I logged into my GarageBand.com account on Tuesday for the first time in years. GarageBand.com is one of the oldest sites dedicated to independent music. It was around before things like embeddable media players and MySpace became so ubiquitous. I started using the site in 2002, mostly because I enjoyed writing song reviews. In 2004, when my last band recorded some songs, I posted one to GarageBand.com. It was met by a lackluster response, which was no surprise. The majority of the reviews submitted to GarageBand.com are done by artists who are trying to rack up enough karma in the GarageBand.com engine so that they can post their own songs to the site. It’s in this way that GarageBand.com sets itself apart from other music hosting sites; If you want to post your own music, you’ve either got to pay a fee for each song or you’ve got to review a bunch of other peoples’ songs. Overall, it’s a pretty clever way to run this kind of site. And five (or more) years ago, it was easily the biggest site of its kind. Of course, newer sites like MySpace don’t have any prerequisites for uploading songs. And that leads me to wonder what the value of GarageBand.com really is in 2009? I was considering creating a GarageBand.com profile for The Sidebars, and I realized that, in order to get our songs on to the site, I’d have to write a bunch of reviews. And there’s nothing wrong with that except it takes time. Time I could be putting towards recording or doing other things. Back in 2004, there was more of a return on the investment of this kind of time, as having your music on GarageBand.com was essential if you wanted it to be heard online. That’s just not the case anymore. Sure, there’s something to be said for having the music available through as many outlets as possible. But it just seems like taking the time to make the song available to a website that’s frequented primarily by other musicians is just a waste of time. Maybe it’ll be something to consider down the road, when we’re done with recording. In the meantime, if anyone out there would like to work as our official intern and write some GarageBand.com reviews, please let me know.

Tags: GarageBand.com, music
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We’re in the process of recording the next song for our RPM Challenge album. If all goes well, we’ll have it out by month’s end. Of course, that’ll only give us three songs. That’s not enough to officially complete the challenge. And that’s OK. We’re going to keep recording after February’s over. All further songs will be posted on this site. Eventually the band will have its own website. But I’ve got a few other projects (not everything on the list, just a few things) that have to be finished before I can start on that.

To give a little more background information on the album, the working title is “Love & Friendship In The Time Of Spiders.” The underlying theme is that most of the songs are inspired by or based around people we only know through the Internet. “The Side Effects” was of course written several years ago. But I do feel like it fits well with this project. It is a love/acceptance song, after all (at least, it is to me). And Jen and I did meet through the old Yahoo! Personals (back when that service was still free of charge). “Hey, Wesley” was inspired by Wesley, the third song, the one we’re working on now, was inspired by a Facebook chat that Jen had with one of our podcast pals in Australia. And the fourth song I’m particularly excited about, as it’s actually a collaborative effort between us and Colin in the U.K. Beyond that, things are still up in the air. I’ve got a couple other songs I’ve just barely begun. But we’ll get there. We’ve got time.

Tags: music, Ourobouros, RPM Challenge, The Sidebars
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Due to a few different things going on right now, I’ve decided to write a bit about music and my relationship to it. This is the kind of thing that tends to give blogs a bad name. So if you decide to read on, consider yourself forewarned.

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Tags: life, music
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Here’s our second song for the RPM Challenge. Still not very likely we’ll make it to ten songs before the end of the month. But after posting this one, we’ll have done twice as many as we did in 2007. I suppose that’s a victory in itself. There’s also a third song in the works that may see the light of day before March 1st.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:42 — 3.1MB)

Tags: music, podcast, RPM Challenge, The Sidebars
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It only took 14 days. But here’s our first song for this year’s RPM Challenge. The simple fact is, I could’ve easily spent another two weeks just tweaking the mix. That being said, I’m proud of how it turned out, and I hope some of y’all out there will enjoy it. This is not the first-ever recording of this song. It was recorded once before by my old band. If you compare the two recordings, you’ll definitely notice some differences.

There’s a lot more I could write about this song. But I think it’s time to let it have some breathing room so I can get on to the next one.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 3:39 — 6.7MB)

Tags: music, podcast, RPM Challenge, The Sidebars
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One week of February is officially in the can. And that means one quarter of the time in this year’s RPM Challenge has passed. For those who don’t know, the goal of the RPM Challenge is to record a full album (either 10 songs or 35 minutes of music) during the month of February. I signed up my “band” for the challenge, and felt pretty good about things going in. I began working on recording the first song just after midnight on February 1st, and things went well for the next couple days. On Monday night (the 3rd), Jen and I recorded the vocals for that song, and it seemed like all was well. But later, when I started mixing the tracks, I just couldn’t get it to sound right. After spending way too much time (see: hours) trying to “fix it in the mix,” I finally gave up and realized that the vocals would have to be redone. That’s not a huge deal, but it was a disappointment. I debated on whether or not to release the song in its current incarnation. But that just doesn’t feel right. Since then, I’ve recorded most of the tracks for the second song. I’d like Jen to record some vocals for it before Id consider it to be finished. Beyond those two songs, I don’t have much. I’ve got a couple other songs I’ve started but haven’t been able to finish. For the sake of the Challenge, I could reach back and pull out some older, completed songs that I’ve never recorded before. But even with that, I won’t meet the minimum requirements of the Challenge. Regardless, this isn’t a declaration of surrender. More of a “declaration of being stuck.”

On a related note, it’s definitely been interesting to get back into the whole “music thing.” I had spent most of my life, from the time I was a teenager, up until when I moved to California, in the pursuit of a Life In Music. I didn’t necessarily have any plans on that changing after the move. But Real Life, being the cold bitch that she is, came in and put a serious smackdown on my Life In Music ideas. This last week (especially those obsessive hours spent on mixing), has dredged up a lot of emotions that I had clearly pushed very far down. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it was unexpected. I may write some more about these feelings over time. I suppose if I were a true artist, I’d turn ‘em all into songs.

I’ve also been posting updates to the blog (scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “blog” link) on the RPM Challenge site, if you’d like to read more about this last week’s worth of music creation efforts.

Tags: music, RPM Challenge
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