Wires: A Year Later

I put the digital version of the album up on sale at the end of November 2011, but the physical CDs didn’t surface until January 30th 2012, so the album has been available properly for a year now. It’s been a busy one.

I’d just come back from playing at the Guinness Cork Jazz festival at the end of October when I went and got the record mastered in Limerick. There were a few niggles with the first master, so there was a retake, and then I finally had something in my hand that I could put out there and have people listen to.

Honestly, I don’t know how to express just how afraid I was of that step.

For a very long time, I was the guy off to the side of the stage playing piano for someone else. Or having a few songs of my own before the main event. But mostly, playing other people’s music.

This was the first time I had properly recorded something of my own, performing and singing and taking the lead on the whole thing. To finally have the finished tracks in my hands was the scariest thing.

I knew that not everyone would like the music. And although you try and tell yourself that it doesn’t matter if anyone likes it at all, it really does. Why else record? Why else put music out there? You want someone to connect to the songs in the way that you did writing and recording them.

I was already reeling that 113 people had enough faith in my music to fund it and help it to get finished. I really was hoping that at least those wonderful people would enjoy the record.

Emailing out download codes to all the funders was the most nerve-wracking experience, while also being a beautiful sort of relief.

Then there was a sort of magic to come home one day to a big box with all the CDs in it, especially after the many ups and downs with getting the design for that all ready. Seriously, the packaging side of things seemed to be a bit cursed : the first designer on board had a little accident and had to take time off work and had to cancel on doing work on this project.

Then the second designer had a computer hard drive failure after doing most of the main design work, and had to redo the whole thing again from scratch (Thanks Dónal, you legend.)

Then with the handmade edition, there were all kinds of little set backs relating to the paper, the kind of ink being used for the print, and the clarity of the text when you’re doing screenprints by hand. I spent many hours folding, cutting, gluing, signing, editioning, and numbering all the handmade ones.

There were 88 of those made. One for each piano key. They were mostly all pre-sold through the fundit campaign, and when I realised I had a few extra, those went on sale and didn’t last more than a few hours. They are a gorgeous digipack and also contain the regular cd sleeve packaging, and combined they are more personal and beautiful than I imagined we could manage to put together on such a tiny budget.

Then there were postcards and notes to write, and some people who had given their time to help out over the course of the project got little thank you cards that I made too.

I think one of the happiest moments for me was when I was able to start writing out address labels and putting the finished limited edition CDs into the post. The people in the post office got used to me appearing every day with another batch, and sending them off to places as far away as Sydney gave me as much of a thrill as meeting people in person to hand deliver the finished product.

Videos were planned. Some were recorded, some were delayed, and in one case, transformed into a live dance show instead that had a short run as part of a festival here in Galway. That was a surprise development that was certainly not a part of the original plan.

It was my first time attempting anything like this on this kind of a level, and yeah, at times I felt like I didn’t have a clue what I was doing and I was in over my head. But I tried to learn what I needed to, and asked advice, asked for help, and worked out answers to problems that arose. Some things didn’t work out – like a vinyl edition of the record, for example, which I would still love to do at some point.

But damnit, I’m pretty damn proud of this little record.
Now. What’s next?

 

 

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.

Cds being sent out to funders.


(photo by Jenny of her copy of the album)

A big batch of the CDs were sent earlier this week, so hopefully those of you who pledged for a reward that included a copy of the physical album who have also sent me your addresses, will start to find the album in your post boxes!

If you’ve not already sent me your address, you’ll probably find an email from me detailing how to send it to me, but just in case, you can email me at ebby@misterebby.com with your postal address if you’re one of the few who’ve not gotten around to it yet. But don’t worry – I’ll probably contact you directly about it if I’m down to just a handful of people left still needing their copy to be sent out.

In case you missed it, you can see a little behind the scenes video about how the covers for the funders handmade edition were screen printed.

Things have been much slower than anticipated, but hopefully the final result will be worth it in the end. Do let me know when you get your copy by leaving a message on the facebook page, or tweet me, or posting a reply on this post. I like knowing that the cds arrived safe and sound. I’ve grown quite attached to the handmade versions after all the time and work that went into them.

Wires album liner notes

I’ve been busying myself making the special funders edition version of the cd covers, but also putting together an online version of extended album liner notes here on the website. It’s one thing I’ve always loved about CDs and Vinyl records – being able to pore over the pages of lyrics while listening, or look at the photographs, see who the musicians are on each song, and read the little thank you notes. It’s something that’s less easy to do when you’re buying music digitally.

But with this online version I’ve put together, you can listen to the album in full, investigate songs individually and see the lyrics, musician credits, and read about the recording experience, or what inspired the song in some cases. There’s some photos from behind the scenes in the recording studio, in the printmaking studio, and now in the dancers studio too. Each page will be updated as more of the videos get shot and made available online, and I’m toying with the idea of putting up some music score parts for some of the songs in future as well. So, the liner notes are something that will hopefully continue to grow and develop over the next few months as I keep realising the “Wires” project fully and will then be a wonderful document of the record when it’s time to move on to the next project.

So, why not grab a cuppa, and Check out the liner notes as they are right now.

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]

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