Portsmouth Multi Cultural Festival...... Ole'

I did though. It was the Portsmouth Multi Cultural Festival.

I played it today at around 1pm.
I guessed it was a council run thing, it had that feel even before I got there.
It had no website, that was my first clue.
I was billed as "Nick Tam Spanish Guitarist" Not the best of starts. "It says that on your website" said Junior in his high visability vest. "I sent you a cd" said I "There wasn't any Spanish guitar on that". He obviously hadn't heard the cd or checked out my website that well. I do play Spanish guitar, it's a guitar made in Spain and I do strum some Flamencoesque type doodles but I'm no Paco Penia.
Anyhoo, I was told I would be on around 1.40 but in the end I went on at 1.00 and played for around 30 minutes. As per the sound on stage was great but out front I was told the guitar was to quiet. That's the thing with these non muso type events. I mean how hard is it? One vocal mic and a guitar with a pick up. Two faders, work it out.
I was quite popular with a small group of young mums, one of them kissed my hand later congratulating me on my wonderful voice, bless. Actually I did go down quite well despite my quiet guitar. 
As soon as I came off I was wisked away by the media, eXpress FM, Portsmouth's local radio station to be interviewed by the Country Music presenter. " I also run this website" he said as he thrust some bumf into my hand, something to do with relatives on-line? " I also run a English School in South America!" he enthused. Ok, I get it, this isn't all you do.
After a couple of obvious "What kind of music do you play?" type questions I was brushed away in favour of a lady dog trainer with her alsation to talk about training for your pouch. I left them a few cd's, although I should have kept one for the hand kisser.

Websites for THE ARTIST

The number of free websites open to the independent artist are many and manifold.

 

They generally promise the same things.

 

You get to design your own profile.

 

Whoopee! You cut and paste the usual yap that you’ve put on all the other websites that promised so much but gave so little. The usual collection of badly lit jpegs showing the variety of haircuts and dodgy fashion choices you’ve made over the years.

 

Get your music heard!

 

I think I’ve covered that haven’t I?

 

 

Tell us about all your live shows.

 

To be honest this CAN be quite useful as one can see where one might go to get gigs for oneself, can’t one?

 

I am a member of so many of these sites, the only way I know is that I receive emails from them daily. None of them, except one that I’ll get to in a minute, actually DO anything. I joined one recently after being encouraged to by a friend that works for the site. I had a heady 2 weeks of “so and so wants to be your friend” “So and so made a comment about your song” comments from other hapless fools like myself congratulating me on a “great sound” or a “kicking track” as I believe our American cousins put it. Then nothing…….honestly nothing! I had taken my own advice and had gone and listened to around 20 of the 300 or so people. To be frank, tragic. Not all in their defence but pretty much.

 

So is there a site that DOES do me some good? Well, yes there is and thanks for asking. It’s called Reverbnation.com and it is the dog’s balls. There are a few good artists there as well as some tragic covers duos that are worth a listen for the comedy value alone. They also have widgets, fantastic little devices that you can paste into other website and/or emails that will play your efforts in a nice little player. Widgets that folk can submit their email addresses to become part of ones fanbase. The best thing of all is that you can keep tabs on these tecky little bastards and see how many people have played them.

 

The sharp eyed amongst you will have spotted that there are a couple on this very page.

If you haven't already, give em a click.

 

I’d be interested if any of you (please let there be more than one of you dear god) have had any joy and by joy I mean this “Someone who you don’t know has listen to one of the tunes you have on your profile (and this is important) more than once?”

 

 

I have experienced this joy and it is a joy unconfined!

 

So, what have we learned?

 

Oh just click on a widget………….

Radio Radio

So once again the publicity machine that is Debbie and me spring into action.

I recorded a radio interview about two weeks ago and tomorrow it will be broadcast on the illustrious Original106 FM. 

I thought I would start my blog career at this point as I wanted to share what it's like waiting for some kind of recognition for work one has done.

I have put in the hard work, the writing of the music, working out the words or "lyrics" as us songwriters like to refer to them.

I've sat and recorded the songs, playing the same guitar part over and over again until I was finally happy with it. The guitar part for Life is a River took me a whole day, playing the same piece over again. Then, recording finished I work through the millions of effects. Which reverb to use? How much? This can take weeks of fiddling around until I get to the point when I think that I can do no more. Then the mix down, then mastering the song as a whole. The artwork for the album is also a painstaking event.

Which photographs? Which font? Sizing and resizing the images so that it all fits on the paper. Thankfully Debs does this for me. Otherwise the album would have the back of a cereal packet with "NIck TaNNs fing" scrawled in crayon slipped into it.

The album is then sent off (still with me? Good). Emails are sent to radio stations and then after a few months there's a response. There is a radio station that will play a track. let joy be unconfined! The next 2 months, thanks to carefully engineered please and requests, I get asked along to the studio to record an interview and to play a couple of songs.

After running through in my mind answers to possible questions, changing the songs I'm going to play, I finally get to the studio.

After a brief chat with Xan, I go into a tiny studio and play my 2 songs. They go well, I don't usually get nervous about playing thankfully. The interview  begins and I rattle on about transport links in the Southampton area. I kid you not,after all the work that we've put into the album, I start banging on about motor-ways. Still , I get the chance to talk about other stuff. I really need about half an hour but get cut short at around 10 minutes. He didn't ask any of the questions that I had anticipated but at least listeners will get to know how easy it is to get around Southampton. 

I won't tell you what I did say in the interview as I'm sure the majority of my yap will be edited out. But have a listen anyway. If you don't get a chance to listen to it live at www.original106.com it will be available as a pod-cast later.