Synthpoppers

Depeche Mode - as done by household items and little kids

2012-02-03T19:44:00.002-07:00

I think these guys just put Fletch out of a job. ;-) Totally awesome. Also, it's kind of reminiscent of my house on some days (on a not-quite-this-musically-impressive scale!).

Thanks Doug for the tip. (Dicken and kids also do versions of Strangelove and Shake the Disease, but Everything Counts is the best of the three).

cn

Best albums of 2011

2012-01-01T22:45:00.001-07:00

radiohead - king of limbs (my son thinks "ghosty guy" on the cover sings the songs on the album)
thomas dolby - map of the floating city (did no one else hear this album??)
lights - siberia (my daughter's favourite album by her favourite artist, hands down. i loved it despite hearing it a million times because of her.)
booker t jones - the road from memphis (who knew you could still make an album that sounds like this?)
coldplay - mylo xyloto
wilco - the whole love
cut copy - zonoscope
junior boys - it's all true
daft punk - tron: legacy ost (technically from last december, but only got it last summer)
moby - destroyed (not his best album ever, but really struck an emotional chord with me)

And my most played track in iTunes was... Toes, by Lights, with 34 plays. Thank my daughter for that one.

Happy 2012 everyone! (If you're looking for Ryan's list, it's here).

Favourite Albums of 2011

2011-12-26T14:40:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for something to spend your Xmas cash on, consider picking up/downloading these albums - my favourites from 2011.

Handsome Furs - Sound Kapital
Lights - Siberia
Mat Kearney - Young Love
Duran Duran - All You Need Is Now
Coldplay - Mylo Xyloto
Acid House Kings - Music Sounds Better With You
Mass Choir - Circles
Owl City - All Things Bright and Beautiful
Eisley - The Valley
The Drums - Portamento

And last year's #1 could've made the list again this year, it was that good.

Orange EP now available - free!

2011-11-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

We're pleased to announce that the latest EP from Caffeine Sunday - Orange - is now available for free download!

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://music.caffeinesunday.com/album/orange"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Orange by Caffeine Sunday&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

This is the "indie pop" EP, our second free release in 2011. It includes 3 songs we've been playing live for a few years but have never officially released (including an alternate version of an old classic), as well as a remix of a track from our 2009 full-length release.

Track listing:

Waiting For a Whisper
Walking the Dog
Getting Away With Murder
Three Song Cutoff (Vegas Mix)

Where can I download it?

See above, or here: http://music.caffeinesunday.com/album/orange

It's free?? Are you serious?

Yes, completely. We only ask that you help spread the word about our songs. Play them at parties, really loud in the car with the windows down, really loud in the shower with the windows open, or use them in your network drama about sexy young doctors. And tell your friends to download these tunes too!

Work wrapped up on next Caffeine Sunday EP

2011-11-24T11:00:00.000-07:00

The next Caffeine Sunday EP (sorry, next FREE Caffeine Sunday EP!) is done and ready to release.

The "Orange" EP comes out on Tuesday, November 29. Watch for the announcement, details and links on that day. Super excited to get more tunes out for everyone!

(Read about our EP project in this previous post.)

cn

See, you can still make a music video in 2011 and make it awesome*

2011-11-10T12:50:00.001-07:00

*Disclaimer - you need millions of $$ and the ability to snare five supermodels to impersonate you.

Case in point - the newest video from Duran Duran. "Girl Panic" runs 10 minutes, and features classic supermodels Yasmin Le Bon, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Eva Herzigova, and Helena Christensen as the members of Duran Duran.

People who hate Duran Duran will hate this video, of course. I think it's funny and brilliant, if a little weird, but I also think it's interesting that they would spend this much effort on a music video in 2011. It's gotten them lots of attention without the help of a major label.

cn

P.S. If Caffeine Sunday made a music video with stars impersonating us, who would be those stars? Flight of the Conchords?

Synthpoppers gets all HTML5 fancy

2011-11-01T21:36:00.000-06:00

Blogger, which we've been on for years, has gotten some pretty radical Google-influenced changes under the hood. This allows us to make the Synthpoppers site more dynamic for the desktoppers out there, and also serve up a mobile-specific version of the blog for those of you with limited screen estate. All for the low low price of FREE.

Have a peek and tell us what you think. If stuff is horrible, we can always revert back to an older theme... The admin side of things is way cleaner, though. Not unlike using Google+.

cn

Propellerheads Reason gets major upgrade this week

2011-09-27T20:13:00.000-06:00

One of the most-used pieces of gear in the Caffeine Sunday studio isn't gear at all, but software. One piece of software in particular: Propellerheads Reason. I can't stress enough how groundbreaking this app has been for me. Especially from a songwriting and production standpoint, it's so fast, simple, stable and fun, it's become the core of my studio.

Well on Friday, Propellerheads drop version 6 on the world. Among the highpoints, they've merged their separate Record app into Reason, so now Reason does true audio recording, right in the app. So it can be the one app for all you do. Some people like Logic or Cubase for that kind of thing, but for synthpoppers, I can't recommend Reason enough.

Here's a promo vid about the new features in Reason 6:

I won't be getting it this week, alas, but I do plan on getting it at some point. Once I get into it I'll post my opinions. If it's anything like the previous versions, it'll be a knockout. (Although I'll say I'm already not keen on the USB "ignition key". If that's what I think it is, I'm not going to be happy about giving up the one USB port on this original MacBook Air just for copy protection shenanigans.)

It's available Sept. 30 and looks like it'll cost $400 Canadian. Upgrade costs are less. (And if you have the previous Reason 5 + Record version, they're even trying a pay-what-you-want upgrade for it)

cn

Two synthpop releases to watch for this fall

2011-09-20T19:20:00.000-06:00

There looks like quite a few big-name music releases coming out this fall that I'm looking forward to (Wilco, Chris Issak, Coldplay, Ben Folds) but there are two synthpop albums that I'm stoked about. You should be too.

1. Lights

The new school, young (and hot) Canadian singer/ songwriter/ synthgirl Lights has her long-awaited new album Siberia due out on Oct. 4. (Details)

2. Erasure

If Lights is the new gen, Erasure are the grandmasters. I've written before about how much Vince Clarke has influenced me. Well, the dynamic duo keep chugging along with a new album and world tour this fall. Tomorrow's World gets released in Canada on Oct. 11. (Details).

Cantwaitcantwaitcantwaitcantwait....

cn

Download Caffeine Sunday's Blue EP for free, starting today!

2011-07-26T11:05:00.002-06:00

We are pleased to announce that the newest EP from Caffeine Sunday - Blue - is now available!

You can download the Blue EP for free, from here.

Tech specs

Caffeine Sunday - BLUE EP - Track listing:

Paid in Full
Plane (Remix)
Low (Remix)
Set Me Free (Remix)

All music and lyrics written by Nash. Remixes produced by Caffeine Sunday. Original versions of Plane, Low and Set Me Free are available on the album I Wish I Could Film Tonight in Black and White.

Download formats: MP3, AAC, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, ALAC

Details

This is the "electronic clubby dance" EP. Two more free EPs are following later this year, and a new album will appear in 2012. Read details of the three EPs being released this year here.

Where can I download it?

Here's the link: http://music.caffeinesunday.com/album/blue

Cool that it's free. What if I want to pay you guys for it?

The best way to pay us back, if you want, is to tell 10 friends about it. It's a free EP, so the point is to make it available to as many people as possible. Spread the word in your circles, and let's get Caffeine Sunday tunes to as many people as possible!

We're really excited to get new music out into the world. Hope you enjoy it. Remember - it's made to be played loud!

Caffeine Sunday releasing three new EPs, starting next week

2011-07-19T08:44:00.001-06:00

There will be not one, not two, but three EPs of new Caffeine Sunday tunes released before the end of the year!

Here's the scoop:

We are releasing 3 EPs of new music in the next six months -

July: Blue EP (clubby electronic dance songs)
Sept: Orange EP (rockier alt new wave songs)
December: Red+Green EP (Christmas/holiday songs)

The first EP - Blue - comes out a week from today, on Tuesday, July 26
And… all EPs are free!

We're also planning a full album to release in the early spring of 2012. The songwriting has already started for that release, and in the meantime we still have several good songs from the I Wish I Could Film Tonight in Black and White album-era that haven't been released. So we wanted to put them out as EPs now, and we wanted to make them free.

Come back to synthpoppers.com next week for the track listing and link to download the Blue EP!

cn

Exciting announcement coming next week

2011-07-14T18:29:00.000-06:00

On Tuesday, July 19, Caffeine Sunday will be making an exciting announcement.

A hint: here's a recent pic I took while I was working on this:

Talk to you next week!

cn

In honour of William and Kate visiting the Calgary Stampede - download the Caffeine Sunday track "Cowboy Hat" for free!

2011-07-07T19:30:00.000-06:00

From CBC earlier today: "William and Kate received Calgary's version of a crowning when Nenshi presented them with white cowboy hats at their official welcome to the city. Previous participants in the Calgary tradition include former U.S. president George W. Bush, the Dalai Lama and actor William Shatner. But in what some commentators saw as a disappointment, the pair did not don the hats. Bookmakers had been taking bets on whether they would." (Full story)

I find this news from Calgary today really disappointing (and not because they didn't don the hats!)

So. Regardless of whether or not you think that was news that's worthy of, well, the news, we wanted to mark the Royal visit to Calgary and the annual Calgary Stampede by encouraging you to listen to and download our track "Cowboy Hat", from our most recent album I Wish I Could Film Tonight in Black and White, for free!

And in case you're curious, here's the story behind the song:

Yeehaw y'all!

cn

Malcolm Forsyth: 1936-2011

2011-07-05T22:08:00.001-06:00

This is not about synthpop. It's not about DIY recording, or performing live while flanked by sequencers and keyboards. But when someone from your town dies, and that someone happens to be one of the great composers in your country's history, you need to pay your respects.

Malcolm Forsyth died earlier today in Edmonton. Forsyth was a member of the Order of Canada, a multiple Juno Award winner, University of Alberta professor, conductor, trombonist with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, and most notably, classical composer. You can read more about his distinguished life on Wikipedia or on his official website.

You can read more details on the news of his death here:

He was only 74 when he died. There's a life lesson in there somewhere.

His best work was written for his daughter. There's a life lesson in there somewhere.

Despite battling cancer, he kept composing right up until the end. There's a life lesson in there somewhere, too.

Listen to Forsyth's 'Sketches from Natal'

Thanks for all the great music, Malcolm. Thanks for making Canada and the world a nicer place to live in for the rest of us.

cn

New free tracks from Cygnets (not swans...)

2011-06-14T21:09:00.000-06:00

Fellow Edmonton new wavers Cygnets have released three live tracks for a free download (link). The tracks were recorded during a recent session at Alberta's independent radio station CKUA.

We've played a couple of shows with Cygnets, and they're not only very cool sounding, but great guys too. They're the only band who looked at us lugging a smoke machine onto stage and said "hey, us too!", pointing at their own smoke machine, instead of the usual reaction which is "smoke machine? you guys are a joke."

(P.S. You can also download their entire album Bleak Anthems from their blog, and pledge money toward the making of their next album at Indiegogo. Be sure to check them out!)

cn

Making scarce musical products in a digital age - CBC Spark feature

2011-05-31T19:23:00.001-06:00

I happened to catch CBC Radio's excellent show on technology, Spark, on the weekend. They happened to have segment on the music industry - namely, how some artists are using analog scarcity in a digitally abundant marketplace to their advantage.

(If you just said "Huh?", that basically means bands that are creating fancy, deliberately limited edition physical products, like a handmade album box with vinyl records inside, to sell at high prices to die-hard fans, in a time where most music is available digitally for cheap or for free.)

The segment is titled "From Rare to Everywhere" and it's definitely worth a listen. You can hear it online or download it from the CBC site (LINK).

One of the segment's interviews is with Jay Ferguson of Sloan (below) on how that band is making super premium versions of its new album.

You can also listen to the full version of Spark's interview with Jay on the Spark blog (LINK).

It's beginning to be a familiar story, but it's still a very interesting trend. It reminds me of the excellent I Am Jen, who custom painted and assembled CDs for her fans:

It makes me wonder about possibly going super scarce in a future release. Like, doing something really cool, and only making 10 of them, instead of attempting to do something on a bigger scale. Maybe there's something to be said about keeping things super limited.

cn

Sleep in the closet so you can fit more drum machines in your studio - Moby

2011-05-24T22:00:00.000-06:00

At risk of being a Moby fanboy (not a bad thing to be, btw), I loved the cover feature Electronic Musician did on him and his Destroyed album that was released today. (The album was recorded in lonely hotel rooms at 2 a.m. on various nights during a recent tour).

The article gets pretty music-recording-geeked-out and gearspotting-heavy (yes!), but it gives some great insight into writing and recording on your own.

My favourite quote:

"My studio is smaller than where I keep my drum machines. In New York, my studio is basically a small bedroom. So, people think I’m either being self-deprecating or exaggerating, but when I’m in New York, I sleep in the closet and I have my studio in the bedroom . . . and I’m pretty comfortable there."

Yup. Sleep in the closet of your little NYC Soho apartment studio so you can devote more studio space to house the 50 vintage drum machines you bought on eBay. That's having your priorities straight - and I'm not even kidding.

Full article

cn

Let's All Buy A Nissan!

2011-05-21T01:10:00.002-06:00

This ad was bugging me for weeks. I have a really old iPhone which has the reaction speed of a 90 yr old Arab dictator, so it was nearly impossible to launch SoundHound in time to grab a soundbite sufficient enough to ID this song before it ended. So I was always left muttering WTDGF, I NEED to know who sings this!

But who needs Apps? Thanks to a complex Google search I discovered the lovely Jasmine Ash is responsible for this sonic gem, as well as another 3 pseudo-synthpop tracks that are sufficiently excellent for worldwide purchase and subsequent dance/bike/rollerblade soundtracking for the rest of our much-too-short-but always lengthening (thank you climate change) summer.

Lulls!

Slave Lake fire a lesson for the rest of us - backup your stuff!

2011-05-17T22:45:00.000-06:00

Slave Lake, a community located about 3 hours north of Edmonton, Alberta, just suffered a devastating forest fire/wildfire that burned down 40 per cent of the town. Almost 3/4 of the entire town has been damaged or lost in the fire. Just like that.

(If you want to help out - and I hope you do - please send cash donations to the Canadian Red Cross!)

One thing that struck me as I listened to radio coverage of the fire today: Holy crap I need to do a better job of backing up my music studio files.

People in Slave Lake had to flee in a hurry and with little notice. Some left their homes with nothing, and now have no idea of when they'll ever be allowed back, or even if there's anything left of their homes. They're lucky to be alive, but they've lost a lot of their personal belongings and possessions.

If my city was hit by something similar, and we had to run for our lives while our house burned to the ground, I would lose a ton of music files. They're backed up, mind you. But real backups should follow Merlin Mann's "Holy Trinity" of file backups: they need to be automatic, redundant, and offsite.

While I've done a pretty good job of backing up my family photos, personal files, and video files (automatically backed up using Time Machine and Arq, redundant using an external drive and Amazon S3, and offsite - see Amazon S3), my music studio files are not well backed up at all. They're not automatic (I have to manually trigger an Iomega backup script to run), they're sort of redundant (old studio files are on CDs as well as on the external hard drive I use to backup newer studio projects), and they're definitely not offsite. If a fire hit us, those files and archives would be gone forever.

So it looks like I have a summer project for myself: get my studio files backed up for real, before something bad a la Slave Lake happens to us here.

cn

New Moby album, book, interactive map, and free streaming preview

2011-05-10T13:17:00.001-06:00

Today Moby launched a preview site for his upcoming album Destroyed.

The site streams the whole album (for free), and has an interactive map with clickable photos taken by Moby that actually accompany the album he recorded (a kind of "Up in the Air" meets Aphex Twin vibe, which I can definitely relate to after staying up late, alone in a foreign hotel room). Anyone using the Instagram app can upload a pic of where they are at 2 a.m. and tag it #destroyed to have it show up on Moby's map.

Besides being a cool listen, it's always interesting to see how artists are tackling the release of a new album. In this case, there will be the standard digital only version, and a CD-with-booklet version, but also a full-blown hardcover book version (with CD and downloads), and a vinyl version with a poster, CD and downloads. These are in addition to being able to hear the whole thing for free online. It's released a week from today (May 17) in Canada.

Co-host of Inside Home Recording podcast dies

2011-05-04T21:13:00.000-06:00

A quick post to say that Derek K Miller, one of the co-hosts of the supremely excellent Inside Home Recording podcast, has died.

The podcast has been a treasure trove of DIY recording tips and advice for years. The only bad thing about it lately has been that the episodes have been a bit hit and miss, in terms of being produced. That's because Derek's cancer had returned.

Yesterday, May 3, it took his life. He was 41. You can read about it on his personal blog (yes, he wrote his own blog post announcing that he had died: Link to post).

Sad stuff.

cn

New gear: the Roland Fantom G6

2011-05-04T08:20:00.000-06:00

On the weekend I bought a new (to me) synth. It's a Roland Fantom G6, and it's fancier than any keyboard I've ever owned in my life. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited about it.

This year I've bought two new keyboards - the first I've bought in 13 years. The first was a Nord Electro 3. Next on the list was going to be a stage piano, but this deal for the used Roland came up locally, and as the stickers used to say on the tapes they sold in Wainwright's Ed's Sound Centre, it had a "Nice Price!" (Unlike Ed's Sound Centre, the price was actually nice!). So I got this instead for now.

Also, this synth fills a void left after my young daughter slaughtered my Kurzweil K2000 synth last fall. I can post pics of it later when I have a chance to give some impressions on the new Roland. But suffice it to say that Trent Reznor couldn't have done a better job of killing it. (My daughter was spinning around in my office chair in my makeshift basement studio, and her leg caught the Kurzweil and knocked it off its stand. It fell to the concrete floor and shattered).

It's going to take a few weeks to get to know this 'board - it's got a ton of features so it's going to take some monkeying around and manual reading to learn how to use it well. But in a couple of weeks (sometime after the Japanaid fundraiser) I'll post a video review of it.

cn

May: A Month of Unrequited Love

2011-05-01T01:12:00.000-06:00

One of my greatest musical "finds" ever, via Indie Pop Rocks on SomaFM, has been Danish indie band Moi Caprice. Nobody does optimistic depression quite like these guys. Soaring and sophisticated, they're the artsier, foreign version of Coldplay that was playing during the break-up scene of the Zooey Deschanel movie you saw at the Metro last weekend. They've become one of my favourite bands of all time, and made my 2008 Top 10 list.

Anyway... Moi Caprice frontman Michael Moller is currently undertaking a solo project, releasing a new song every day in May as part of a project called A Month of Unrequited Love. I've been there, buddy.

Check the site every day in May to download his latest track. If the first track The Birth of a Song is any indication of what's in store, it's going to be a GREAT (and sad) month. If/when you love what you hear, you can donate to ensure Michael can continue to make and release this amazing music, and ensure these 31 songs are eternalised on CD and vinyl.

Maybe this is how you release an album in 2011...

Wanna be an indie artist? It probably won't work out for you, so you better be making something you love

2011-04-27T13:29:00.000-06:00

Marketing and leadership shitdisturber Seth Godin was interviewed recently on CD Baby's DIY Musician Podcast (link). He's had some very strong opinions, predictions and advice for musicians in the past (like in this post). What does he have to say on the topic of indie music now?

Forget about being picked for anything. Get over yourself and embrace the art of "free". Have patience. Rethink what being a great musician means. Make what you love. And even then, it's probably not going to work.

Still in? Read on.

Forget about being picked
This has been written about for years now, but it bears repeating again because so many people are stuck in the trap of the 20th Century music industry model: Get signed. Get picked by Canadian Idol judges and voters. Get selected by Festival X or featured on Blog Y. And then it will all be OK.

Seth says we have a choice. You can go with the old way (wait to get picked) but 99.99% of us will never be picked, so enjoy waiting for nothing. Or, you can pick yourself.

Remember, while it's a terrible time to be in the music industry, it's not a bad time for music. More people listen to more music now than in any time in human history. So it's not the love of music that's gone away, it's the business model built on big labels, payola radio and CDs that's a dinosaur.

The catch, according to Seth: Picking yourself comes with a lot of responsibility.

How do you get things going if you pick yourself? No one really knows. But Seth suggests starting small. Very small. Just 10 people.

"Your job is not to get SXSW to pick you. Find 10 people who when they're exposed to your work need more of it, and bring their friends."

Don't wait to get picked. Pick yourself, and find a tiny number of people who passionately care about what you're doing.

"Great musician redefined"
When the interviewer tells Seth that many musicians seem frustrated that they need to be on top of a lot of non-musical things now in order to be an indie artist, and that they can't just focus on "being a good musician and focusing on the music," Seth challenged our default definitions of "the music" and "musician".

"The music"- until 1910 and the birth of recordings, "music" meant live performance. The idea of selling "music", in the form of records, to make money is a purely 20th Century idea. Before and after, not so much. Time to rethink this.

"Musician" - It used to be enough that being a great musician meant playing the notes correctly, with the right articulations, the right fingerings, the right dynamics, and the right phrasing. I have a Bachelor of Music degree, so I know all about this. Being a good technical musician is important. But if you want to be a musician that other people care about, you're going to have to be great at other things too. It's not enough to know the notes. You need to figure out a way to stand out and be memorable to other people. And that involves more than notes on a page or lyrics in your head.

Free?
Bringing up the complaints that CD Baby DIY Podcast got from listeners in reaction to an interview with Chris Anderson, author of "Free", Seth pointed out a pattern he sees with people who hate the idea of giving away something for free in order to get an audience.

"I don't know one successful artist who has followed the free path and said 'that was a mistake'...I know all sorts of people who aren't successful at collecting an audience, who refuse to give away anything for free, who are angry about it."

The world would be better if people did pay for everything, but the world would be better if a lot of things happened. They're not happening either. Get over it.

Seth says stop worrying about selling stuff. Start worrying about getting your music to spread.

"The new model is: no one's ever going to hear of you unless the idea spreads. And if the idea spreads, it's not that hard to figure out ways to make money from it. So what you got to dream up when you go to bed at night is 'what can I do tomorrow that's likely to spread?'"

Patience. Lots of Patience.
This is a tough one. But it's an observation that's probably painful, but true.

"Patience is the key," he says. He mentions a jazz musician he knows who has been at if for 30 years, and now her tribe is only now starting to show up.

"That sucks, but that's the deal."

Ugh.

It still probably won't work anyway
And probably the most controversial comment was Seth's closing remark. Controversial in that it's a fairly pessimistic view of your chances, even if you do all the right things.

"I think you should be an artist. I think you should stop trying to be a business person, and stop trying to please your mother-in-law. I think you should make the music you've always wanted to make because you're not going to get many chances, so you might as well make that thing that you're proud of. It's probably not going to sell, but the stuff in the middle isn't going to sell either, so make that thing you believe in, do it loud and do it proud, and hopefully the rest of the world will hear you."

So, in a nutshell, what you are doing probably isn't going to be successful, so you better spend your precious time making something you love. Chances are no one else cares. But if you make something you love, and it's something that's great, and you can get 10 people to love it too, then just maybe you'll build a following and your life as an indie musician will get a lot easier.

Sobering, depressing and inspiring, all in one quote. Welcome to being an indie musician in 2011.

cn

Seth Godin and the future of the music industry

2011-04-19T17:33:00.001-06:00

Anyone who's read my posts for any length of time will know that I've been a Seth Godin fan for years. He's a disturber and a thought provoker, and he tends to see what's happening in a given industry before others.

Well, there's an excellent (but too short!) interview with Seth Godin on the equally excellent CD Baby DIY Musician Podcast where Seth talks specifically about music, and what indie musicians need to do in order to have success. Or not.

Have a listen. Think about what he's talking about. Agree? Disagree? Hate?

Listen to the podcast (28 min)

I'll be back next week to go over what I think about it.