Create Over Critique Seeing a project through despite having reasons not to

A couple of days ago I stayed up until 6 am mixing and mastering a new song that Genevieve Artadi had just finished recording. I think I started at 10 or 11 p.m. the night before, so a pretty standard amount of time for a mix/master with this type of song. After finishing the mix and revisions (and sleeping a few hours), I processed the whirlwind of activities and thought about it from a teacher/mentor perspective. There were many cool lessons that I learned from the experience, but the thing I kept thinking about is how Genevieve left no room for fear, self-doubt or negativity through the whole process.

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Elevate Your Music by Collaborating Inspiration All Around Us

Many creatives in music have strong opinions about their musical ideas and what effect they want these ideas to have both within the work itself and on their fans and audiences. The freedom to make these autonomous decisions feels really great if we’re afforded that opportunity. However, it doesn’t always mean the end result will benefit or even be that great.

with Robin Holcomb recording. Photo by Carrie Robinson.

(With Robin Holcomb in studio. Photo by Carrie Robinson.)

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The Making of a Record – Part 3 Getting People to Hear and Interact with Your Music

So you have an LP, EP or single that you want to release. The recording is done and you’re really excited to share your music with everyone. If you simply want to get it out and don’t really care whether 1, 100, 1,000 or 1-million people hear it; then go for it. It’s really easy to print a few CD copies of your record and/or have the major streaming services carry your music.

Before rushing the release to the world, it’s best to consider a few things first.

  • Why are you releasing this record?
  • What do you want to accomplish with this release?
  • How large is your fan-base and is it big enough to help spread your music to new fans?
  • Are you a relatively new or unknown artist hoping that this record will gain you new exposure and fans?

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The Making of a Record – Part 1 The Work Before the Work

A couple of months ago Anna Freedman asked me if I would produce her first record of original music. Anna is a really accomplished musician who plays piano, sings and writes music. We worked together as teacher/student when she was in high school. Now she plays around Seattle and teaches at Creative Music Adventures as well.

I asked Anna if I could share the process of bringing this recording to fruition through a series of posts here to help folks who may be interested in recording their own music (or helping their students make recordings). She was nice enough to agree to this idea. So here is the first part of the series…

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Dancing Dots – Sheet Music and Recording Piano ensemble

Here is piece that can be played on 2-4 pianos by four pianists called “Dancing Dots”. It emphasized dotted-quarter + eighth notes and dotted-eight + sixteenth note rhythms among other things.

Listen here:

(Click here if you can’t see the player in the email.)

Here are the links to the parts and score:

The Piano Drum Video, Audio and Sheet Music

This piece has been played by elementary students as a project piece or by advanced students as a reading piece. It’s intent is to help with 1/16th note subdivisions and counting. It combines popular drum patterns used in a lot of electronic music and breakbeat tracks.

Here is the mp3 version:

Here is the free sheet music to the score and parts:
The Piano Drum Score
The Piano Drum I
The Piano Drum II
The Piano Drum III
The Piano Drum IV

The Piano Drum

Tadpole Race – Sheet Music and Recording Here's the music from a jazz tune I wrote called "Tadpole Race"

This is from the live jazz recording I released called The Fantastic Adventures of an Amphibian Named Jamal. It’s called “Tadpole Race”.

This one has many variations over the years. So the lead sheet may not match this recording exactly.

Download the free PDF sheet music here: Tadpole Race

Tadpole Race

A Rock in My Roll – Videos, Sheet Music and Recordings A Four-Piano Ensemble

This was written a few years back and several student ensembles have played it over the years at Creative Music Adventures. Since many of you who follow these posts/emails are piano teachers, I thought I would share it for you and your students. We’re all looking for fun summer projects and this may fit the bill. Or if you play, it’s always fun to read through ensembles with friends.

Here are PDF’s of the music:

Here is a video version I recorded so you can hear/see the parts (think of this as Jacob Collier Lite):

Here is the audio version:

Here are a couple of different classes of kids playing it (if you have students learn this please post a link to a video in the comments section of the post so we can enjoy their performances!):

A-Rock-in-my-Roll-Score

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