I'm really sad to hear of the passing of John Barry, he was a big inspiration to me as a composer. This a my favorite of mine by him. By all accounts a decent bloke as well, straight down the line Yorkshire:
This is a song I wrote a few years back, this is a fairly blatant John Barry tribute track I recorded last year - Blue Filter http://t.co/ycVQXwl - he was a massive influence on me through the composition lessons I got in that style from my friend & teacher Richard Beaumont. His harmonic invention was so far ahead of his... time, great chord progressions and from all the interviews I saw a decent,no messing around bloke.
RIP
Monday, 31 January 2011
Saturday, 29 January 2011
Gigs and recording
HI!
Hope you're good?
Is all go here - recording of my 3rd album is going well (surprisingly electric) and the album by my band project The Fierce And Dead is nearly finished mixing.
This is the last weekend to get my first 2 albums for £10 on CD plus postage and packing - I try really hard to keep costs down but this is out of my control. You can order them here:
http://mattstevens.bandcamp.com/album/ghost
Thanks so much - your support allows me to keep making music and do it for a living, which is incredible (and they said it couldn't be done!!).
I've just been confirmed for the Electric Garden Festival in May in Blackpool - TIckets are £31 for the weekend (thursday to sunday) but day tickets are also available info is here:
http://www.electricgardenfestival.com/
Thanks loads, speak soon
Matt
www.mattstevensguitar.com
Hope you're good?
Is all go here - recording of my 3rd album is going well (surprisingly electric) and the album by my band project The Fierce And Dead is nearly finished mixing.
This is the last weekend to get my first 2 albums for £10 on CD plus postage and packing - I try really hard to keep costs down but this is out of my control. You can order them here:
http://mattstevens.bandcamp.com/album/ghost
Thanks so much - your support allows me to keep making music and do it for a living, which is incredible (and they said it couldn't be done!!).
I've just been confirmed for the Electric Garden Festival in May in Blackpool - TIckets are £31 for the weekend (thursday to sunday) but day tickets are also available info is here:
http://www.electricgardenfestival.com/
Thanks loads, speak soon
Matt
www.mattstevensguitar.com
Friday, 14 January 2011
January already?
Hi
Hope you're good. Having a good 2011?
Thanks so much for all your support in 2010 - it was an amazing year for me and it was all down to the support of the people who read this :)
I just wanted to tell you about a few things:
I'm doing a gig in April supporting Fish of Marillion fame - this is really important to me because its the first time I've played my home town of Rushden in Northants for about 3 years. Even thou I don't live there anymore it still means a lot to me and its great to play with Fish, tickets are selling REALLY fast, this will likely sell out. You can order tickets from here:
http://www.wegottickets.com/event/105242
Thanks loads to everyone who has paid for downloads and CD's this month, its down to you I can keep doing this music - you can order them here, unfortunately we're going to have to put the prices up at the end of the month due to the suppliers doing the same. For the moment you can still get both albums for £10. I expected the last batch to last 6 months not 1 so thats fantastic.
The Yonks EP with my friend Lextrical is out now from here - its a free/pay what you want download of improvised/remixed stuff - if you enjoyed the Esoteric album of weird stuff from last year its along the lines of that :) - let me know what you think. If you like it we may do some more :)
And I'm doing another free webcast gig on the 23rd Jan with my friend Nick Tann and Leibowitz. Full details are here - http://cafenoodle.ning.com/
Please feel free to share the music on my site and burn a CD for a friend - sharing is good :)
Speak soon
Matt
Thursday, 30 December 2010
Goals for 2011
To eat food that is healthy
To drink liquid that makes me feel better not worse
To write a blog post every day
To take exercise every day
Complete the Fierce and the Dead Album and play some gigs with them.
To Complete my third instrumental album and complete "the trilogy"
To post a video every month
To continue to grow my music teaching and social media
To only play gigs that are worthwhile to me musically (and not loose money doing them) (even if this mean only doing a few)
To fund my music through other interesting work
Sunday, 5 December 2010
All about Tubeify
This morning I received an invite to a new music service - Tubeify. What it does is use the Last FM database to allow you to listen to virtually any song or entire album as long as its on Youtube (and most songs are). Its like Spotify with a much bigger catalogue, all the music you want streaming free to your computer. Where Spotify is limited by the albums it can license Tubeify streams them via Youtube so includes many of the artists that won't license to spotify ie The Beatles, Pink Floyd, etc. This is a very scary thing to the old music industry and I would imagine they are currently in the process of trying to shut it down. It is truly a global juke box, music as a service rather than a product.
Saturday, 4 December 2010
Classic Rock Society Magazine review of Ghost
Great review of Ghost in the Classic Rock Society Magazine:
Matt Stevens – Ghost
www.mattstevensguitar.com
This is an album of excellent instrumental acoustic guitar-led prog. Stevens hails from London and uses both internet and live performances to thoroughly promote himself. This is his second release. It is considered music, somehow diluting the essence of past decades into a captivating listen, giving you snippets of Fripp and Radiohead among others. I can only think of one other acoustic guitarist who pushes the boundaries, and that’s Steve Unruh (The Great Divide). The ten tracks have great intelligence and variety with common guitar loop technique, enhanced through crafted and inventive embellishment (dissonant riff, glockenspiel, bass, real & programmed drums) to create cinematic and atmospheric prog. From sparse and dark (‘Ghost’) to post-rock (‘8:19’), there’s plenty to savour. DP
Cheered me up :) - its been weird being off FB and Twitter, i've got more done to be honest but I miss the sense of community
Matt Stevens – Ghost
www.mattstevensguitar.com
This is an album of excellent instrumental acoustic guitar-led prog. Stevens hails from London and uses both internet and live performances to thoroughly promote himself. This is his second release. It is considered music, somehow diluting the essence of past decades into a captivating listen, giving you snippets of Fripp and Radiohead among others. I can only think of one other acoustic guitarist who pushes the boundaries, and that’s Steve Unruh (The Great Divide). The ten tracks have great intelligence and variety with common guitar loop technique, enhanced through crafted and inventive embellishment (dissonant riff, glockenspiel, bass, real & programmed drums) to create cinematic and atmospheric prog. From sparse and dark (‘Ghost’) to post-rock (‘8:19’), there’s plenty to savour. DP
Cheered me up :) - its been weird being off FB and Twitter, i've got more done to be honest but I miss the sense of community
Friday, 3 December 2010
Bob Lefsetz/Time Off FB/Twitter
I'm taking some time off Twitter and Facebook and Forums for a few days to spend some time with family but just wanted to post this highly useful list by the excellent industry commentator Bob Lefsetz:
1. Be really damn good. Great art makes up for a ton of ills. One can argue strongly if Mel Gibson makes a movie on his own dime and it's great, he can reemerge from the depths. We're a forgiving populace.
2. Don't fall on your sword. Your crime doesn't mean as much to people as the mainstream press says it does. Kevin Smith sat at home, depressed as the man labeled "too fat to fly", but eventually Tiger Woods crashed his car and Smith's foibles on Southwest, which were inaccurately reported, faded away. A career in the public eye is first and foremost about persistence, and perseverance.
3. Play the mainstream media game, die by the mainstream media game. News outlets don't care about you, they care about advertising, they care about ratings. Don't let the tail wag the dog. Katy Perry is in the news every damn day, but she still can't sell out an arena. Get your perspective right. Katy's handlers have got it totally wrong. What does showing off your tits have to do with music? Kanye's not the best-looking dude on the planet, but it doesn't matter, because people believe he's good.
4. If you're not willing to give away something for free, you're not willing to have a career. If Kanye can give away free tracks, why can't you? It's about your relationship with your fans. The song doesn't have to be on the album. You've got to know where in the food chain to charge, and it's not at every contact point.
5. Maintain contact. You're doing your own act. Now, with the Internet, you don't need permission to do it. You can perform on YouTube, you can tweet, less is more is history. Now you always give more, and the public decides how much it wants to graze in your neighborhood. Fans come and go, but you can't let it impact your art. You've got to do what you want to do, not what you think the audience wants.
6. Have a personality. If no one hates you, you're not doing it right.
7. Don't focus on the album release. Your marketing's got to go on for years. The Doobie Brothers released a new album. Straight to the dumper. There was no Twitter presence, no fan engagement, just a record most fans don't know exists and don't want anyway. And I only use the Doobies because they're an ancient act, and all the ancient acts don't know how to do it. You don't need a label and you don't need an album. You need fans, which you've got, and you need to know how to reach each and every one of them. Pat Simmons should have played acoustic in someone's house. The band should have done live performances of classics on YouTube. They should have gotten their fans involved. If Paul McCartney wants to sell a new album, he's gonna have to do it this way too. Unless you want to be a recluse, if you want to survive in the new world, you've got to get yourself out there. Don't pooh-pooh it as marketing, it's performing! And isn't that what you do! And it can be as much about music as you want it to be.
8. In a chaotic era you've got to go your own way, you've got to forge your own path. No one knows, certainly not the mainstream media guys or those at the label. They know how it used to be done. It's incumbent upon you to do it your own way, for yourself. The Eagles can't sell every ticket? How come Don Henley's not on Twitter, he's got opinions. Just putting tickets on sale is no longer enough. Hell, how do people even find out about the gig? Most people complain they didn't know you were playing. And if you're a new act? You've got to be good. And if your goal is to connect with the mainstream and have it do your bidding, you've got it wrong. It's about a career. And you build it. And it works because you've got fans. Your label doesn't own your fans, nor does the radio station, only you do. Start there.
Read this article, it's really well done:
1. Be really damn good. Great art makes up for a ton of ills. One can argue strongly if Mel Gibson makes a movie on his own dime and it's great, he can reemerge from the depths. We're a forgiving populace.
2. Don't fall on your sword. Your crime doesn't mean as much to people as the mainstream press says it does. Kevin Smith sat at home, depressed as the man labeled "too fat to fly", but eventually Tiger Woods crashed his car and Smith's foibles on Southwest, which were inaccurately reported, faded away. A career in the public eye is first and foremost about persistence, and perseverance.
3. Play the mainstream media game, die by the mainstream media game. News outlets don't care about you, they care about advertising, they care about ratings. Don't let the tail wag the dog. Katy Perry is in the news every damn day, but she still can't sell out an arena. Get your perspective right. Katy's handlers have got it totally wrong. What does showing off your tits have to do with music? Kanye's not the best-looking dude on the planet, but it doesn't matter, because people believe he's good.
4. If you're not willing to give away something for free, you're not willing to have a career. If Kanye can give away free tracks, why can't you? It's about your relationship with your fans. The song doesn't have to be on the album. You've got to know where in the food chain to charge, and it's not at every contact point.
5. Maintain contact. You're doing your own act. Now, with the Internet, you don't need permission to do it. You can perform on YouTube, you can tweet, less is more is history. Now you always give more, and the public decides how much it wants to graze in your neighborhood. Fans come and go, but you can't let it impact your art. You've got to do what you want to do, not what you think the audience wants.
6. Have a personality. If no one hates you, you're not doing it right.
7. Don't focus on the album release. Your marketing's got to go on for years. The Doobie Brothers released a new album. Straight to the dumper. There was no Twitter presence, no fan engagement, just a record most fans don't know exists and don't want anyway. And I only use the Doobies because they're an ancient act, and all the ancient acts don't know how to do it. You don't need a label and you don't need an album. You need fans, which you've got, and you need to know how to reach each and every one of them. Pat Simmons should have played acoustic in someone's house. The band should have done live performances of classics on YouTube. They should have gotten their fans involved. If Paul McCartney wants to sell a new album, he's gonna have to do it this way too. Unless you want to be a recluse, if you want to survive in the new world, you've got to get yourself out there. Don't pooh-pooh it as marketing, it's performing! And isn't that what you do! And it can be as much about music as you want it to be.
8. In a chaotic era you've got to go your own way, you've got to forge your own path. No one knows, certainly not the mainstream media guys or those at the label. They know how it used to be done. It's incumbent upon you to do it your own way, for yourself. The Eagles can't sell every ticket? How come Don Henley's not on Twitter, he's got opinions. Just putting tickets on sale is no longer enough. Hell, how do people even find out about the gig? Most people complain they didn't know you were playing. And if you're a new act? You've got to be good. And if your goal is to connect with the mainstream and have it do your bidding, you've got it wrong. It's about a career. And you build it. And it works because you've got fans. Your label doesn't own your fans, nor does the radio station, only you do. Start there.
Read this article, it's really well done:
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