• Video
  • Audio
  • About
  • Blog
    • Published Work
    • Instructional Stuff
      • Audio Instruction
      • Music Business
      • Music Instruments
      • Music Genres
      • Programming And Such
    • Music Thoughts, Rants, Randomness
    • Production And Song Stories
  • Store
  • Contact
  •  

Monthly Archives: July 2016

Your Music Isn’t Special

July 28, 2016 by Aaron
Music Thoughts, Rants, Randomness
aaron trumm, art, art business, business, music, music business, music money, nquit music, rock, rock music, special, success, unique

Your music isn’t special!

Oh no! I always hated that saying. People will say it all the time, either when they’re trying to get you to have less ego, or they’re trying to convince you to give up the pipe dream, or whatever. But MOST of the time when you hear that is when you’re learning the real ins and outs of music marketing and business. Straight forward business minded people in music will tell you that right away.

It’s mostly to let you know that you can’t just sit around thinking your some kind of genius and expect anybody to respond to that. It’s weird, egoistic, and most of all, doesn’t work. It was always a bit depressing to me but recently I got a very new take on it in my head.

Now I think that’s very GOOD news. At least the concept of it…see I feel like it’s a relief not to have to make every song some epic world changing thing that will certainly go viral. Going viral is like winning the lottery – quite unlikely. And it’s actually MORE depressing to me to think of pinning my hopes and dreams on something that unlikely.

So, it’s really a good thing to realize, it’s not really the music that makes the success. Don’t get me wrong, you don’t want to suck, and the music is really moving and makes a difference, but success in any business is about relationships. Yes you start with a great product, but you don’t have to worry so much about your product being somehow better than everyone else’s, or when you go on stage being super competitive about standing out or making sure every time you sing a song, it’s this insane transcendent experience for everyone in the room and people are like “holy fuck what did I just SEE??”

That’s crap. That’s the surface facing internet culture and our American tendency to go for the icing and not the cake that tells us that every little thing has to be “special” and everything worth consuming has to be world shattering and like nothing ever seen before. That’s an overwhelming thought because it’s impossible. A song is 3 minutes. There are rules you follow, no matter how avant-garde you are, and there’s really only so much one tune can do. Sure, it moves people, sure there may be transcendence. Sure, you can do a concert that just takes people away, or a video that’s just wildly powerful or moving – but that will never be that special in the grand scheme of things. There’s always that stuff. There’s 7 billion creative people on the planet and there’s no end to the powerful, moving, transcendent material out there.

Part of the clickbait strategy is to sell every damn page or video as some kind of crazy amazing hugely weird thing – headline formulas include “you won’t believe what this guy did..” and whatnot..and you do see a lot of “wow!” – 7 year olds playing drums, dude jumping off buildings, whatever. But who cares? No matter how amazing you are, you’re not the only one.

So trying to be special is weird and overwhelming and it’s really not effective because the more you act like you’re special, the more you alienate people. Really, to succeed as an artist is about building a network of like-minded folk, collaborating, and putting your mark out there. No one can do what you do and in that sense YOU are special. But you don’t really need your music to be special, and you certainly need to understand that it won’t be perceived as all that special for the most part. But you can still build a business, and a fanbase, and take your place among the other badass artists that you have something in common with. And that actually will be enough, in fact, it’s even enough to build to rock star status and become famous.

So yeah – your music isn’t special – that’s not because you suck – it’s because music is small – powerful, but small, and everybody does it – so your music isn’t special. And it doesn’t need to be, because YOU are. So you can relax 🙂

— A

Hey – it may not be special, but I think some of my stuff rocks and maybe you will too – easy to find out by getting some for FREE at aarontrumm.com – LOVE!

Open Oceans

July 1, 2016 by Aaron
Livin Is Bling
aaron j. trumm, love, music video, nquit music, open oceans, ptsd, stop loss, war



Order Button

Here is Open Oceans. I wrote this tune in about 2008 or so on an acoustic guitar. It’s the first time I tried writing with a guitar and playing and singing simultaneously. I ended up playing the repetitive acoustic guitar on the actual record. There’s another couple of electric parts that I added, and then more electric parts by my friend Paul Lafourest. He also played the bass on this. My buddy Nathan Menhorn is the drummer.

The lone female vocal is Jenny Malin, who is now passed away 🙁 There’s also Paul on backing vocals, and our friend Lacey on extra female vocals. There’s a lot of density in the song, but it can be done pretty pared down.

This song is about stop loss. The woman character is waiting for the soldier to come home, but stop loss has him staying longer. Stop loss is when the military disallows scheduled retirement or return from duty in order to keep soldiers in the field. In the end, he’ll be coming back, but with PTSD.

What can you even say about PTSD? I will say this – a LOT of people have a little bit of PTSD, and it can come from the obvious stuff like going to war, or being a cop, or living in a really rough neighborhood, or being physically abused as a child, but it can also come from other places, like trauma surrounding your health, or psychological abuse that can come from a lot of places. What PTSD does is it makes you react to every conflict as if it were life and death, and this makes it very very hard to communicate.

The good news is, it’s a problem that can be solved (usually). To that end, I’ll be donating 15% of revenue from this song and video to a worthy cause that helps do this. I’m not allowed to say which charity, but it’s good, and I spent a goodly amount of time researching who was really doing good work for that cause. So, to help with that, you can GET YOUR DOWNLOAD OF THE TRACK HERE.

The thing that I notice in these lyrics is that at the end I’m like “gonna need your love to remain revealed”…because that’s so important. The way to really start to get out of being conditioned to be violent is love. And man…I dunno what I can even say about it. Love, dude. Love.

Here are the lyrics to this tune, so you can see ’em and such:

love i’m waiting til the mornin light
just to see whether not you might
don’t make me have to tell you twice
i been leavin my light on night after night

been back deep in these open oceans
bad world tracks and these backward notions
everything they have in the world is not
enough to wanna shorten the time i got
even so i run with american forces
sand gun and tanks are replacing horses
and if you come back with enough you might
sleep a little better in your bed tonight

love i’m waiting til the mornin light
just to see whether not you might
don’t make me have to tell you twice
i been leavin my light on night after night

i been runnin from my bones for days
lookin for another way i can say this to ya
i ain’t never really comin home
they got another little trick
in they bag o stones
they call it stop loss
and it means i ain’t comin back
so make a little snack go to bed and relax
and i’ll give you a call when i’m over the wall
but we’re gonna have to run so fuck ’em all

love i’m waiting til the mornin light
just to see whether not you might
don’t make me have to tell you twice
i been leavin my light on night after night

there are too many ways i can die for you
there are too many days in my life for you
there are too many things I can do for you
what you do for me?
what you do for me?

she been spendin her days makin eyes for you
she been spendin her life waitin up for me
what you do for me?
what you do for me?
come on come on come on come on now

they got me built up past the brink
i’m nothin but a pile of muscle i’m about to sink
can’t float can’t swim can’t fly away
can’t get to the end of the fight today
i got a castle made of blood and my bones are mud
can’t bang my brain on the manly stud
they make me eat this food til i need to puke
gonna break this dude and i won’t rebuke
gonna slip away gonna come to you
but you gotta remember that i won’t be through
gonna need your light to remain revealed
gotta leave this war on the battlefield

love i’m waiting til the mornin light
just to see whether not you might
don’t make me have to tell you twice
i been leavin my light on night after night

love i’m waiting til the mornin light
just to see whether not you might
don’t make me have to tell you twice
i been leavin my light on night after night

And here’s the lyric video, so you can follow along:

So there you have it – Open Oceans. See ya soon!


Order Button

—-
Oh! Get you some free tracks while you’re here – put your email here to do that:

[nquitmailinglist]

Thanks for listening, watching and reading!

[purchase_link id=”1748″ text=”Livin Is Bling Download” style=”button” color=”blue”]

Latest Posts

  • Mix Fu:
  • Making money in music is scary. Subscriptions may help.
  • Signal Flow Part 2
  • What Is Quantizing and How Do I Use It
  • Cull the Herd

Archives

  • May 2022
  • February 2022
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • May 2020
  • March 2020
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • February 2018
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • October 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • February 2016
  • November 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • November 2006

Follow

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

2022 © Copyright @ NQuit Music –  All Rights Reserved – Website by nquit.com