• a sense of your marketing plan (which I share)
• your current number of followers (which is growing) plus
• whether you can bring more new listeners/subscribers to their platform.

There are also independent curators of Spotify playlists who act as influencers – record labels, journalists, podcasters, music publishers, radio stations or simply music lovers – and they are actively engaged in the discovery of new music and sharing their finds with their followers.

My instrumental music has often been characterized as cinematic – music that could serve as soundtracks to movies, TV series and video games. To that end, I’ve been investing time in finding those influencers who enjoy discovering music that fills that niche, regardless of whether the music has been already placed within an existing movie, show or game.

To that end, I’d like to introduce you to The Hand Editions, a playlist curator and music publisher based in Italy focused on classical, electronica and instrumental music.  Their Spotify Cinematic DarkLight playlist includes such established notables as Hans Zimmer (multiple top ten movie soundtracks) and Carbon Based Lifeforms (a hugely popular Swedish electronic music duo) and I’m very pleased to have two music tracks Reverie and Discovery placed on their Darklight playlist.

Here’s the link to the Cinematic Darklight playlist, and a big THANK YOU to the Hand Editions.

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Plays: 25,000
Playlists: 69
Countries: 27
Top Countries:
Japan, Germany, USA, Australia, UK, Mexico, Brazil, Austria, Spain, Canada

Spotify

2020 had 13K listens. Since then I’ve added another 52K to bring me up to 75K streams.

Biggest gain came from my first pop song (a co-write) “Vegas In Your Eyes” working with LA-based producer and singer.

The nature of getting onto multiple playlists involves getting onto lists curated by influencers. I was able to place on a couple from Japan and Germany. Then other playlist owners piggybacked by adding Vegas to their playlists.

Listen Now

Labyrinth

Playlists with multiple artists, versus albums, has become the norm for listening to music. So rather than releasing this album all at once, the strategy was to get single track releases onto multiple playlists.

This approach delivered another 25K of streams.

Listen to the Album 

Key Band Success Factors

• Like one another
• Musicianship level is comparable
• All share the same level of commitment

And Now: RockShots!

Having spent the last two years stuck in front of my workstation, it was time to re-engage with live music.

I auditioned a couple of times as a bassist and was fortunate to connect with Rockshots, a rock cover band. We practice weekly and are now  playing live gigs.

Getting live gigs is all about demonstrating to bar owners that you have a following that may come out to eat and drink. Bar owners will look at the band’s Facebook page and look at the number of likes and follows when deciding who to book.

We would welcome your support if you could like and follow us on Facebook. Thank you in advance.

What’s For Dinner?

Given our expanded time with in-house dining,  here’s a curated list of positively flavored instrumental music featuring Darshan Ambient, Ulrich Schnaus, Tangerine Dream, Mike Oldfield and other talented composers. Enjoy!

Dinner Ambient PlayList

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Songwriting process

Typically in our songwriting sessions one of us would come with a melody, chords, a possible song title or a lyric idea.  That day Ray came forward with “Vegas in Your Eyes” and so we talked a bit about what it might mean.

We settled on the idea of someone talking to a close friend who was a dreamer – “You got Vegas, Vegas in Your Eyes”. So we started with that as the opening of the chorus, with Ray singing over the top of chords I was strumming.

The momentum of that pushed us line by line through to the end of the chorus. Then, it was “now what?” Well, we needed to set up the chorus with the first part of a story – a first verse, that would naturally lead into the chorus.

The song took the standard shape of a common pop song arrangement. Intro – verse – chorus – verse – chorus, with a bridge leading into a final chorus. We walked away from the session with a pretty complete song – lyrics, melodies, chords, song structure.

Pushing it over the finish line

Next steps proved more difficult.  A guitar-centric arrangement similar to what a pop-rock band would use didn’t feel right.  We tried several other genres and none seemed to fit. So the song got put on a shelf and we moved onto other ideas.

The song kept popping into my head over the years and so I made the decision to engage an established L.A. producer. He recommended a vocalist.  Shaley Scott sang not only the lead vocal but also the harmonies and ad-libs. Great Job!

Track is now available for streaming and purchase on all major music platforms!

Here’s the lyric

Vegas in Your Eyes

Long & lonely highway – as far as you can see.
And now you’re passing Jesus – (all) alone at thirty-three
Is it time to roll the dice – Ride the roulette wheel?

I see Vegas in Your Eyes
I see Vegas in Your Eyes
I feel your pain – You’re chasing a dream that you can’t hide
Let the slot machines go crazy – As you reach for the other side
I see Vegas, Vegas in Your Eyes.

Long forgotten innocence – with nothing left to lose
Searching hard for sunlight – In a way that’s true to you
Time to leave the dust behind – (and) living what is real

I see Vegas in Your Eyes
I see Vegas in Your Eyes
I feel your pain – You’re chasing a dream that you can’t hide
Let the slot machines go crazy – As you reach for the other side
I see Vegas, Vegas in Your Eyes.

Vegas, Vegas, Vegas in your eyes
I see Vegas, I see Vegas, I see Vegas Vegas………

I see Vegas in Your Eyes
I see Vegas in Your Eyes
I feel your pain – You’re chasing a dream that you can’t hide
Let the slot machines go crazy – As you reach for the other side
I see Vegas, Vegas in Your Eyes.
I see Vegas, Vegas in Your Eyes.

© 2020 b schmidt Ray McKenna
℗ 2020 blue i music publishing

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The seven instrumental tracks were released on a single by single basis over the last 12 months:

• Reflections – Looking back on what might have been
• DayDream – lying on the side of a hell looking at a blue sky
• 2020 Vision – at the time of recording, hoping for a return to normal
• Main Street – video sound track to an affectionate look at Toronto Canada
• Blossoms – ah Spring!
• Not 2 Not 1 – a conversation between different synthesizers
• Young Nun Walking – inspired by a photograph

Enjoy!

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As I looked at the picture, I wondered what her internal dialogue might be as she walked about in the outside world away from her convent. This led me to two melodies that are like a conversation:

• one melody line (a soprano) representing the woman’s aspirations
• a second melody (flute-like) reflecting “the world as it is”

and that the two melodies would weave together over the tempo of walking.

Choose your preferred link to listen to the track. Thank you!

Young Nun Walking is the final track from the album “Labyrinth”

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Creating

The ongoing challenge is to keep track of all the ideas that could be considered for new tracks for the next recording projects. So my process is this:

1. Within my music hard drive I create a folder for the upcoming month
2. I commit to spending at least one hour at start of day to come up with a musical something
3. I mix the idea down (usually a melody supported by chords, often a bass, sometimes a drum groove) and save it to an MP3 (320kps)
4. I’ll name the music file with date and a working title – YrMoDay Name (example: 210402 Hopeful) that is saved into that month’s folder

Review

At the end of the month I import all the recorded MP3’s into my Summary work file (the blog image above shows the current visual) and listen to each new file and rank them in terms of the quality of the idea.

Having had a bit of time between the date of creation and the time of review, I can be pretty severe in critiquing my own work.

Some ideas don’t get to stay in the Summary file, however I don’t delete them from my hard drive, because I feel I need to still honor the creative process. Generally speaking, I’m pretty good in minimizing the material objects in my life (furniture, clothes etc). When it comes to stuff I have created, I’m an electronic packrat.

Rating the output

The most promising musical ideas are sorted by type – ambient, piano-based, strings/orchestral, uptempo, midtempo etc and whether they might fit into an album project. Then, within their genre, they are compared with previously reviewed ideas from past months and then ranked again, with the stronger ideas dragged to the beginning (left side) of the Summary project file.

Planning Work

Once I’ve got a group of ideas that I think hang together musically as an album project, I list them in a spreadsheet and weigh them in terms of:

• composition (the melodies, supporting chords and overall structure)
• arrangement (the choice of instruments)
• mix (the balance of all the instruments relative to one another)
• mastering (final production for public release)

Each category is assigned 25 points – whether the state of composition is 10/25 or 15/25 is subjective. A score of 25 means that area of work is complete, a song with a score of 100 is ready for public release.  Assigning numeric weights allows me to see what work is still required to push a track to the finish line.

Here’s what the current album project “Labyrinth” looks like:

Not 2 Not 1 was released on April 1st – here’s the page link to Spotify or AppleMusic

Blossoms will be out in two weeks, followed by Awake and Turning Corners. 

To be first to hear the new tracks as released, Follow me on Spotify

Thanks for reading!

b

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