Summertime Lazies...open mic's

Ah, September..."sumemer's almost gone" is a few weeks behind us. Took much (most (ALL)) of August off from a music/creativity angle, but it was needed. Back "in training" with acoustic chops and working MLPI into the rotation.

And that rotation will be seen at an open mic near you (ok, near me) in the next few wks. Gonna do a few covers, a few originals, generally have some fun. Ireland's 32 down on Geary has what looks to be a fun Wed nite thing. I'm ansy to play out but the open mic scene doesn't thrill me - maybe it'll be different this time around but either way I'm PSYCHED for it!!

The write way!

Regular Songwriting and Guitar Playing = Peace of Mind.

Some folks work out. Some meditate. Some do religion. Some do drugs. Some hug Redwoods. Some howl at strangers. Some do all of these at the same time.

For me, it's the guitar playing and songwriting...I find when doin' both everything else makes sense. The revealed truths can be harsh sometimes, but that's part of the fun...

...and is great writin' material.

Rock on!

iTunes, MySpace, oh my (and be my friend like Bob Dylan?)

Mile Long Post-It is now available on iTunes. Exciting stuff, as they certainly are the standard of music distribution these days. I think electronic music distribution (of high-quality formats anyway) is a wonderful thing as it saves the resources needed to make and subsequently dispose of cd's or dvd's (or whatever other physical media's on the horizon).

Also spent some time revamping MLPI's MySpace page - have six tunes up and turned off the "autoplay when visit page" feature - kinda pisses me off when I visit other websites that do that so I'm restraining. Highlight here is that I'm (apparently) now friends with the one and only Bob Freakin' Dylan. Six degrees of separation get closer all the time. Anyway, come on by and link a tune or friend on up MLPI!

Treat me right

So finally gettin' around to some acoustic treatments for the studio. This is to make the rum a bit less "muddy" sounding, and let me better hear what I've recorded and am mixing. Looking mostly at Auralex products, and they actually offer a free service to analyze your room and then advise which of their products to buy. Why not - I'm givin' it a shot, although sketching the studio is taking quite some time 'specillay with my lame handwriting ("measure twice" would be wishful thinking!). Currently workin' Craigslist and Ebay (post if you have some available :-). Next up's gonna be some new monitor speakers - been using Mackie HR824's and while they're fun to listen to, I'm not really hearing what I think I need to - especially with how vocals "sit" in a mix. Considering Adam A7's or Dynaudio BM5a (I think they're called), but wanna do the acoustic treatments first while I still have the HR824's so I'll hear the difference on spkrs I'm used to.

But for now, there's a sidewalk sale with two acoustic guitar's available about to start...gotta go...

RPM Jukebox; MLPI Unplugged...

So what could be better - well, almost as good as anyway - as scorin' MLPI's debut cd from CDBaby...how 'bout listening to it FOR FREE! The good folks at RPM Challenge have created a jukebox with all this year's participants. Check it out http://www.rpmchallenge.com/jukebox then click the Library tab and do a search on "Mile Long Post-it". Cool, eh? While your there, check out some of the other cool and interesting stuff RPMers cranked out in February.

Still spreadin' the gospil of Mile Long Post-It to friends, co-workers (like it or not :-), and on the web. Kinda on the fence of just how much promo I wanna do on this before moving onto the next project. I'm a huge fan of this project, but have to acknowledge there are some limitations (29 days that's gonna happen) and I'm thinking I want to save a big promo push for a creation I'm 200% behind (I'm about 110% in favor of current MLPI! - pretty good!).

And also toying with MLPI Acoustic - or is "unplugged" better? Anyway gonna try and sell the idea (few tunes worth anyway) to my dobro pal Ian and see if we can whip a few into shape.

Rock on!

MySpace/MileLongPostIt is up...kinda...

Updated Mile Long Post-It's MySpace page (cleverly called http://www.myspace.com/milelongpostit). Put a quick blog entry pointing over to this one, as I'll be using Blogger exclusively (vs. tryin' to keep up separate blogs at RPMChallenge, MySpace, Blogger...). I was tempted to host the blog at milelongpostit.com, but why reinvent what others have already set up. I am thinking about putting a forum site up though - might be fun, and would be more interactive than bloggin'.

Anyway, mixed feelings on MySpace. Gotta admit I don't spend much time on it, but with it being so popular, I "gotta be in it to win it" I guess. Also figure since it's free there's really no excuse not to - heck, any avenue to get these tunes heard is a good one.

Now who do I send "friend" requests to...

CDBaby is cool!!

MILE LONG POST-IT is now available from CDBaby - a great independent music distributor. I'm most psyched 'bout their mp3 download offerings, as they offer a great quality product (high quality MP3 no DRM!!) and I can set a great price point (5 bucks for download - c'mon!) and still have CDBaby get paid and walk away with a few duckets. One really great thing about the downloads is they're "green", or "eco-friendly" to the last generation :-) - that is, no plastic being created. Beautiful thing.

OK, back off my soapbox, the other really cool thing on CDBaby is the high-quality previews. You can check out the first 2 minutes of a song (not 30 seconds...two minutes!) at a real good quality (don't try this on dial-up). Man, online music rocks!

Two weeks little news

Can't believe it's been two wks since I added to this blog. While the RPMChallenge was happenin' I blogged nearly daily and found it a good thing to track progress. OK, and a bit of a self-cheering-section, but why not :-). Aimin' to get somethin' of substance posted here over the weekend - we'll see.

Today - getting CDBaby distribution stuff wrapped up for MLPI. Cool group, and I'm glad to be workin' with them. Next will be MLPI website updates, and then "game plan" for what to do next with MLPI: Gotta consider how much more time/effort to put into a project that's "done". In quotes, 'cause I'm undecided on how much I want to push it. I think there's some great stuff on the CD but also some dicey stuff, and I'm toying with keeping the promo limited, and really pushing my next effort (which has already begun...but that's a story for another blog). We'll see.

Website up; promo continues

So I (finally) have a skeleton website up at www.milelongpostit.com. Over the next couple weeks I'm gonna fill it out a bit more, with a guestbook, better email form, more blogging (of course!), and more about the music. Also maybe some audio samples, although I may wait 'till CDBaby is all set up as they'll do all that anyway. The new website is on Linux hosting which is new to me having done mostly Microsoft-based sites previously. Interesting to learn cPanel, and might really take the opportunity to learn some open-source stuff.

A bunch to-do yet before SteveTime(tm) kicks off but find myself with the decidedly new-gen question: Do I use the time to install TurboTax, or SecondLife...

Stebe Shepard signing off....

Movin' to Blogger...

Somewhat swollen from all my MLPI blogging, I'm gonna move to blogger... more soon and Rock on!