Releasing a Music track and Stems under CREATIVE COMONS Attribution-Share Alike License

 Did that yesterday for my DIGITAL DUST EXTENDED track on Bandcamp.

I output the stems from my project, added a text file with the license info, as below, zipped that directory up, put on google drive, and made a shareable link.

Hello There!

I have licensed these DIGITAL DUST EXTENDED Stem files as 
CREATIVE COMONS Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Adrian Bruce (Megacurve  Kyoto, Japan)   October 6 2024.
https://www.artandtechnology.com.au/

You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following terms:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit , provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made . You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

So why would I do that? "Digital Dust" was an expression Rick Beato used to describe unreleased Music Projects sitting unused on Hard Drives.  I think it also applies to most personnel projects uploaded to Streaming sites and Bandcamp from people without any kind of following, such as myself.

The most popular tracks I have put on Bandcamp have had, may be, 12 plays, and most of those haven't been till the end. So the reality is my tracks on BandCamp are mostly just Digital Dust sitting on hard drives.  

Doesn't mean the tracks are bad, just the few acquaintances who bother to listen to something this guy they know made, don't care. They aren't followers for my music, but maybe follow as  I designed a famous music system in the 1980s, or I live in Kyoto Japan, they read the SF Desktop Production articles and the models I made in the 1990s, or they appreciate the car or maybe the comics I make.

The Digital Dust 59 second version was done for a music+comic YouTube Short, and that did all I intended it to. It had some 52 views, which is a massive hit for me 😀

So releasing the extended version under the creative commons license is an experiment to see if anything else interesting comes of it.  I expect that little will, as anyone after something like that to work on will not come across it, for the same reasons the original track do not get played.  

If someone was to make any real money from a derived work, good on them! That requires networking and marketing skills I don't have.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Digital Dust: Independent Music Releases

Another go at the 59sec YouTube vertical SHORT format for a music comic.  The soundtrack waveform vertically, with start at top, the playbar moving down the screen, and the comic happening in front of that. 

I had been making music and comics like this about once a week for a few months, until the OBon Holidays. Got sick after them, and took a few weeks to recover, and then more to recover my MOJO.

I put an earlier version on YouTube where it got some 51 views in 20 hours, and expect it will get few more.

It looks like YouTube turned off showing it to anyone after the initial hour.

I made a few small changes after that 1st version to make the one above. Nothing that would make deleting the first and reloading this one worth it though.

It is Ibanez RG 6 string DROP C#, Ugritone "Drums Against Humanity", Cabinet IR, Squire JBASS with humbucking Wilde Pickups, SURGE XT vst in REAPER DAW. Animation made in MOHO Pro 12. The "digital dust" floating down the screen was done with a particle system in combination with a few binary text strings.

I edited down the music to make this 59seconds. 

The streaming companies all seem to be a scam, when you look into it. Benn Jordan has more than a few X posts and videos about the main Streaming Services and their mode of operating with the major Record labels. Benn getting all his Spotify tracks deleted without warning, for no reason in just one thing showing none of the companies aren't on the level.

Have now put 2 versions of Digital Dust on Bandcamp as an album.  The 59sec animation version and Digital Dust Extended 3:20.  Naming the tracks Digital Dust will most likely prove to be very appropriate. 😀 The cover has a version of the cartoon on it too. Without any kind of following, which I don't have (and any I do have is related to my cartooning or what I did at Fairlight Instruments Pty Ltd in the 1980s), no one but a few friends will bother to play any music I put out, and mention on my Social Media.   

Have, for the first time, made this a Creative Commons, Attribution, Share Alike, to allow remixing. A download link to the STEMS .ZIP file is in the Bandcamp Album description.

What are STEMS?  They are a collection of wave files, each all the same length, starting at the same time, that are all the tracks in my project rendered out. Delay and Reverb are on their own separate tracks too. So if you load them all into a DAW, and play, you get a version on the track I released, except all the instruments haven't been panned. If you mute Delay and Reverb, and add your own sends to the tracks, you can make a completely different mix. The track is 4/4 at 130BPM. 

Trying to combine the JINGLE (music for advertising, short, simple, remember able), Synthesizer with METAL INSTRUMENTAL. It isn't a rock/ pop song structure. It was started to do a 59sec music comic, so wasn't planned as a "song".

This one ends up being a little too simple, a little too repetitive, but does it have to be that way? Generally add more parts as time goes on, but this is a very sparse VAN HALEN, guitar panned left, mix. 

There is always the next one to work that out on.  

Or someone's remix derived from it will be amazing. We will see.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

The DEEP PURPLE Return!

 

Their recent Equals One Album is the first Purple Album I've bought in decades. The new guitarist Simon McBride is way more classic Purple than Steve Moore was.

The track PORTABLE DOOR also cleverly covers my own disdain of X with its weird populist and trivia garnering large followings of under-achieving, loud, over-sharers and more than a few roleplaying for popularity, mostly for an unsophisticated, hick, JERKVILLE audience.   

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Megacurve - Best Of... maybe

 

I selected 11 tracks I have made over the last 14 years and called it The Best Of... a time machine for myself, brings back memories of what I was doing and being inspired by, at the time I made them.

Available on Bandcamp here for free download.

I have but together a PDF Booklet for this Best Of Album and is about the very long journey it has been, and some notes on the tracks, and their making.

Has 6, 7 and 8 string guitars, Jazz Bass,  synthesizers, ambient sounds and are all produced in the Reaper DAW.

We recorded a fair few tracks with our 4 track TASCAM Portastudio back in the 80s, but those have been lost to time. Don't even own a cassette player anymore,  and don't want one.  There was a time after that where we just used a midi D-110 synthesizer with a sequencer, but my 15years at Roland in Japan, "at a music gear company", was the time I was least interested in playing the guitar and making my own music. Just had to do something else in my spare time.  The release of Reaper in 2005, living in Sydney again, not being in any "music gear company", and having the time, rekindled the passion. 

Half of the tracks in this album have vocals and most of those were done in 2021. 

I had notes of what lyric lines could be in a song. I sang bits of them, rewriting as needed a verse at a time. I then listened back to that A LOT, so that the lyrics became a song I knew. Unlike the first time I tried to sing the lyric. I then re-sang everything, double and triple tracking the parts.  Before vocals they were all just instrumentals, without thought for vocals.  Normally you would strip out most of the melodic guitar or synth under the vocals, but I didn't do much of that here. Something else that makes these different.  Maybe this kind of detail, and the lyrics should be in the Album booklet?

What I have done most of recently is stuff for under 60seconds music comics, and and extended version of the latest of those is included as well, HOW YOU USE IT.  

If I came back on a different day, I would have chosen a few different tracks, but they are all on my Bandcamp page anyway, so this seems like more of a playlist than a best of album. 

At 65+ I am at the age were you see more than a few people you know pass away.  You just don't know how long you have left, and a BEST OF ALBUM was one of those things on I my bucket list, I can now mark off.   

There are 1,000s of tracks uploaded to the streaming music sites daily. Very few of those will get listened too, unless a major artist on a big label manipulating the playlists.  I know that my own stuff will be played once by  friends and acquaintances totaling 10 plays over a few months.   If the production was better (mixing, mastering, fewer playing mistakes etc etc) those numbers wouldn't be any different.  I haven't built any kind of general audience to get more than that, and aren't interested in doing that.  

I don't even try and charge anything for them, but can say some have paid for them, so that makes me a "professional musician" right? 😁    

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Music Comic: How You Use It

 

We had the OBon Holidays here mid August, and our son and his family visited us for some 5 days. Great to see our grandson again. Not so great we got sick after they left, possibly from grandson or son. My symptoms were mild covid. Cough, slight fever.  The medication I received for it was what you get for covid, and it took me almost 3 weeks to get over it.  The medication made me groggy, mostly snoozed.  I got to finally listen to Frank Zappa music during much of that.

Fine now I think, and back to normal programming...

I have been listening a lot to Ola Englund's Chug Projects and, as usual, Mattias IA Eklundh. Both are Metal, but Ola is of the much heavier, instrumental variety. Also looking over the TABs of some of their material.

I really love what they do. Been thinking I want some heavier tracks of my own recently. I have the drums and guitars and tone for it, but what comes natural at the moment is something else. The above is a music comic about it.  Yes, I know guitar has a missing "i" in it, but couldn't be bothered fixing it.

This started as a G Lydian practice thing. Just adlibbing.  I remember Allan Holdsworth in a guitar tutorial video where he had graphic printouts with all the scales, all modes on the fret board. Like this below I did for for 6/8 string guitar (the way I tune the 8). I do these in CorelDraw, they way I do my illustrations.

Of course he was about memorizing all of them, like he did.     

If this had a few fast arpeggios, scale runs and two handed tapping in a solo, it would far more "metal", but this is more slow simple melodic lines. It is how I felt doing it. 

Ola's Chug project is a way for him to force himself to weekly play guitar and make original music. My own Music Comics are like that too, but I don't have an audience waiting for mine. I do them for myself about recent thoughts.  I generally keep them under 60 seconds so I can just throw them on Xwitter, where almost no one sees them, and even if they do, the chances someone will stop scrolling and play them is very low. Doesn't matter though. The click thru on X is so poor, even compared to Facebook.

The Reaper project:

This has Drums Against Humanity, uses their BLACK METAL midi pack. Guitar is just the Harley Benton R-458 8 string with a Metal Zone pedal and a cabinet IR called ML Sound Lab's BEST IR IN THE WORLD.wav

I didn't put a bass track on this.  Just one of the things about this not being a standard arrangement.

I also put it in our Assorted Bits Album on Bandcamp.

I find it interesting that the ingredients can be so metal, but the result isn't. It is all "How You Use It" that makes a difference.

And unless you misunderstand that I can't or don't do heavier stuff, I think this was pretty heavy:

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology