Apparently the French have started to prepare the forthcoming ski world championship.
As usual, they do things with style but still not sure it will be enough !
18/01/2013: FINALLY BACK IN STUDIO TO RECORD ... A TV ADVERTISING
Yesterday I spent most of the afternoon in studio with some musicians to record the music of the new TV ad.
Not quite a recording session for the Best of BARON ZERO but I did enjoy my bout as producer. Probably one of my dreams jobs !
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17/01/2013: USE 3D PROJECTION TO MAKE YOUR LIVE SHOW AN UNFORGETTABLE VISUAL EXPERIENCE
BILLBOARD reports on how indie band LOVE IN THE CIRCUS has 3D projection mapping to "create a live stage that evokes a Cirque du Soleil-esque setting, wrapping custon animations around a physical stage" at the Sony booth during the recent CES.
3D projections have been used by a growing number of brands over the last couple of years and the results are often spectacular; but as always you need resources and great ideas do not hurt either. Quoting from the article: "the whole process took three week and would have cost $ 150,000 if it weren't for Sony, which donated the cameras and video editing software, and the production hous ewho helped the band design the visual".
So obviously, this is not yet something everyone can afford but knowing how quickly technology evolves and costs decrease, it is certainly something to watch for the future.
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10/01/2013: BECK INVENTS THE FIRST TRULY DYI ALBUM
There are many things than can be said about BECK but what of the things that never cease to impress me is how his creativity extends beyond sheer music.
His latest album SONG READER, released last December, is not a record in the classical sense; it is a collection of music sheets for 20 songs and Beck has called for people to record their own interpretations of the songs and post the results on SONGREADER.NET, YouTube or Soundcloud.
As summarized by MASHABLE: "Beck has essentially crowdsourced his own album via social media platforms".
The MASHABLE article - which you can check out here - includes a number of the work created as well as an interview with Jordan Bass, editor for McSweeney's Books, who worked with Beck on the project and eventually published SONG READER. One part of the interview is particularly interesting since it touches to copyrights:
"we are happy to see people distributing their versions too. There's a group called the PORTLAND CELLO PROJECT that recorded all 20 songs from the book and has then up on iTunes now. There are similar things going on all over the place, which is great".
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07/01/2013: WATCH OUT, THE DIFFICULT ART OF A GREAT ALBUM COVER
Since the end of the world has been delayed due to some unexpected technical problems (apparently we are a bit short on giant solar flares at the moment), I took the opportunity to catch up on some back reading.
One of the post I went through focused on what makes a great album cover and how illustrations supposedly do a better job than photographs.
Of course, it would be hard to disagree with the fact that the usual indie band photo (you know the one, 4 blokes leaning against a wall) is not going to cut it. But at the same time, I still think it makes sense to put your face(s) on the cover if people do not know what you look like.
In any case, the most important thing is obviously that the cover photo draws people in and express what your music is about.
Here are the front/back covers of the forthcoming BARON ZERO live album for which I used both technics: starting from an actual photo and treating it graphically like it is an illustration.
Quite simple but I believe it does the job.
What do you think ?
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26/07/2012: BARON ZERO COVER U2'S "ONE" AT THE TOP OF A MOUNTAIN
Here is an acoustic cover of One, recorded a few weeks ago somewhere up in the mountains of Austria.
See this as a crossover between Heidi and Bono Vox. Or what we would call in French "acoustique & bucolique" !
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15/07/2012: BRINGING THE FACEBOOK LIKES INTO THE REAL WORLD
I have longed fantasized about a simple way to bring the Facebook "likes" into the real world.
How can you make sure that people who like the band they watch or the track they listen will turn this experience into active endorsement. Sure the growth of mobile devices has made Facebook closer at hand, but most people will need an extra push to go to their FB account in the minute.
Chris Robley has a very interesting post on DYI MUSICIAN (the blog of CD BABY as I'm sure you know by now) where he writes about how the band BUILDER OF THE HOUSE have done this:
Last month I went to the album release concert for a friend’s band called Builder of the House. As I watched the opening act, I started to notice little tent signs on all the table tops. Lo-and-behold, there was one on my very own table too [note: this is the photo to the right].
I thought to myself, “Well, that’s a good idea. I’m not sure if I’m gonna get my phone out right this minute to like Builder of the House on Facebook, but at least everyone in this room knows the name of the headliner now!”
Then a guy who was helping the band sell merch came over to my table and said, “Hey, just wanted to let you know that if you like Builder of the House’s music tonight, you can like them on Facebook and they’ll send you a free MP3 tomorrow. The Facebook URL is on the back here….”
This actually would work even better with the use of QR codes and I can imagine doing something like that during my next gig: "if you like what you hear, scan the QR code on the wall and press the like button". You could even keep track of the numbers throughout the concert.
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14/07/2012: DO THE FRENCH HAVE AS MUCH FUN AS THEY USED TO ?
Today is the day when every Frenchman rejoices and remembers how much fun it was to chop the heads of all this blue blooded aristocrats.
I guess we do not have as much fun as we used to. Here is to the frogs !
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07/07/2012: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MUSIC LICENSING
THE DYI MUSICIAN (the excellent blog of CD Baby) have just published an extremely useful serie of articles about music licensing - everything you need to know.
And before you dive into the details, you can also check the short video they posted:
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05/07/2012: GAVIN SLATE HIJACKS STARBUCKS "PICK OF THE WEEK"
Absolutely excellent idea from Toronto based musician GAVIN SLATER who decided to hijack Starbucks "Pick of the week" campaign to launch his song "Life of a salesman".
What did he do ?
Well he simply created and printed his own Pick of the week cards, ressembling very closely to the original but featuring his own song. And dropped them incgnito in as many Starbucks as he could.
By the time we are writing this, Starbucks was unavailable for comments. But it would be interesting to know what they think of it now that the prank is all over the net.
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