The Journey … The Discovery

….. So let’s jump in time a bunch of years after my experiment with my first recording (name to be announced soon)

THE TIME: November 34th, 2017ish, 3:52AM
THE PLACE: Somewhere in Ohio
( narrator voice trails off under the music)

some of the detail above may be a little unsure…..

I am paging through my new favorite catalog, you know, the one for SWEETWATER, the music retailer in Indiana. I am drooling over guitars and synths and microphone, and suddenly I spy…. AN AFFORDABLE SMALL IN SIZE HOME STUDIO DIGITAL RECORDING CONSOLE. My retirement plans have just been changed! I’m gonna build me a recording studio. BTW – I 100% recommend Sweetwater for just about any musical needs you may have. They are great for advice as well. I now use them pretty much exclusively.

So I did just that. I already have some keyboards and a few guitars. I buy a used Tascam recording desk, a power conditioner, a few microphones, a pair of Studio monitor speakers, a pair of headphones and lots of cables and jumpers and Mic Leads. Presto. I never ever thought I would be able to have a recording studio, but now I have one. I am one happy Gitar picker!

First order of business–READ. A LOT. I study up on copyright law, distribution, publishing, and streaming services… WOW – this gets complicated. My head is still reeling at time at everything I have to do to get ONE song released into the world. So I make a list, seek out few YouTube advisors on the subject, and begin the process. Damian Keyes seems to a pretty good source of information. Mechanical rights, cover song writes, how many streams it take to get a DOLLAR paid to you

ASCAP, BMI, Distrokid, Tunecore, Performance rights, music licensing to TV / Movies, SoundCloud, Spotify Apple Music, Deezer, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter… Marketing, Promotion, emails,, Socials accounts, Buying adverts….
Wowowie whoooo woop woop geezopete. IS there no end to it? WIll I ever understand it all?

There is SO much to learn before putting your music out there that it really makes your head spin. I don’t know how much success I will have, but I have learned that I can’t just drop this on Facebook and expect much of a response. A Facebook friend of mine had made a recording and put it out on Facebook. A few days later he remarked that he was very disappointed, He said “I have over 250 “friend”s on here, and I only got a handful of responses…. “
We all know that Facebook only shows you like 10 or 15 peoples posting from your friends list, so more than likely almost none of his “friend” even saw the post.

The Next step is to re-record the tune and clean it up. The copy I had from that first DAW recording had issues, namely latency of each subsequent track. And since it was quite some time since I did the experiment, I had to reconstruct and write down just how I played it that first time. Since all I had was the finalized stereo master mix down, I had to mentally separate all the parts and re-imagine them. I had to get a good, properly timed master recording before I could submit it for copyright. (It took 3 months to get the copyright certificate).

The Re-recording of this, while it took many takes, was probably the easiest part of this process. The harder part was the learning curve with the equipment. I am using a Tascam NEO 2488 Porta studio. It is marvelous.

In its various stages, I have played this song for a few individuals of various age ranges, and everyone has said something like “wow, that is nice”, so I am encouraged by those comments alone.

What I Discovered were 2 things.
1. After much practice, I was still a decent musician.
2. Getting just this one song out there and hopefully getting noticed and a lot of play, and a good response is going to be a Lot of WORK.

So the next phase of this Journey is the Preparation….

See you next time

‘Nuff Said’

The Journey of a First Time Indie musician – The Experiment

My current venture began several years ago as an experiment. I have had an unhealthy  interest in the recording process for much of my life. As a young teenager, I read everything about studio recording and live sound amplification that I could get my hands on.

Many years later, while scouring the web late one evening, I stumbled onto a free recording software program called Cakewalk. Since it was FREE, I downloaded it.
And installed it.
And fired it up.
And plugged in my guitar.
And strummed a few chords.
…. aaand I got NOTHING.
Major disappointment!.
I tinkered and fiddled, changed setting after setting. I probably fussed with it for about an hour…. and suddenly I could hear my guitar… and it was recorded. Eureka – it WORKS. I now had a big grin on my face.

Prior to the development of these software DAW programs ( Digital Audio Workstations), you had to have THOUSANDS of dollars of equipment to make a decent music recording. But now Cakewalk was FREE! (and still is to date). I was a happy camper.

So after I had gotten this program to work for me, I sat on the floor, I hit the record button,to test it I started to finger pick some chords at random for about 2 or 3 minutes (2:38 to be exact).
I played it back and IT SOUNDED GREAT. As I listed to it again, I began thinking “Hmmm, I think I ‘hear’ a lead that needs to be added to this” I said to my self, and proceeded to record that lead I heard in my head.
I played it back. A Bigger grin shows up on my face. “Wow that sounds kool” I said to my self. (I say stuff to my self a lot.)

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!  I began to ‘hear’ a second lead in my head, different from the first one.
Sooooo. I recorded that…
Played it back…
and the future guitar hero in me said “That –  is good. But it needs a bass line to fill it out.” Sooooo I pull out my Bass guitar and (yep you know it) I recorded that.

After playing the recording back that now had 4 guitar parts that were ALL ME, the biggest grin shows up on my face and I declared that It was good, I saved the recording and went to bed, cuz by this time it was about 2 or 3 in the morning…

And a song was born.

 ‘Nuff Said’

With that I will continue on to the next part of this journey,  “The Discovery”

Previous Post

‘Nuff Said.

Creating, Recording, and releasing a song as an independent Musician.

As none of you know, (because this is the first that I am making this public), I am about to release my first song single titled “Aftermath”.

To shed some light on what that takes and how it came about and the work that goes into doing this, I am firing up my Air Cooled Underware Blog… and will soon point you to the website of my “band”. So below. (or above, however WordPress displays it) begin my series of blogs called

“The Journey of a first time Indie Musician”

For anyone who has not done this and is considering it, I will for warn you —There are a LOT of things to learn, and a lot of little details involved as you will see. You don’t just crank out a cover on your phone and upload it to a YouTube video… as I learned with lots of study.
BUT if your really into this– YOU CAN DO IT!

I promise to try my best to keep these short, just a few paragraphs as much as I can, so that these will be a quick read for all of you readers.

‘Nuff Said for the moment.

Hello, (Welcome Back Kott…. um, Not Dead Ye… )

Well look what the Cat Dragged In. I’m back. The last time I wrote anything here was in 2013. Most everybody who was following me has either abandoned their sites to other things for reasons unknown or shut down their sites all together. If you’re drawn here by accident or by tag words feel free to look for me around and read my old entries.

There is an ulterior motive for firing this old blog back up. You see I want to try to get my readership again BECUZ I just finished my project and I will be making a big announcement about this very soon. I am very excited about it and I hope you will follow along with me and find it exciting as well.

Also in the original writings I seemed to be pretty good at evoking responses from my readers, and I hope I can still do that. Time will tell.

If you used to follow me and are still around please let me know in the comments below.

If you are just discovering me -WELCOME. please also let me know in the comments below.

I hope you will follow me and read my comments. I promise to keep most things very short, so you won’t have to spend a lot of your time dealing with it.

‘Nuff Said aka ???? STAY TOONED! GRIN.

IHATECOLD IHATESNOW IHATEW…..

I never used to. In fact the change of seasons is why I love it here in the “Midwest”
( Whomever called Ohio the Midwest, NEVER looked at a MAP of the whole USA. )

In fact even in my late age I have often been known to call people up at ANY hour at the first sign of snowflakes

“Improve the Mold” I said

My wife and I have raised 3 children to adulthood, each successful in their own way. All are married, all have families, all are employed. Mrs. Air Cooled and I are very blessed.

When they were in their late teen years, I told each of them the following:

“You are a product of the influences of us for all of your life so far, as well as a mix of other outside influences. Your personality, your strengths and weakness are what they are at this point. I challenge you to Improve the Mold that made you who you are.

Become better than Me and your Mom. Take an introspective inventory of who you are, and how you became that person. Consider all of the traits that came from living in our home for most of your life that make you YOU. Determine what the good parts are and make those stronger in you.

Then find the one or two personality traits about me or your mom that absolutely do not like about me or you Mom that you see in your self,  and lock that in your mind. Now from this day forward spend the rest of your life eradicating that from your personality  so that you don’t pass that bad trait on to children that you will have. Then pass this advice onto your children when they are old enough to understand this task.”

Only time will tell………..

‘Nuff Said that to them many years ago.

in Honor of my friend Frank Crivello

I started my day at work as usual, firing up the dreaded computer, then logging on to the usual nine or so software applications that I use everyday, but upon looking over the master plan for the day I see that I and several other fellow cube-ites (not to be confused with cubits) are all slated for a two-hour time frame away from The Machine. “Ah something a little different today”. Probably some group training. That will be a pleasant change.

An hour later one of the supervisors tells me ‘ I know you have been away a few days but I presumed you would want to go to Franks Memorial service today so I blocked you in for it”

I had not heard. I was stunned. It took

One Year Anniversary Bloggin

Wow. I didn’t pay much attention, but my little “you got comments” light let me know that I have been for One year already. so What have I done?

I got freshly pressed very early on so that gave me an unfair advantage of getting a lot of readers and a respectable following very early one.  I have made some great “friends” in the process.

Too many obligations and a couple of illnesses got in the

Oh my I have been freshly Pressed- whatever shall I do?

I have no idea how articles are selected for the honor of being put right up front on the  Freshly Pressed Page,  all I know is it happened to me without notice and I had only been on Word Press  about

Making yourself sound important

This one is for the ‘Just Thoughts” category– I am working on finalizing a website so we can go LIVE this week, and researching a couple of terms, I see on the side of a web consulting company’s page an “about the author” note..  And this is what it says….

 is a lead at <company name removed>. He/She ensures that business requirements are translated into scalable, integrated technical architectures, and user-centric interfaces. 

and here is another one………