Today I had my first gig with the Internet Archive in their mini concerts series. It was a really good experience (and if you’re a musician, especially one who performs online, I urge you to sign up for it yourself!) and I’d like to share some thoughts with folks in general! (And if anyone from IA is reading this, hello!!!!)
As I talked about previously, there are many different services for getting your music online with the major streaming providers. Here’s my thoughts on a few that I’ve worked with, and a couple that are on my radar and I plan on trying out in the future.
Of course, the best place to sell your music is on places like Mirlo and Bandcamp, where you actually get paid well for things and your buyers are able to retain access to your music in exchange, but the unfortunate reality of music in the current era is that most listeners are going to the streamers to listen to stuff, so if you want your stuff to be listened to, this is where you have to put it.
Today is Transgender Day of Visibility, and as a transgender musician who has been releasing music online since the 1990s (and writing music since the 1980s), it’s super important to me that members of my community get seen today. The complex feelings around being transgender have always been a big part of my music, even before I had the words to express it.
Convolution reverbs are pretty neat. Basically you take a recording of a space’s acoustics and then the reverb characteristics of that space can then be applied to any audio signal. I usually use convolution reverbs for most of my music, since it’s a lot easier for me to use someone’s recorded impulse response of, say, the Ulm chapel than to fly to Germany to record there in person.
You can also use recordings of things other than acoustic spaces for interesting effects; Logic’s Space Designer comes with a whole bunch of impulse responses that are used for various effects, including drum transformers, ghost rhythms, and other such things. A lot of my more sound designy stuff makes heavy use of this.
But what if you use whole songs as an impulse response?