Q4 sales totaled $998, evenly split between physical and digital. That’s slightly better than Q3, but way below typical holiday numbers. One optimistic explanation is that instead of buying CDs as gifts, people bought iTunes cards, which would shift those “holiday” sales back a month.

The biggest seller was my latest album, The Thought Chapter, which is now $250 shy of breaking even. Next up was Color Theory presents Depeche Mode, which finally sold out physically (though there are a few copies left at CD Baby). The sales-by-album breakdown has remained essentially the same since I started posting figures:

That brings the total of physical CDs I’ve sold or otherwise parted with to 5,965, for a total of $54,296 in sales. That sounds impressive until you realize that 1) it’s over 16 years, and 2) I’m still in the red. But hey, I’m getting closer to breaking even every month. For more details, see my running tally of profit/loss figures for each album.

My chances of selling the remaining 2,735 CDs in my garage before the death of the medium are slim. I’m open to any crazy promotional stunt you might dream up! A few years ago, people would listen to a CD if you handed it to them, if only because a professionally designed package in shrinkwrap had some perceived value. These days most would throw it straight in the trash, so any giveaway needs to be highly targeted. Maybe I should just hold onto them until CDs become “vintage.”

Here are the latest production ideas for my new album, to be miraculously completed in 149 days.

On the Pulse came about while familiarizing myself with Operator’s Analog softsynth. While I’ve long understood what all the knobs do on your typical synth, I rarely program sounds from scratch. For this snippet I programmed the strings and the bass, the latter of which I modeled after Tracy Thorn’s “It’s All True.” I forgot to turn on overwrite mode so my two bass takes overlapped, resulting in some pleasant glitches. I love happy accidents!

Wanderer is well on its way to becoming a full-fledged song, entitled “Crawlspace.” I’ve already got the chorus melody and lyrics, centered around these lines:

Thought I had hit rock bottom
You dug a crawlspace for me
Underneath my all-time low

It was difficult for me to stop and move on, but I’d really like to have a full production bank of snippets to draw from before finishing any more songs.

Deadbeat is an experiment in arpeggiation. Though the intro is a flowery mess of notes, the actual arrangement alternates between only two, fed into separate arpeggiators. For the end of the snippet, I introduced random pitches into one of the arpeggiators, so I can never create the exact same mix again.

Preparing “If Not Now When” for Rock Band got me thinking. What if instead of forcing the game to work with an old song, I wrote a new song to fit the game? I’d make a clear lead synth part for the “guitar,” spread non-vocal material across five notes, and introduce variations throughout the song to maintain the fun factor. But why stop there? Why not name the song after the game? Well, I suppose any song called “Rock Band” would have to be an actual rock song, so that won’t work. But what if the song was about about a keyboardist dropping out of a rock band to go electronic?

Here’s a first draft of the lyrics, along with a little piano sketch up through the first chorus so you can see where the words go (it starts with an instrumental lead, so don’t let that throw you off). What do you think, beyond the obvious fact that it’s completely out of character for me? My guess is it won’t work for the album, but could it work as a one-off hard-rocking synth anthem premiering inside the game? For now, you’ll have to use your imagination on the “hard-rocking” part.

Rock Band
©2010 Brian Hazard (ASCAP)

It’s hard to miss the place I’m going
You can hear the noise from a mile away
Hey I could use a hand unloading
But you can’t believe I showed up late again
“Where have you been?”

Patch in the board
Pull up some faders
Play some cheesy strings and some sound effects
Make too much noise
Piss off the neighbors
Cop a famous riff and call it a new song
We’re busy Mom

CHORUS:
Who wants to be in a rock band
When you got synthesizers
Take your human interaction and I
I’ll take my wires
Tune up your guitars
Practice your classic rock
I don’t need to jerk around
I got perfection in a box
Who wants a rock band
Whoa, a rock band

Why do we call this a rehearsal
When we’ve never played once outside your garage?
I didn’t join a sewing circle
You can kick me out but you can’t keep me in
‘Cause in the end

CHORUS EXTENDED AT THE END:
Who wants a rock band
When you got drum machines
Where the hell d’you find a drummer who can’t
Can’t find the beat
Yeah electronic
Is where it’s really at
Grunge was big back in the 90’s
But it’s never coming back.

I spent 33 hours last week preparing my song for Rock Band’s in-game store. Here are a couple videos of showing where it stands right now, before going through the testing process. The first video shows the whole band in autoplay mode on expert difficulty, and the second just the vocals, so you can better appreciate the camera and lighting work (and the fact that Trent Reznor is singing my song!). For more information on the song authoring process, see my new article: Rock Band Network for Dummies?

I was quite the a-ha fan growing up. I could sing every song on their debut album, Hunting High and Low, from memory, with my own creatively inaccurate interpretation of the lyrics. “Take On Me” was clearly the standout, but I was drawn to more somber fare like “Here I Stand and Face the Rain,” “Dream Myself Alive,” and my favorite, “Living a Boy’s Adventure Tale.”

Yesterday I completed my interpretation of the 80’s classic. It’s the first new Color Theory recording since 2008’s The Thought Chapter, and the first song I produced entirely in Ableton Live.

I also uploaded the song to thesixtyone here. If you’ve got hearts to spare, I’d appreciate the support!

Here’s the latest batch of raw materials for the upcoming album:

Prozac is the first snippet that clearly demands to become a song. In fact, I can probably start the first verse right where it leaves off. Now I just need 11 more snippets like this one.

Ooh Yah was inspired by Rain Rain. She opens “Double Dutch” (track 3 of her album, which you can hear using the player in my last post) with a building “ooh yeah, ay yi yah.” I wanted some raw material to experiment with Ableton’s Corpus and Vocoder, so I recorded myself singing the same one-note phrase. The snippet expands that single phrase into a mass of harmony, then dies away. Very Imogen Heap, and surprisingly, very easy to do!

Crushed Rose is a cover (by a different name). I created the snippet a week ago, and finished mixing the rest of the track last night. I’ll probably post it to thesixtyone next week. I’d prefer to not include any covers on the album, but let’s see how many songs I can write and record in the remaining 167 days.

Your candor and criticism are always encouraged.

The debut album of Rain Rain, The Deadliest Fairytales, was released yesterday. I devoted the vast majority of my working hours in September and October to mixing it, and I couldn’t be more pleased with the result. Not only it is a sonic treat, but the songs are all fantastic! It’s a solid album that fans of Color Theory are sure to enjoy. You can preview it using the player above, and pick it up here (or just click on “download” in the player).

We did it! Color Theory made the top 7, coming in 4th place with 297 downloads. Thank YOU for making it happen! Until next Monday at 11:00 a.m. EST, the seven winning tracks can be downloaded with a single click, which means thousands more people will hear my music. Oh yeah… and I get $507!

In the end, we won by only 19 downloads. Here are the final counts:

1. Kirby Heyborne 385
2. Gil Monteverde 329
3. Cascadence 320
4. Color Theory 297
5. TallBoy 295
6. FIRE 286
7. Garfield Mayor 286
8. JC Cassis 278 (lost)

Congratulations also to Rob Bentley and the rest of the street team, who collectively generated 201 clicks. We clearly wouldn’t have made it without your efforts.

It means a lot to me that so many of you kept trying to download my song despite the technical glitches. Whether or not you ultimately contributed to the download count, you have my heartfelt thanks.

I’ve been selected to participate in a Windows 7 promotion! Microsoft has made 49 songs available for free download, including my track “Behind the Rhine.” The seven most downloaded artists win $507!

Would you please go there now and download my track? (it’s free)

http://www.reverbnation.com/playlist7?artist_id=334871

They don’t ask for your name or email address, but you do have to “become a fan” at either Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter. Don’t let that scare you! There’s nothing to stop you from un-friending them after the voting period is over. For the record, while I love my Apple products, I use Windows 7 every day and am quite pleased with it.

Would you please ask your friends to do the same?

You can use the “share” button on the Playlist 7 site, or better yet, copy and paste the following (yes, it’s under 140 characters):

Help my friend Brian of Color Theory win $507 by downloading his song – it’s free! http://www.reverbnation.com/playlist7?artist_id=334871

If you’re willing to go the extra mile, join the Color Theory street team for some great reward(s). The promotion ends on Monday at 11:00 a.m. EST.

It really does pain me to be that “vote for me” guy. I normally avoid internet popularity contests at all costs, but this one is different because 1) it’s a lot of money, 2) our odds are really good, 3) Microsoft is promoting it aggressively, and 4) doing well might land me a spot in their next promotion. After all, I was selected for this one based on the results of their previous Sponsored Songs promo, where I came in 90th out of 1001 participating bands.

Thank you for your help!

Brian.

Microsoft’s Playlist 7 opportunity motivated me to create my first street team mission. Anyone can participate! You can join the street team here. Since the team consists of Color Theory fans as well as fellow musicians, I’ve created a reward that should entice both:

The 1st place winner gets their choice of:
A. The Color Theory Ultimate Fan Pack™ or…
B. Mastering your next release up to 15 tracks (up to a $900 value!)
2nd and 3rd place winners receive: all 8 Color Theory CDs
4th and 5th place winners receive: 2 Color Theory CDs of their choice

Mastering is performed by yours truly. My “day job” is owner and head engineer of Resonance Mastering.

The Color Theory Ultimate Fan Pack™ consists of:

1. A first edition copy of Sketches in Grey in original shrinkwrap
2. Original graphic proofs for The Thought Chapter
3. My last copy of Like Clockwork, a 2CD of piano/vocal demos
4. Copies (I only have one set) of the three embarrassingly unfunny newsletters I mailed to fans from 1994-1996
5. All 8 Color Theory CDs, including my out-of-print Depeche Mode tribute

I won’t be able to put a package like this together again, so let’s get out there and uh… get some people to click on a button! You can access the mission at any time to see status updates, discussion, and a real-time leaderboard.