For finding new music, I prefer analog search

We have iTunes. We have Pandora. We have Facebook. We have Last.fm and Spotify and MOG. So, where have I discovered most of my favorite bands?

I tried Pandora a few times. Awhile back, I tried creating a station based on two bands I love, Sevendust and Systematic. I started listening to it, and as one might expect the first couple songs were from Sevendust and Systematic. Then the station started throwing other bands at me. The first few of those sounded like weak knockoffs of Sevendust and Systematic. But then, the real fun kicked in. The station started playing me singer-songwriter material, including a number of songs recorded with only acoustic guitar and vocals. Not quite James Taylor, but bordering on that. This is in no way a criticism of singer-songwriters or acoustic guitar, but I'd venture to guess that most of us that are in the mood to hear Sevendust, Systematic and similar artists are not really interested in having our attention interrupted by a mellow ballad on acoustic guitar. I thought, hmmm, maybe I screwed up the station settings. No, when I dug around a bit, I noted that one of the characteristics that Pandora associates with Sevendust is acoustic guitar. To be fair, Sevendust, does use acoustic guitars and they do a ballad here and there. Still, their work always lands far away from singer-songwriter ballads and when I put together a Sevendust/Systematic station, I'm expecting Heavy!

Now, Last.fm does quite a bit better for me. If I look up one of my favorite bands on Last.fm and stream their associated station, I will often discover some bands that I haven't heard of that I like. Usually, the hit rate is 30-50%, where the remainder I don't like, regardless of whether I've heard of them or not. For me, it's a much more useful discovery tool than Pandora but Last.fm still falls well short of what I look for when I'm trying to discover artists that I like.

Given that the digital age hasn't quite given me the ideal tool for discovering new bands, how do I discover most of the bands that get added to my library? From people... A few years back, Steve Shumake ran a Live 365 radio station named VonGoober Radio. I discovered it at some point and was awestruck by how many of the songs were a) new to me and b) exactly the kind of music I love. I discovered dozens of bands every time I listened to the station. It led to a great period of musical discovery for me, broadening my listening to include bands from Finland, Sweden, Germany and throughout the world. My own music library grew rapidly during that period and the newly discovered bands had a big influence on my musical arrangements and songwriting. So for me, a single human music mentor is orders of magnitude more effective at expanding my musical knowledge than the sum total of all the digital services out there. The key is that Steve likes similar music and has a big appetite. When he discovers new music, he makes it known to the rest of us, and I know from past experience that if Steve likes it, it's very likely that I will like it as well. Steve eventually decided to shut down the radio station but he still maintains a VonGoober Last.fm group if you'd like to explore his taste in music.

Looking back at digital tools, I do find Wikipedia to be a powerful tool for discovering new music. Whenever I notice myself asking the question, "What ever happened to that band...?", I look them up in Wikipedia and find out. That often leads me to discover they split up and started new bands, or renamed themselves or just reunited and are due to release a new album. Still, this isn't really at the heart of what I imagined would be possible on the web. In a general sense, the innately "analog" learning channel, human advice, is still much more accurate and reliable for me than any of the recommendation/rating services online. Perhaps someday that will change, but for now... Thanks Steve!

Where do you discover most of your music?

So far, the promise of digital music falls short

It's my fault... Well, OK, not my fault alone, but really the outcome of my efforts combined with many like me. I've made a career as a software engineer, a career that began at Digidesign (now Avid) right around the dawn of the digital music era. It was an amazing experience, being surrounded by so many bright, motivated software people, nearly all of whom were also experienced musicians. Just about every office in the building had at least one musical instrument, a mixing board, an amp and other musical odds and ends. We all shared this grand vision of how digital recording was going to completely change the world, placing the real power in the hands of individual musicians and not the record industry. We musicians would no longer be at the mercy of talent scouts and no longer forced to pay $100 an hour to track our music onto fancy 2" tape decks.

And, in many ways, that's exactly what happened. The record industry has struggled in the last decade and, similarly, recording studios are having a tough time figuring out how to stay in business. But, musicians did not benefit to the extent we all envisioned. Instead, companies like Apple, Google and Comcast stepped in and leveraged the weakness in the entertainment industry. They've reaped huge rewards, while the playing field is still steeply tilted against the individual musician.

What went wrong? First of all, digital media reinforced a trend in consumers' perception of intellectual property value that had already begun with LPs and tape. The average consumer believes that the right price for an album is between $10 and $15. But, it's gone beyond that with streaming and other forms of digital distribution. Many consumers believe that because they can obtain music for free, that music should be free. Unfortunately, that attitude tips the scales toward big businesses, who sell in large quantity. If you sell millions of copies of something, you are better equipped to lose a fraction of those shares to unpaid downloads. In contrast, the typical indie musician may sell 10s or 100s of copies of their album. If your fans don't pay you for all of those copies, you lose money on the release (you may lose money anyway, but you lose less if every copy is paid for).

Secondly, most of the online streaming and distribution services make it very difficult to stand out. For the Scattershock and Danger, Ltd. releases, I spent a lot of time making sure we had product available on iTunes, CDBaby and Bandcamp. I also went through the social networking services (Facebook, Myspace, etc.) and the music services (Last.fm, MOG, Spotify, Pandora, etc.) trying to make sure we have complete profiles and are well-represented on each service. I will discuss my specific experiences with some of these services in future postings, however, overall I found the digital music world to be just as restrictive to our indie releases as the old brick and mortar record industry. As a non-touring act, with a very small initial following, the services tended to push us into the "Who Cares?" category. We have minimal ratings, so we rank low in searches. On some services we don't have enough "something" to qualify for their flavor of "bands we sound like". In essence, the new digital distribution model still makes it easiest for major releases to get attention.

Generally speaking, I'm an optimist. I still believe that it's possible for the digital revolution to benefit the small indie artists. Much like a political revolution, however, the digital revolution has been co-opted by a new generation of big companies. For the revolution to eventually benefit indie artists, the consumer and the Internet will need further evolution and refinement. I am hopeful that eventually things will improve but, so far, the promise of digital music has fallen short.

Shaken, Stirred & Almost Settled: My New Life In Bozeman, MT

I love Bozeman. My wife, Nancy, and I decide 3 years ago to pick up our lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and move our family to Bozeman. We had tired of 13 mile commutes that took 45 minutes. We'd run out of patience with planning kids play dates months in advance. We wanted to be closer to the mountains, for the sake of skiing, hiking, backpacking and Nancy's photography. We were convinced even before we made the move that Bozeman would be an overall improvement for the family and that the kids and Nancy would make the most of our new home. I knew that one side of my life would be better, but...

By leaving the Bay Area, I was walking away from a songwriting partnership (with Steve Rosenthal) that had spanned decades. I was leaving all of the musicians I'd grown up with, the clubs, the music stores, my recording studio...everything musical I'd built up over the years in the Bay Area. To be totally transparent, I'd done some interesting recording projects in the last decade, but my songwriting partnership hadn't generate new material since the 1990s, and didn't show signs of picking up pace anytime soon. Those factors combined to make me hope that Bozeman would somehow be the change that I needed and would lead to a new chapter in my musical explorations.

Very soon after our arrival in Bozeman, I got some indications that my hopes would play out. While planning the relocation of my Redwood City studio to Bozeman, I met Billy Costigan of Poindexter's. Billy had attended P.I.T. (The Percussion Institute of Technology) in Hollywood only a couple years after I had gone to G.I.T. (Guitar...). My conversations with Billy over the first year or so in Bozeman led to the vision for The Music Tech Center, so in essence, Bozeman had spawned a new musical chapter.

And yet, the thing I want the most, to be writing, arranging and performing original music, well, it just hasn't happened yet. I live for heavy, melodic music and there really isn't much of that in Bozeman. Lots of country, bluegrass, Americana, even blues and jazz. But, thus far I'm aware of 3 or 4 heavy bands. My high school (Berkeley High, population roughly 3000) had more actively gigging metal bands than Bozeman does (city population around 30,000, county population around 100,000). Suffice it to say, heavy music isn't particularly big here.

So, I'm now left to wonder what really comes next. Do I somehow transform myself into an avid bluegrass guitarist? Do I admit the obvious, that I was somehow meant to be born in Finland and relocate to a country whose language I have no clue how to speak? Do I finally decide that the music "hobby" is over, sell all the gear and learn to play golf?

Some of those ideas are crazier than others but I don't think any of them really nail the solution. I am what I am. Heavy, melodic music is in my blood and has been ever since my first concert (KISS, the Oakland Coliseum, age 13). But I've also learned recently (while attending the only all-metal concert I've been to in Bozeman) that I can't turn back the clock. I'm not in my mid-twenties anymore and I can't pretend that I am. Whatever comes next for me musically has to begin where I am today. It has to reflect some unique combination of my years of classical guitar lessons, followed by jazz lessons, followed by the great realization that what I really loved was heavy, melodic rock. It has to reflect the fact that I'm now a happy and proud father of two great kids and that my wife and I have known each other for 24 years and been married for 19. The next chapter has to benefit from my ability to focus, and to complete projects that I start. In a perfect world, though, what comes next will involve other musicians, not just me.

Maybe the Bozeman band I'm looking for, the one that's ready to crank out a masterpiece if only they could find the right guitarist, maybe they're just around the next bend. Maybe the MTC gets the last infusion of funding it needs and takes off, surrounding me with inspired, creative people, day in/day out. Or maybe, it's all on my shoulders. Maybe I just need to start writing songs again and, when the time comes, put a budget together and pay to have the right players on the session. Maybe I just need to learn how to channel my musical drive directly and much more efficiently, and then use my inherent stubbornness and determination to create a finished work, or two, or three.

How have you found success where it appeared there was only failure?

Where Are All The Women In Metal?

Women have been liberating themselves for the last 50 years or so. My doctor, my veterinarian, my CPA...all women. As a software engineer I've spent years in the industry working side by side with incredibly bright, creative and self-assured software engineers that just happen to be women. I've played softball alongside women, I've skied with women and I fully believe that women are every bit as capable as men.

But, there just aren't that many women in heavy music. To be fair, there are certainly some women in heavy music: Otep Shamaya, Tarja Turunen, Anette Olzon, Tanja Lainio, ... OK, so I didn't have that much trouble generating those names and that's the tip of the iceberg. But still, it's odd. Each of those women fronts an otherwise all-male band. Even Joan Jett and Lita Ford, integral members of the all-female band, The Runaways, have spent the bulk of their successful years in music with male bands backing them. Sure, in addition to the Runaways, there's Girlschool, The Donnas and Kittie but for every example like that, there are 100s of all-male bands.

Why is it that my son is already showing an interest in electric guitar, while my daughter is focused on singing? They both like heavy music but, somehow, the innate desire to be an instrumentalist in a rock band (a desire I've felt for most of my life) shows up in my son and not my daughter? Perhaps it's simply a vicious cycle. There are very few female role models playing instruments in heavy bands. And, the more I think about it, the more I think that's true across much of contemporary music. It's not hard to find female lead singers, or backup singers in many mainstream styles but the list of female, well-known, accomplished instrumentalists is awfully short. Yeah, I can think of a few off the top of my head: Lita Ford, Nancy Wilson, and Lzzy Hale. But it's not a lot. You don't often see women on the cover of Guitar Player or Modern Drummer and that's strange.

Go to see a symphony and often there are more women in the string section than men. In medical fields (human and animal) women are shooing up more often than men. But go to a massive summer metal festival and you won't see many women on stage.

Maybe we're still fighting the perception that women are there as decoration, for visual stimulation. Certainly that would explain why women do show up as front people for bands in much greater proportion than as instrumentalists. That bugs me, because there are so many other traditionally male jobs where women are competing (or even out-competing) with men. Many of those are highly unglamorous and yet women are still drawn to those jobs. When I was apprenticing at KGLT, I scheduled myself with Cara, a DJ for decades who plays heavier music than I do. She can out-swear and out-tough me any day. But she doesn't play an instrument; she isn't in a band.

My wife, Nancy, theorized that perhaps boys are encouraged more to be instrumentalists than women. Except, how many of us heavy guitarists were actually encouraged to follow careers in music? I wasn't. Most of my musician friends weren't. Yeah, my parents weren't negative about my music interests; they let my bands rehearse at our house, they came to gigs, they supported me but I was never given the impression that becoming a professional musician was a good life choice... So, it's hard to imagine that there's a big disparity in parental support between boys and girls when it comes to playing in rock bands.

Honestly, I'm not completely sure why so few women choose to play guitar, bass or drums. We know from classical music that they are just as capable of virtuosity as men are. From many other fields, like medicine, law, business, politics, etc. we know that women can go toe-to-toe with men. Maybe it's only a matter of time. Nearly every contemporary musical style was pioneered by men. Perhaps what it'll take is a new genre, led primarily by women, where they define the rules, the style, the personas. One way or another, though, I hope that when my daughter hits her teens that she can find comfort in music, the same way I did. I can't imagine how I could have gotten through junior high without music as a refuge and I hope that option is equally available to the unconventional, non-conformist, dreamers out there, like me, that just happen to have two XX chromosomes. For me, life would suck without guitar and I wouldn't subject anyone, regardless of gender, to a life without the escape and the reward of musical immersion.

What are your thoughts?

Heavy

Why Heavy?

Because some of us need to fight fire with fire. When we get angry or excited or frustrated, mellow, so-called calming music just exaggerates the emotion. No, it is better to meet the anger head-on with music that can rise to the challenge and go beyond. That's why Heavy.

What is Heavy?

It is music that embraces extreme emotions. It is not subtle, it is in your face. It is at home in horror movies, sports wrap-up shows, big budget action flicks and sports arenas. It is often technically challenging, whether through melodic gymnastics or up-tempo precision chugging. It hits you like a ton of lead and you love every minute of it.