O'Brien released a fantastic video to his track “CFCs Feat. Alicia Wiley & Eric Blair” ( Featured in Ramen Music Issue #01 ). It features some creatively done stop-motion animation by 15 year-old Malone Mischke. My favorite bit is the outro :) Graham was signed late last year to the indie label NOECHO. His “Live Drums” album is available for purchase…
Life has a rhythm, it’s constantly moving. The word for rhythm (used by the Malinke tribes) is FOLI. It is a word that encompasses so much more than drumming, dancing or sound. It’s found in every part of daily life. In this film you not only hear and feel rhythm but you see it. It’s an extraordinary blend of image and sound that feeds the senses and reminds us all how essential…
Phil just introduced me to a guy/band called “The Burning Hell” The Burning Hell is the alter-ego of ukulele player and all-purpose nerd Mathias Kom. While the band can occasionally bloom into a multi-instrumental monster with many heads and arms, more often than not these days The Burning Hell is a small band with big hearts. They’ve got a couple of really great videos ; my…
This text comes from Ramen Music Issue #01. Check out Issue #01 in full I’m very proud to present the inaugural issue of Ramen Music. The idea to start Ramen first came to me 6 years ago. My friends and I had been recording music for years. We made music (and still do) because we needed to. Because it was an essential part of who we are. Because we absolutely loved doing it. It was not just a…