Category Archives: Derivative Works

A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories

Progress Is Derivative – The Welcome Home (Sanitarium) Debate

Remember my definition of Progress Is Derivative – taking the best things of what has come before and merging those things all together to come up with something unique, original and innovative.

Case Study for today is Metallica and their song Welcome Home (Sanitarium) from the album Master of Puppets released in 1986.

INTRO (0.00 to 0.20)
Let’s start with the natural harmonics intro. Back in 1971, a certain progressive rock band called Yes released Roundabout. The intro is more or less a droning note, with some harmonics and a hammer on/pull off lick on the E string. Remember Progress is Derivative. Take something from the past and make it better.

INTRO 2 and VERSE (0.21 to 1.48) and (2.10 to 3.10)
Anyone heard of a New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) band called Bleak House? If the answer is NO, then you are in the majority. However, a certain person called Lars Ulrich has heard of this band. James Hetfield has even said in an interview that the band shall remain anonymous. So Bleak House release a song called “Rainbow Warrior” as a seven-inch single in 1980 via Buzzard Records. By 1982, the band called it a day. The intro riff of Rainbow Warrior is catchy. It was so good that James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich are influenced by it. They start to jam on it and they start to tweak it into Welcome Home (Sanitarium). Remember Progress is Derivative. Take something from the past and make it better. Hetfield and Ulrich made this riff the centrepiece of Sanitarium.

OUTRO (4.05 to 4.26) and (04.48 to end)
Remember a little three piece band from Canada called Rush and a song called Tom Sawyer. Metallica have taken the intro from Tom Sawyer and used it as their outro. The feel and the phrasing of the two songs are almost identical. The note selection are just a touch different. Remember Progress is Derivative. Take something from the past and make it unique, innovative and original.

Welcome Home (Sanitarium) is a derivative version of three different songs accumulated into one song. This is what music is all about. Should Metallica have credited Graham Killin, the guitarist and main songwriter of the band Bleak House and the writer of Rainbow Warrior. My answer is No.

The final say goes to Graham Killin. The quote below is from an interview he did with John Tucker in November 2012, on the website http://www.hrrecords.de

‘Dad! You’ve got to go after them for this. They’re using your stuff and you’re not getting royalties for it!’ Killin can’t hide his amusement at the thought. The irony of the situation is that ‘Bleak House’, the novel from which the band took their name, has at its heart a lengthy legal argument that consumes everyone and everything. “So every now and then it’s a little topic that crops up in conversation, y’know? And I think ‘would it actually be worth approaching a music solicitor and saying that as it’s my intellectual property would I stand any chance of getting anything?’” he laughs again. “Who knows?”

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A to Z of Making It, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories

The Modern Music Paradigm is the 1982 Paradigm (Comparing the output of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Ronnie James Dio with Dream Theater, Trivium and Machine Head)

So you want to make it in the music business as an artist? You want to set the world on fire. Since I have been doing some reading on a New Wave of British Heavy Metal band called Bleak House, I wanted to share their story.

Let’s go back in time.

It’s 1982. Bleak House have two highly-regarded releases out in the market and a loyal fan base. One of those releases was a single called Rainbow Warrior, that had a movable power chord verse riff that went from B to C to D over an E pedal tone. Sound familiar. It should. It is Metallica’s Welcome Home (Sanitarium).

The below quotes are all from an interview that Graham Killin did with the website http://www.hrrecords.de back in November 2012. So what went wrong.

“Looking back now I think we got a bit complacent. We weren’t trying to push enough, the new material wasn’t coming through so easily, and when we were going out playing we were just rehashing what we’d done before. We should have knuckled down and put some new material together, and done more gigs. We should have stuck at it. You look back and you think ‘if we’d stuck at it and done a few more gigs, put some more new music together, who knows what might have happened.”

The modern paradigm is as follows;

1. Stick around and outlast the competition
2. Keep on writing and putting new music together
3. Keep on networking and building relationships – artist to fan. Not artist to record label.
4. Keep on writing and putting new music together

Remember back in 1982, it was very rare to get a two year gap between albums. In 99% of cases, most artists that released an album in 1982, had another album out in 1983 and then another one in 1984. If Bleak House wanted to be a force reckoned with, they had to compete with the competition.

Look at Judas Priest. In 1980 they released British Steel, in 1981 they released Point of Entry and then in 1982 they released the big one, Screaming For Vengeance. Then they went on a two year gap between long players.

Let’s look at Iron Maiden. In 1980 they released Iron Maiden. In 1981 they released Killers. In 1982 they released The Number Of The Beast. In 1983 they released Piece of Mind. In 1984 they released Powerslave. In 1985 they released Live After Death. In 1986 they released Somewhere In Time. Then they started to go on a two year gap between long players. Iron Maiden worked hard for their success. That is why they are on top right now.

Another hard worker I want to mention is Ronnie James Dio. Let’s look at his output.

In 1975, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow was released. In 1976, Rising came out. In 1977, On Stage came out. In 1978, Long Live Rock N Roll came out.

With Black Sabbath, he was involved with the Heaven and Hell release in 1980. In 1981, Mob Rules came out. In 1982 Live At Last came out.

In 1983, Dio released Holy Diver under his own name. In 1984, The Last In Line came out and in 1985 Sacred Heart was released. 1986, the Live EP Intermission and then in 1987 Dream Evil came out with Craig Goldy on guitar.

That is 12 releases in a 12 year period. Remember that all of these releases took place at a time when it was expensive to create and release music. During a period when the artist was king and in control of what they created, before the dark times of when the Record Labels controlled what style of music would be recorded and what songs would be released. As an audience we felt that those records deserved our attention. Today, anyone can record and release material. However, the fan now needs a reason to pay attention.

So for any artist starting off. This is the standard again. You need to be creating and releasing. You need to be giving us a reason to pay attention. Forget about the 2 to 3 year gap between albums. That is the Record Label standard. It was never the artist standard.

Compare the above paradigm to the music released in the last 10 years.

Trivium kicked things off in 2003 with Ember To Inferno. In 2005 they released Ascendancy. In 2006 they released The Crusade. In 2008 they released Shogun. In 2011 they released In Waves. In October 2013 they are going to release Vengeance Falls an album that was finished in March 2013. Five albums in ten years.

Machine Head released Supercharger in 2001. In 2003 they released Hellalive and Through The Ashes of Empires. In 2007 they released The Blackening. In 2011 they released Unto The Locust. In 2012 they released Machine F***ing Head. It looks like a new album will see the light of day 2014. Five proper albums in 12 years and seven all up (including the live albums).

Dream Theater is an interest subject on this. Let’s look at the 2000’s era with Mike Portnoy in the band.
2001 – Metropolis 2000: Scenes From New York
2002 – Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence
2003 – Train Of Thought
2003 – Official Bootlegs – The Majesty Demos 1985-1986
2003 – Official Bootlegs – Los Angeles, California 5/18/98
2003 – The Making Of Scenes From A Memory
2004 – Images and Words: Live In Tokyo/5 Years In A Livetime DVD (re-release of their 1990’s VHS releases)
2004 – Live At Budokan
2004 – Official Bootlegs – When Dream and Day Unite Demos 1987 – 1989
2004 – Official Bootlegs – Tokyo, Japan 10/28/1995
2004 – Official Bootlegs – Master Of Puppets
2005 – Octavarium
2005 – Official Bootlegs – Images and Words Demos 1989 – 1991
2005 – Official Bootlegs – The Number Of The Beast
2005 – Official Bootlegs – When Dream and Day Reunite CD and DVD
2006 – Score
2006 – Official Bootlegs – Awake Demos 1994
2006 – Official Bootlegs – Old Bridge, New Jersey 12/14/96
2006 – Official Bootlegs – The Dark Side of The Moon CD and DVD
2007 – Systematic Chaos
2007 – Official Bootlegs – New York City 3/4/93
2007 – Official Bootlegs – Falling into Infinity Demos
2007 – Official Bootlegs – Made in Japan – Deep Purple
2007 – Official Bootlegs – Bucharest, Romania 7/4/02 DVD
2008 – Chaos In Motion: 2007-2008
2008 – Greatest Hit (…and 21 Other Pretty Cool Songs)
2009 – Black Clouds And Silver Linings
2009 – Official Bootlegs – The Making of Falling Into Infinity
2009 – Official Bootlegs – Train of Thought Instrumental Demos 2003
2009 – Official Bootlegs – Uncovered 2003-2005
2009 – Official Bootlegs – Santiago, Chile 12/6/05 DVD

And this is the Dream Theater era without Mike Portnoy
2011 – A Dramatic Turn Of Events
2013 – Dream Theater
2013 – Live at Luna Park

“Gez wanted to earn some money from it and we weren’t doing enough gigs for that and besides, whatever we used to earn we’d plough straight back into the band for merchandise and to cover recording costs and have more singles pressed, stuff like that. But he wanted to actually earn something, make some money out of it; and yes, he did join a country & western outfit, as the urban myth goes, and yes, he has made money out of it; he joined a band that was actually making money. And he ended up marrying the singer!

As for Roy, it was inevitable that he might get an offer from somebody else. At one stage I think he had the opportunity to audition when AC/DC were looking for a drummer. But he didn’t go! He bloody well should have done; I’m sure he would have got in because he was such a great drummer. After Gez and Roy left I don’t think the magic was there any more. Bleak House got put on the shelf, and there it stayed. I think that was around September 1983, and we never played live again after that.”

It’s time to add a fifth point to the modern paradigm.

5. Don’t focus on the money side of the art. If you want a weekly wage, it is time to get a job that pays weekly.

Great art and everlasting music comes from inspiration. It doesn’t come from a thought process that involves money. As soon as a band member or an artist is thinking about the pay day, they are not in it for the right reasons.

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Music Is A Long Road – A Trip Down Memory Lane with Fates Warning, Tom Petty and Dream Theater

For any artists these days, be it Bon Jovi or Metallica or Dream Theater or Motley Crue or Imagine Dragons or Shinedown or Machine Head or any new band starting off right now, they all need to understand one thing. We are living in the generation of kids born from 1997 onwards. This generation wants to consume music. Their sense of community is all online. Anyone that says they don’t have a Spotify account is not living in the modern age. These kids weren’t alive when the Record Labels ruled the day, so they have no desire for yesterday, they are all about today and what lays beyond.

For any artist these days, their whole career is about relationships. If you want an audience to invest, you need to establish a relationship. You need to make the effort. The days of touring a city based on the record sales figures for that city are long gone. Ask Dream Theater or Iron Maiden how many albums they have sold in South America? Then ask them how many people came to their shows in those countries.

Mike Portnoy stated in the linear notes on the released bootleg recording of Dream Theater’s Santiago, Chile show from June 2005 that they didn’t know what to expect from South America due to the low number if records they had sole there. They even went to the show with a cut down stage set to save money. In the end, they played to their biggest headlining audience ever.

It’s all about roots. If an artist doesn’t have any, the audience is not interested. Experience moulds the artist, it influences them. Music is an end unto itself. When done right, the sound and the feel is enough. It doesn’t need the videos, the PR sell and all the pyro that comes with the rock n roll show.

Tom Petty sang that Love Is A Long Road. That is the aim of every artist. To foster the love of the audience into a sustainable career. To paraphrase Tom Petty, Music is A Long Road. The same way that a relationship with a partner has its ups and down, so does the relationship between artist and fan. The same effort that an artist puts into a loving relationship is basically the same effort they need to put in to their music career.

The music community has shifted to being a song centric community. We just dont know it yet. The album format that used to make the most money for the record labels is almost a dead format. However artists still go back and release a collection of songs as an album.

In order for the album format to work for you, you need to create an album that is playable throughout. You need to create an album that needs to be heard over and over again. You need to create an album that stands up years after its release.

Fates Warning released an unbelievable album called Disconnected in 2000. However talk to anyone these days and it is like the band never existed. It’s been years since I’ve heard Disconnected and to my amazement, it sounds as fresh and innovative today as it did 13 years ago. Jim Matheos is the pure definition of the progress is derivative statement. He has the ability to take good things from songs that came before and mould them into something great, unique and innovative.

In the Year 2000, progressive music was at opposite ends of the spectrum. You had the Dream Theater style of progressive music on one side and the Tool style of progressive music on the other side. In between you had a band like Porcupine Tree, merging Tool like aggression with Pink Floyd like atmospherics. The mainstream was ruled by Nu-Metal bands. The missing link was Fates Warning.

With Disconnected, Jim Matheos merged the Tool and Porcupine Tree progressive elements with the Dream Theater progressive elements and put them through the Fates Warning blender.

Disconnected is a fusion of all the best progressive elements at the time into a cohesive piece of work that can be listened to over and over again from start to finish. It is a tragedy that this album is so overlooked these days. In the same way that each lick and melody from Images and Words by Dream Theater sticks in my head, Disconnected from Fates Warning does the same.

I am looking forward to hearing “Darkness In A Different Light” when it comes out on September 27. Nine years is a long time between albums. Nine years in the music business is an eternity. So much has changed. Love is a long road. Music is a long road.

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Deja-Vu. 2011 vs. 2013 with Dream Theater and Trivium – Random Thoughts on their new songs

It’s like déjà vu again. In 2011, I was listening to new songs from Trivium and Dream Theater. Trivium had just unleashed In Waves as its promotional single for the In Waves album and Dream Theater had unleashed On The Backs of Angels as its promotional single for the A Dramatic Turn of Events album.

I remember listening to both songs back then and taking into account both of the band’s position in the musical landscape. Dream Theater to me, had the most to prove, as this music would be their first without founder Mike Portnoy.

In my opinion In Waves is a stronger song than On The Backs of Angels. The song wins all the time. I was listening to Images and Words yesterday and the reason why that album is awesome 21 years after its release is the songs. Learning To Live, Metropolis and Take The Time are progressive as hell, but man, I can physically hum the whole songs to anyone including the progressive interludes.

Images and Words is Dream Theater. That album represented what Dream Theater are all about and it set in motion everything that was to come. This new album is self-titled, therefore it should represent what Dream Theater is all about.

Anyway I digress, going back to my 2011 experiences. In relation to the albums, both of them had a six week U.S sale run (physical sales) and then disappeared. Will history repeat itself? I think so.

Dream Theater – A Dramatic Turn Of Events
Week 1 – ending 21 Sept 2011 – 35,750 units sold
Week 2 – ending 28 Sept 2011 – 8,030 units sold
Week 3 – ending 05 Oct 2011 – 4,430 units sold
Week 4 – ending 12 Oct 2011 – 3,120 units sold
Week 5 – ending 19 Oct 2011 – 2,600 units sold

Trivium – In Waves
Week 1 – ending 17 Aug 2011 – 20,640 units sold
Week 2 – ending 24 Aug 2011 – 6,700 units sold
Week 4 – ending 07 Sept 2011 – 2,890 units sold
Week 5 – ending 14 Sept 2011 – 2,890 units sold

Artists are so scared if an album under performs these days. WHY? The album sales figures quoted above is not the metric to judge success on. Dream Theater have hardly sold any music in South America, however they play to their biggest crowds there. I wonder how that came to be?

As Nicko McBrain said in Flight 666 The Movie, Iron Maiden hasn’t sold an album in Costa Rica, however they are playing a stadium show that is sold out with 30,000 people attending. Put it down to piracy, file sharing, Bit Torrent or copyright infringement. The bottom line is this, if what you create is great, expect it to be shared.

Before the Internet, before YouTube, before streaming services like Spotify, fans had to own the music to hear it. That is no longer the case. The history of recorded music is at our fingertips. Fans are participating in this new arena, while artists and labels are still banging their heads against the wall judging success by album sales.

Even Mike Portnoy asked fans to buy The Winery Dogs as a show of support to the label and to show to them that this project is viable. Why does he care about sales? Look at all his posts, show after show. He is blown away at the reaction they are getting. Isn’t that the validation he should be seeking?

So here we are in 2013. We have Trivium’s new song Brave This Storm and Dream Theater’s The Enemy Within.

So what is the verdict.

I can’t say that The Enemy Within is anything special. Some bits remind me of Scenes from a Memory, but really, I could see this song fitting on A Dramatic Turn of Events. It is not a great leap forward in musical terms. Let’s hope that the other songs make the “definite statement.”

Hopefully what we heard was their “Commercial” piece for the album, in the same way that Forsaken was seen as the “Commercial” piece in Systematic Chaos. If this new album turns out to just be ADToE part 2, then yeah I’ll be pretty disappointed, and everyone will know what a pivotal role Portnoy played in the band and how directionless they are without him.

On the other hand, I was very cautious as to how the Trivium and David Draiman collaboration would work. From hearing Brave This Storm, I would say they are on a definite winner. The song is heavy, it is a progression from what they started with In Waves, it is all math in the verses and it is very melodic. Let’s hope that the other Trivium songs are not Brave This Storm 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on.

For some reason this got me thinking about a song from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers called Rebels which is the lead off track on his 1985, Southern Accents album.

With one foot in the grave
One foot on the pedal
I was born a rebel

Are musicians/artists rebels in 2013? It seems that they all want to be winners. Seen any posts from a musician recently about what they think, what they feel, what they are going to do and it doesn’t relate to selling music. Our heroes are even beholden to the Corporations.

Randy Blythe is one artist that shows his humanity. He uses his photographs and puts stories around them, which always relate to a personal part of his life. We are all human. We win and we lose. Blythe focuses on his work, not the sales pitch.

There is new news every day, so if Dream Theater and Trivium want their story to survive, they need to keep it alive by making news every day

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories

Learning To Live – Dream Theater – Classic Song To Be Re-Discovered

It’s the music that makes Learning To Live a classic.

If I had to recommend one song to a new Dream Theater fan that typified the progressive rock leanings of the band, then that song would be Learning To Live. Learning To Live was released on the 1992, Images and Words album. The song is that good, that Dream Theater even rewrote it and called it Breaking All Illusions. That version was released on A Dramatic Turn of Events in 2011.

The Kevin Moore keyboard intro kicks things off with a wicked 15/8 time signature. This same passage re-appears and this time it is played over alternating time signatures, starting off with 14/8 for 2 bars, then 13/8 for one bar and back to 14/8 for another bar. Then it goes back to 13/8, 14/8, 13/8, 7/8.

In between you get a very metal like passage in the vein of Immigrant Song from Led Zeppelin, that moves between 7/4,6/4,4/4 and 5/8 time signatures over F#m, C#m and Em root notes. It doesn’t sound forced. It is very fluent like.

The verse is unbelievable. Myung holds it all together with an unbelievable groove over a 7/4 and 6/4 time signature, that is supplemented by Kevin Moore’s choir like voicing’s outlining the Em9, Cmaj9, Amadd9 and Em9 chords. Myung paraphrases the novel Atlas Shrugged from Ayn Rand.

There was no time for pain, no energy for anger
The sightlessness of hatred slips away
Walking through winter streets alone, He stops and take a breath
With confidence and self-control

I look at the world and see no understanding
I’m waiting to find some sense of strength
I’m begging you from the bottom of my heart to show me understanding

Petrucci and Portnoy build the song nicely into the chorus. Petrucci begins with normal volume swells, while Portnoy locks in with Myung. As Petrucci’s guitar gets busier with harmonics, chords and arpeggios, Portnoy’s drumming becomes busier.

The second verse has an unbelievable progressive groove that keeps within the 7/4 and 6/4 time signature of the first verse. This time it’s all power chords and its heavy as hell. Chugging along on an E5 power cord, Petrucci enhances the riffs by chucking in B5, Bflat5 and F power chords, utilising the devil triton to maximum effect.

The 90s bring new questions
New solutions to be found
I fell in love to be let down

Then when you think they are going to go into the Chorus again, they go into a bridge part with a simple 4/4 groove and then the instrumental break starts. Petrucci is now playing what Moore played in the intro.

The flamenco passage at 5.30 kicks things off. From 6.30 it gets progressive and then the woo ohh ohhs kick in and Petrucci takes over at 7.10 in one of the most heartfelt solos Petrucci has laid to tape. Those bends remind me of Dave Gilmour in Comfortably Numb.

The whole Wait For Sleep segment that begins at 7.30 and ends at 9.35 includes brilliant jazz bluesy solos from both Moore and Petrucci and the main piano riff from Wait For Sleep. It then segues back in to the Chorus.

The way that your heart beats
Makes all the difference in learning to live

Just when you think the song is over, the outro kicks in, again led by an unbelievably groovy and very funky Myung bass line. Then Petrucci joins in with the Natural Harmonics and then the monk style voices take over. As a listener I just sit back with the head phones and allow myself to be taken away. A brilliant song and a brilliant piece of work.

Mike Portnoy has gone on record saying how much he hated working with the producer David Prater and the use of drum midi triggers. Portnoy feared that the triggers would make the album sound dated and seen as another generic hard rock album.

One thing is certain. The album still sounds fresh and current in 2013 as it did back in 1992. As Rush’s 2112 laid the groundwork for what was to come for Rush, Images and Words did the same for Dream Theater.

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The Heat – Seize The Moment

If you have my attention, seize the moment. Blow me away. My wife had been talking about going to watch a movie called The Heat. I haven’t seen anything on it or heard anything on it or read anything on it. So when our little guy went to sleep last Saturday night and my wife’s parents were over to baby sit, we went to the cinema to watch it. There I am standing in line and I am seeing all the females buying tickets with male partners tagging along. I thought to myself, this is a chick flick. I got screwed. It’s going to be terrible, I should just buy myself a ticket to watch The Lone Ranger. Nah, I can’t do that, it is slack to my wife. So I purchase the tickets. There I am in the cinema, and I am looking around. It is all couples. I am thinking to myself, I bet the guys got suckered into this movie thinking that there could be a payoff after the end of it, especially the guys with girlfriends in tow.

Let me tell ya, this is the funniest movie I have seen this year, I was in tears. The Heat delivered when it mattered and that is why I am writing about it.

It takes a long time to get your breakthrough moment. And when you get your opportunity, you have to kill. That is what Melissa McCarthy has done. She has seized the moment. It wasn’t until 2010, when she had her breakthrough moment and that is on the back of 13 years of hard work to get to that place. Launching a career is fact-based. And the facts are out there??? FACT – Are you good enough?

The biggest payoff today is attention. There is nothing worse than giving our attention and that thing that gets our attention just doesn’t deliver. There are no second chances in this day and age. Where are all the WINNERS of the reality music shows today? When they had the people’s attention on TV, they saw fame and dollars. They forgot about the hard work needed to keep the attention once the TV show ended.

You can tell that McCarthy likes what she does. She believes in herself. She is the anti-starlet to all the fake Hollywood starlets. She is the real deal. More real than all the reality stars put together. It was the jokes that did it. She was crude and rude enough to appeal to both men and women.

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Metallica – The Years Roll On

I finally watched the Metallica Death Magnetic DVD on the making of the album. For those that don’t know, it came with the Coffin Edition of the album. What can I say? After I watched it, I re-watched it. It has given me a new appreciation for the Death Magnetic album. The doco basically gave me an insight into the process that I could relate with, and since then the Death Magnetic album has been doing the rounds in my ear phones on a daily basis.

Sort of like how I listened to music in the Eighties and Nineties, when all you had was that one album for about six months, until some other album came out that you could afford and it then became the flavour of the month or months.

One To Rule Them All

James Hetfield still rules the roost. As much as the documentary tried to paint Lars as this hands on kind of guy, if James didn’t agree or say yes, the musical idea wouldn’t be part of the song. The documentary covers each song from Death Magnetic and in each segment, there is footage where James and Lars, along with the Engineer are in a control room that has an orange rendered wall and James just sits in the middle like the DON. Bob Rock once said that the problem with St Anger was that the main songwriter wasn’t there mentally. You can see that he is back for Death Magnetic.

Death Magnetic is the album Metallica needed to have. It is a return to the core. Remember progress is derivative. Like how Aerosmith had Permanent Vacation as the launching pad for Pump and Get A Grip.

Song Writing Process

Another thing from the documentary that connected with me was the whole song writing process, referring to jam tapes/CD’s, trying to get ideas down, writing in the studio and it is something I could relate too. The whole whiteboard that was shown behind Lars went he was on the drum kit at Metallica HQ is what I used to do to write songs with a previous band, and we would write on the whiteboard, things like Intro – Tool riff, Verse – Metallica riff, Pre – Limp Bizkit riff, Chorus – Spineshank riff, Lead – Ozzy riff so that we knew our queues. In the doco, it mentions titles like Sad, Creeping, Lightning on the whiteboard, obviously a reference to the riffs that where inspired or had a feeling similar to those songs.

Feeling

Metallica had a vision as to how they wanted Death Magnetic to sound and feel. Every day was a writing day. Every day was a creating day. When they thought they were finished, they went away and wrote some more.

They got feedback and re-visited the early creations to see if they are still feeling it. If they were not feeling it, they would write down what they liked about the song and what could be better. If they are feeling it, then they have achieved what they set out to do.

One thing that Imagine Dragons was clear on when they started was their vision. They wanted to rock. They wanted to play acoustically and they wanted to experiment in electronic sounds. The wanted a big drum and bass sound. They wrote down five albums that were their all-time favourites and studied those albums and learn those albums. Albums that included artists as diverse as Arcade Fire, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Harry Nilsson, 2Pac, Paul Simon and Muse.

The Years Roll On

When Metallica released Death Magnetic, they went on a two year victory lap touring behind the album. They released DVD’s from the shows, for the French and Latin America markets. They released live EP’s for certain markets. In Australia we got the Six Feet Down Under EP’s part 1 and 2.

When that died down, they orchestrated the Big 4 shows. They then orchestrated the Orion festival. They played the summer festivals around the world.

They celebrated their 30 years anniversary with a week of shows in San Francisco. They released the Beyond Magnetic EP, which had 4 songs that didn’t make the final cut on Death Magnetic.

They then released Quebec Magnetic. They are doing the Through The Never movie.

Does anyone remember the debacle of Lulu now? It’s old news, history. It’s like it never existed. What a difference two years makes?

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MAKING A DIFFERENCE – Progress is derivative and quality equals success.

I am a volunteer coach and administrator for the football team my kids play. Another parent mentioned to me how it amazes them the amount of work that volunteer coaches put in and that they put in hours of preparation just to organise training. On top of that, I work full time as well, juggling work commitments, and still taking time out to prepare and make training every Tuesday and Thursday and then help out every Saturday and Sunday. Just recently I spent seven weeks attending a Youth Licence course, so that I am also qualified to coach my kids.

So I am thinking to myself, is it all worth it? Am I making a difference? Are my methods having an impact? How many artists have walked away from their dreams or the direction that lead to their dreams at this stage. In the end, musicians are just volunteers to begin with?

I am always looking for ways to improve things. I am looking outside my circle, looking at what others have experienced and drawing on that inspiration, twisting it and making it better.

John Petrucci from Dream Theater more or less said the same thing in a Roadrunner interview about the upcoming self-titled album.

“I see every new album as an opportunity to start over. To either build or improve upon a direction that has been evolving over time or to completely break new ground. This is the first self-titled album of our career and there is nothing I can think of that makes a statement of musical and creative identity stronger than that. We’ve fully explored all of the elements that make us unique, from the epic and intense to the atmospheric and cinematic.”

Like Five Finger Death Punch, like Karnivool, like Heartist, like Stone Sour, all of these bands are focusing on their core uniqueness and expanding it in new ways. Remember my catch cry: Progress is Derivative. You keep on building what you started until a connection is made, between song and listener.

Then watch that one listener, hook another listener and so forth.  Then you have the outlier, the one band that did things just a touch differently; Imagine Dragons.

The band did six-hour gigs at the main Las Vegas casinos when they started out. The set list was mixed up with cover songs and originals.

Playing the casinos were classed as hometown gigs. The big difference here is that those hometown gigs are not played to hometown crowds. Due to Las Vegas’s reputation as a holiday strip, the band performed in front of new people every night. They needed to adapt fast as live performers, so that they win over a new crowd every night. That is why their album is back in the Top 10 again, 10 months after it was released. The band is touring and winning.

They have the momentum going. The numbers and the stats are on their side. Night Visions was released last September. In the US alone it has sold over 1 million copies so far. The songs, Radioactive, It’s Time and Demons have sold in total 7.2 million digital downloads. YouTube plays for the three songs number over 100 million. Spotify streams for the three songs are also close to the 100 million mark.  They performed and created as much as possible. That is the key. Created as much as possible. Progress is derivative and quality equals success.

They knocked on the doors so many times, and those doors finally opened up. They kept on improving on what they started and they got better at it.

And in relation to the kids football team, I am making a difference. 13 games into the season, they have won 10, drawn 2 and lost 1. As each day goes by, I am getting better at it and the kids are getting better at it. IT IS WORTH IT.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity

Quality Equals Success and Those Doomsday Scenarios From Misguided Artist

Remember a time when people used to fear Doomsday. Back then Doomsday was the end of the world through some act of nature or nuclear warfare. These days Doomsday has gone all up market.

Doomsday now has a three piece suit and it is a trader on Wall Street. Each week, there is a new poll that states, “Doomsday; 98% risk of 2014 stock market crash”. “Doomsday; Critical Warning as 2013 shocker looms”. This is how far we are gone as a race. Our whole doomsday scenarios now revolve around the loss of money. Our priorities revolve around wealth and the accumulation of it.

I remember back in June 2011, Chris Clancy the vocalist of Mutiny Within, posted on his Facebook page (which was then removed) about the labels not making any money from music sales, so they take from the band’s income and after four years of working almost every day, he had only earned $100 in all of that time. There was also a rant about illegal downloads and how the band was dropped from Roadrunner because they sold less than 10,000 legal sales in the US and that their album had been illegally downloaded more than 60,000 times. It is that same argument you get from ignorant musicians, that their music is stolen because the label didn’t make any money of it.

So what does Doomsday and Chris Clancy from Mutiny Within have in common. Clancy’s priorities revolve around wealth and the accumulation of it. So when he got signed by Roadrunner, he must have thought he made it. The cold hard reality is, if he wanted to be paid millions, he should have gotten into banking. Even then, not all the people that get into banking get to make millions. That is life. Some win, some lose, others just do enough to get by. Making money is not the be all and end all.

Quality = Success

I listened to both albums that Mutiny Within did, the one under the Roadrunner umbrella, and the second one, under their own umbrella. In my view, Heartist and Mutiny Within sound very similar. So why does one band have more traction than the other.

THE BUZZ

Heartist took as much time as they could to build up an online buzz for themselves before they played any shows. So Heartist end up playing their first show and Roadrunner was there along with a few other labels. Mutiny Within didn’t build up an online buzz. They did it the old way, by building up a local scene buzz, which then got the label interested. Heartist went cyber world-wide with their buzz. They did it the new way, connecting with fans and letting the fans spread the word. That is why Heartist are touring everywhere and Mutiny Within are not. That is why the Heartist EP has sold a lot of copies, even while it is still downloaded illegally. Mutiny Within when they got signed only had a buzz in their local market.

DO IT YOURSELF

Heartist did it themselves. They kept on writing and creating, on their own time schedules and own budgets. The first Mutiny Within record was a Roadrunner financed record. Heartist was all DIY.

LETTING THE MUSIC TAKE SHAPE (without thinking it will sell)

All artists and songwriters come from a variety of music backgrounds. If you write and allow those backgrounds to come to the fore, each song will end up being different and unique. Don’t stick to one song formula, just because it could generate a hit. Remember the real hits, the songs that last forever are the outliers, the rule breakers, the game changers.

Stop thinking about the RECORDING INDUSTRY and start thinking about the music

Here is a DOOMSDAY scenario for you: The record industry started to collapse when it lawyered up and went to war against technology, beginning with Napster.

So why are artists still playing to the rules set by the recording industry.

In Sweden, Spotify is the king and the queen. Digital sales (downloads and streaming) accounts for 80 percent of music revenue in the territory and remember Sweden is the original home of The Pirate Bay.

Remember quality equals success.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Derivative Works, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity

You Don’t Know Me, But You Will…. From Controversy, Popularity Is Born

I watched Fast 6 the other day, and the final additional scene had me all pumped up. For those that haven’t seen it, I will not spoil it, however it sets up Fast and Furious 7 very nicely. The final words said in the movie, are the words of the villain, “you don’t know me, but you will……..”

Isn’t that what every musician wants. To be known.

So how does it came to be, that the villains end up known to the world and the ones that do real good are forgotten. Does the world at large know the names of the police officers that captured the Boston Bombers? Does the world know the names of the victims that died in the bombing? The answer is NO, however everyone knows about the Bomber brothers, their family links to Chechnya and so forth. Even Rolling Stone has glorified the bombers with their recent front page issue. By doing this, Rolling Stone has sent social media into meltdown.

David Draiman and Nikki Sixx are two rockers leading the outcry against Rolling Stone. It looks like the Rolling Stone magazine is taking the “you don’t know me (or maybe forgot about me), but you will “mantra to heart. Once upon a time Rolling Stone mattered. Today, Rolling Stone is a dead magazine. They needed to do something shocking like Rammstein did with the Pussy video to bring their name back into the mainstream. You can’t get more shocking than putting a terrorist bomber on the front cover, regardless of what kind of story you are trying to sell. The wounds are too fresh.

Another person looking for publicity is Thom Yorke from Radiohead. He has gone onto a Twitter rampage against Spotify and what they pay artists. For those people that didn’t know about Spotify, they sure know about it right now. Every mainstream news story has picked up the story and run with it. Every blog is talking about it, including this one right now.

Thom Yorke on the other hand, should write great quality music as a solo artist and take control of his own catalogue of music. That way he will know exactly what Spotify pays him, instead of waiting for the statements that the labels give him. It’s funny to look back and read stories about how Thom Yorke and Radiohead was praised for releasing an album under a “pay what you want” model. From this recent outburst, it is clear that Thom wasn’t expecting fans to pay nothing for it, however they did. That is why they never tried that model again.

The big grey area that hangs over Spotify is the lack of transparency over the payments made to the labels, because in order for Spotify to operate in the US, the labels wanted a 50% share in the company.

One thing is clear from all of the above, from controversy, popularity is born.

Ozzy Osbourne’s solo career at the beginning was all about controversy. The dove and bat biting incidents, the tragic death of Randy Rhoads, the drinking and partying which lead to the Alamo incident, the court cases about backward messaging on the song Suicide Solution and the drugs.

Motley Crue built a career from controversy with their sexual innuendos, the pentagram on Shout At The Devil, their partying and drug taking lifestyles which lead to the tragic death of Razzle at the hands of an intoxicated Vince Neil and the death and rebirth of Nikki Sixx.

Even Dream Theater experienced controversy when in a Guitar World interview circa 1994, certain musicians from the grunge / alternative scene blasted John Petrucci for playing with no feeling. Since Petrucci responded gracefully that he likes the music that those bands do, all it did was divert people’s attention to Dream Theater.

Did anyone in the mainstream world know that Black Metal existed? Of course the fans of the style did, however it was just a niche. Then churches started to burn and people started to die. So the Black Metal movement is all over the news.

From the Napster controversy, the people got to know that you can find and download mp3’s of music that you liked, from people that had similar tastes. 13 years later, people are still downloading. From the Napster controversy, the people got to know who the RIAA is and how corrupt they really are. Throughout the years, the RIAA popularity as a corrupt organisation has grown tenfold. From the Napster controversy, everyone got to know Lars Ulrich and Metallica. For better or for worse, Metallica had fully become embedded with mainstream media and pop culture. Press Organisations that never reported on Metallica, suddenly where reporting on Metallica.

Metallica in 2013 is now the biggest metal band there is. Did the Napster controversy hurt Metallica? My answer is No it didn’t. It made them bigger, it spread their name out across all the corners of the world and most importantly it made their music available to everyone.

As an artist, that is your mission statement. Your music needs to be available to everyone. It is not about money right now.

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