Physical things still matter

I've just done putting 100 CDs into their little cardboard sleeves. This is the first batch of our first album with Gaujarts. I didn't mind having to do that myself, since it gave me a sense of accomplishement. More than any electronic MP3 release will ever do. Since there is something final about having the CD in hand. And i'm thinking if we continue to play together into our next possible future recording, i will still insist on having a physical release, even if all the world goes iTunes.

So much of our lives is digital today, but still, still... we do like to touch things.

Or will the sense of touch be the next to go the way of tail and claws?

Music image problem

There was an article about annual latvian music award nominations in one internet portal. The event, which is held by Association of Music Producers, is getting controversial this year, since quite a few well known acts have not been nominated (due to the fact that to participate you have to submit your work). But that's not the issue.

I don't usually read comments in portals, but this time i did, since the topic interests me. I was surprised by amount of "commentators" who had very strict opinion about latvian music as whole. Basically, they wrote, everything is crap, latvians can't play or write, latvian musicians should better go and dig graves, latvian language is not good enough to be used for song lyrics.

Maybe they are a very loud minority, but anyway that is a marketing problem. People have bad opinion, for whatever reason, which means that they won't come to gigs, they won't purchase any records or won't generally look for new latvian music. This opinion must be turned upside town, since it doesn't allow for development. We do have some great bands, great songs, great performers, just that latvians have this tendency of judging their own more harshly, perhaps because the musician lives just around the corner, therefore he can't be good, since the "the latvian" himself can't play or sing or write (and this musician around the corner can't be better than him, can he?).

Bad news is that advetising campaign probably won't help, the change has to start with the musicians themselves. We have to be better promoters, better marketers, better musicians, be generally more active. Maybe then we can "pull" the audience up a level?

Handy English

I've been thinking on why many non-English speaking musicians (or wannabe musicians) write songs in English. First obvious reason is that English currently is lingua franca. But that answer didn't satisfy me, i thought there's something more going on.

And finally i got it yesterday night.

When i started to write songs, first three or four were also in English. I tried to write some lyrics in Latvian, but i found it very difficult and didn't succeed. At that point i didn't try to put the finger on the reason why there is such a paradoxical problem (i should be better with Latvian, after all). But the reason is this: English language is incredibly rich with one syllable words. One syllable words are extremely handy for songwriter, since, when putting lyrics to melody, you (usually) have to match the heavy beat of the bar (i'm not sure if that's correct term) with the stressed syllable of the word. Which means it will sound awkward, if you, for instance, start the song with heavy beat, but the word itself has a stress on second or third syllable, in other words there is a limitation.

With single syllable words there is no problem, you can arrange them as you wish, change order, no problemo.

Beatles' "Hey Jude" first verse has 29 words, 25 of them are one syllable.

ABBA's "Take a chance on me": 81 words, of them 75 - one syllable words.

Britney Spears "Oops, i did it again": 45 and 38

The first song i ever wrote (in English, obviously): 32 and 29.

Trendspotting

All marketing or business gurus will tell you how important it is to spot a trend before it actually happens. Good for business and for development too. So here's one. 

Music industry is going through massive changes. It can no longer support itself through sales of media (be it cassette, vinyl or CD (or suing people)). So the biggest "revenue-maker" for the industry and bands in the future will be gigs. Which means that the total amount of concerts will increase. It's already happening, this summer in Latvia was a clue to that, very busy with different artists coming to play here.

So if i have to think, how to make money out of that, one obvious direction is to buy or build venues to hold those gigs. But bugger me if i know what to do with that piece of information...