Holiday Music Update

OK, so it's the 14th of December and I don't have anything ready for release this year. And I don't think I will have anything in time. Is that OK? Last year by this date I had "You Know It's Christmas Time" out even though it was later than ideal. This year I started working on a version of "Jingle Bells" which is going to sound different from any version you've ever heard. But I don't think I will get it done in a timely manner. Since vocals always give me trouble and take the most time to do, I am considering doing both a vocal version and an instrumental. Then either I will officially release one or the other or both depending on how good they come out. If I cannot get a good vocal version I will focus on an instrumental version which will feature all the same backing music. Either way it's going to be an organ driven song. It's just a matter of being able to sing 2 choruses and a verse in a falsetto. There's nothing I could release quickly enough that would sound good enough by Christmas. Even just doing the instrumental version of "Jingle Bells" would require quite an amount of planning and playing. So it doesn't look like it will happen this year. But it's not like this didn't happen before. I didn't release anything for Christmas in 2017 either. When I say "release" I mean through an official avenue. That mostly means CD Baby since my last 3 releases have been through them. I don't count anything less than that as a serious release anymore. The good news is that--and you have probably seen me write this in a number of previous years--I am in the Christmas spirit and am quite focused on making 2021 the year I release not only one Christmas album but two. I don't know if that's a good idea though because mostly likely I will not have anything new to release in 2022. Yes, big plans, I know, but you have to think ahead. So perhaps I won't release 2 next year, but the question remains whether I will release an all original album and an album of covers or combine covers and originals for 2 separate albums in 2 years. Frankly, I think it's a waste to put out an entire album of original holiday songs. I suspect a good mix of originals and covers is the wise thing to do for each. That way I will have brand new songs for 2 years in a row. I guess I figured out what I will do. See how it's good to write down your thoughts? At least now I know for sure what to do and I can start picking out the traditional songs I can do my own versions of. An album of 10-12 songs will suffice, with no more than 5-6 (half) being originals. Maybe less? It just feels wasteful to put that many new songs on a new holiday album when they could all potentially serve as individual releases in the coming years. If I were making it a goal to release yearly holiday albums exclusively--because if I did choose that I would not have time for non-holiday albums--I wouldn't mind putting that many new songs on a new album considering I'd be repeating that on a yearly basis. But it's not my goal My real goal is to have a solid holiday album releaesd by October of 2021, November at the latest. If I can accomplish that I may not worry about a second release in 2022. Who knows? No sense in looking too far ahead. So allow me to just focus on what I've got planned for 2021. Of course that is all contingent upon nothing crazy happening in 2021. As long as my BR-1600 continues to function properly--which by the way I am very glad to say it has been--I can record my music. The only thing is that I have to do a bulk of the recording from now until April or May or whenever it starts getting too warm and October at which point I should be at the brink of finishing up and releasing. I will have to work fast and efficiently. Oh, if my vocals should not cooperate than I may have to resort to releasing an album of instrumentals. Or a mix of instrumentals and vocals. I'd be OK with either scenario.

Holiday Music Plans For 2020

 It's the holiday season and in terms of having new holiday music ready for this time, I have learned my lesson. Well, not really. Neither is it officially the holiday season--though to me it is because it really starts to feel like it even before Thanksgiving--nor have I learned my lesson in terms of releasing new holiday music. Can I just add that the holiday season to me starts with Halloween? There's no denying that Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas & New Year's are all very much related with some fascinating parallels in the subject matter of endings and new beginnings. The last quarter of the year really is my favorite time. 

Anyway, I am working on new holiday music. Considering my history of timing I'd say I'm pretty early. But I cannot guarantee I'll have anything new. I will try, however. The good thing is that I have plenty of time to keep 'promoting' last year's tune, "You Know It's Christmas Time." That was another late release--December 11 to be precise. Traditionally, holiday albums are released in October though I don't know who buys them that early. I have to admit that I'm not quite in a Christmassy mood pre-Halloween. And nobody plays it that early either. ChristmasSongsRadio.com started playing holiday music before Thanksgiving this year and I'm grateful to hear the wonderful, diverse variety you can find there which includes my very own songs.

I have no problem with recording and releasing an electronic tune. "You Know It's Christmas Time" was virtually such a recording with the exception being a real guitar track and my vocal. While I was able to get the music tracks down rather quickly, it was the vocal that held the release up. But one thing I didn't know was that as a result of releasing that song through CD Baby as a "Pro Single," I was granted a free membership into ASCAP. That was cool. 

Another song I have nearly ready for release is "Christmas In The City (reprise)". The problem is I don't have the non-reprise version of the song anywhere near completely written! The reprise version is a 6-minute track featuring a repeating 4-part harmony of "Christmas in the city, lookin' so pretty" trading off with instrumental solos. It was just meant to be a fun, 70s funk inspired song. But I need the main song it's based off with a lot more lyrics than that. Have you ever heard of a reprise being released without the song it was based on?

So that's something I can work on. I also wanted to do a minor key version of "Jingle Bells." That may be something I could do quick if my vocals don't fail me too much. But I'd prefer doing something original. 

As I write this I have a working demo song titled "A Winter's Day" playing in the background. I like its mellow sound and feel but I've been stuck on writing for a few years. And it's another 4 part harmony song so it surely would take me quite some time to finish up a recording.

So there's lots to do. I will be seriously thrilled if I can just have a new recording released in time for Christmas. It's just about 4 weeks away so there really is no time to waste. Wish me luck.

FROM THE ARCHIVES - Spooky Jam

 As promised, my next blog post would be about the "Spooky" jam recording I made many years ago. Here it is on YouTube:

Just like the previous post's recording, I don't have an exact recording date for this but I can certify that it's sometime from 1996-1999 because during that time I was still using an analog 4-track machine. Sometime around 1999-2001 is when I acquired my first digital recorder which was a Boss BR-8 and recorded on Zip disks. Remember those? Anyway, it may be closer to 2001 as that is that date of the recording of my very own first original song, "Autumn." 

But as it is, "Spooky Jam" was a tape recording. I said before that this Tascam 4 track machine had absolutely no built-in effects. The sound came out dry unless you added effects to your input signal. So the reverb you may hear on this recording was my experimentation of playing the song on the Tascam into the input of the Boss BR-8. That way I was able to add reverb and, unintentionally, some compression as well. 

This recording was a much slower version of the previous "Spooky" and the instrumentation was sparse. There's an electric guitar doing various things, a bass, a harmonica here and there and my homemade drums. I still am not sure whether it's my guitar doing the bass or if it was a real bass, though I am leaning towards an actual bass. If it is a bass that would date that song at December 1998 and beyond. Again, knowing the recording date would solve the mystery.

There's only one guitar track which plays rhythm first and then some solo parts. The drum part is actually double-tracked past the mid-point of the song--one track on the left and one on the right. I really loved experimenting with panning the sounds. At first I was playing the drums like bongos and then changed to playing with sticks which at that time were just some Sharpie-type markers which no longer served as writing utensils.

I wasn't really good at improvising with guitar playing at that time. Otherwise there wouldn't have been so much dead air time on the guitar track. And the harmonica? Yeah, I couldn't play that either. The bass was a repetitive line so the drums were probably at the forefront of this recording. I should add that during the time of these early archive recordings of mine, I didn't have a metronome. So there are lots of out-of-sync sounds at any given moment. That's also why the recording fades in at the beginning and fades out at the end. I tried to preserve the best portion of the impromptu jam.

That's about it for the history on this recording. I think it sounds better with the reverb. I always felt there was something missing on my recordings even after acquiring the capability to record on 4 tracks. I used to think once I had a real piano sound that would take care of it. But it wasn't. It wasn't having real drums either. It was not having reverb and delay and compression. My music didn't come alive until I had access to the built-in effects of the Boss BR-8.

 

From The Archives - My "Spooky" With Vocal Cover

 Now that I have reestablished a presence on YouTube--who am I kidding? I have nowhere near the views on my videos that I had before. At the time I uploaded some of my cover videos in 2009 and the early 2010s, some of them were actual firsts. I had the first correct "Barney Miller" theme bass cover. The first bass cover for "Skin Tight" by The Ohio Players. I had a really innovative cover for Paul McCartney's "Heart of the Country" that came up first in Google searches. I had many others as well. All gone. And even though I have re-uploaded all those videos they have gone nowhere and are pretty much dead. Other YouTubers have taken my place in search engines with their covers of the same songs. So even though I may have a presence on YouTube once again you'll need a microscope to find my material.

Regardless, it's more important to me to have my videos up on YouTube than to have the views. At least with them being on that site they're "out there" even if virtually impossible to find. And of course there's always that element of 'you never know what's going to happen." It may be discovered some day.

But anyway, this post is going to be about one of the videos I recently uploaded there. One of my all-time favorite songs is "Spooky" by Dennis Yost & The Classics IV. Even before I had real musical instruments--not counting the Casio PT-10--I made a pretty bad version of the song multi-tracked with cheap mics onto even cheaper cassette tapes. Yes, it was my rubber band and coffee can days. Extremely lo-fi. And as bad as it was I still plan to upload it to YouTube someday and link to it here.

As time went on and my lot of gear improved over the years, I decided to redo "Spooky" and this time with a vocal even. Too bad for me I didn't keep logs of when I did my recordings so I only have my hazy memory to go by. One thing is for sure: I got my first electric guitar in 1996 which came about 4 years after my very first guitar, a Harmony folk-style acoustic guitar. It had a noticeably smaller body than a dreadnought. Looked kind of like a classical with steel strings. 

So the first electric guitar came in 1996 and it was an Epiphone Les Paul Special II purchased from Guitar Center. But I only purchased the guitar. What's an electric guitar without an amp, you say? Well, to me it was a lot. I had a 4 track Tascam analog tape machine at that time and I knew I could record directly into it sans an amp. To be perfectly honest I neither had nor wanted an amp at that time. A lot of that had to do with my own naivete in terms of what an amp could do for my sound, though. 

But I was able to get clean tones and distorted ones as well. It was just a matter of adjusting the volume on the guitar and the input volume on the Tascam. So I thought I had everything I needed. 

When I got my electric guitar I not only used it for guitar parts on my recordings but also for the bass parts. I would tune down the lowest 2 or 3 strings and it would sound sufficiently bassy. I'm not sure if that's what I did on my version of "Spooky" because I am not clear on the recording date. I didn't get my first electric bass until December 1998 so if this recording was made before then, I used my guitar for bass. Anyway, there are 3 guitar parts and the 1 bass part. The other instruments you hear are my drums (coffee & candy cans) and a tambourine and some seed pods.

To me the best part of the song is the electric guitar solo with delay. I learned the sax solo and played it on guitar. All these years later I still really like that solo. And I didn't use a pedal for that delay effect. I had to do it the way they did it in professional studios back in the day. I don't recall my exact method but the gist of it was to have a 2nd copy of the solo recorded a little quieter and lagging a small bit behind the first. Done with tape of course. I didn't sit there and play the solo a second time and record it. It was just the magic of tape.

Also, I recorded this song before the internet became a ubiquitous thing. So I couldn't go online and look up tabs for songs and get the right or close-to-right chords. I had to figure it all out myself. And I know some of those chords I played were indeed wrong because when I first did see the chords for this song they were very different from the simple ones I played. So those guys who were putting the chords and tabs out there on Harmony Central were truly pioneers and I learned a lot from them.

Finally, I decided to add a vocal to my recording. I know it's a bad one. Out of tune and pitchy. And in my natural speaking voice. It sucks. But I love the reverb on it! 

My Tascam recorder had no built-in effects. Absolutely nothing. Once I purchased my first guitar effects pedal, a Korg ToneWorks 411fx, I finally had effects! But I didn't know how to use the blasted thing because it came with no manual. You see, I bought the floor model which was the only one available at Guitar Center and those models never come with their boxes or manuals or anything else. But I am grateful to the young guy who sold that one to me. I don't know what he is doing nowadays but I hope he is happy and well. 

At this point I can't even tell you how I got the reverb on the vocal. Did I plug a microphone or something into the Korg ToneWorks and sing my heart away? Or was the reverb added to the dry vocal recording later? I'm not sure but the reverb was beautiful. I couldn't always tune in that reverb however. Not having the manual I couldn't always find it. I would mindlessly turn the rotary knobs until it appeared. I know it had other sounds and things but I only cared for the reverb. 

And that's the story of that recording. Funny thing is, I no longer have that guitar or that bass (if I used a bass, that is) or that effects pedal. I don't regret not having the 2 instruments but I sure wish I had that pedal still. I think I know a little more about using it now. And they're going for over $100 on eBay these days.

As recently as 2019 I took that recording without the bad vocal and did a new vocal. It came out better but not without its own unique flaws. Now that I know the correct chords to play I just may do a new version or 2 of it. I'd like to do a version as close to the original as possible and perhaps a rendition featuring my own unique take on it. It's a song I never tire of. In fact, my next post will be about sort of a "Spooky" jam recording I created around the same time. Stay tuned!

Songs I Have Learned to Play

You may be wondering what have I learned to play on the piano since getting the Yamaha Piaggero this past winter. At first I started with trying to play all the Christmas classics in the key of C. And while that may sound like a really simple thing, keep in mind that most people would not be able to pick out the melodies and chords by ear. I cannot do that myself perfectly but I know when something sounds right and when it sounds wrong, and when I've got it figured out I can play it decently.

I don't have all those tunes mastered yet--and by mastered I mean being able to play without error--mainly due to me not playing as often as I should/could. But in terms of a full, non-holiday song that I have learned to play completely, you'd probably never guess what it is so I'll just tell you: "It's Too Late" by Andy Williams. Yes, Andy Williams. You might question as to why I would learn to play Andy's version as opposed to Carole's or any other version out there. For one, Andy's version is very Marvin-Gaye-What's-Goin-On-ish. It's not the kind of sound you would expect from Andy. Marvin's classic was released in January 1971 while Andy's cover was recorded in the spring following. Clearly it was influenced by that smooth soul jazz type of sound achieved on that Marvin single. As an aside, this new musical direction for Marvin Gaye was refreshing and a nice break from all the love and heartbreak songs he did up to that point. Socially conscious music was slow to penetrate Motown but it started with The Temptations and continued on with the music of Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Rare Earth and Edwin Starr to name a few.

Back to my reasons for choosing Andy's version---frankly, I like Andy. He was one of those--if not the only one--classic era crooners who was able to focus not exclusively on Tin Pan Alley and jazz standards and rather build up his repertoire of music to include pop/soft rock hits of the day (unlike Tony Bennett who would become literally ill at the thought of having to croon "Sugar, Sugar"). And Andy did a great job of mixing the classics and the fresh to create his own sound. I'm happy to say that I have probably all of his albums from about 1962-1975, a period in which 2 albums per year was rather common.

Okay, so he didn't write his own songs. When you've got a voice like his you don't have to. Look at Elvis. Tom Jones. Ella Fitzgerald. The great voices were never expected to write songs. Probably not encouraged to. But if you had a voice more like Bob Dylan's, Neil Young's, Tom Waits', etc., you'd better write darn good songs!

But I've come to appreciate Andy Williams over the last several years. I think it was the Christmas TV specials that did it to me. However, it wasn't even just Andy. It's also been Perry Como, Tony Bennett & Frank Sinatra, someone I vowed never to listen to in my younger years. And it's not even so much how they thing but also the arrangements of their recorded music. I don't see how you can't not like that music. It's just so pleasant, soothing and perfectly crafted particularly considering their 1960s releases.

Anyway. "It's Too Late." Andy's version. I can play along with it now. Not perfectly of course but enough to show a significant improvement in my keyboard skills. And it's not even in the same key as Carole's original. I do add some elements of her version to this one. But it feels good to be able to play along with the recording from start to finish even if I do make mistakes.

I've also learned to play "Time of the Season" by The Zombies. It's definitely more simple than the other song, but interesting nonetheless. Still can't play it perfectly either but that's okay.

With the organ sound on the keyboard I have learned to play that organ riff on "Gimme Some Lovin'" by The Spencer Davis Group. That is really cool! Even though the rest of the song does not have a lot going on in terms of organ parts, knowing that alone is great fun. I can walk into any music store now and just play that riff and I'll instantly appear to be a keyboard wizard.

I also took it upon myself to learn the organ intro and basic song part to "A Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procol Harum. Another really fun thing to play that would raise eyebrows if played loud enough in a store.

Of course, learning to play these things makes me want to record my own versions of these songs. That's great if I were in a cover band or if I could make my own covers in a short amount of time. But these things can take on lives of their own and end up eating a lot of the time I should be using to make my own music. I have to remind myself that it's June now and I haven't recorded anything new this year and the time for releasing an album is growing short. So we'll see. I know I'm going to look back on these last 9 years or so and regret not having used it more wisely. In the meantime I'll just keep practicing and writing more. And recording soon, too! I want to have new material to send to "The Basement Tapes with Nick & Bootsy"! Thanks for reading, Bootsy!!

Yamaha Piaggero

Time for an update? Well, I'm glad to say that I've been honing my keyboard skills a bit since I acquired the Yamaha Piaggero not too long ago. This is a very nice keyboard with some pretty good sounds on it. The price is affordable, though I hate that term because who is anyone to determine what is affordable for anyone else? But it was affordable for me and when you include the accessories package--bench, stand, power cord, sustain pedal and piano book--it was a super great, unbeatable price.

I chose the 61 key version because I felt it would be sufficient for me to use and store in my already tiny and cramped room. The 76 key version would have been nicer but also would have taken a bit more room but not much more. Now that I think about it I probably should have gotten the 76 but really this one here suits me completely.

It has 2 sounds each for piano, electric piano, organ, harpsichord as well as string and vibraphone sounds. I mainly use the piano and organ tone banks. The electric piano sounds are not bad at all with one sounding much better than the other. This is true of the organ as well. I find myself always using only one of the 2 organ sounds and one of the 2 electric piano sounds. The acoustic piano choices feature a brighter and a darker sound. Both sound good enough for recording.

Speaking of recording, it has a built in feature for recording that you can play back while you play live on the keys. That is very useful. Also includes metronome sounds.

A feature that I accidentally came across (and then later read in the manual) is a reverse-sustain effect with the sustain pedal. Normally you plug in the sustain pedal and when you press it you get sustain. But I discovered that if you press the pedal while you turn on the power to the keyboard you get the opposite effect; you'll have sustain all the time except when you press the pedal!

I like having sustain all the time. Just sounds better to me. Of course, this doesn't sound good with the organ sounds. But with piano and electric piano it's great.

And one of the biggest selling points of this keyboard for me was the built-in speakers.  It is so nice to be able to play along without either using headphones or having to connect it to an amp or something.

My goals with getting this instrument was to play every day/night and significantly improve my keyboard skills and to use it to compose music. Using only a guitar to compose all your music is limiting in my opinion and leads to creating similar sounding songs or at best, repeated chord progressions. Using a keyboard opens up a new world in terms of composing.

So while I haven't played this instrument every day/night I have improved my skills already and have even learned to play a few songs albeit not without stumbling and making errors. But it feels good knowing how to play some songs and getting those fingers all independent-minded.

Here are photos of both the 61 key and 76 key versions:

We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties -- Please Stand By

I did forget to mention in my last post or so that another contributing factor to the delay in completing the new Christmas song, "You Know It's Christmas Time," was that my recording studio, the BR1600, was no functioning properly.

While recording this song I allowed my free space to get to zero because I kept recording parts over and over and not erasing them and not optimizing the song. Optimizing is a feature that permanently erases everything you recorded over. The erase function only temporarily removes stuff you don't want anymore but it's all still there and all you have to do is use the "undo" button to bring it all back. Optimizing is the only thing that frees up space permanently. So when I got to 0 recording time I was forced to erase and optimize. That freed up a lot of space but it was too late by then. The BR1600 was not working smoothly after that point anymore. It would just stop recording while I was singing my lines or even playing some of the final instrument parts. There was a point I really thought the song was not going to be completed and in terms of making a final mix and then mastering it, I had to go through unconventional means to do so.

The good news is that it appears the hiccups are only on that song. I have not tried recording any brand new songs, though. But what I did have to do was play the final mix and record it into my computer, burn that onto a CD, import it into the BR1600 as a new song and then play it back through the mastering mode as I recorded it once again into my computer (which by the way is also on its last legs). This is the only way I was able to get the song mixed and mastered. Doing that normally would not work. The recorder would always stop recording at the very same point in the song. I was turning blue in the face.

I even started looking around to buy a new one of these. Surely, I thought, I've had this one for over 10 years and they must have made amazing upgrades and improvements to it. To my surprise, I found out they don't even make these things anymore. The only major company still making these non-computer based systems is Tascam which is the brand of the very first 4-track tape machine I ever had. This was really bad news for me. I have never used software and computers for making music. I still don't want to. I like having a standalone unit for music-making.

As I was looking at a 24-track Tascam recorder some of the reviews did not read so well. I recall multiple similar complaints about clicking noises that made it onto recorded songs. I don't want that!

So I'm really in trouble now. I'm hoping that the problem lies just with that song. After erasing and optimizing I relieved about 24 hours of recording time! From 0 to 24 hours. But I should have been doing this all along the way, after every new song.

The error message I get is "drive busy!" I looked all around the web for info on this and I found that Boss has 2 methods to temporarily fix this. One is to transfer all the songs in the BR1600 to CDs and then initialize the hard disk. That would take an inordinate amount of CDs to do. And initializing the disk erases everything that was on it.

The other method is to connect the BR1600 to a computer via USB and transfer everything that way. Again, you'd have to initialize the hard disk which erases everything. But it's all on the computer now so that's OK, right? Not really since my computer has been crashing scores of times since last summer.

I don't know what to do right now. I'm going to keep using the BR1600 for as long as it allows me to continuously record. Once it stops I will have to try one of the methods above. And those methods are not a cure by any means. Boss says you will have to repeat this process every several months. Why did they have to stop making this thing? This is similar to the iPod. I kept expecting that the iPod was going to perpetually increase in disk size as the last one I purchased was a 160GB and soon enough it was filled to the brim. But after the 160 there was no more. Then they came out with the iPod touch but only in smaller versions. Same thing with the Boss recording studio. I had the 16 track (which is technically not 16 tracks but actually 12) thinking someday I'd get me a 24 track. Perish the thought.

Even though I cannot get me a brand new Boss 24 track studio (which in reality would probably be only an 18 track), I can get a bigger iPod than my current 160GB. Although it's 256GB it is also still an iPod touch which I don't mind anymore. Actually I feel more comfortable now with the 'touch' technology so I'd prefer a touch iPod vs. the old wheel version.

OK. So this post was about my technological struggles of recording. I still plan to write about some of the goals for this year.

New Christmas Song Finished & Released

I find it mildly amusing that I had forecasted the completion of my new Christmas song within a few days of the end of November. I did not finish the final mix and mastering until December 11. And by the way, I'm still not thrilled with the final mix. I would have kept remixing and remixing until I got it just the way I wanted--were that possible considering it's an unattainable goal--but it's already so late to be releasing a Christmas song that I did the best I could under the circumstances. The good news is that it is now both at CD Baby and Bandcamp and also at iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and everywhere else. I just hope it gets to those places well before Christmas.

I started this new song well before Thanksgiving. Mind you the intention was just to create some background music for videos. But as I really liked how it was turning out I thought it would be a waste to just leave it as background music, though it could still well serve that purpose. However, once again the vocal part is what created such a delay. Not getting everything sounding up to par. And unfortunately the released version is still not perfect vocal-wise but it's the best I can do under the circumstances.

I must admit--I seriously considered giving up vocal music during my many takes for this song. It became so frustrating to record the same lines over and over and not get them just right or even just good enough. I honestly cannot understand how some people can sing and hit the right notes every time. I started thinking along the way of doing instrumental music exclusively. I would definitely get more music produced more frequently if I were to only do instrumentals. But I also enjoy writing lyrics even though it's hard for me to sing them. And I cannot ask anyone to sing for me due to legal reasons. Whatever I create musically has to be 100% mine. The last thing I want to deal with is legal issues.

Anyway, here is the newly finished song found on my Bandcamp page:

You Know It's Christmas Time

Hope you like it. It's radically different from any Christmas song I've made before. But again, it wasn't initially planned to be such. The good thing is that not only is it a Christmas song but it also fulfilled the initial desire of being background music if I only remove the vocal.

Regarding the youtube issue--I tried to appeal the deconstruction of my Exit World channel but youtube only responded by saying that I need to get the Fred Rogers Company (FRC) to rescind their copyright strikes. Like that is going to happen. So as someone suggested I could move to Vimeo and carry on there, or I could just create a new email through Google and start my new youtube channel that way. (Actually I just found out I can create a new channel with my existing Google account).

I nearly forgot--this has also put a damper on my plans to release my old lo-fi recordings from many years ago. This makes me angry the more I think about it. I was not a multiple violator of their policies. I uploaded material that was not banned immediately. It was all up for quite some time before this happened. Had they taken all the FRC videos down initially I would not have uploaded more. All I received were copyright claim notices. Those are not bad. They serve to inform that someone has claimed the right to the video in question. But they gave me no chance. It was 1-2-3 and I was done. I blame both the FRC and youtube for this. I did not continue to upload claimed content after receiving any of the strikes. That's the part that is not fair. They make it seem as though I continued to upload videos after receiving the first 2 strikes. Why didn't they just take down all the Rogers' videos with the first strike? Why did they need 3 strikes to do it?

Anyway, I sent the FRC a few more emails with the final one giving them a piece of my mind. I stated that they handled this situation in a very unprofessional manner. I said a few more things as well. Surprisingly, I did get a response with an offer from them to talk to youtube about my Exit World channel. As I relayed this to youtube they refused to accept it and kept giving me the runaround. Like a broken record all they keep saying to me is that I need to resolve the copyright strikes on my Exit World channel when I don't have any on that one. Their reason for shutting it down was that it was linked to the channel with the strikes (JustGoodStuff). So I wrote them a not-so-pleasant email as well and I haven't heard from them anymore.

As far as I'm concerned that matter is done and I'm not going to hear from either party any further. So I'll just come up with another channel for my own personal music (which I will probably call "Millions of Me" as this is a possible new recording artist name for me). The other one I already made is called "AllTheBest". The only problem I'm having with the AllTheBest channel is that I cannot upload videos longer than 15 minutes since I'm not verified. My 2 most popular videos were just over 15 minutes each. Under 16 but over 15! I left the computer on all night long to upload one of them just to get a message that said it couldn't be processed since it was over 15 minutes. Couldn't they warn me ahead of time? So frustrating! And I'm hesitant to verify my account since that may lead to getting the new channel(s) shut down as well. I don't know what's involved in 'verifying' so I can't take any chances right now. I may just have to create a third channel with a brand new email.

Most importantly though is that I released a new Christmas song in 2019 and much earlier than in previous years. Also it's on my Exit World - Topic channel created by CD Baby.

In my next post I will discuss some goals for 2020, as is in keeping with tradition. If it weren't for "You Know It's Christmas Time" I would not have had a new song in 2019. I had a few background music recordings I made and I guess those should count especially if I am seriously considering working exclusively on instrumental music.

This post took way too long to write. It's pretty much after the fact now since it's been sitting here since mid-December.