Born To Be Wide - Music Publishing

Last night I attended a Born to Be Wide event on Music Publishing in Edinburgh which offered to explain the black art of music publishing.

Whilst this event was geared towards music publishers, I still think it very useful to have an understanding of how they work so as a songwriter you can work with them.

A packed venue showed how important a stream of income this was becoming in the music business, especially in light of new modern technologies. With this enthusiasm for publishing came words of warning from all the panel. There are lots of horror stories where people have in their eagerness to publish, have signed away their rights, or signed deals that could even cost them money, so legal advice is invaluable when entering into publishing contracts.

In one sited example someone had signed away there next 15 years of publishing for £3000.

From a performing songwriters point of view the no.1 one thing to do to gain the attention of publishers etc was to build an audience for your music so that your music becomes a commercial product with a market place.

It was also clear that fast food pop music culture with little substance but consumed en by the publics such as shows like the x factor created a demand for this kind of music by music publishers etc. So one way in gaining an income from your songs would be to write commercial pop music for the types of wannabes on the x factor.

For those of us that don’t do this, the road is not completely blocked but it certainly seems to be long, narrow and hard going- but that in itself is songwriting material.

Guest Speakers included.

Murray Buchanan - Lawyer

David Mcginnis – Mute Songs

Paul Shedden – Shed Publishing

Paul Harris – A&R Reverb XL Publishing

And representatives from The Music Publishers Association.

 

Man at Work

On Thursday night I went along to Glasgow’s only floating venue The Renfrew Ferry to see Colin Hay.

It’s been a while since I had been on the ferry and not only has it drifted to the other side of the Clyde but I was also surprised to see that it had been done up and it no longer resembled the car ferry the way it used to.

The stage orientation was also different, the benefit being that the upstairs section could view the stage as well. It’s all a far cry from the days of the Hideaway Blues Band some 17years ago. Ouch..

My last, more recent trip to the ferry taught me an important lesson. Double check the dates of the gig before going!.

I once turned up, and paid to get into the ferry to see Gillian Welch, and after sitting through half the life story of what I thought was a strange choice for a support act – “Howard Marks – Mr Nice” I asked the bar staff when Gillian Welch was on only to be told 'next week'.

I left the ferry £15 lighter.

Still, I managed to get the correct night for Colin Hay - the Scottish  / Australian songwriter now living in LA, who penned  ‘Land Down Under’ amongst others. His humour and banter with the audience proved he had lost none of his Scottish wit and it can even be found in his lyrics of many of his songs.

I thought the acoustic versions of his 80s hits worked really well and proved they were very good songs to begin with. His unique vocal style delivered a few favourites of mine - Just Dont think I will Ever Get Over You  ( from the movie Garden State) & Are You Lookin at Me?.

Really enjoyed the whole gig and found there was a great honesty in his songwriting. Hopefully he will find time in between his appearances in Scrubs  to visit Glasgow again, and next time he should bring some cds!.

Have a listen to the words in Are You Lookin at Me?

Learning how to shoot

I’ve always been interested in photography, particularly for inspiration for songwriting but hadn’t touched my old Nikon ‘film’ slr for some years. So, about a year ago I used my trip to New Zealand as an excuse to buy myself a Nikon D60 digital SLR. I am trying to build up a collection of photographs that both influence and work with my music so I decided I had better learn what all the settings on the camera do. This did not involve reading the manual.

 So, a year on, and becoming increasingly disappointed in missing out on great photo opportunities I decided it was time to enrol in a photography course, hopefully resulting in an improvement to my ratio of good shots to duff shots (in favour of the good).

With thanks to my teacher at Langside College, Jim Bamford, I am please to say this course has done a world of good and instead of faffing about in semi automatic mode I have now graduated on to fully manual controls, a better understanding of how my camera works and dare I say it better quality pictures. You should see some of these new improved pictures finding their way into my photo a day section.

One of the best bits of kit I have bought so far is a polariser, which has allowed me to capture tremendous blue skies (when they appear)– see the Orkney shot on the previous bog and to bring out some of the grey skies frequently have here in Scotland. I’ve still to experiment a bit more with the graduation filter and the tripod I have but if weather improves & the snow turns up soon I’m planning on getting some landscape shots over the winter.

Of course the only problem with doing this course is I now have a large and expensive shopping list of lenses I want to buy. Ah well Christmas soon..

Orkney Blues

Now that I’ve almost recovered from Orkney’s Blues Festival I thought I’d share some of the highlights of the weekend.

Stromness, with its picturesque harbour and twisty streets was the base for the festival and buzzed with activity from locals and tourists all seeking out the music and squeezing into the venues.

I was also lucky enough to get a chance to play in the Gable End Theatre on the Island of Hoy. This converted former School in Lyness had been lovingly transformed into a community theatre.

As the day went on the wind picked up and at Rackwick, near The Old Man of Hoy, it was hard to stand up straight. When mentioning this to a local this was merely described as a breath of fresh air and that the wind speed was recently recorded at 120mph during a slightly breezy day before the device used for measuring it blew away.

Needless to say I performed When The Wind Blows that night.

Back in Stromness, there were some great performances over the weekend and I witnessed some fine acoustic work and stomp box action from Naomi Mather, some local stars Fastliners, a blast of blues from Perth’s Wang Dang Delta, & The Roy Mette Band who’s high voltage blues was surely enough to power up those northern lights.

A trip to Orkney is not complete without seeing those famous Neolithic Archaeological sites. So it was great to finally get the opportunity to see places like Maeshowe & Skara Brae (in glorious sunshine!) which I had studied at University but never got the chance to see.

Unfortunately my weekend ended with a visit to Kirkwall police to report a car park hit and run on my hire car which has (hopefully) prompted an inter-island search for the culprit. Still, this did not dent my enjoyment too much, there can’t be many places to hide...

Thanks to Walter & all at the Orkney Blues Festival, Catherine & Michael for their tour guiding, Max & Jill for their hospitality & homebrew and everyone else who helped make the weekend an extremely enjoyable & memorable one.

I thoroughly recommend a trip to experience these northerly islands.

Into the Wild

I made it back intact from the wilds of the northwest on Sunday.

The weather was fierce, but the hospitality and whisky as always - more than made up for that. 

I drove home from Ullapool via Torridon, which is one of my favourite areas, spectacular mountain scenery and strange rock formations are quite different to the landscapes around the central highlands. This area always inspires me and local mountain An Teallach had a big part in my song Bridge of Kings. Unfortunately the shear volume of rain and the lack of TVs meant that both the mountains and the lesser spotted Scotland goal remained hidden from view. Shame that wasn’t the case for Wednesday’s game.

I stopped for lunch in the village of Kinlochewe which was hosting a gruelling 90 mile cycling competition through hell & high water. The only cafe was therefore bustling with activity as half drowned tourists and frozen cyclists in need of a heart massage took refuge. As I ordered soup & a coffee the wee wifey in charge made an announcement to everyone that the village had ran out of water (what on a day like this??) and if we must use the toilet only no.1s were acceptable. Highland hospitality at its best.

Not far from Kinlochewe I came across a car stuck in a ditch. Offering my assistance I decided to inspect just how ‘stuck’ the tyre was and bent down for a closer look at the exact same time as the driver decided to give it one last go with spinning the wheel, which gunned me down in a hail of mud. Not funny. After confirming the car was well and truly stuck I decided the best place for the driver was Kinlochewe.

The weather was so bad that even the sheep were looking for a lift.