indie bands – Page 3

Matched third-party content on YouTube anyone?

Yes UMPG publishing, I acknowledge that our cover of Iron Maiden’s The Trooper involved playing a song owned by a third-party.

The power of search engines enables us to find information we desire on the web. It still amazes me that I can type a word or phrase or question in Google and instantly retrieve vast amounts of information matching my query. Search engines use algorithms to mine databases for matching content. Beyond our basic queries, a web crawler, or bot that browses the World Wide Web, is an amazing tool for discovering trends in scientific data, determining where advertisements are most effective, and providing publishers with matches to third-party content!

So, what does this mean for us playing cover songs and sharing them with friends online via YouTube? Well, a WebCrawler may match a YouTube cover song to audio content of an original copyrighted version. A content ID claim from the publisher, like matched third-party content, will appear in your video manager and you can either acknowledge or dispute it. Once acknowledged, any advertisement revenue produced by the video goes to the publisher with rights to the content.

Considering the rapid emergence of online music sharing, publishing companies must remain innovative to reduce copyright infringements. With so many free and illegal MP3 downloads, you bet a publisher is going to claim rights to copyrighted content! No wonder why the music publishing sector is growing 🙂 I’m just happy that my video can still be shared!

Art

Lets play more shows please!

The best part about loading out after last Sunday’s show was knowing that we have another show just around the corner! This time it is with a fellow local Ithaca band, Powder the Moon, featuring music by our good friend, Gabe Tavares. For anyone interested, you can listen to his music here: https://www.facebook.com/GabeTavares/app_2405167945

Having a show to look forward to on the calendar makes my days leading up to it feel so sweet 🙂

At our last show, my camera died while were playing, so hopefully I will get some good video from this one to share!

Live, Music

That feeling you get when you’re performing..

I really used to think that playing music at home in the privacy of my comfortable room was the best feeling ever. If you met me just two years ago, I probably wouldn’t even admit that I played music and not ever would I want to do it in front of anybody! But now we have a show coming up this Sunday at the Chapter House in Ithaca NY, and a cannot wait to play on stage. I love hearing our music wildly fill the air in a large dimly lit room and I love how fast the songs seem to fly by in front of a crowd. It makes me so happy when my friends come to support us and I literally feel butterflies when I meet new people who enjoy what they hear.

At some point between two years ago and now, I realized my fear of playing live stemmed from self-consciousness about the possibility of making mistakes, or making a fool out of myself in front of others. One day something hit me on the head and I thought, “Wait a minute, why should I deprive myself of a new experience because of fear of what others might think?!? That is the dumbest thing ever!” Today I believe sharing songs through live performance is one of the most rewarding facets of being a musician.

If any new musicians out there who haven’t yet played for an audience read this, I encourage you to go to an open mic or book a show! If you’re waiting for the right time or the perfect song or the best crowd, throw those notions out the window! That feeling you get when you’re performing will be worth it. 🙂

Lyrics

Writing Lyrics: Be a sponge!

So genius could strike at any moment, or a light bulb can suddenly flash on in your head, but don’t just wait for the ideas to come. Seek out inspiration, listen to everything around you, be a sponge and soak it all in! Sometimes inspiration can come from the funniest things. Like at work in meetings, on the bus talking to a stranger, waiting in line at the grocery store, the list goes on and on. I love it when my friends use silly expressions and cheesy metaphors because it gets my mind spinning with words. Be a sponge all day long and you’ll fall in love with the littlest things! 🙂

Lyrics

Writing Lyrics: Expressing past memories and emotions

I remember getting out of elementary school in the early afternoon and bolting out on my bike to ride around the neighborhood with my friends. Our 3 little blocks seemed like an endless world of grasshoppers and lizards and perfectly branched climbing trees. We defined our surroundings by a combination of limited knowledge and our Disney influenced imaginations. A haunted house at the end of a long driveway, a hole in the ground that we tirelessly dug to China, the Creek where pirates had once been who we sent bottled messages to, and the sky fort in my backyard that transformed from a ship on the sea into a castle on an island into an airplane in the sky.

Now I’ve gone back there a few times over the past five years. Walking the entire neighborhood in a short 20 min, I recalled strong emotions of adventure, fear and excitement that were once triggered by childhood fantasies. Have I lost this ability to create new dimensions? Have I acquired enough knowledge to scientifically understand everything in front of me and closed in on the gaps that used to be filled with make-believe? Or could I be suppressing a playfulness that is not a social norm in the workplace adult world? I remember this empowering phenomenon that grew in the company of my childhood friends. When we were in the same wavelength, sharing the same imaginative visions of being witches or steering a pirate ship. We fed off of each other’s energy and fueled each other’s energy.

I tried writing a song about these feelings and memories. Here is a video from one of our first attempts playing the song live. Right now its called, ‘Best Friend,’ but I’m working on the recording so everything is subject to change! (things can get crazy when it comes to recording 🙂 ) I dedicate the song to all of my good friends who I grew up with. Man we have sure learned a lot of lessons together! I’m so happy to have music as a channel through which to express these childhood memories.

Lyrics

Confluence of Anomalies Lyrics

Here are the lyrics to our recently released song, Confluence of Anomalies!

Verse 1
Confluence of anomalies
Weather man explain to me
I couldn’t sleep last night
Cold air in my window tight

Verse 2
Boy you’ve got a lot of nerve
Climbing up your learning curve
World looks rough from here
And all it took to get you there

(Repeat)

Chorus
From a satellite
A sea of lights
Giving you away

And there are no lines
In real life
Dressing up the day

Verse 3
Run business as usual
Isn’t it unusual
So hard to break a trend
Even with an incentive

Verse 4
Weather knows no boundaries
Latitude complexities
Try to draw relationships
All this based on estimates

Chorus
From a satellite
A sea of lights
Giving you away

And there are no lines
In real life
Dressing up the day

And it looks so small from here
What a shaky sphere
Only currencies of lights
Giving you away
(repeat 3x)

And it looks so small from here
What a shaky sphere
Only currencies of lights
And we’re all here

The end!