The State of Exit World Music

I realize it's a bit early but I am strongly considering not keeping my "Milestone" album up for sale on iTunes, Amazon, etc. The annual fee I have to pay to Record Union in order to keep it available on these platforms is not much, but as I never really sold much to begin with it's turning more into an unnecessary expense. To keep it available without having anyone buying it or any songs from it is completely purposeless. Of course, this means it will be taken off Spotify as well but no one's listening to it there either. I don't know how this will work with CD Baby. Probably will come down from there as well.

I released an EP about 2 years before "Milestone" and at that time I paid a one-time fee and it remains up for sale and/or play on all these platforms (minus CD Baby). By late 2014 when I put out the full album Record Union changed their policies and required an annual fee to keep the music up for sale. I do not know when they made these changes but I wish I could have had an advance warning. Not that that would have led me to release the album any sooner but it would have been a good heads-up and something to keep in mind. And even though the EP is not costing me anything to maintain for sale I may end up taking it down as well.

Why am I doing this? Well, one reason is cost as I mentioned already. But another is just coming to terms with the fact that this is really going nowhere. Not that I am going to stop making music altogether, although there are those low points when I do entertain the idea of just selling everything with the exception of perhaps an acoustic guitar. I haven't been doing much with music lately. And it's really a circular, compounding ailment. Why make music that no one is going to listen to? This takes much too much time and effort to just do it for my own ears. If I were a painter would it make sense to paint portraits and then keep them under my bed or in the basement or attic? What good is it if no one else can experience your work, your art?

It's all just too frustrating. People don't want to hear new music unless it comes from an industry-established name. If you're willing to do a cover by an industry-established name then you may get some attention. Otherwise there's no appreciation for the dozens of hours put into writing, recording & producing an original song. Granted, I allow for the general possibility that my music is not good to some people. But there is plenty of stuff that is not good being played on the radio and on commercials and on TV shows and in movies. There is plenty of music on the charts that is not good.

Seriously, I haven't even been writing songs or playing guitar much at all lately. I've probably lost all my callouses. And the truth is I don't even really care. It's not fun anymore and it doesn't matter like it used to. I am still going to finish up what I've been working on and do some more trusty old Christmas songs. I'll put them up on YouTube and soundcloud at some low-quality level just to discourage downloading. I'll save the high quality recordings for the few people who do appreciate what I do.

I have a Twitter account which I set up for my music under the name of Exit World, of course. You couldn't imagine how many followers I've had who are trying to sell me something, whether it's remastering my songs, airtime for my music (sounds like payola), promotion, etc. Basically the majority of followers I've gotten only want something from me in one way or another. I'm sure they haven't even bothered to listen to anything I've made. They find out I make music and then naturally follow me. The worst thing is that many of them follow for a day or two and then unfollow. That really is a plague over on Twitter, isn't it? Following to get you to follow and once you do they unfollow. I don't even bother anymore. I am also considering taking down my twitter account. There is no point to it. It's nothing more than a huge waste of time.

But I still have to pursue creative avenues of self-expression. I'm going to eventually start some other things--things that don't take so much time to do. Things that don't require anyone to zone in for 3 or 4 minutes. This is a visually-stimulated era and there is no denying that attention spans have gone south and permanently at that. I don't know how these things will turn out but one thing is for sure--there are some very busy times ahead!

Instrumental Song "The Way Home"

Some years ago I was just recording some ideas I had in my studio. I did some overdubs and left them as is for some future projects. This is actually nothing new. I still do this nowadays whenever I have ideas for new music. Well, I revisited that piece of music that originally was only acoustic guitar and electric guitar with lots of reverb. It just was just less than a minute long. But I added hi-hat, bass, piano and some percussion to it recently and I extended the song so it clocks in at just over 2 minutes. It's an instrumental and I titled it, "The Way Home." I don't know but this song has always had an on-the-road feel to it for me. And kind of a late 1970's soft rock sound to it. Perhaps even a TV theme song potential going on there. What do you think? Here is an abbreviated version I uploaded to YouTube. I had to edit it to fit the video:





Here is the unedited version that I uploaded to soundcloud:



I like how it turned out. I am considering putting it on the final draft of the album. Or I may just save it for my instrumentals album. Whatever the case I want to make it an official release.

I decided to work on this song even though I was not fully finished with "If I Told You." I just needed to take a break from that song as I was having difficulty with a small vocal part that I have now thankfully completed. The only thing remaining is the drum track. I may wait till I have another song ready for drums before I add them to this song. It's just way too much effort to set the drums and mics up for less than 2 minutes of playing time. At this point I will either continue working on that 10 minute song I started recording last year that is still without complete lyrics or I will move on to something else brand new. Stay tuned!

Work Song by Bobby Darin Bass Cover Tab

Someone recently asked for this tab and I was surprised to see that I had not already posted it here long ago. This is Bobby Darin doing a live-for-television haunting version of "Work Song" that features only his vocal over electric bass & drums. This is so much better than his studio version from years earlier.





OK, that's the song and now here is my video of playing bass along to it:



I have to make my usual disclaimer that in this video I did not play the exact same notes as in the song. As is usually the case, I take many of the ideas used in songs and then I add some things here and there. If I were to play the entire song I would have played it note for note. But since I only did a small portion I wanted to show what could be done with it.

This song modulates up a couple of times but I only tabbed out the part I played in its initial key of D minor. So you can play the same part when the song modulates by just moving up the right number of frets as necessary. Here it is:

G  :------------------|--------------------|-------------------|
D  :------------------|---5---5-6-7--------|------------5---5-6|
A  :-------5----5-8---|-8-----------7----5-|---5-8----8--------|
E  :--5-8-------------|---------------5----|-------------------|

G  :-----------------------|---------------5-7---|--------------------|
D  :7-----7----------------|---5---5-6-7-7-------|----------5-6-7----7|
A  :--7-----7---5----5-8---|-8-----------------5-|---5-8--8-----------|
E  :----5-----5------------|---------------------|--------------------|

G  :6-9-6---7----7-----|-----------7--------|--------------------|
D  :------7--------7--5|-------5-7---7-6--5-|---5-----3---5------|
A  :-------------------|--5-----------------|-----5-5---5---0-2-0|
E  :-------------------|--------------------|--------------------|

G  :------------------|--------------------|-----------------|
D  :-------------7---7|7-6-5----5----5-6-7-|7-5--------------|
A  :3-0-4-0-5---------|------------5-------|-----8--4--5-----|
E  :------------------|--------------------|--------------5--|

G  :----------------|
D  :----------------|
A  :3--4--5---------|
E  :----------------|


So there you have it. To you who asked for it, I hope you find it useful.

Rocky Mount Instruments (RMI) Electra-Piano

I love finding out what certain instruments I hear on recordings actually are. For instance, long ago, I remember hearing a lot of songs that featured organ, but on some of these very same songs the organ would take on two different personalities in terms of sound. On quiet passages it would be that smooth, pure electric organ sound. But during louder passages it was a shaky, warbling sound and I had no idea how that was attained. After all, I had only had some cheap synthesizers with solely that clear organ sound. It wasn't until I talked with a more experienced fellow musician about it that I learned the warbling tone came from using a Leslie Speaker with the organ. From that point I did a ton of research on Leslie speakers and found out that basically there were rotating speakers inside a wooden cabinet that when turned on applied the scientific principle of the Doppler effect in order to create that unique sound. OK, so I guess it's not just instruments but also effects that are meant to be used with instruments. Anyway it's exciting to learn new things such as this and today I learned one more thing.

There was a musical instrument that was used in several songs that I really like from the early 1970s. It was clearly a keyboard-type instrument and I kept thinking it was some kind of electric harpsichord. It was certainly not a Fender Rhodes nor a Wurlitzer nor an electric clavinet. As I researched videos for vintage electric harpsichords online and listened to their sounds I was not fully convinced I was on the right track.

Here is one of the songs I first heard this instrument on. It is right at the start of the song and plays throughout. The song is not in English, as it is a Brazilian song from 1972. Check it out:




Interesting sound, right? Well, today I decided to play one of the many LP's I have which I will be selling. It happened to be Bread's debut album from 1969 which I bought during my sole visit to the now-defunct, annual Mammoth Music Mart. I picked up 4 LP's and several cd's that day. But as I played the Bread album I pulled out the sheet with lyrics and credits and looked over the instruments each member of the band played. There was one called RMI electric piano. I had never heard of that before. I'm sure I looked at that sheet dozens of times before but I never sought out to discover exactly what an RMI electric piano was. Today I did, though, and I found a video of a dude playing one on YouTube. And it was exactly that sound in those songs!! I can't really pick out where it was used on any of the Bread songs on that album but I will have to listen again more carefully.

The interesting thing about this instrument is that it was fully electronic, using transistors instead of any electro-mechanical parts to generate the sound. The 300 series (which were probably used in these songs) came out in 1970 so the timing is definitely right.

Check out this video of someone playing this instrument:





And now one more of the songs that had the RMI in it:



It's not as prominent throughout this song as it was in the first song. It starts to come in during the latter part of the solo in the middle of the song. It is not to be confused with the Fender Rhodes which plays throughout the song.

So I'm pretty pleased to have learned something accidentally today, especially considering it was something I've been trying to figure out for quite some time!