LORENZO'S MUSIC

Recap of Our First Live Music Stream Event For The Ubuntu Summit

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 10:30:00 -0500

We just finished our CC Music Live companion stream to the Ubuntu Summit, and what an incredible two days it was! This was a first-time experience for us, and thanks to the incredible performers and the essential help from Ryno the Bearded, we were able to pull the whole thing together.

First, thank you to everyone who participated, watched, listened, and supported the artists.

The Performances: A Wild Combo of Open Culture

If you missed the stream, you missed the live experience—it's over. The event highlighted the stunning diversity and creativity within the creative commons and open-source music community.

The entire thing was a wild combo of unique performances:

Lorenzo's Music: We kicked off the showcase—our first show since opening for The Greyhounds and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos last year.
Crash Server (from France): A live coding band that codes music and mashes samples together on a server, all while trying to overdrive and crash the server itself.
Sockpuppet: A unique performer who played in a VR club with movement tracked to their own actions, making the VR avatar move.
ArtistSynth (from the Canary Islands): Delivered an awesome freestyle performance by riffing on beats and patterns live inside his Bitwig DAW.
Greuzi Sexgott (from Switzerland): This cloud jazz band closed out the showcase with their jazz jam style, filmed using a three-camera setup in their studio.

You can and should go check out these amazing artists, support them, and download their music now!

Support the Open Culture Mission: Two Ways to Help

As a Creative Commons and open-source band, we use only open-source software tools to create, record, and make videos. If anything we've done over this summit gave you value, here are two simple ways you can help us continue this mission:

1. Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel: It’s as simple as that, and it really helps support us. Click here to subscribe!

➡️ Lorenzo's Music YouTube Channel: youtube.com/@Lorenzosmusic

2. Join Our Crowdfunding Community: Consider joining our Ko-Fi or Mirlo communities. These crowdfunding platforms help us cover the time it takes to create, promote this open-source music and put on free events like the CC Music Live stream.

➡️ Support us via Mirlo: mirlo.space/lorenzosmusic

➡️ Support us via Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/lorenzosmusic

Or you can do both! :)

We hope to see you when we try to do this event again in April with new artists, new music, and new ideas!

Are You a Creative Commons Musician Looking for a Global Stage?

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 00:23:00 -0500

If you're a musician dedicated to the open culture movement, or you release your work under Creative Commons, I'm organizing a unique online streaming music event for October 23rd and 24th that's designed specifically for you.

What's the Opportunity?

This is more than just another online show. Our event is going to coincide with this year's online Ubuntu Summit, a major event for the open source community. This is a really unique opportunity to perform for a global audience of people who are already enthusiastic about free and open culture.

I know from experience how great this community is. My band, Lorenzo's Music, performed at the Ubuntu event in Prague a few years ago, and I even gave a talk there about how we use GitHub to collaborate on music. This is a fantastic chance to connect with a tech-savvy audience that truly understands and supports the open ethos behind your music.

We Need You!

Right now, I'm looking for musicians and bands who are part of the open source or Creative Commons culture to participate. All you need to do right now is let me know you're interested, and we can work out the details later.

I need to hear from you as soon as you can because the event is coming up fast in October.

Ready to get your music in front of a global, open-minded audience?

👉 ~~Link to the Musician Submission Form Here~~ 👈

Click the link to fill out the form and give me your information. I'll get back to you!

We've got a new online show! Lorenzo's Music: The Live & Unfiltered Show

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 00:18:00 -0500

Introducing Lorenzo's Music: The Live & Unfiltered Show!

Earlier this summer, we quietly launched a brand-new weekly "variety" show—Lorenzo's Music: The Live & Unfiltered Show. After experimenting with the format over the past few months, we're excited to officially share it with you!

So, what's the show all about? Every week, we live stream our band practice from the studio. But this isn't your typical rehearsal—we've set up multiple cameras around our studio to show everything that's going on. Each episode features us playing a few songs from our setlist, along with a special segment where we either improvise a new song or work on one of our latest songs that we've never played live!

It's not just about the music—we chat, joke around, and go off on tangents. And the best part? If you are watching the show you can join us in the live chat! Feel free to interact, ask questions, or just hang out with us as we go through our practice.

We broadcast the show live every Wednesday night at 10 PM Central Time on our YouTube channel. Can't make the live stream? No worries—replays are available afterward so you can catch up anytime.

Check it out, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and hit the bell icon to get notified when we go live. We'd love to see you there!

Check it out on YouTube and remember to subscribe to the channel!

Watch - Lorenzo's Music: The Live & Unfiltered Show on YouTube

Greyhounds, David Hidalgo and Steve Berlin of Los Lobos & Lorenzo's Music - June 23, 2024

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 16:38:00 -0500

Greyhounds, Steve Berlin, David Hidalgo (of Los Lobos) and Lorenzo's Music

June 23, 2024, at The Gamma Ray Bar in Madison WI.

We have the absolute honor of playing a show with the fantastic band Greyhounds!

Not only that but accompanying them for the show will be Steve Berlin and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos! (I'm sorry to keep using exclamation points but c'mon! All this deserves it!)

This show by itself is a reason to be excited.

But here's the thing -- one of the biggest influences behind Rob and I originally starting Lorenzo's Music in the first place is the music of Los Lobos and the discovery of the many musical side-projects of David Hidalgo.

We were really trying to find what we wanted to do musically when we discovered the Latin Playboys album. We pretty much said, "Yes let's try and do music like that".

Soon after that, the Los Lobos Colossal Head album came out, Then later the Houndogs album and we just kept finding more and more to be influenced by.

So yeah, this show is an especially cool thing for us 😊

-Tom

Tickets to the show are available here - Greyhounds, Steve Berlin, David Hidalgo & Lorenzo's Music June 23 - Gamma Ray Bar

Talking about using Ubuntu Studio, Ardour and GitHub for music at the Ubuntu Summit in Prague

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 11:30:00 -0600

Lorenzo's Music talking at the Ubuntu Summit in Prague about being open-source, creative commons musicians

Lorenzo's Music doing a workshop at the Ubuntu Summit in Prague (📷 photo by Stanislav Milata)

We were asked to speak at the Ubuntu Summit in Prague. We've been a creative commons band for years.

Back in 2017 the band also switched to being a completely open-source band using only free and open-source tools to create all of our music, videos, and artwork.

Our main operating system of choice has been Ubuntu Studio.

Eric Eickmeyer who leads the Ubuntu Studio project suggested to the people running the Ubuntu Summit that they should ask us to come and talk about how we use Ubuntu, Ardour, and GitHub for music.

Tom Ray talking at the Ubuntu Summit about "Using Ubuntu Studio, Ardour, and GitHub for music collaboration"

Tom Ray of Lorenzo's Music talking at the Ubuntu Summit in Prague (📷 photo by Stanislav Milata)

On the first day of the Ubuntu Summit, I gave a talk about "Why Ubuntu Studio is good for music and artists" and how we came up with a method to use Ubuntu Studio, Ardour, and GitHub for music collaboration.

During the talk I covered:

The benefits of an open-source operating system for artists and musicians
Ubuntu Studio, Ardour, and GitHub for music collaboration remotely
How open-source software helps artists and musicians

I talked about our creative journey to Ubuntu Studio and open-source software. I also how Ubuntu Studio isn't just a Linux-based operating system but should be thought of more as a production suite.

You can check out my full talk from the Ubuntu Summit on the Ubuntu OnAir YouTube channel

Lorenzo's Music workshop: Our method for using Ubuntu Studio, Ardour, and GitHub to collaborate on music

Tom Ray, Eric Brusewitz, Rob Gugel, and Cliff Hammer of Lorenzo's Music doing a music workshop at the Ubuntu Summit (📷 Photo by Stanislav Milata)

On the second day of the Ubuntu Summit, the band did a workshop about the method we came up with to use Ubuntu Studio, Ardour, and GitHub to collaborate on music remotely.

During the workshop:

We showed examples from our songs in our GitHub repositories
How only using branches is the key to collaborating with music in Ardour on GitHub
How Ubuntu Studio's environment makes it all possible to work individually

From left: Paul Davis of Ardour, Cliff Hammer, Rob Gugel, Tom Ray, Eric Brusewitz, Tom's Wife taking a picture 📱🙂 and Erich Eickmeyer of Ubuntu Studio (📷 Photo by Stanislav Milata)

After the workshop was done we talked even more with Paul Davis the creator of Ardour (the DAW that we use) and Erich Eickmeyer of Ubuntu Studio about our process.

Which I got to say was pretty freaking awesome!

The whole thing was a fantastic and wonderful experience.

-Tom

You can see more behind-the-scenes stuff that happened and the band playing at the Ubuntu Summit here - OUR FIRST SHOW IN EUROPE - PERFORMING AT THE UBUNTU SUMMIT IN PRAGUE

We're going to Prague!

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Fri, 7 Oct 2022 01:35:00 -0500

We are going to play a show in Prague in November at the Ubuntu Summit

We have some news. We've been invited to play at the Ubuntu Summit in Prague in November!

(Check out how it went here: OUR FIRST SHOW IN EUROPE - PERFORMING AT THE UBUNTU SUMMIT IN PRAGUE)

How did this happen?

On a podcast, I talked with Erich Eickmeyer, the lead for the Ubuntu Studio operating system we use. It's a production suite that comes with open-source audio recording, video editing, and design software pre-installed.

I talked with Erich on the podcast because I wanted to meet the person that runs Ubuntu Studio just to geek out about what they do.

Well, last month Canonical, the company that runs all of the different versions of the Ubuntu operating system asked Erich if there were any musicians that use Ubuntu Studio that would be a good fit for the conference in November.

And Erich told them to contact us!

We're flying there to play the wrap party

They asked us to play at the wrap party for the Ubuntu Summit in Prague and we're pretty psyched about all of this!

I'll also be doing a talk

On top of that, I've been asked to do a talk about Ubuntu Studio for music. I'll be talking about how the band uses Ubuntu Studio, Ardour, and GitHub to collaborate on writing and recording music remotely.

One of our songs was used in a movie that just hit Amazon Prime Video

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Sat, 18 Jun 2022 00:19:00 -0500

Bad Match movie poster

We offer our music for licensing so people can use them for films and more.

A lot of the time we never even really get a chance to see the independent films it's used in.

Recently, I got an update that a movie called "Bad Match" was just released on Amazon Prime Video.

One of our songs was used as background music in a bar during a short scene about 30 minutes into the film.

It's one of those scenes where if you didn't know it was there you might not even catch it. But still pretty cool!

Lorenzo's Music interview on Tha Bloc Report Podcast

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Sat, 6 Mar 2021 15:00:00 -0600

https://blocsonic.com/bloccasts/episode/the-tom-ray-episode

Check out this interview I did on "Tha Bloc Report" podcast! It's a show run by the netlabel BlocSonic who put out our EP "Cool ships and heat exchangers".

The show is a mix of music from the BlocSonic library and interviews with bands from the label.

I talk with the host Pot-C in the middle of the podcast about what the band has been up to and about my personal projects that include how I've gone into business for myself and vlogging about it over on my website tomrayswebsite.com

You can subscribe to the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts!

-Tom

Divan Japonais Micro-Bar Promotional Commercial in Italy

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Tue, 1 Dec 2020 23:51:00 -0600

We were contacted by Federico Loreto from an Agency called Lab Photoagency who talked to us about using one of our tracks from our Rom-Comm Mixtape in a commercial they were putting together for a micro bar in Italy called Divan Japonias.

We told him we would love for them to use one of our songs.

When the commercial was finished they sent us a copy and to our surprise, the track they ended up using was actually one of the in-between soundscapes from the mixtape called "All have sax in an open night club doorway".

We thought that was kind of fantastic! Normally intros to our songs or the songs themselves are used but this is the first time that a soundscape we created was used in a video like this!

5 questions with Lorenzo’s Music Interview on Fischarper blog

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Mon, 6 Jul 2020 12:40:00 -0500

5 questions with Lorenzo’s Music Interview on Fischarper blog
https://www.fischarper.com/tom-ray/

5 Questions is an interview series by Barbara Fischer a harpist living in Southwest Florida. The interview series involves different people in the music industry and she reached out to us because to learn more about how we have recently made the decision to release albums using only open source technology.

Here is a section from the interview:
Q: What are your favorite open source tools for musicians?

A: As I just mentioned Ardour. It’s what we use to track our recordings it’s a fantastic DAW. Also, there is Gimp and Inkscape for creating designs and KDEnlive for editing videos. Also the mp3 tagging software Kid3 for adding ID3 tags to song files.

Via - 5 Questions with…Tom Ray of Lorenzo’s Music

In the interview we also talk about:

How & when did you start making music?
Would you tell us a little about Lorenzo's Music?
How did you get interested in open source software, and how has that affected your music?
What are your favorite open source tools for musicians?

Here is a link to the full interview
https://www.fischarper.com/tom-ray/

Super Toy Car 2 Game on Xbox Live Features Songs by Lorenzo's Music

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Sat, 2 May 2020 13:44:00 -0500

Our songs have been featured in various apps and mobile games in the past, but I think this might be the first time our music has been licensed for an Xbox game.

It's called Super Toy Cars 2 which was released on Xbox One and steam. It's an arcade-style racing game where you control miniature cars that speed through tracks made of supersized everyday objects.

Check it out!
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/super-toy-cars-2

Lorenzo's Music Interview on Linux Rig

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Thu, 21 Mar 2019 17:08:00 -0500

After our article in Forbes about being an open source band, we've been getting a lot of love from the open source and Linux community. Which is awesome!

I was contacted by Linux Rig to talk about the Linux set up we use and also about how we started using open source software to create and record.

I used to use a bunch of proprietary software for artwork and I heard about this operating system that had all of this open source software built into it and I was curious. So I tried it out.
- Lorenzo's Music on linuxrig.com

Thanks Steven Ovadia for taking the time to contact me!

- Tom

Here is a link to the full interview - https://linuxrig.com/2019/03/20/the-linux-setup-tom-ray-lorenzos-music

Lorenzo's Music In The Game Miami Crime Simulator 2

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 22:41:00 -0500

I heard that one of our songs is in the game Miami Crime Simulator 2. So I thought I would try going from car to car in the game and find the station that was playing our music.

Lorenzo's Music in Forbes, Using Open Source Software For Music

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 12:28:00 -0500

Lorenzo's Music is featured in Forbes to talk about how we decided to use open source software to create and produce our release of ROM-COMM MIXTAPE. Read the in-depth interview online now.

Here is a small part of the interview about how the whole experiment using open source software got started.

Jason Evangelho: Why open source software? What led you down that path?

Tom Ray: We've been a creative commons band for years. Anyone can use our music for videos, movies, apps and re-sample and build upon it for whatever they wanted as long as they gave us credit or attribution. So we believe in the concept of open source culture. It just made sense to create with things that have the same principles.

The thought was this: musicians spend a lot of time and money on gear and instruments already and we wanted to know what could be done with open source tools as an option.

It's just really cool to know that there is a community of people out there making software for musicians and artists that fall under the same ideology of sharing and availability for everyone. And it's possible to do it!

Read the whole interview on Forbes.

Tom Ray talks about Lorenzo's Music and other projects in The Cap Times

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Sat, 25 Aug 2018 13:46:00 -0500

Enhanced article photo by Tom

"He is also the creator of “American Bandito,” in which Ray enthusiastically talks to local artists about their work. And he's one of the founders of Madison’s long-time rock band Lorenzo’s Music, which just released a new project, “The Rom-Comm Mixtape,” over the weekend."

Read the full Cap Times Article - Q&A: Whether it's a podcast or a comic about his wife's cancer, Tom Ray jumps right in

Apple Removes Lorenzo's Music Mixtape From Store Because Of Descriptive Titles

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Fri, 24 Aug 2018 10:41:00 -0500

I was told recently that the link to our ROM-COMM MIXTAPE in both iTunes and Apple Music store shows this message:

"Item Not Available The item you've requested is not currently available in Apple Music in the United States."

When I emailed about it, I was told that Apple:

"has more rigorous rules and it would be necessary [to] remove the information of the musical instruments in the name of the tracks so that your album can be distributed to this store."

Apparently, Apple frowns upon creative expression and can tell you how you should title the music you create. Who knew? Certainly not us since they never even sent us a notice explaining they took it down.

So we are resubmitting the mixtape and it should be available again soon, with the abridged titles.

Update: Apple has accepted the abridged titles and the mixtape is back in their store. On a side note, every other music outlet allowed the way we chose to title our songs. I'm just sayin'. -Tom

Picture it all - animated version

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Sat, 16 Apr 2016 22:09:00 -0500

An animation student from Korea made a music video of us for a school project.

Watch the video on YouTube - https://youtu.be/GoUBE653OGs

A few months back we were contacted by a student from the Korea Animation High School.

In the email, it said they were inspired by our song "Hot Water Avalanche" from the album Solamente Tres Palabras and asked if they could make an animated video of our song "Picture it all".

They told us they were going to make the video as a project for school using a rotoscoping technique where animators trace over live footage, frame by frame, for animated films.

They asked us if this was ok? Since our music is licensed under Creative Commons I told them they didn't even need to ask and it sounded pretty cool. Said to them that would be great!

I said to let us know when they finished because we would love to see it.

Months passed and I had kind of forgotten all about it.

Then I woke up one morning and there was an email from a name I sort of recognized. It was the student in Korea.

They had finished the project and sent us a link.

It was amazing! We were so floored by this we wanted to share it with you.

A Playboy Magazine Photo Shoot

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Sun, 7 Feb 2016 17:01:00 -0600

Our song "Oh, Oh, Oh" from the album BAZAR was recently used in this photo shoot video of Playmate Júlia Cruz, for an issue of Playboy Magazine Portugal.

Matthias Schoenaerts Photo Shoot Video

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 00:04:00 -0500

This video shows Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts at a photo shoot in Cannes, while our song "I'm not a fool" plays in the background.

Picture It All Featured in Chris Haslam Transworld Skateboarding Video

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 21:48:00 -0600

A mad crazy video on Transworld Skateboarding with Chris Haslam was posted that uses the instrumental version of our song "Picture It All"

You can download the song here: Picture It All - Download

Via: https://skateboarding.transworld.net

Modern Family Themed Elle Photo Shoot

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:00:00 -0600

'MODERN FAMILY' by ELLE January issue 2013 from Daniel Jon on Vimeo.

A behind the scenes video of a Modern Family themed photo shoot for Elle Magazine.
Our song "Roulette" plays in the background while filming families that are much cooler than our own.

The new Bad Brains album art is our artwork!?

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Ray) — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 22:39:00 -0600

*Updated - 2/08/13*
Actually talked on the phone with Shepard Fairey who did the artwork for the Bad Brains album. We found out after also talking with the designer that did the album art for our earlier EP and Shepard they did both use the same public domain source material for the artwork from a 1933 World's Fair poster and that it was not just from our earlier EP artwork.

I love Bad Brains, I have since I was a kid. I was excited to hear about the new album. I just noticed a weird thing about album cover for it.

It is LITERALLY an upside-down version of the album art for our first EP.

Our EP art

Their album art

I mean it is seriously the same right?!

Now I'm not upset by no means about this, our art and music are all released under CC-BY-SA license which means you can build from and reuse what we make. Although, that does mean that whatever you use needs to be under the same license and attribute to us, the original creators, unless we work out an agreement for other options.

I guess my question is: where did they get the idea for this album artwork? Was it us? I would like to know.

The teenage version of me is super excited by this discovery. Present day version of me is curious and think it would be cool to hear from them about it.

You can get their new album "Into The Future" on their website.

And you can get OUR album with the same artwork here.

P.S. Just a disclaimer - The music for both albums are quite different.