Category: life

Postcards are love.

I’ve only a few postcards with album download codes left, so I decided to pop them up on bandcamp. It’s a nice little way to buy my record for a friend – I’ll post them the download code with a little note on a postcard.

I’m a big fan of postcards – I have an on-going postcard project of customised cards that I send to a friend. There’s something really lovely about getting something in the mail that isn’t a bill, don’t you think? Recently I even bought a little letter-writing pad and matching envelopes; I needed the pad to write notes for some of the CD sales and I’ve ended up writing some actual letters since then.

Half of the reason I love shopping online so much is receiving the packages in post. But I love sending postcards mostly because they’re a nice little way of thinking of someone that is a lovely surprise for them to receive too. I used to have a penpal when I was a kid, but it wasn’t something that really lasted for me, and honestly my love of snail mail only really formed when I was writing letters to one of the first guys I dated. We lived quite far apart, and actually met online, then started sending each other letters before we ever actually met. I’ve a complete soft spot for physical mail ever since then.

I thought I’d find posting out the CDs to my funders a bit of a chore, but I quickly discovered that it completely fed into my love of sending things through the post. I loved bringing boxes of packages to the local post office after packing and addressing a load of cds. It really is a random simple little joy.

Send more postcards; send some love.

The Internet Helps Me Make Music.

I mean that quite seriously. I’m not a tech wizard like Imogen Heap, or a genius at fanbase engagement like Amanda Palmer, but the way I work now is so heavily influenced by technology.

I still write words on paper, and write music notes on music manuscript, but then I use the Soundcloud app on my phone when I’m demo-ing something quickly or to record some improvs. The recordings are stored online for me to check out again when I’m back home, or working on that piece again. Of course, I also share the finished recordings of my work on Soundcloud too.

I use the free notation software MuseScore to put together my arrangement ideas that I’d sketched out on manuscript, and edit and fine tune the arrangements using the software. I send parts to other singers, or performers, by exporting the parts from Musescore and emailing them. Or I share the score on musescore.com.

I test out early demos of songs by posting them to a web forum community I’ve been a part of for over a decade that has always been an honest sound board and a very helpful support for creative artists of all kinds.

I funded half the costs of my record by using fundit.ie to crowdfund the cash from friends, acquaintances, fans, supporters, family, and well intentioned strangers who just wanted to help art get made. What I discovered was that the people funding me online were a mix of folk I knew from back when I was hanging out online on Fortunecity.com from the late 90’s, through to ones I interacted with a lot in my years on Livejournal, or music fan forums, as well as people I interact with through the current batch of popular social networking sites.

Most of my music sales are through my bandcamp store, or other digital music stores like iTunes and Amazon. I get it on to those other stores using Tunecore, an online music distribution service. People discover my music by streaming it on Deezer, Spotify or Earbits or somewhere similar. I do little hangout concerts on Google+ for strangers and familiar faces all over the world, and my music videos go up on youtube and vimeo.

Basically, I’m saying that I love you internet, and I’d be lost and lonely without you, playing to the wall in my room or a handful of people in a local venue. The internet has changed the music industry a lot, that’s pretty obvious, but I like the change. It suits me a lot more.

Glue, dancers, strings, and radio.

The week has been spent folding album covers whenever I’m not at work or away from the house. My desk is slowly becoming a graveyard of empty tubes of glue sticks. It’s quite sad really – perhaps I’ll make them into a little mini graveyard and use it for something or other. Which reminds me, I need to buy some more glue. The full funders’ edition is nearly done. When it is, I’ll be emailing those people who’ve still not sent in a postal address to get the CD sent to. If you’re not sure if you’ve sent me your address, you can always send it a second time just to be sure. But all things going to plan, the first lot will be getting posted quite soon.

I’ve been told the dancers are ready with their piece, which is quite exciting, and we’ve been talking about doing live performances of it somewhere too, but there’ll be more updates on that one when get to scheduling the video shoot. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this turns out, as it’s something completely new for me.

Coming up next for me though is an in-studio session with Flirt FM, and a concert with the string orchestra I play with too. The orchestra concert is free, so if you’re around Galway on Friday evening, drop into St. Mary’s school for a 7pm concert. It’s a very social event and the orchestra members are all bringing food, and doors open at 6pm for people looking for some pre-concert food, coffee, and chat. There’s some fierce baking competition amongst the orchestra members, so I’m confident that the food on offer will be as wonderful as the music. Although it’s something I do purely for leisure, I somehow have ended up with some little solo bits, though I’m a terrible violin player.

I’ll have more details about the in-studio session for Flirt FM after this Tuesday, but it should be available as a podcast or download after it airs, so I’ll update with a link to that as soon as it goes live. It’ll be just myself and piano in the studio, so it’ll be quite stripped down and intimate.

Updates galore.

It’s been a while since I updated the blog, but I’ve been working away at things – firstly moving webhost and all that entails, which always will make me nervy. I get the fear of messing it all up and losing everything and ending up with two hosting plans that are both charging me… But never fear, I managed it much easier than expected.

Little things that are noticable changes – at the moment I’m using some random wordpress template still but that’s grand. I’m hoping to change around the look of the site a lot now that I’ve got more time on my hands again. Secondly, this hosting service lets me use subdomain pointers, which my previous one didn’t, so now http://music.misterebby.com/ will bring you straight to my bandcamp store. It’s the little things like this that make me happy. Next, I’m gonna set about making the site look a lot prettier and add all the content about the album that I’ve had written up for ages and not had anywhere to put yet.

The youth theatre musical I’d been working as the Musical Director of went on stage last week, which saw me hiding away in the theatre for a week with long day sitting in the orchestra pit playing an awful lot of piano. It was wonderful. Besides, the teenagers were doing Guys & Dolls, which is just so much fun to play.

The day after the show wrapped, I was off to the little hamlet of Ballymoe, Co. Galway to meet up with folk from Golden Plec for their Tea And Toast charity drive across the country. I played a version of my song “Wet Feet” on ukulele for them before they whizzed off to catch the next band on their trail. It was a lot of fun though, and completely worth it for the look on the face of the young girl working in the shop in Ballymoe when she found out that something was making a stop in Ballymoe. Pure shocked that I’d be across the road playing a song that would go up online. There’ll be an accompanying radio show on the 2xm show Fourcast, and I’ll post the podcast link for that when it’s available.

I’m playing a small set here in Galway on Thursday in Kelly’s bar as part of the Noisy Plug sessions, so if you’re knocking around Galway this week, do drop in – it’s free, and there’s a great line up of four different acts on the night: here’s the facebook event for it.


Things have been slow getting the limited edition, hand printed versions of the album out to funders, which is something that has been a bit frustrating all round, but unavoidable unfortunately. However, I did get sent this photo earlier today, along with a message that the prints are almost ready. Which is pretty wonderful:

To top it all off, someone did a cover of one of my songs, and is planning on doing another. It really made me smile yesterday when I was linked to it, as I’ve never heard anyone covering one of my songs before. He had quite a different vocal style, and does his own take on the song, but it makes me happy to know that one of my songs made enough of an impact on someone that they wanted to do a cover of it. So, here’s Jack Mason-Goodall’s version of my song “I Wish You Were Here”, which he has posted on his Soundcloud:

And finally, the two dancers who have been working on a piece to one of my songs got in touch to say they’re nearly ready to show it to me before the film it. I can’t express how excited I am by this. To have someone to use some of my music as the canvas for their own creative work and create a piece in response to the music I’ve recorded is thrilling. Hopefully next we’ll be making a video of the dance piece accompanied by my music as the next step in this collaboration.

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