247 is a good friend of mine here in town, but more importantly he’s the hidden force behind a lot of great things happening in Nashville! 247 has done a lot of production for other artists around town, including my friend Spoken Nerd. I’ve told you about him before because he’s one-third of The Billy Goats. Also, he appeared on the Machismo EP.

One of my favorite things he’s done was his project with BlackatSylvesta & Ugly Lovely called Out of Place. 247 is the main lyricist in the project. You can get their entire Genetic Defects album for free by going to the Out Of Place Bandcamp page. Or just play it here.

He’s been doing a lot of video production as well. Recently, he began an online interview series highlighting some of his favorite artists around Nashville. You can catch interviews he’s done with James Fate, Bobby Exodus & Spoken Nerd on his youtube channel. Finally, I was able to “take my talents” to 247’s place and shoot an interview video plus a live performance featuring Jed Smith on drums. Take a look!

I have a lot of shows coming up in the Middle TN area. I love to play live. It’s one of the more cathartic things I do in life as an artist. I recently found out that I will be a part of Mashville in August. Mashville is the monthly DJ party here in Nashville where the best DJs play hip-hop, electronic, dubstep, and whatever other music they want. It’s always an honor to play. Here are some pictures from the last time I played Mashville.

Something odd happened at the last Mashville show. I had some fans come out to see me. After my set, they were all disappointed. One of them had brought her friends. She said, “Well I told them how awesome you were and that you had such a crazy energetic live show. But when we saw you, you were just playing records.” I was kind of taken aback. Did she not know that I was killing it? But then, I realized the problem. Normally, I don’t just DJ with records. My live show has developed into a unique blend of music, crowd engagement and performance art.

I recently learned of a term and genre for this called Live PA. The PA part stands for “Performing Artist.” This Live PA term is used to describe producers who recreate their studio environment while performing their tracks live. Usually, this is different from a typical DJ set where a DJ will play mix tracks that he might not have created himself. I do think that you can be both. Perhaps, the best DJs and Live PA artists are both. The Live PA forum states, “The “real” Live P.A.s take it further by recreating their studio sound live and have the expressive capability to improvise and change the music on the fly, because all of their instruments are right there with them on-stage.” Later, they go on to say, “…many of us grew up going to and playing in rock, jazz, and classical bands and concerts, where musicians play instruments live and put on a show for the audience. Some Live P.A.s also DJ, and some DJs also do a Live P.A., so the two performance methods go hand-in-hand for some musicians, while other more traditional musicians wouldn’t want to be caught dead behind turntables – it all depends on the person. ”
Check out Divinci of Solillaquists Of Sound

My goal as an artist and as a performer is to grow in the DJ world and the Live PA world. My favorite DJ, DJ Shadow, seems to move effortlessly between these two distinctions. For instance if you have his In Tune and On Time DVD/CD, you can see that he has lots of turntables, samplers, midi controllers; plus, he’s remixing it all live to create something completely different from the studio creation. Somehow I think this is what DJs can and should do anyway. However if you then listen to a Shadow mix such as this next one, you’ll note that he performs tracks of his own plus some other ones.
DJ Shadow In Los Angeles 10.31.09- Snippet by djshadow

Anyway! To avoid future disappointments, I will try and communicate what kind of set I will be doing. Either a Live set or a DJ set. If you see my name on a flyer with no distinction, it’s probably a live set. For instance here:

But if you see it and it says DJ set, well then obviously:

Eventually, I hope to grow to the point where this type of distinction isn’t necessary. At the same time, it’s kind of a fun problem to have. Would you rather watch a DJ set? or a Live PA set? You have any stories or comparisons? Let me know in the comments.

One of the questions I’ve been asked the most is: How did I get my music on Pandora.com? Well, this is an easy question. Pandora has a wonderful FAQ section and the step-by-step process is spelled out nicely there. However, for the benefit of us all, I will walk you through everything I did, my thought process while doing it, and even what I am doing now that I have music on the site.

First off, it goes without saying. I’m a big fan of Pandora. Just about all the music I currently love is music that I discovered through either word of mouth or Pandora’s random selection. People like Blue Sky Black Death, Bonobo, and Free The Robots. So when I released the Machismo EP, I knew that I wanted it on Pandora. However (and in spite of the great instructions on their site), I hesitated. If you’re an artist, you might be hesitating too. I needed to do a lot of research. I felt like looking around and seeing if other indie artists were going this route. Thinking back, they obviously were or else where would all this great new music be coming from? Anyway, I kept stalling until I read a great blog post about Pandora over at genyrockstars.com. That’s a great post from Greg Rollett and long story short is a retelling of how to and why it’s great to be on Pandora. I recommend it for anyone who is wanting to do this. So anyway, it was a great kick in the pants and if I was going to be serious about my music, I needed to get on it. So, I got started.

I sent my Machismo EP in. I needed to have a barcode. At the time, i was struggling over whether to go with CDbaby or Tunecore to distribute the Machismo EP. I don’t know how it is now, but Tunecore was giving out barcodes with their subscription whereas CDbaby was charging extra fees. So I went with Tunecore for that reason alone. Also, you have to have your physical CD for sale on Amazon. You can easily set this up with Tunecore as i did with their on-demand store. You have to do this and you have to make sure it’s physical copy.

I uploaded two tracks to pandora.com ; filled out all the paperwork and sent that in along with a physical copy of the CD and then you wait. I took this time though to also fill out and get my stuff registered over at SoundExchange. Lots of paperwork, but you have to do all this stuff. Anyway, from the time I started this Pandora process until the time it showed up was about 6 months. Long time, eh? But hey, now it’s on there.

Ok great! Well, how was anyone going to find my music? Well, if you’ve heard the Machismo EP, you know that I have two instrumental tracks and 6 tracks with emcees. Pandora had only analyzed one track (Machismo) into their system. This means that only that track would possibly show up in rotation. Also, it means that my similar artists would only be artists who had music similar to that one song. Well, it’s the curse of having a diverse little record. I emailed their support to see if they would do any more. They got back to me to say that it’s customary that only 1-5 songs would be analyzed. Well, I thought that was both good and bad. I was able to up the load to 3 analyzed tracks. You see in the pic above it’s the 3 tracks that it says “try tracks 2, 4, and 6.” Anyway, so I have made comments over at my profile and at my record about how anyone can download Machismo for free. And I can edit those comments later if i need to.

So that’s cool. I noticed that they matched me up with artists like Dela & Panacea. Pretty cool, but I want people to catch my instrumental stuff too. Maybe the next record. One thing I also have done is create a Pandora station. I did this using Quiet Entertainer (again, that’s ME) as a seed. Also, I added some other artists that I like and other songs that I like as seeds. So anyone who listens to my custom Pandora station, will not only get a good mix of similar sounding artists according to Pandora but a great dose of stuff similar to what I’m listening to now and hopefully will have a keen ear to what my next record might sound like. Of course, you can hear the custom made Quiet Entertainer Pandora station here.

That’s really about it. The joy of Pandora is that it picks music for you. I can’t really push my music on people; and I wouldn’t want to. I hope that it plays my stuff for people and that they enjoy it. I wish I could tell if people were finding me through Pandora. But I guess I have other things to worry about. Like working harder and creating more. Meanwhile, I hope this was helpful to artists and also to anyone else as more of an insight to another aspect of something I deal with as QE.

Two things: 1) If it was helpful, then I’d love it if you’d share or re-tweet this. 2) Are any of you getting your music on Pandora? & how are you promoting it?

We are in the 6th month of a 12 month year and I wonder what I have to show for it. My dreams of doing music full time have been hanging on for dear life. Why? I could blame poor time management, insufficient hustle, cluttered workspace, etc. But I’m going to blame all of the above. Yet, these are silent killers. I wouldn’t have noticed it until the finale of LOST a couple of weekends ago. In fact, a bunch of my favorite shows ended for good this year: LOST, 24, Heroes, & FlashForward. I’ve been obsessed with watching these shows instead of getting Quiet Entertainer off the ground.

Here’s how it happens. I don’t watch TV on actual TV. I use Hulu and Yidio to watch pretty much everything I’m going to watch. I think if I watched on the regular timetable, I’d at least be able to say “oh I’ll work on music until 24 comes on.” But as it is; I can watch at anytime; and I’ve been lazy and finding an urgency to get things done. I love Hulu and Yidio, but in this case it’s been sucking all my time! I blame myself. But who could resist watching every clip and web exclusive of LOST leading up to the finale? And Jack Bauer’s finale season: How far will he go?? And a Hulu bonus! the entire series of the A-Team is on Hulu right now! Should I watch the entire series before I go see the movie in theaters?

I wouldn’t have noticed the slow death of my music career if not for a few artists. Let’s look at The Hood Internet. They recently came through Nashville on their tour. I had never heard of them before but they were booked to play Mashville, Nashville’s monthly DJ party. So, I went online to check them out and they had released 9 free mixtapes over the past 3 years! How did I miss this? So I downloaded just 4 mixtapes (for free) and I instantly had 4 hours of music to listen to. Well these guys aren’t lazy. This exact thing happened when Pretty Lights came through half a year ago. I had never heard of him, but he was coming to Nashville so I looked him up. He had four free records on his site too! I don’t know when he started but I think it’s also been 3 or 4 years his current setup. I downloaded it all and had about 4 or 5 hours of music with which to get acquainted. I’m a big fan of both now.

This discussion made me remember a blog post I read a while back from Justin over at AudibleHype.com asking Is Touring Really Necessary? I encourage artists of any genre looking to do this for a living to go read that. Long story short though, He says the five core ingredients to success without touring are:
1. Great Music
2. Easily Accessible
3. Prolific Output
4. Evangelist Fans
5. Low Overhead

I had to look around; is anyone doing this in my town? DJ Wick-It is pretty close. I think he’s got at least 4 of those 5 goin for him if not all 5. He’s got all of his (very dope hip-hop & dubstep) music available on his soundcloud page. Also, Spoken Nerd is super prolific. Since I’ve known him, he’s always put out a lot of music and is always thinking two records ahead. Check his latest from his bandcamp.

So, I am looking to these artists for inspiration. With some of my favorite shows out of the way, I have no excuse. I have to get to work and make actual music. I know my e-mail list will keep me accountable. Maybe you will too. So thankfully, I don’t have to worry about Jack Shepard OR Jack Bauer. At least not until the 24 movie comes out.

If you liked this post, I’d love it if you’d re-tweet or share. Also you can subscribe to my blog.

That’s a video taken about 2 miles up the road from where I live. The large store there is Kroger where I actually used to work. The flood seemingly hit our area of Nashville (Belle Meade / Bellevue) the hardest before taking over the rest of Nashville including downtown, Opry Mills area, & Antioch along with neighboring Franklin. A lot of the water in my immediate neighborhood has gone down finally, but there is still a lot of damage and devastation. Needless to say, my thoughts have been kind of scatterbrained as I try to make sense of all of this. The updates I was going to give you throughout the week and weekend has been neglected. I’ll try and give you a quick run-through of some things I’ve been doing lately and also how this flood affects all things QE.

not a Nashville pic but you get the idea

On the night of the first rainfall, I actually got a chance to see Pretty Lights along with Gift of Gab as they both came to Nashville. Despite the flood, this show was packed. It worked out well because had I been home that night, I would have been trapped by the flood-waters. Instead, I just couldn’t go home. Pretty Lights’ show isn’t groundbreaking DJ-ing or turntablism or anything. However, you can’t argue with 2,000 screaming people. Gift of Gab was awesome. Daedulus (who I didn’t know would be there) was really great and gave me a lot of ideas. However, a true highlight for me was seeing This Is Art (Check them out on bandcamp!) perform. I just opened a show with them a couple of weeks ago. They did great in front of a large crowd and their continued success inspires me to connect with even more people.

Anyway, so the next day I foolishly tried to get a bunch of my gear and stuff to safety after the flood. As it turns out, the safest place for the gear was in the home and not in my truck. So although everything is mostly dry, I do think some moisture got inside the mixer. I will be letting it dry out. It should be good before the house show I’m playing with Details Details this Saturday. This Nashville stuff is crazy. Check out this video that a friend made. I leave you with that for now.

I enjoy weekends when I have shows on both Friday and Saturday. It doesn’t happen often enough but lately it has been more frequent. Tomorrow (Friday) I’ll be performing again in Murfreesboro, TN; this time at YEAH! (Youth Empowerment through Arts and Humanities). It seems like a cool spot. I’ve never been, but it appears that it’s an all ages spot geared towards youth. This is another way for me to invest down . I’m doing that show with my friend Details Details & a band called Ray Charles Death Tempo. Hey, why not? Check out this video of Details Details:

Then on Saturday the 24th, I’ll be going back to Clarksville, TN to play at The Coup. They are having their 2-year Birthday Party. I always have fun when I play out there. Everyone is always pretty nice and hospitable. I can’t really ask for more than that. Other than money. Lots of other bands on that bill. It’s actually the second day of a two-day festival thing they’re doing. Nite Nite & Smokee B will also be performing.

If you miss out on these, I’m sure I’ll be updating on Twitter about them. So keep in touch. Be sure to subscribe to my blog so you don’t miss any!

Some of you know that before I got into DJ-ing I was heavily involved in acting and theatre. So these days, I dream of one day having the time to go back into acting. I was reminded recently of this when I read Greg Rollett’s post on using music to launch another career. Who has done this better than most? Will Smith. You know him from DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, the first Grammy winners in the rap category. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was his highly successful TV show.

Then he had several successful movies in which he was the main star. Independence Day, Men In Black, Bad Boys. In addition to that, he had a successful solo artist career during the time he was in these movies. However, I didn’t really like his latest movies. I keep waiting on something that I’ll really care about.

But look at DJ Jazzy Jeff. He’s also a Grammy Winner. Also had a recurring role in the successful TV show. He went back to music; releasing records, rockin parties. He has been producing other artists, like Jill Scott and Maxwell. He also has been judging DJ competitions, helping the up-and-coming class. He’s also been an unofficial spokesperson (maybe he IS official) for Ableton Live.

What I like about his career, he’s still DJing and doing shows. At these shows, he’s seen as a legend. A LEGEND. I guess Will Smith would get a lot of people out to his shows if he went back to rapping. But would he have legendary status? Maybe he should, but I don’t think he would. What’s the difference? I think more than Will Smith, Jazzy Jeff has invested his time downward. Meaning, he spent some time being involved with other people who were learning to DJ and produce.

Investing down is a surefire way to build your legacy. Maybe it’s your kids. Maybe it’s ALL kids. Maybe it’s a beginner in your field of expertise. I suppose that Will Smith is investing down into his kids’ lives. That is admirable. However while Will Smith is seen as a star, Jazzy Jeff is seen as a hero.

So the question is, would you rather be a star? Or a hero? Let me know in the comments. If you liked this post, please share or retweet.