Curt Siffert - music is the space between the notes

All The Blue-Eyed Angels

Curt Siffert — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 20:25:46 +0000

A good friend of mine, Jen Blood, approached me a few months ago asking for a piano musing that she could use to market her book, All the Blue-Eyed Angels. It sounded like a fun project so I said yes (this is often how I make decisions :) ). She sent me the roughdraft of the video, and I asked for a few adjectives to describe what the music should sound like. She responded, "dark, haunting, Gothic, mysterious, romantic, old New England, suspenseful, tragic, sensual... " :-)

With my piano musings, I sit down, press record, make up a piece on the spot, and press stop. Sometimes I publish that version, other times I might re-record 2-3 times to clarify my thinking a bit. It was a bit different with a video because I had to watch the video while I was playing, so it took a few more tries to get things lined up pretty well - I remember trying to crescendo to the image of the house being on fire. It was fun!

Months later, her book has apparently been selling very well - she even charted on Amazon! She's come up with a sequel called Sins of the Father, and has taken the opportunity to re-market the first book with a new trailer, containing the same music. It's been really fun to see the book(s) taking off!

Happy Valentine's Day - (New Original)

Curt Siffert — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:11:57 +0000

In honor of Valentine's Day, and for today only! - I'm releasing a previously-unreleased original, a love song called One Sleeping Maiden. Click on over to see the lyrics. Enjoy!

EP Quick Update

Curt Siffert — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 19:20:32 +0000

While The Salvagery was a fun summer project, the far larger effort is the continuing work on my first E.P. It's coming along and I hope I'm in the home stretch here. Some of the songs you've heard before in rough form, and some are brand new. My Favorite Clown is now fully instrumented and has some nice surprises. I hired a string trio to help me with She Believes. Damn My Eyes is sounding pretty incredible, I think. Add to that three new songs and a fully re-imagined Together, and we've got an overstuffed E.P. that is getting close to full album length. I'm really looking forward to sharing it with you all!

If you're on Facebook, remember that you can fan/like my page or join my group to be kept up to date. Thanks!

The Salvagery on All About Jazz

Curt Siffert — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 22:21:35 +0000

Triage, the album from my side band The Salvagery, was recently highlighted over at AllAboutJazz.com. If you go over there now, you'll still see our album cover on the front page in the "free mp3 of the day" section. Here's the page and review of our free download, Trinomite (track #2).

The Salvagery - Triage

Curt Siffert — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 22:32:28 +0000

A rock drummer, a jazz bassist, and a classical pianist all set up under some microphones and press "record" -- without any prewritten music.

Triage by TheSalvagery

Purchase at:

bandcamp

Compact Disc (limited run, 50 copies): $9 suggested + $3 s/h

Digital Album: $7 suggested (included free with cd purchase)

CD Baby

Compact Disc (limited run, 50 copies): $12

iTunes

Digital Album: $7

The Salvagery is a three-piece outfit from Portland, Oregon. The three members - Curt Siffert, Steve Turmell, and Steve Morgan - all played together in a large show/jazz combo called Deja Nu. A jam session before a rehearsal led to them deciding to get together on their own time to record some improvisation sessions. The sessions were held in Siffert's living room. Over the course of five sessions, several recordings were complied - the most interesting of the recordings were collected and published into their first release, Triage.

Members:

Curt Siffert has a degree in classical piano and several years experience performing and writing in the jazz and pop idioms. Currently focusing on his own pop songwriting projects, you can find news of his latest projects at curtsiffert.com .

Steve Turmell has drummed for well-known projects in the Northwest including Quoting Napoleon and Courtney Jones. He is currently the first call drummer for a blues band touring in the Northwest, and is also producing his own recording projects.

Steve Morgan is a refugee from Los Angeles with progressive and jazz roots. He plays upright and electric bass regularly for several pop, jazz and latin projects in the Northwest.

Mixed/Mastered at Session One Audio by Josh Olswanger.

Facebook or Mailing List?

Curt Siffert — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 19:38:27 +0000

So, it never seems clear which way a musician should go in terms of his or her online presence. For musicians, Facebook is really pushing the "fan page". I'm not so sure. After doing some wrestling, I think that I'm going to approach my various communication structures like so:

My mailing list: The mailing list is gold for musicians. This is where a musician's strongest supporters are. If someone signs up for a mailing list, then it means that they don't want to miss when relevant news happens, and want to be emailed. I'm using the mailing list for summaries of recent goings-on, and big announcements. This means that I'll be sending out information about once a month or so. If you follow me in other ways, you should still definitely join the mailing list so you don't miss anything important. (Side note, apparently it's possible to join the mailing list via facebook but I don't remember how I came across that link and how it works, exactly.)
My facebook fan page. This is what facebook pushes and recommends for artists, but I honestly still don't really get it. Fan pages suffer from the same failing as regular profiles. If an artist posts a status update to their fan page, there's absolutely no guarantee that their followers will see it. Even if their fans are online at exactly the same time, they won't necessarily see the status update. The other "updates" that fan pages post - no one ever reads those. You have to click in a special sequence and cross your eyes to even come across the "updates" that have accumulated in your inbox. What's nice about a fan page is that as a fan, you'll see updates once in a while, you can leave comments, and - if you remember - you can click over to the fan page to see what you've missed. I'll be continuing to post small status updates to my fan page a few times a week, but I'd definitely prefer it if fans also joined my mailing list or my group. What's my group, you ask?
My facebook group is still around. Facebook changed their group structure and I ignored it for a little while, but last week on a whim I re-posted an old piano improv that is one of my favorites, Slow Rain. (Soundcloud link here.) I had posted it to my fan page too where it was pretty much ignored, but when I posted it to my group, I got a ton of positive feedback, including from some long-term fans who had never heard it before. Groups are different now, they are kind of like group mailing lists where members can talk to each other. If I post an update, it will actually get emailed to the members. I can post a message that will get delivered to every member's facebook inbox, too. And if a member leaves a comment or posts to the group, it can get emailed to you too (unless you change your settings). It's very fun. It can also be invasive to some - a musician friend of mine recently posted video blog entries once a day for several days in a row, and the frequency of content and comments drove some members to leave. So I'll be posting to the group once a week or so, usually just focusing on media that people might like to hear, or other announcements - I'll be keeping the trivial parts out of it. Obviously, musicians LOVE feedback, so I really like the group - if you want to feel a bit more included in the fan community, this is the place to join. You can also add your own friends to the group if you're sure they'd enjoy it.
My twitter account is just kind of silly. I use it in spurts, actively but infrequently, and it's definitely not limited to music. Follow me there if you want but it's not really anything important.

So, that's it! To summarize, the mailing list is king, please join!! (This is where I will be announcing more details of my next recording project.) If you want to interact more with the fan community on facebook, join my group. If you want to see the occasional trivial status update, like my fan page. (Or just like it anyway, it doesn't hurt.) And for the most trivial and unrelated stuff, you can follow my twitter account.

Hopefully, that clarifies everything!

Stalactites and Stalagmites (7/19/07 #4)

Curt Siffert — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 07:07:43 +0000

The scaffolding from where treasures are stored and later forgotten.

Music Income Sources

Curt Siffert — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 01:57:50 +0000

I was browsing around yesterday and I found this article on the tunecore blog. There's a free ebook linked within that I quite liked. So much so that I put together this rough graph of all the information I found in the ebook (click to embiggen):

Music Recording Income Streams

Comments or clarifications appreciated!

Weekend Studio Notes

Curt Siffert — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 23:06:38 +0000

Spent some more time this last weekend at the studio. Now we're getting to the tail end of the recording process, we're recording with Rob Stroup at 8-ball studios, in Portland.

Thursday night I drove down from Seattle, and rested up for Friday. Friday was a ton of fun - I got to play a Leslie organ/speaker for the first time. They way they recorded it is by pointing mics at the back of the leslie speaker, and then turning the volume WAY UP (by way of volume pedal) so that the signal would be loud enough that the mechanical noise wouldn't show up on the recording.

This was my first time at playing an organ like this and it was a bit embarrassing that I couldn't even make the classic organ glissando sound quite right at first. The sound was also so loud that it took a bit for me to calibrate, I had to remind myself not to be tentative. But soon enough it started coming together. Jake Oken-Berg was there next to me and was stomping on the pedal button that turns the vibrato on and off while I was playing, a true collaborative effort! I had Jake also take over and play organ on a couple of the parts while I did the bridge and the last few choruses.

After that it was cello time. Skip vonKuske came over and did a great job - from solo lines, to layering, to some tremolo stuff on the song of mine that Jake is doing his own arrangement for.

After the cello, it was time for me to finish recording the piano part for Damn My Eyes. We've gone back and forth on this song a few times, there was some concern that it would sound too "classic jazz", but that was never really the direction I intended for it. We made a couple of short cuts, and over the last week I had been working on a piano part that sounds more intentional, and a hell of a lot more aggressive. I love it now, and for the first time I even think the song works live as just voice/piano - I'm looking forward at trying it out at an open mic sometime. Anyway, it works really well with the bass and drums now, and I'm looking forward to hearing how it shapes up after we finish layering.

We ended the day with me doing some lead singing - finally! It was funny a couple of times because I'm so used to singing at the piano that it felt alien to sing standing up. I had Rob change the mic a couple of times until I finally decided that standing up was better so I could have more breath. We ended with Not Today and I felt really locked in on it, to the point that I was demanding to sing more takes after we were done just because I was enjoying it so much.

Day Two of the weekend was all about the guitar. Guitar is an instrument I haven't really been able to wrap my head around for these songs, but that's where Jake and Rob were very helpful. We had Bob Dunham in to do the guitar, he brought along about fifty thousand guitar pedals, and we basically just experimented all day. It might be that we strip down some of the choices later in the editing/mixing stages, but I think a lot of the material and choices work really well, and Bob did a great job.

What's left? Well, there's more organ to do... a couple of specialty instruments, the possibility of some string playing, and then just a whole lot of singing. We're definitely in the fun stages and I'm realizing that I absolutely love the recording process, at least when I'm on mic. It's even more fun than the gigging and the rehearsing, although I have to say that there's still nothing that tops the feeling of playing through a new completed song for the first time. Writing is painful, but the sense of victory you get at the end, that's really something else.

Still definitely on track for 2011 being the year of the cd release. More later!

The Year Of The CD Release!

Curt Siffert — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 03:21:26 +0000

Some technical difficulties and a greater reliance on facebook and twitter have caused a certain lack of updates here, but that will be remedied soon. :-)

The news, though, is that 2011 is the year of the cd release! Quite possibly more than one. I'm fiddling with discmakers right now for one vague purpose, and will be visiting the studio to hit the home stretch of tracking for another. Stay tuned (ha) and I'll have information soon.

Her Worry Dolls (7/19/07 #3)

Curt Siffert — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 01:30:05 +0000

She got them in Guatemala, and kept them next to her matryoshka dolls. At night, the worry dolls would dance and try to offer comfort to their counterparts.

Damn My Eyes reviews

Curt Siffert — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:51:54 +0000

I submitted Damn My Eyes for reviews over at Garage Band more than a year ago, and the reviews have been trickling in ever since then. It looks like the review process finally stopped a few days ago. You can check out all the reviews here, but here's the general summary.

First, there were several "awards". The awards are always a good stroke to the ego, but I never actually noticed any traffic bumps on any of them until the last one. Damn My Eyes was given the "Track Of The Week" award in Alternative Pop on Jan 18th, and there was a measurable impact - I got about 25-30 new "iLike" fans (from 71 to 98, I believe), one or two of which joined my mailing list. iLike's fans are kind of in a separate category - I can reach all of them through bulletins, but they don't give you email addresses for any of them, so I honestly don't try and contact them a bunch except to remind them of my mailing list. I do tend to send out announcements to them when new songs come out, though.

The reviews were informative. There were a few common themes. Many felt Alternative Pop wasn't the right genre, and that I should have put it in jazz instead. I'm torn on that, it's my most "jazz"-ish song, but it's played much the same way every time and has an actual song form, so I see it much more as jazz-influenced pop. Beyond that, I see the theme of the reviews as that they like the idea and the recording, find it a very enjoyable song, and that it is a bit conventional - doesn't take a lot of risks into really original territory. At the same time, it's the song of mine that has gotten the best response so far, ahead of Together, My Favorite Clown, etc. Over on Jango, Damn My Eyes is a touch more well-reviewed than She Believes, too. Damn My Eyes continues to exist off to the side for me, one of my more favorite songs but not in the core group (She Believes, Not Today, and So Beautiful). I think it can be dressed up more but beyond that I think it'll be one of those songs that is really fun to play live as a change of pace song.

Youtube Soundtracks

Curt Siffert — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 02:30:08 +0000

For those who don't know, I've released quite a few piano improvisations over the years, through a podcast I call Piano Musings. They're released under a Creative Commons license.

I hadn't done a search for my name over at youtube for a while and was surprised at what I had found - a few people had taken the music and applied them to some of their home videos. Always kind of fun to see where they end up.

First, it appears there was some Italian film festival, and Unbond made its way into this one. It's the middle piano cue; the ones at the beginning and end are someone else.

Next, using A Merry-Go-Round In Rain, here's a short video of a snowfall in someone's backyard, from Brussels, Belgium:

Weirdest is some level cheat for some online game. They had used Phoenix Grace, one of my favorites... presumably because the youtuber's username is "ElitePhoenix". Oookay.

The music has of course ended up in several other places, which you can page through by reviewing my Art Musings page. And if you have end up using the music for any of your own projects, please let me know! The music is protected by a Creative Commons license, which means they are usable for non-commercial purposes if you give me attribution.

More Costello's

Curt Siffert — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:38:12 +0000

James Jeffrey-West with a cool writeup of the gig we shared a couple of weeks ago, and also includes a video he shot of me singing Old Friend. Check it out:

Gigging at Costello's

Curt Siffert — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 11:36:02 +0000

Had a very fun gig at Costello's Travel Caffe last night. By the way, for those of you who don't know I had a gig last night, be sure to join my mailing list.

I ran into James Jeffrey-West at a couple of songwriting workshops earlier this year, and then we ended up sharing a gig at the Local Lounge on MLK. Shortly afterwards, Pete and I interviewed him for Acoustic Conversations, for an upcoming episode. James has a regular gig at Costello's, and invited me to take part.

Last month I headed down there to catch a show of his - the venue is really warm. The night I was there, it was a packed house. At the time I wasn't sure about playing there, because everyone is eating dinner and I'm never sure if I'd end up being background music, sitting down behind a keyboard at floor level. And if you've read my previous blog entry, you know how I can feel a bit conflicted about a couple of my songs needing more instruments.

But one idea I've been toying with has been to play standing up. I had never done that before. I also wanted to try talking while playing a little more - I went to a David Wilcox concert a couple of weeks back and he does a lot of that, it really adds to the experience. So I practiced both this week, and then there I was standing up behind the keyboard, talking and singing. And it worked great!

I biffed the piano parts a little more often than I normally would but I think that's just getting used to the new position. My pedal was squeaky under my boot and was also trying to get away from me - I think I can solve that at future gigs with a sticky mat and a sock. And I had a great time. I have had a couple of discouraging gigs in the past, but I do seem to enjoy gigging more every time I go out. I think it's getting a little easier now.

James puts on a very nice show. He has a great set, with wonderful stories behind his songs. He has different people playing with him every time he is there at Costello's. I definitely recommend signing up for his mailing list and attending a show there.

The Piano Scene

Curt Siffert — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:11:00 +0000

It's been quite a crazy experience trying to understand the pop and singer/songwriter scene as it applies to piano.

Here's the situation. You have a piano, some piano skills, and you can sing a little. You write some songs for the piano. In any batch of songs, you're going to have some songs that absolutely require a band, some songs that absolutely require a real piano, and other songs that are still just fine for a random electric keyboard with no backing musicians.

When you're starting out, you're basically limited to the third type of song. All your band songs (for me that would be Damn My Eyes and Not Today) can't really even be performed. Other songs that really should be played on a grand (for me that would be She Believes and Old Friend) sound more like a pale imitation of themselves when you play them on a keyboard pumped through an small sound system.

And so for piano songwriters, it becomes a sort of permanent treasure hunt to find where and how to play. Every once in a while you think you find a possibility and then you get a curveball. Here are some of the recents.

Jo Federigo's in Eugene - I traveled down there with Debbie, after hearing Lisa Forkish rave about playing on their piano and for their audience - their website said they were still open, but their telephone had a mysterious voice mail message explaining they were closed until further notice.
Martin's off Madison in Seattle - I heard there was an open mic night here with a real grand piano and was very excited to attend. Took Debbie and loved the atmosphere and the food, and they had a great pianist there. Soon it dawned on me, however, that all the piano music was loungy jazz standards, heavy on Bacharach and music theater, and that Debbie was the only woman in the entire place. And I confirmed with the waitstaff that "open mic" basically meant singing karaoke while the pianist backs you up. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, but disappointing to find a cool piano bar only to find that it doesn't cater to your style of music.
88 keys in Seattle - there is a monthly songwriting event here at a dueling piano bar. I attended tonight - it was pretty funny because the pianos aren't even real - they're digital keyboards in grand piano shells. It actually wasn't bad, because the stage and sound were quite good, but the event is on a Tuesday night when the area is completely dead - it's tough as a songwriter to sign up for a 30-minute showcase slot and have no one in the audience other than the other songwriters that have showed up. It's not a good way to build an audience.

I had a great meeting with Jake Oken-Berg recently and we talked about other venues in town that are good for various levels of local songwriters. There's a good piano at Wilf's Restaurant, but it is more for jazz musicians that can fill up a three-hour set - I'm not sure they are amenable for a shared bill where each person might have forty-five minutes. There are venues like Jimmy Mak's with a great piano, if you can guarantee that you'll fill the room pretty well. There's a nice-looking smaller venue in Seattle named Egan's in Ballard that might have possibilities for if you can't guarantee a big crowd. The entire question is how to get started and put on enough of a good show with the puny songs and the electric keyboard and the small sound systems, to gather up enough fans to be able to justify the nicer venues. Tough road.

What seems like a possibility is the house party circuit - finding a collection of folks with grand pianos in their homes and putting on small concerts. I've got some brainstorms in the works for that, as I get closer to having a good hour of original material.

Rehearsal Recordings posted

Curt Siffert — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:18:06 +0000

I have some rehearsal recordings posted - I'm letting some of my mailing list subscribers hear them because more ears are always better! If you're interested in hearing them and sharing what you think, come on over and join the mailing list. Here are some former rehearsal recordings that I've worked up and deemed good enough to release publicly: http://www.reverbnation.com/tunepak/1378735.

She Believes Video

Curt Siffert — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:07:17 +0000

A few weeks ago I bought a flip mino hd. I like it a lot, the battery holds its charge well, it's easy to record with it, and the video quality looks fine enough to my eyes. Then I stumbled across some attachments that let you connect cameras to mic stands - and I have a huge mic stand that I use to record overhead drum mics.

So I started playing around with camera angles. I recorded a bit of footage of me paying passages of She Believes from the side. And then I set the camera up above me so it caught the entire keyboard range of She Believes, from bottom note (low C#) to high note (a pretty high C#). I also set up the laptop to record my face from the left side (or is it the right?), and I set up the mics to get a good audio recording to record into Logic. Then I pressed record on all three - the mino, iMovie, and Logic.

So there I am with three contraptions all recording at the same time, and it seems like I always make at least one clunker of a mistake when I practice this song - plus, I didn't relish restarting by pressing stop and rewind or whatever on all of these things. So in my mind I had one take before I gave up on the whole silly idea.

The take turned out pretty good! I pre-mixed it and sent it off to Josh over at Session One Audio, who's been helping out with the recent Acoustic Conversations episodes. Then I took the mix and sent it off to Mikel Wisler at Runaway Pen Productions. We lined up the camera angles and picked what went where.

Overall a simple low budget project but a lot of fun. Here's the result:

The America Song

Curt Siffert — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:46:59 +0000

I'm still working on the title so for now I'll just call it "The America Song". That's not intended to me arrogant, by the way, it just means it relative to all my other songs. Not relative to all songs in existence. There are a ton of America songs out there.

And... that's part of the problem. This song is the first song I've written that came from a dream, so I had to write it. But, two songs I'm apt to discount from the outset are patriotic songs, and protest songs. I just generally find them so thoughtless. This song... is a little bit of both, and I definitely put thought into it, so maybe that moderates things. But I'm still mulling it. I have a good rough of it but it needs a couple more doses of marinade before I upload it.

Exclusive - I Don't Mind

Curt Siffert — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:05:42 +0000

About six months ago I wrote a song called "I Don't Mind", and I just made it available as an exclusive for my mailing list subscribers. This one's actually a love song, and I'm a bit embarrassed about that since love songs are schmaltzy, and goodness knows we just can't have schmaltz in music. I tried my best to write this one schmaltz-free, though.

The recording is from shortly after I wrote it, and it has a couple of audio artifacts in it, but it's the first time I made it successfully through the song from beginning to end and I like the performance, so I'm a bit sentimental about it. It's technically a pre-love song.

To give it a listen, come on over and join the mailing list.

Another One Down

Curt Siffert — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 07:21:22 +0000

Finished another song earlier today, Sunday afternoon the 12th.

Man, this one was rough. I had the idea for this song probably almost a year ago. This was a very slow songwriting process, I've had the musical material for a long time, two ideas for the form of it for a couple of months, and the rough lyrical concept with two or three phrases ever since I thought of it. And I just couldn't get over the hump. I set some ridiculously high standards for myself on this one and I'm not sure it's a good idea to continue doing that - does it lead to better music, or just a more labored vibe to the music? I don't know.

So this one had more free-writing than any other song I've done so far, maybe three layers of free-writing. Where I'd free-write, and then boil it down into a shorter page of concepts, then free-writing more on that, and then boiling it down again... overthinking, zooming out, overthinking, zooming out... it's great to have this one written and I think I will like it a lot, but this time it's a slightly different feeling - not so much the rush of having created something, more like the relief of having a monkey off my back.

Notation Plugin

Curt Siffert — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:18:00 +0000

I found this plugin at Noteflight today and am as pleased as punch. I might find myself using it quite a bit on this site.

Here's a favorite chord of mine that seems to sneak into a lot of my music. One good example: Before A Kiss.

(Note, if my music is playing in the background, hit pause in the player in my right sidebar. :) )

Random News

Curt Siffert — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:29:05 +0000

Jango sent me a missive today, asking me to take a surveymonkey survey and asking for any other feedback. In this case I liked the opportunity to share my thoughts - I've skipped a lot of surveys in the past but Jango is a pretty fascinating service and when a site is new, it kind of invites thoughts and advice of how they could do things differently. They even gave me a free 500 plays out of the deal. I like how engaged Jango appears to be.

In other news, I'm enjoying doing the Acoustic Conversations podcast. We have a variety of musicians on the show, all at different points in their career. A couple that are actively hawking their cds, rehearsing regularly, and gigging out whenever they can. A couple of others that have it as their livelihood and have toured nationally and internationally. A couple that have done all that and are now relaxing more at home with their large repertoires and familyish local fan base. And some others that are just starting to take it more seriously, gigging at the open mic nights and doing shared bills with other musicians as they try and get recording projects together. That's about where I'm at, and it's good to be in touch with them as we can discuss putting together some shared bills. If you haven't yet, head on over to Acoustic Conversations and check out some of the episodes. There's some good stuff over there, some of which might be sharing a stage with me in the future.

Acoustic Conversations - Dustin Pattison

Curt Siffert — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 02:07:24 +0000

We have a new Acoustic Conversations Podcast episode up... time our guest is Dustin Pattison . Check it out.

Damn My Eyes Award

Curt Siffert — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 23:55:18 +0000

Looks like Damn My Eyes is Track Of The Day today in Alterative Pop, over at garageband.com. Check it out.

Last.fm and Jango Promotions

Curt Siffert — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:50:04 +0000

I recently signed up for "pay-to-play" promotions for Last.fm and Jango.

Last.fm and Jango are both systems that will recommend your music to others based off of similar tastes. Users of the sites listen to music through their online players, and they get a mix of artists that are their favorites, and new artists the system believes they will like based off of analyses of "similar artists".

The question for independent artists is how to break into that and get your music recommended to new ears. On the one hand, the whole point is for listeners to find new artists - that's you! On the other hand, the system needs to know about you, which requires many listens from many people. It's a catch-22.

So the way around that is to buy plays from these services. There are of course a variety of opinions on whether a good artist should even need to do this, but listeners need to hear about music somehow.

I decided to test Last.fm against Jango. I used two of my songs, She Believes and Damn My Eyes, and I picked the smallest play package for each. Here are the results:

First, I signed my last.fm copy of Damn My Eyes up for a promotion of 100 plays for $20. I chose similar artists of Ben Folds, Jamie Cullum, Harry Connick, Jr., Randy Newman, and Marc Cohn.
- Full Listens: 71
- Skips: 27
- Loves: 3
- Bans: 1
In addition, another last.fm user recommended it to a friend of theirs.
Then, I signed my last.fm copy of She Believes up for the same promotion - 100 plays for $20. I chose similar artists of Billy Joel, Ben Folds, Jamie Cullum, and Harry Connick, Jr.
- Full Listens: 75
- Skips: 23
- Loves: 0
- Bans: 0
In addition, two people outside of the campaign "loved" the track during this time.
Then, I signed myself up for Jango - on my artist page you can see the rough results. I ran two separate promotions. The first one was for Damn My Eyes. The minimum was $30 for 1000 plays. You need 50 "likes" for a song to get into general rotation. After 1000 plays, I had somewhere around 200 likes, and 10-12 fans.
After that, I signed up again for She Believes, for another 1000 plays. I got another 150 likes and another 6-8 fans I believe. It's hard to tell which stats are for which songs because their stats page doesn't list a complete history, but that seems to be the rough breakdown.

To judge these results you can go listen to my songs to get a relative sense compared to other music you like. But when judged against each other, my rough conclusions are that Damn My Eyes is slightly more likeable (in a broad sense) than She Believes - however I find that She Believes tends to make a stronger impression on the people that like it.

But regarding the services themselves, while it was fun getting the extra listens, I'm still not sure of the benefit of either of these services, for a variety of reasons.

Last.fm does not give you a sense of where that critical mass point is. How many listens does it take for them to start recommending you after a paid promotion? After the conclusion of my promotion, I haven't noticed any additional plays of my tunes through last.fm. Having no sense of how many listens it takes, I don't find it worth the money to pay for additional promotions.
It's too early to tell with Jango since my promotion just ended, but I think I am getting at least a couple of plays a day out of Jango now, after the conclusion of the promotions. That's not a lot. I'll report back here if that jumps up at all.
Response rate sucks. I tried writing my last.fm listeners to say thank you, and I got some new last.fm "friends" out of it, but out of more than 100 messages that I sent, only two wrote back, and I only got one new signup to my mailing list. I am sure this is because many of the plays had to have been to passive listeners.
It's the same with Jango. I've tried writing all of my 18 fans independently and I got one signup - a guy that joined my facebook group. This is better than last.fm, but Jango is still confusing here - I can see on my page who has "liked" me and who has signed up as a "fan". In terms of functionality, there is absolutely no difference. I can't write all my fans at once.

My whole strategy at this phase of my career is to build my mailing list and write songs. I don't yet have a cd or a product to sell, so I use my music to build my mailing list so I have as many likely buyers as possible when I eventually do have something to sell. So from my perspective anyway - and factor in your own opinions of my music quality - it doesn't look like these services are worth the results. I basically paid $50 per lead. (Update: Jango response rate is getting better - their listeners might be more active.)

Now, there are several things that could moderate these conclusions:

Continued future plays could yield more mailing list signups, which could make the services feel "worth it". I'm noticing Jango plays, but not Last.fm plays.
Since my two tracks are well-mixed but one-off rehearsal takes, better produced studio versions of the same songs might yield better results
Flat-out better music might yield better results, but that would always be true even if you're Mozart.
I'm sure I could design a website that would better designed for increasing mailing list signups.

But overall I think it's important to note that both of these services appear geared to the listeners, not the musicians. It does a good job of introducing new music to listeners, but neither do anything towards encouraging the listeners to become active supporters of the musicians behind the music. There is a lot of music out there, and you're really just sort of being anonymously presented to people. This creates a low likelihood of building an actual relationship.

Update: I'm informed that Jango is only a few weeks old. My impressions of Jango overall are positive, and it's clear they're actively working on functionality. After getting another 3-4 mailing list signups I'm more optimistic that Jango's promotions might be worth it.

Small Changes

Curt Siffert — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 08:12:30 +0000

You might notice some small changes around here. I've cleaned up the right sidebar and the tabs up top.

One of the things that is interesting about slowly adopting and growing into the self-definition of a songwriter is watching old expectations and theories fall away as they get replaced with new ones. They can be as minor as believing it's essential to have all my social links on the right sidebar. I guess I've switched to thinking that cleanliness is more organized and more attractive to whoever might come and blaze through the site. In the future I'll probably rework my bio (it's already a bit dated) and maybe the site design itself.

She Believes (v3)

Curt Siffert — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:08:45 +0000

At about the time his daughter turned five, a buddy of mine started telling her goodnight stories. Except, this guy grew up reading comic books, so his idea of telling goodnight stories was to tell her the story of Darth Vader, and of Superman. There was something about that that I thought was so funny, and kind of touching too. So that eventually turned into this song.

This new version of the song is probably the last one until the cd. This has drums and upright bass and is closer to my overall concept for the song. Some great energy provided by Scott Townsend on drums and Chris Gustafson on upright bass. Previous versions of the song can be found in the Bone Yard.

If you enjoy this song, feel free to download and share, but please sign up for my mailing list. Thanks!

More Awards

Curt Siffert — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:51:27 +0000

One of those occasional GarageBand awards came my way today... Damn My Eyes won "Best Mood in Alternative Pop, week of 9Mar2009" today. Here's the song page, where you can also check out a few of the reviews.

Give the Music a Boost

Curt Siffert — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 04:39:21 +0000

Each time I post a new song to my site, I'm hoping for another microscopic (or macroscopic) boost to find new fans. But creating the music isn't enough, I have to find new ways to get the word out - and that's where you can help.

The number one best method is for you to use your own creativity - if you think there are professional opportunities for any of my songs, then go ahead and follow up and see what happens - it couldn't hurt! But beyond that, here are some simple ideas:

If you're on facebook, join my facebook group. Facebook is a highly connected place and it's very possible to recommend music to friends and start pushing things in a viral direction.
Check out my player on the right sidebar - there are ways to share it and republish it on your own web page or blog.
Go through the links on my right sidebar and if you have any memberships to any of the relevant sites, "add" me, "like" me, do whatever seems appropriate to boost my numbers - most of these sites react to additional popularity by increasing the likelihood a song will be recommended to new people.
Simply recommend the site or the songs to friends you know - the more people on my mailing list, the better.
Send me suggestions! I'm always curious about other effective ways to get the word out.

In the meantime, I'm continuing to work on writing new songs and coming up with enough repertoire to be able to gig in a variety of circumstances. In addition to the songs on the Songs tab, beyond Damn My Eyes, I have two more songs completed, one other mostly completed, and three others in workshop mode. They'll all exist soon enough.