Tag: music

Happy Birthday to me.

There are now actual CDs for sale through the bandcamp store, and some people have already noticed this and have been buying! Which has really made me smile. Those initial orders have been posted, and it’s all gone swimmingly. So, yeah, Bandcamp is pretty damn handy to use. It’s also the best way to make sure most of the money you choose to spend on music goes directly to the artist in question. To top it off, there’s a plethora of audio formats to choose from if you’re getting a download – one person got in touch to say it was great to be able to get the record in FLAC format. So, for audio nerds, that’s definitely the store to go to if you want the highest quality audio version of the album.

Today is my birthday! It’s been about a year since I decided to record an album, and it’s nice to be able to say that in that time I found a studio I could work in, raised the extra cash I needed, and put out an album of my own music for the first time. Birthdays are always more about setting new goals for me than any other time of year, and I’m busy working away at ideas for how to promote the album more, finding more places to gig, and looking at all the other songs I have written that I want to record. I’ve another album of music sitting waiting for its time to get recorded.

But, for now, it’s still the time to focus on Wires, and helping the project unfold and develop more. I’m working on some videos and trying to get the music heard by more and more people. I have been toying away with ideas for re-working this website completely to give a different sort of focus to it, and realising that I’m utterly rubbish at web design (any volunteers?) but I’ve a load of content nearly ready to go up as supporting material for the record.

Honestly, the best birthday present I could imagine would be more people being introduced to my music and enjoying it. Nothing makes me smile more than seeing one of my tracks posted as someone’s jam, or getting a message on twitter or on the forums about the album from people I don’t know well at all, or that email from Bandcamp telling me someone else decided it was worth spending their money on my music. There honestly is no better feeling in the world.

Live video demos

I’m currently going through a bunch of little live video demos of some of my songs that I have on my computer, and posting a few on my youtube channel for people to see.

They give another side to some of the songs that ended up on the album – though the ones that work best in demo form are the ones that ended up pretty much with just piano and voice on the record itself.

They’re pretty low res quality, as they’re just stuff that’s recorded with the webcam and a little home recording setup I use to get songs down when I’m working on them so I have something to reference again later. I’ve been using it again lately to demo some of the very new songs I’ve been working on.

I Wish You Were Here
It’s an old song that wasn’t meant to end up on the album, but did a take of it on the last day of the piano and vocal tracking, and liked how it came out, so it ended up on the record.

Wet Feet

I think this video shows just how lazy I can be at the piano sometimes. And also how much I move when I play – it’s something piano teachers always pointed out to me but that I never really noticed until watching back little clips like this. They really tried to get me to stop moving my upper body so much when I played, but it’s a habit I’ve never broken, and something I still do whenever I play. I just move a lot at the piano when I’m playing.

The version on the album is pretty pared down too – there’s some lovely cello on it that I miss now whenever I’m playing the song solo again. Same with this next video, actually:

Restless

I do plan to have some proper videos up on my youtube channel soon, along with these wonderfully webcam home demos too.

Listen or buy the album: [itunes] [amazon mp3] [bandcamp]

Cds have finally arrived.

Cds arrived.

If you have already sent me your address, then thank you very much – I have your address on file. I know mailouts don’t have the best chance with some spam filters, so I figured I’d best remind people through the website too.

But, the CDs have finally arrived back from the manufacturer, and this weekend the print artist is making her handmade covers which will be a the limited edition just for Fundit Funders, and won’t be available in any shop. So, all things going to plan the CDs should start being posted out from early next week. But yes, please do email ebby [at] misterebby [dot] com with your postal address for me if you are one of the wonderful people who helped fund my record and thus are on my list. And check your emails to see if my mailing list for you funders is getting through to you as some people have had issues with that it seems.

Other folk, stay tuned as the record should be available in some of the fantastic little indie music stores around Ireland very soon, and then the physical cd itself will be on sale through bandcamp too.

Feedback makes it worth it.

I started a post doing a “2011 in review” sort of post, but quickly realised that my entire focus for all of last year was in getting the album recorded and released. So, in lieu of a rather repetitive reflection on the past year, instead I’m going to look at the effect that all that work has had on other people by posting some of the rather lovely things folks have said to me about my record.

Gathered together like this, it really makes me smile when I get worked up about trying to make a living from music work. Getting these unsolicited little messages really makes my day, and they come from the various corners of the internet that I hang out in. Some are friends, some are long time internet acquaintances, some are newer connections struck up on twitter, others are complete strangers. These are just some of the ones that I saved and stuck in a little document that I open up and peek at when things are stressful. I didn’t put all the messages in this, just a few random ones that made me smile tonight.

So, thank you for listening and for supporting my music last year, and thank you so much any of you who took the time to send me a message like this. <3

Some of the Feedback from friends, strangers, unfers and others:
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