Curt Siffert

One of the cool things out there for independent musicians is iLike. It's a website that recommends free music by independent artists, by analyzing who your favorite artists are. It knows who your favorite artists are by keeping track of who you listen to in iTunes and your iPod, so you don't even have to tell it your favorites.

All you have to do is go to the site and download a plugin that attaches to iTunes. Then as you play songs in iTunes, a sidebar appears in iTunes that shows you other similar artists with free music you can download. It's really snazzy.

My song Together has been on GarageBand long enough that I'm now recognized as an artist on iLike. So that means that more users will find my music in iTunes, and I'll hopefully get more fans over time.

But in order for that to work, I need people I know to sign up with iLike and "like" me. So once you have it hooked up to iTunes, go to my artist page and click the "iLike this artist" badge in the upper right. You can also recommend the song itself. Also, apparently if you click this link, you'll automatically be my friend, but that's for my user page, not my artist page.

It looks like it also hooked me up to a facebook page. Funny.

Some pretty cool news, my song Together has received a couple of awards over at GarageBand. Along with several more reviews, you can see the awards on Together's page over at Garageband:

• Best Programming in Acoustic, week of 11Jun2007
• Potential Soundtrack in Acoustic, week of 11Jun2007
• Potential Soundtrack overall, week of 11Jun2007

It's the third one that is coolest, because that means that my song is being briefly featured on one of Garageband's main pages. For this week at least, if you go to http://garageband.com/charts, and click Potential Soundtracks, you'll reach this page, where you can see my song in the third slot.

So, after doing a bunch of research, I've finally figured out how to apply the creative commons licenses to my works here.

All my piano musings have a by-nc-sa license applied to them. That means that you can, without having to contact me and ask, download the pieces, and share them provided my name stays attached. You can also adapt them into your own works provided you apply a similar noncommercial license to the resultant work, and again give me attribution.

All my songs have a by-nc-nd license. That means that you can, without contacting me to ask, download and share my songs provided you keep my name attached. nd stands for "No Derivatives", meaning you can't adapt them into your own works. So it's a slightly more restrictive license.

You can of course feel free to contact me for more permissions on any of them, though. Some of the art musings have already had extra permissions granted to them (even though they are connected to my tunes, I let the artist have commercial purposes for the resultant art). Just contact me, I love to collaborate.

It was fun figuring out the technical end - in addition to each page having a creative commons badge, I was also able to give each song a friendly page name, such as http://curtsiffert.com/phoenixgrace for Phoenix Grace, and even embed the copyright information into the mp3 for each song. That means that as these songs propagate to file-sharing networks, the url for the song home will be spread out there as well, so people will be able to find me.

Together is still being being reviewed on GarageBand. It's such an interesting process. For one thing, since I've always been interested in online democracy and group moderation, their "everyone gets a fair shake" process impresses me. The way it works is that you're guaranteed at least fifteen reviews when you submit a song - from other people that are submitting songs. Positive reviews move the song up the charts, and the further up the charts it goes, the more reviews you get.

This means that songwriters need to be given incentive to review other songs - and they manage that well, by giving you free entries if you review a certain number of songs. And also, if you review, then your song will become more quickly reviewed.

So far, Together seems to be doing fairly well - the reviews are mostly positive:

"Very well done...I found this piece very relaxing."

"Music brings shivers down my spine, it's just that good. ...and with just violin, piano and guitar. I don't know what to write because I just got caught by the music and it mesmerized me completely. And normally I don't even like this kind of music."

"The hook is profound and is repeated sufficiently to make it's metaphorical point. I hope you keep this minor masterpiece intact."

"...in the end the sound was just too depressing and it just felt like it was beating me over the head with it..."

ehhehe

I went ahead and submitted Together to GarageBand. It's the first time I've used GarageBand's system that reviews songs and lets them climb up the charts if they're well-reviewed. Should be interesting. Click on the badge to find my page.

I had an idea for a new podcast and started developing the idea today. There are songwriters out there that are gaining attention and buzz by trying to write a song every so often and put it up on their website. That's some of what I've been doing here, both with my own songs, and also my piano improvisations. I've made podcasts out of both of them and listeners keep slowly subscribing, so it's encouraging.

But I'm also finding that people tend to like following along with the development process - it's kind of a way to step inside the mind of a songwriter, and see what it is like. It makes it more community-driven.

I'm also trying to motivate myself to songwrite more often. I want to find ways to get comments, and also find other musicians to possibly collaborate with. I'm sure others are in the same boat.

So I thought a songwriting workshop would be the way to go - but to make a podcast and website out of it as well. Each episode, a few songwriters get together to share their ideas or roughdrafts of their songs. We'll discuss the songs, songwriting in general, and perform for each other. We'll then post the episode and the songs on the website, and tell our friends/fans/supporters. It'll be a great way to get additional visibility, and to motivate each other to write songs as well.

The idea of having half-formed songs out there might be frightening, but I find that the benefits far outweight the costs. People are interested in this, and a songwriter can always write more songs - the hard part is gaining the interest. That's the approach I'm taking - I'm releasing all my music under Creative Commons. Eventually I might release a cd for sale, with better versions of the songs, but in the meantime, I want to find listeners.

I've posted an ad in a few places and have started to get some good feedback and interest. I'll keep y'all posted about the development of the idea. It will be called "Songs In The Round". Feel free to contact me if you're interested. If nothing else, for participants it'll be a fun way to get good comments and free beer, and for listeners, it'll be a good way to get some free music.

I recorded the first version of a new song tonight. I added it to the Bits and Pieces podcast. It's called Balancing Above The Air. Remember you can get all these songs automatically by subscribing to the podcasts.

Comments or feedback appreciated.

A few weeks ago I found out the Portland Songwriters Association was advertising an event (presented in conjuction with West Coast Songwriters) wherein songwriters could bring songs in to be screened by a Ms. Antoinette Olesen, who is head of A&R for Parthenon Music Group Inc.

I don't really know what "Parthenon Music Group" is, but I figured what the heck, "head of A&R" always sounds good. I don't really understand how this A&R stuff works, though. The event was $10/head, but I think that was money that went to the two nonprofit songwriters' groups, which I'm more than happy to pitch in to.

There were quite a few people pitching songs - and she was very nice. She apparently liked every song that she heard tonight - songs that weren't a fit for what she was looking for were "perfect for what they were". She was very much looking for "Great country or country pop songs that are outstanding and different from what you hear on the radio but 'fit' major radio. Especially female intelligent up-tempo."

It was interesting hearing the songs, too. There were some very twanged-up retro-sounding old country, stuff that you could just tell immediately would not be marketable for her purposes. And a couple of songs that were quite good that she seemed excited about. A lot of songs with intros that were too long, or with forms that needed tightening.

I decided to attend at the last minute - the song I have that is the best fit is All Aboard (update: I have since posted the song - go listen), and while I think it could go in a Nashville direction, the recording I have now is from a rehearsal and isn't very produced. It's very strummy and without any kind of country touches (other than the fact that it's about a train).

Since I was late, my song was last and didn't get presented until about 11pm, after about 1/3 of the people left.

It was a pretty cool reaction, I guess. "Is this your band?" "No, it's not a band yet, it's just some guys I got together to help me out." "But this could be a band, and you're the artist?" "Yeah, I'm the artist." "I really think you should continue with that. Put your band together and continue with that. This really isn't the style of what I shop, but I like it a lot - the lyrics are picturesque, I really like the sound. I really think you should go for it. And you've got other material? Send it to me as you come up with it, I would like to hear more."

And I got a couple of good comments afterwards, too. I don't know, it wasn't underwhelming. She was so nice to everyone else, and she told plenty of other people to send her more stuff. So it could have easily been her just choosing to be encouraging to a songwriter. But it seemed genuine. I remember struggling with how to feel afterwards, while walking back to my truck, and I ended up just seizing on the thought:

"Well, I did my music thing for the day."

So that felt good.

Well, part of the process of getting to know my own website is reacting to new information. I was so much in the mindset of having this be a site about my creative process and development of a jazz musician that I didn't think anything of posting recordings of me playing jazz standards, but it is evidently illegal (and I should have remembered that).

The songs still exist on the site, but just in unpublished (not public) form. I can of course send recordings of me playing to my friends. So I will eventually open up the site to memberships, and add my friends (which are most of you) to the list - that way they'll be available by request.

In the meantime, I have posted a new Piano Musing called A New Steeple. I've also posted another one of my originals, As One, to make up for the loss of the standards. I'll be using the Bits And Pieces podcast more for song ideas, roughdrafts, and other original material from now on.

More postings coming soon about the art/music collaboration that Kasey Baker and I are doing.

I just had a rather odd phone call.

Riiinng

"Hello?"

"Hello?" Foreign accent. Caller ID said "Farias Pro" at 818-909-2262.

"Yes, hello?"

"Yes, is this... museworld productions?"

"Uh, yes, yes this is Museworld Productions." No one has ever called me for Museworld before.

"Yes, I am calling to inquire about ringtone licensing for one of your songs."

"Oh, really. Which song?"

"I Will Survive."

"Oh, you mean As One?" Odd, because I had just started working on a piano/voice arrangement of it and had just hit a breakthrough. Very strange.

"Yes. I am calling to inquire about ringtone licensing."

"That's possible. Can I ask who you're calling on behalf of?" She mentioned Farias, it was meaningless to me. "Well, let me give you a little more information. I'm Curt, I wrote the song. Did you find this off of the website? It's a personal website of mine." She sounded a little confused. "Oh, then did you find it off of ASCAP?"

"ASCAP, yes."

"Have you heard the song?"

"No, no I haven't. But your name is Curt? Curt Siffert? Thank you for that."

"Sure. Are you calling on behalf of an organization?"

"No, I am calling on behalf of my boss, Gustav (something). It's for a new company."

"Oh, I see. Well, licensing is a possibility. What did you have in mind?"

"Well, I am just calling to inquire about who to talk to about licensing. I have that information now, your name and number. So let me get some details together and we will call you back. Thank you so much for your time!"

"You're welcome."

No idea what that was all about.