It had to happen…

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After 4 years of not releasing any new country music, I finally went out and got some software help from “Band in a Box”. BiaB is a super useful and horribly designed piece of software. You really cannot understand the depths of how terrible it is until you work with it.

Band in a Box interface awfulness

Yes. Those are icons of floppy disks. Many of you have never seen a floppy disk. The last time a Mac had a drive like that was 15 years ago.
So the “Save” floppy has a useful tooltip… “Save Song, [F2 or cmd-S].” F2!?? ARGH!!!

The “Bass, Piano, Drums…” part is awful. You double click on the radio buttons to get a drop down menu.

So, putting aside the stupid, ugly, and completely non-customizable interface… we’re left with baffling buttons.

“F” That means “Folder”
“Song” Brings up a non-standard dialog of things in the “F” folder that you selected. ok…? hmm…
“M” and “S”! YES! These are standard buttons in DAWs. Mute and Solo!
Except that they are not Mute and Solo.
“M” is for “Song Memo” – a window that shows a bit of text including Key, Tempo, and Length.
“S” is for “Additional Song Settings”.

Okay, okay… I’ll be here all day if I keep this up. Anyway – designers, PLEASE help out the Band in a Box people.
But I wanted country… so I had to work with this craptastic interface. I hope you all appreciate!!

Back to country music…

Bam! River Valley Breakdown!
Six minutes of non-attention grabbing bluegrass music!

Get it here!

APRA and the money.

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APRA
APRA (Australian music rights association) contacted me yesterday. They have money for me because a TV station aired a program that had my music in it. $460AUD.

The producers of the show correctly licensed the music from me, and no one had to pay for the use… but the TV stations have an agreement – they pay a yearly fee, and that gets divided up among the music rights holders and disbursed through APRA.

I asked if they could give the money back to the station. They said ‘no’. So, now I’m trying to get the money to give back to the station that didn’t need to pay it in the first place.

Here is exactly how simple that is:
1) Sign up for APRA*
2) Collect money
3) Send money to TV station

*Signing up for APRA is a problem. It isn’t difficult, but it is a problem. When you sign with a rights collecting agency like this, they get to do things for you. Things that I don’t want done. For example, as a “benefit” they get to demand money for the use of my music. Wherever they think they can legally get the money, I’m sure they try. That is their job.

Lucky for me, I can “opt out” of a variety (possibly all) of their collection efforts.
– public performance
– broadcasting
– streaming
– live performance
– film
– background music
– radio
– tv

In order to keep the CC license, I would need to opt-out of everything… including the things where they are already collecting money!

Now it looks like this:
1) Sign up for APRA
2) Opt out of everything**
3) Collect money
4) Send money to TV station

**Opting out requires 3 months’ prior written notice – to be effected on July 1 or January 1. The July deadline is gone. So I could sign up in September, immediately give the 3 months’ notice, and be all good by January!
From what I can tell, this would give APRA three months’ worth of free reign to go after people for money – which is exactly what I do not want. Also, this process can cost about $200AUD.

So now…
1) Sign up for APRA
2) Pay APRA $200 to…
3) Opt out of everything
4) Hope that APRA doesn’t screw with people in the meanwhile***
5) Collect remaining money
6) Send remaining money to TV station

***We have now run into the territory of “really unacceptable” and “potentially asinine”.

Option, The First
Do nothing. Leave the money with people who collected it on my behalf without my permission. This money will go back into the pool of random money and be given to other composers for no apparent reason.

Option, The Second
Try to actually get the money and give it back to the people who didn’t need to pay it in the first place, while possibly screwing up licensing for everyone else.

I seriously dislike this portion of my world.

Exhilarate

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This piece accomplishes two goals; 1) I finally got around to getting out another rock piece. 2) I learned how to spell “Exhilarate” (no ‘e’ anywhere in the middle).

Synth is Monark.
Bass is NI Rickenbacker.
Kit is NI Modern Drummer.

Exhilarate

Shareheads

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So there’s music, and there’s not music.

This is not music – but it IS Creative Commons: By Attribution art. And it is freaking cool.
Thanks to Dmitry for sending me the link.

Album art? Sure! Book cover? Why not! Stickers? Wallpaper? Anything that needs gussying-up… Cool stuff.
Also, they is high-res. Like 40 megapixels. I didn’t check them all, but they are really good to go for anything up to and including billboards.

Shareheads

Not Quite Strauss

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Is this a rip-off of Strauss? Absolutely!
Is it as good as Zarathustra? Absolutely not!

I originally wrote this piece for a planetarium in Spain (where Zarathustra is NOT yet in the Public Domain). Enough people from other countries had issues with Strauss – so I figured I would post this.

Fanfare for Space

Backseat Gaming

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Hello, hello, and welcome to the first video that I’m on called “Backseat Gaming”.
Sim City with 2 people, but only one player.

(background music not yet available for downloads… so – just enjoy the show!)

New work in the Public Domain

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Piece for Two Fingers.

Download it from Soundcloud. For free. and for Free.

—-

So what is this? It is something simple. A piece of music that you can play with two fingers. Any two fingers. (they do need to be on different arms).

This piece is dedicated to the Public Domain*. Please don’t be a jerk and try to sell this piece to people, or stop other people from using this piece by claiming it is your own. It is not yours. It is everyone’s.

This is actually a pretty versatile piece for scoring. Someone quietly thinking? Bam! Lay this in! Serious discussion about interpersonal relationships? Bam! Winner! Someone lose a puppy? I got your score right here!

*SoundCloud does not have a Public Domain licensing option… I chose the closest one there is.

Made with Native Instruments’ “The Giant” upright piano.