Music Thoughts, Rants, Randomness

Master The Craft And The Art Will Follow

February 11, 2021 by Aaron

home recording, home recording studio, recording, recording magazine

This article first appeared in Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

One of my earliest mentors was a man named Dale, but we always called him “the old man”. He was a documentary producer at the local public television station where I got my start. I worked under him as a work study generalist, but he quickly put a camera in my hands and, recognizing my bent, had me heading up sound on set within weeks.

Dale and his other protégé Manny brought an artfulness and soul to documentary making that I’ve rarely seen matched. We were the wild men of KNME, the ones with big beards and foul mouths, and it often seemed to me we were flying by the seat of our pants. Some days we would just grab a hi-8 camera and a pistol grip boom and go down to the worst parts of town, just to see what we could find.

It may have seemed crazy to me at the time, but one of Dale’s favorite things to say to us was “master the craft and the art will follow”. If it’s not obvious, what that means is this: Amateurs try to be creative first, thinking up wild ideas and trying to figure out how to do it. Professionals do this too but what they do first is work hard to understand their craft. That gunslinger you think doesn’t have a care in the world? He doesn’t, but that’s because he’s so well prepared.

An audio engineer from the days when audio engineering required actual engineers, Dale taught us to know our tools very deeply; how light, sound, physics, gear and even people worked. He taught us to prepare thoroughly and love the craft. For me, what that meant was it wasn’t enough to know where the record button was. I wanted to know how to white balance, what an iris does, how to manipulate the f-stop, what kind of lavalier would actually work in a noisy environment, and what a change in light would do to a long shoot.

Sure enough, as Dale predicted, the more I learn, teach and write about the craft, and the more I understand the mundane details and deep fundamental concepts, the more creative I feel. There’s nothing to block the creative flow when you truly know your medium and your tools.

That’s one of the major reasons I write for Recording. When it comes time to teach something, there’s no choice but to know it in and out, and when I do that, I tend to find a creative wellspring as a reward.

It almost never fails. Deep dive into the subtle and elusive art of cleaning and punching up low end in a mix, and you find your mind conjuring up a song laden with sick kick drums and slick bass lines, just so you can mix them better than you’ve ever mixed before. Learn once and for all what happens when you treat a room and how to do so, and suddenly you’ve got nothing standing in between you and that cello masterpiece. Get a systematic view of the mics available in a certain budget window and what you can expect to hear from them, and suddenly you can picture an elusive vocal mix with no question about how to achieve it.

There’s an interesting and tricky balance that goes on there. Some recordists are absolute perfectionists. Some believe there are details that don’t matter. Try asking a Facebook group about MP3s and see how many answers you get. The one thing that remains constant though, is that the more knowledgeable an artist is, the more empowered they are. That’s probably why we continue to debate the physics, science and psychology of sound and music. We want to know. We want to have an unburdened creative flow. We seek mastery.

When we’re young, we want it quickly. We often want to skip the boring stuff and get straight to being wildly creative. We worry that we need to chase the art, or it will fly away without us. That’s ok too, but sometimes we tend to go great guns without preparing, only to wonder why the final product isn’t what we envisioned. Our sifus, senseis and mentors tell us “master the craft”. We say “but we want the ART!”.

It turns out, the muse is attracted to skill. That creative spark we all seek and hope will come our way is enflamed and incited by our mastery and love for craft. It’s looking for the artist that will do it the most justice. Every time you learn something about HOW to make the art, the art comes sniffing around.

So, we at Recording hope to help you some in that regard. We hope we can be a part of your on-going love of the craft of making incredible records, and it turns out that really helps us on our path to mastery. We’ll keep making records and writing about how, and you keep making records and reading about how. Write about it too, we’d love to learn what you know!

After all, as The Old Man says, master the craft and the art will follow.

I’m a producer, vocalist, pianist, writer and craft masterer – hmm…. Anyway, look for me on Twitter or Facebook at @AaronJTrumm.

A Transformative Weekend

August 19, 2019 by Aaron

music business, music licensing, pay to submit, recording magazine, sync, taxi, taxi music, taxi.com

How The 2017 Taxi Road Rally Exceeded All Expectations

This article first appeared Recording Magazine in January 2018. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

Two disclaimers: Recording Magazine and Taxi have a great relationship, so I understand if you expect a bit of bias; I personally was a Taxi member for a short time 15 years ago, and not since. (2019 EDIT: I actually did become a Taxi member for the year after I wrote this, and did not renew, which doesn’t mean I don’t think you should. It’s one of the only pay-to-submit companies I would recommend.)

Now that that’s out of the way, GO TO THE TAXI ROAD RALLY. I went this past November for the first time, and I started the weekend with at least a small amount of skepticism. I’ve never liked paying any kind of membership fee for anything, and I’ve always especially distrusted anyone who asks for money from artists. So although friends were telling me Taxi’s great, I was really only going to the rally to network.

Boy was I wrong. I haven’t been this excited, juiced and sparked since my first National Poetry Slam, which if you’ve never heard of it, is 5 days of the 300 best performance poets in the world going head to head. It is one of the most intense, beautiful and transformative experiences you can go through. So is the Taxi Road Rally.

First off, take the breakout sessions. 4 time slots a day, with at least five different options for classes from industry pros – and I’m talking people who will melt your face with their credits, and then melt the rest of your body with the depth and clarity of their knowledge – on topics spanning from how to reverse engineer an instrumental cue to how to deal with stage fright, to how to master with new LuFS standards, to how to decipher music business contracts, to how to achieve balance and success without messing up your marriage (that last class, taught by Jill and James Kocian, revolutionized my career in a single hour and is easily the best thing I’ve done for myself in 20 years).

Next let’s talk feedback. One-on-one mentoring sessions and group mentor lunches where you can bend the ear of producers, sync agents, radio promotors, other musicians, and so on. Not to mention several listening panels with industry pros who will tell you in no uncertain terms what’s right and wrong with your music (from their unique industry point of view), and do so in an empowering way that truly helps.

You know all this though. You can see it in the back pages of this magazine quite often, and you can read it on the Taxi website.

What you may not know about, and what made me want to go back next year, and re-join Taxi ASAP, is the incredible community of like-minded, supportive and positive dreamers that Taxi members are. Members lift each other up, encourage each other, collaborate with each other, eat together, laugh together and make the big bad L.A. music industry feel like a huge beautiful slumber party – with millionaire mixers and hot shot producers in the next sleeping bags.

Not once did I hear a piece of feedback that didn’t start and end positively (I call that the sandwich method). Not once did I witness any sort of competitive vibe or see anyone stepping over each other to get up. The whole tone of the Taxi Road Rally, to borrow from Marc Smith (the inventor of Poetry Slam), is “pull the next one up”. The result is a collaborative energy that has clearly resulted in success AND happiness for countless members, and a level of overall quality that was frankly mind boggling.

AND I got to walk around with a guy who mixed and produced Christina Aguilara and Will Smith (Rob Chiarelli) and the guy who wrote Every Which Way But Loose (Steve Dorff)! That was a funny story! Not to mention men and women who have written with, produced, mixed, played with and known almost every artist I’ve ever heard of. To hob-nob with great people in the recording industry and have it be not only NOT intimidating, but absolutely invigorating, is, to me, high achievement.

As to whether I would recommend you join Taxi, I couldn’t say. That depends on what you’re trying to accomplish and where you stand in your career. Taxi, like any such company, can help you a LOT, but only if you’re ready to utilize that help. If you’ve got a good sized catalog, or you’re good at writing or producing music quickly and to spec, AND if you have the right attitude about feedback and being willing to grow and change, then Taxi could be great. If you’re not willing to change or your skin is too thin, or maybe you’re a beginner starting out, I’d say wait. But I encourage you to get on their list and check out the listings they send out (for free). That alone can teach you a lot. And when you’re ready, get yourself out to Taxi’s Road Rally – maybe as a guest of a member, like I did – and bring your tunes, your good vibes, and a REALLY big, empty notebook!

In the meantime, you can go check Taxi out and see if you like the vibe at www.taxi.com.

Happy recording!

Changing Of The (Pick) Guard

June 14, 2019 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, guitar, guitars, modern music, nquit music, recording, recording magazine

Modern use of guitars is changing

This article appeared in the December 2018 (I think) issue of Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

A curious thing has been happening lately in my studio. I’ll hire a killer guitar god, bang out a session, throw down a great mix thinking “ohhh yeeaahh” and when I seek feedback, I’m told the track sounds dated or old. For a little while, it was every time there was any kind of guitar involved. Once it was pointed out, all those tracks sounded stale to me too. What gives?

Needless to say this was quite disturbing, because I love a sick guitar track. I love putting one on a record even more, but that’s mainly because I can’t play the guitar to save my life. I’ve had guitars since I was 16 (that’s 27 years but who’s counting?), but I can play an e chord and that’s it. So maybe this whole trend where guitars aren’t as central is good for me?

This really got me thinking, and almost immediately, I started seeing article after article about the decline of guitar sales (over the past 10 years, electric guitar sales have gone down to about 1 million annually, from 1.5 million), the death of rock and roll, and so on. Everyone has an opinion about why, and the guitar-making giants have their opinions about how to slow or reverse their apparently imminent demise. I’m more interested in making hot tracks, telling amazing stories and moving people to dance, yell, sing or cry.

So the question for me became “why does this instrument sound old?” and “what do I do about it?” Do I remove guitar from my productions? Do I use it in a different way? How do I coach a guitar player who wants to keep up with the latest trends?

Well first, let me say this: Trend chasing isn’t always important. Straight forward, guitar driven rock and roll will be relevant as long as there’s someone who’s moved by it, which, Beethoven will tell you, will probably be forever. Trend chasing is also dangerous to creative flow, and can be detrimental to originality, leaving a person forever one step behind the edge. In other words, I don’t copy the latest hot acts. I AM the latest hot act, and I encourage you to think the same way.

Now that that’s out of the way, we can talk about the role the guitar plays now, as opposed to the role it played 10, 20 and 50 years ago, and more importantly, some ways to keep it fresh in the studio.

But Why?

First it might help to understand why my track with the shredding 16 bar guitar solo and nifty keen twice dubbed, stereo spread distorted rhythm track sounds old, and why I would gravitate toward that, even though I don’t play guitar. Well, because it IS old. It’s something that we’ve all heard a thousand times. That’s not a bad thing at all! But that’s the basic reason.

A rock band has this basic line up: Drum kit, electric guitar, electric bass, vocal. There may be piano, synths, other vocals, but that’s been the foundation for long on 70 years. I haven’t been around THAT long, so why would I be slave to that? For the same reasons I make music that’s very different from that, and there are two big ones:

1 – Guitar driven rock-n-roll has been the most important musical thing in the world for longer than I’ve been alive. Of course I want to emulate that, it’s what I think matters.

2 – Guitar driven rock-n-roll is hard to record. Until maybe 10 or 15 years ago, you really had to BE somebody to have the money and access to record that music. Of course I love it when I can sound like that, it makes me feel successful.

Ironically, these are also reasons that straight forward guitar driven rock seems to be getting less and less important. New musical trends are often initiated by people who lack the resources to do things the old way. Hip-hop is a great example. Grand Master Flash used two old turntables because that’s what he had. EDM is today’s version of hip-hop. Samples, synths and “fake” drums are easy and cheap to create, and an intrepid kid with a crappy laptop can make music that way. She may not even have the resources to learn how to play a guitar, let alone the scratch to get a big ol Marshall stack to play with, but she’s got a laptop.

And of course, the young and creative tend to want to push past what they’ve heard before.

So, now the pop landscape is dominated by sounds other than your basic 4 piece rock band band.

But the guitar isn’t dead by any means. I didn’t say sales had gone down from 1.5 million to 0 – a million is still a lot! But at the cutting edge, it’s being used differently. So I’ll spend the rest of this piece talking about how, and present a few ideas for using it in fresh ways in your productions.

Acoustic

While I have noticed a drop off of new and hot electric guitar driven rock, I have noticed a significant pick up in the number of acoustic driven acts and songs. Ed Sheeran uses nothing but an acoustic guitar and a looper on stage. Jason Mraz and Jack Johnson are older examples, but they’re still relevant, and they’re acoustic guitar people. Satellite radio has an entire channel dedicated to “coffee shop” versions of hit songs. And in my productions, my favorite killer guitarist has recently given me a few latin influenced nylon string acoustic tracks that absolutely no one said sounded dated (even though THAT tradition is way older than rock and roll).

So idea one is pretty simple: go acoustic. And if you can get creative with technology like looping, effects and genre mixing, you might discover a completely new sound. Tommy Emanuel is incredibly creative with a series of effects pedals and wildly different playing techniques, all using an acoustic guitar. For another older example, look to Ani Difranco’s array of oddly tuned acoustics.

Even a plain acoustic guitar somehow remains a more timeless sound, probably because it’s another example of something that a creative person with no money and no band can use to show up anywhere and move people.

Texture

Matt Bellamy (front man for Muse) was quoted this year by the BBC as saying “The guitar has become a textural instrument rather than a lead instrument, and I think that’s probably a good thing.” That’s an astute statement, and if you listen through a bunch of hit music today, even hip-hop, you’ll be able to pick out guitars that sometimes don’t even sound like guitars. Big, reverby swells and pad like sounds, boops, beeps, noise tracks, even crazy effects and odd techniques that sound like synths are all possibilities. After all, the guitar is actually a super versatile instrument. You can bend the strings, you can break all kinds of fretting rules, and you can add effects like crazy. And the cool thing is, a great guitarist can switch from texturing to rhythm to traditional lead relatively easily.

Check out “Last Danger of Frost” by Steve Kimock for some crazy textural yet melodic guitar work, or listen to U2’s “Beautiful Day” for textural work that also serves to create a groove.

Throw Back Farther

One of the problems those of us of a certain age have is that we throw back – to our youth. That’s the surest way to sound and feel old. But throw back art is almost always in vogue, when it’s ACTUALLY old. Instead of throwing back to your youth, throwback farther. Throw back to your parents or grandparent’s youth. Think at least 40 years back. Have you noticed that 70’s movies are getting cool now? 80’s rock hasn’t made it back just yet, but it’s starting to poke it’s head in the room.

So when it comes to guitar, try thinking back to the 50’s. Portugal The Man.’s “Feel It Still” uses a really 50’s feeling spring reverb’d bass/guitar combo to give the track a retro feel, but the use of newer technology and drum technique in combination with that, as well as a very un-fifties lyric set and modern female vocal makes it feel weird, fresh and cool. Bruno Mars’ entire act is a purposeful throw back to old school funk R&B and it works because there are slight differences in the production style and culture that connect it to now. The guitars in these productions are clean and funky. They generally aren’t distorted or bluesy sounding. Take off the distortion, throw in a wah pedal, and see what happens.

And of course, if you or your guitar player friend are steeped in older traditions like classical guitar or flamenco, you can come up with brilliant new combinations that ground themselves in the past yet pull you forward into the future.

Jump Forward

Here’s another idea. Use the guitar as a tool to create EDM-like grooves or technological wonders that combine recording technology with the instrument. Recently a radio promoter and artist manager told me that a song sounded great except for the guitar, which he said would be an easy fix, just use the guitar in a new way. He pointed me at an act called Nvdes, which is ostensibly guitar driven, but on many tracks you wouldn’t necessarily know it. Their use of the guitar doesn’t always sound like a guitar, but it’s not necessarily textural or secondary. Often a guitar creates their groove, but it’s just – well, different.

Post Malone’s “Better Now” starts with a barely identifiable guitar which forms the foundation of the groove, similar to The Edge’s work on “Beautiful Day”. At least – I THINK that’s a guitar!

Or…Metal It Up

When I talked about guitar driven rock’n’roll before, I neglected something important. Metal. Metal is still metal. It’ll always be metal, and metal is for guitarists. But even then, the genre has been pushed, morphed and split. Metal guitars combined with rappers ala Rage Against The Machine, Limp Biskit or Linkin Park, ethereal female vocals like Evanescence, or even with traditional Scandinavian folk are all examples of odd metal pairings that push that genre. Try Cellar Darling for a curious mix of these things like textural work, ethereal female vocals and traditional driving metal guitars. Or if you want a true blending of genres, try The Sidh (one could even argue against calling them metal). The point is, if you want you can just go ahead and double down on guitar and metal things up, and you can still be inventive!

Mix Up The Mix

It’s not just about playing style. You can experiment with new mix techniques too. Right now, minimal and spacious is trumping big wall of sound kind of material, so instead of a double tracked stereo guitar, you might try a mono track, panned just a little left or right. Instead of a huge full spectrum distorted guitar, try just a little fuzz, eq’d tightly into a smaller frequency footprint, to leave room for other instruments to play a bigger role in the overall picture. Or go bigger than ever, or super reverby, and neglect the other elements of a traditional band, to create something that’s truly and only guitar driven. The idea here is if you haven’t heard it, try it.

Other Elements

Finally, as you try to freshen up your guitar sound or tweak a dated sounding track, you might consider that the culprit may not be your guitar at all. The guitar may be the most important element of a traditional rock band, but it’s not the only element. What would your song sound like with a blues-rock guitar track, but a drum machine style rhythm track? How about no drums, or a cello instead of a bass guitar? The possibilities are endless.

Speaking of drums, this conversation is larger than the guitar. Drums have also seen a similar shift in their usage and role in modern music, and next month, we’re going to tackle that subject as well. We’ll talk about how a drum kit can sound dated, and what to do with that, as well as alternatives to the traditional trap drummer that could freshen up not only your tracks, but your stage presence as well. Don’t worry drummers, we won’t leave you behind!

Until then, happy shredding, all you six string samurai!

Aaron J. Trumm can play e-minor and sometimes a version of a minor on a guitar. Check him out at aarontrumm.com and talk to him on social media @AaronJTrumm.

Why the hell do I freelance?

June 14, 2019 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, freelancing, writing

Apple IIe Keyboard

Freelancing. It’s such a strange word. It sounds like we lance things for free. The truth is, I’ve never lanced a thing, and I don’t work for free. Nevertheless, “freelancing” is what I do. What that means is anybody’s guess, because the word doesn’t describe the work. I could be building websites for people using some content management system like WordPress. I could be recording music in a church. I could be writing articles for a fancy-pants magazine.

These are all things I’ve done, but I guess most freelancers focus on one type of task. Doing the same thing every day has rarely worked for me, though. I like to use all my talents. I love to learn (which is why I hated high school), I love to grow, and I love my freedom. I love being able to spend two weeks going to my office from 9 to 5 like a normal person, and I love being able to suddenly change it up and do my work from a coffee shop where I can watch people do whatever they do on their various laptops. Perhaps they’re “freelancing” too. I suppose I love the “free” in freelancing most of all.

There are drawbacks. Sometimes I don’t have enough to do to pay the bills. Sometimes I wonder what “stability” might look like. Sometimes I miss my friends in the daytime, who mostly go to offices working for the government or a big company. But in the end, a person needs to be who they are. I am a traveler, a roamer and a dreamer. I write because I have things to say. I sing because some things can’t be said. I create because I must, and that means I have no time for a board room or a water cooler conversation. I discuss my binge watching on my own time, in my own way, and not when there are better, more powerful things to do.

I hope this little note finds you well, dear reader, and I hope you’re being you to the best of your ability. If you want to freelance too, I encourage you! It’ll take some courage, some ingenuity, and a sense of discipline that most people don’t have, but it could be worth it! You could actually get free!

[wpdevart_facebook_comment curent_url=”http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/comments/” title_text=”Comments” order_type=”social” title_text_color=”#000000″ title_text_font_size=”22″ title_text_font_famely=”monospace” title_text_position=”left” width=”100%” bg_color=”#d4d4d4″ animation_effect=”random” count_of_comments=”2″ ]

Flow Vs. Focus – or – directed flow vs. blocking

October 6, 2016 by Aaron

6 figure songwriting, aaron j. trumm, cathy heller, creativity, flow, licensing, music, music business, music for film, nquit music

I’ve been taking an online course about writing music for licensing – Cathy Heller’s “Six Figure Songwriting”. My intention is to find a rhythm writing and producing songs (my songs) that really hit the mark and are what music directors and licensing agents need. Honestly the class (which consists of a easily managed set of videos and then a year of interacting with a private Facebook group and doing Q&As and Webinars with the class leader and her business partner) has been amazing thus far, and completely confronting and difficult, as I work and struggle to find the way to make art that hits the points that music directors need hit, and still stay authentic to not only myself, but my ACT – and/or BRAND. I got into a conversation in the Facebook group, and just a few minutes ago, wrote at length in response to a comment, and I decided I wanted to share what I said on here.

Out of respect for my classmate’s privacy I won’t post their comments first, but they were insightful, and as I tried to communicate my thoughts, one guy was reading what I said as a clamping down on the creative flow, and/or a difficult balancing act – trying to compartmentalize the creative flow or have separate creative outputs, and such. Indeed, I could see where what I said sounded that way, and it struck me how easy it is to clamp down your creative output when you’re trying to learn to DIRECT it – even when you’re just TALKING about it. He apologized about the length of his quite insightful commentary, and that’s where we come in here – my commentary went like this (please note, this is NOT an argument – I genuinely learned from my classmates’ comments, and it led me to this stuff:

My Comments

No worries about length! Look at my long diatribes! I really appreciate the actual discussion here, because we can talk about technique til the cows come home, but eventually this is ART, which means we gotta go deep, because our egos are involved, so growing as artists is also about growing as people. So I really appreciate people engaging in a real conversation with me. 🙂

It’s funny because you read what I was saying as putting a block on the creative flow and I meant the exact OPPOSITE. You said it seemed like I was putting rules on, and actually I was but what I was trying to get at is – there doesn’t necessarily need to be that much rigidity in it. I can see where my long diatribe read that way though, ’cause I said “can’t” like three times – so my intent was turning over on itself as I tried to work out the logic!

The game is sort of both I guess, and I actually don’t mean trying to have a separate artistic output – I mean having a singular artistic flow – “act” if you will, wherein you’re hitting these points on some songs and not cutting yourself off from songs that maybe don’t hit all the points.

I think the best way to describe what I mean is with examples. Let’s say tomorrow I wake up and BAM this great love song springs to mind. It fits my singing style and I even already have tracks that would work beautifully. Maybe it’s upbeat and quirky, but this song is a LOVE song, it’s a pop song – it’s for fans and radio and it’s so specific that I wouldn’t even pitch it to a licensing agent. Do I stop that flow because it won’t be 100% licensable? No way man! Do I try to twist it into something less specific? Maybe…but maybe not. Maybe I let it be a love song and move on to a new song for licensing.

On the flip side, let’s say I have a great idea for a really licensable track – I’ve got some quirky rhythms in mind, I’ve got a screamin guitar loop, and these cool ass lyrics about – uhm – getting your color back *grin*. I sit down to map out production and I think “Ok it would work really nice to do this cutsey – ukelele, and a maybe female vocalist….” wait. at that point I realize I could also make this track equally cool and licensable using my voice, maybe (in my case) a piano – similar rhythms, but closer to my “act”. I could go either way, but it probably makes more sense to keep it within my “act”‘s wheelhouse. That way when I go to pitch this, there’s a whole bunch of history and other songs of that act. I probably have 5 others like it in the pitch, it’s a lot better pitch (pitch as in sales, not notes). Whereas if I just say “hey let me hire this woman off the street because it’d be cool to have a female lead” – what do I have there? I have ONE track in that vein. That’s not a great pitch – and from a more traditional music marketing standpoint, I can tell you from experience, that that lone track with no active act behind it is completely un-monetizable. In fact – even a whole entire record with no active act isn’t monetizable in that realm. Boy have I made that mistake more than once! lol

So the point that I was getting to is really that I was making a mistake in thinking that if I had a romantic love song in me, or maybe a political message, or whatever – that I had to somehow force that part of me into a “licensable” track. That’s not flow at all. Instead, I realized, let yourself do your stuff. Then, learn how to write for the licensing world, knowing what’s needed. It’s just basically letting yourself have a bigger range. The brainstorming process, for example, is a way to DIRECT that creative energy, which, ultimately IS about control – but it’s directed flow rather than boxing in.

Someone might think “I write dark brooding songs” and think they have no way to be licensable but there’s nothing that says that same artist can’t have a happy song. Or a song about pie. And each song holds its own place and has its own purpose. A given song doesn’t have to do everything, and having RANGE like that, while still maintaining a kind of focus of identity is really the hallmark of a professional.

An example – as a slam poet (I was a professional), I had a given style, and it wasn’t comedy, but there was still room for comedic work in my repertoire, and there were a range of different poems in my rep that served different functional purposes (love poem, political poem, spiritual poem, etc). In slam, EVERYTHING is written for the audience, so although there was no lack of ME in there, the entire creative flow was always directed. That gave me enough range to adjust during competition, or to create vibrant, varietous live sets, but none of it was completely off track from my basic core identity. It could all be packaged into my act.

I think in a purely creative sense, authenticity doesn’t have to be about fitting ANYTHING about what you’ve done in the past or might do in the future, or your act or ANYTHING. From that point of view, flow is just letting ANYTHING you think of come forth, and not blocking it (and of course, you cannot improv without that much freedom of flow).

But this is music BUSINESS, and from my point of view, that’s gonna change how the flow works, and that’s ok. It comes back to what [classmate name censored] said, which is you’re not writing for yourself as much as for the client. But I’m adding to that a wider view of your BRAND, and that as you look forward not only to how your pitch will look, but to the future of your brand, you starting looking how you can find the sweet spot where you’re writing for POTENTIAL clients and also for your BRAND, neither one of which is “you”, so it’s at this point, never about your own satisfaction, but then again, it will be, because we’re artists, and flow is always satisfying, and moving other people is always satisfying.

Ok – so – yeah. That may be my longest Facebook post ever too! 🙂 Thanks for reading, if you did! lol

And Some Other Thoughts

And that’s what I had to say there. Writing for a purpose is antithetical to the rebel heart of an artist, but it is directed flow that makes most great art, and I really have no problem with writing for the needs of clients or for what may cause money to made, because I can’t cause someone to spend money on my art without touching and moving them, and THAT’S ultimately the goal. And no, I really have never valued the process for the gratification it gives me. The process is sometimes really gratifying and fun, and sometimes an incredible ugly frustrating grind. My gratification comes when the art is received and makes some impact in another person’s world.

Oh and hey – put a comment, tell me what you think! 🙂 You can contact me too if you want.

Getting Back

August 9, 2016 by Aaron

aaron j. trumm, art, being moved, connection, house concerts, inspiration, intimacy, music, nquit music, shannon curtis, songwriting

So I’ve been trying to “get back” to something quite a few years now – and I’ve been trying to “Get back” to this thing in a different way, so that I’m not poor all the time, not neglecting my health, and not running around in lonely worlds trying to connect. Really it’s not going back – it’s going forward toward something I’d touched before, but is also out there in front of me.

The “thing” I’ve been trying to get back to is really connection, and it’s a thing that I did experience a whole bunch when I was a serious slam poet. It’s why we DO this thing, where we perform or make music or art – we’re really trying to dock our hearts into other hearts and become one again and there’s really zero other things more compelling on Earth.

Check this TedX talk by Shannon Curtis, who really spoke to this:

She mostly tours around doing house concerts – shows in people’s houses, in intimate settings. I did a few of those back in the day, and I had plenty of moments in those and other intimate venues like she describes. Her talking about it, and the music video she describes, where she had fans write their struggles on a paper and film them, made me cry like crazy. I started to really remember again why I was doing what I was doing when I was touring a lot as a poet.

I’ve been very focused for 3 years – ever since my epic lung transplant saga – on business, learning, growing, and making a viable and sustainable business. I’ve been so focused that I damn near forgot WHY I wanted to build that business in the first place. It’s because I couldn’t sustain that job of moving, inspiring and connecting with people if I didn’t have a proper business in place. I just kept having to stop and get some day job I didn’t want and which never really made a dent financially, and eventually it kind of fell apart, and culminated in the destruction of my health.

I LEFT the life she describes on purpose, but I always intended to rebuild that job of connecting, and go back to work. It’s a whole new world now, and I’m new, and the job is new. I don’t wish I was on the road all the time. But doing work that makes that thing happen, where people are moved, and you connect, that’s my role in life, and I think maybe it’s everyone’s role.

It really doesn’t even have to be “art” (whatever that means). If you’re a social worker or a teacher, or a lawyer working to advocate for kids, even if you make something like video games or popcorn or whatever it is, you’re doing that for other people, and your main work is connecting.

So – if you ever wondered about me, or any of my colleagues, why we do what we do, Shannon hits the nail on the head pretty good.

Thanks Shannon!

— A

ps:
oh jeeze almost forgot my requisite link to free music – here! 🙂 www.aarontrumm.com/free-download

Your Music Isn’t Special

July 28, 2016 by Aaron

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!

A Pinhole Shot From A .38 That Broke The Aching Sun

November 4, 2015 by Aaron

bart train, pinhole shot, subway, suzy, third option, third rail

I have a friend, Suzy, who I’ve known since 2004. I’ve never met Suzy in person. We met on Yahoo Chat. This was before Facebook if you can believe it! Now Suzy and I text and when one of us is drunk, we might call. I’ve seen Suzy go through relationships, deaths, changes. I’ve talked to her mom. I’ve seen pictures of her dogs. She’s helped me through breakups and heartaches. I’ve pissed her off, I’ve made her laugh. This is a good friend.

I met Suzy because for a while in 2004, after I’d been dumped by my girlfriend, I was spending a lot of time locked away in my apartment drinking Bud Ice (because it was the cheapest beer I could find), doing music composition exercises for classes at the University of Houston, listening to Jack Johnson and Manu Chao longingly, and chatting with people online. There were beer bottles and loose leaf sheet music everywhere, my studio gear, such as it was, was strewn about in piles, and I was basically the living embodiment of the blues. There’s something to be said for that, but I wouldn’t do it again!

Anyway, the way I met Suzy is, I saw her name on Yahoo and said “are you real?”, because at that time, these chat rooms were becoming less and less human and more and more spam bot. She always mentions how I said that. Apparently it was a really weird thing to say! I kept talking to Suzy off and on, even after I left Houston. I left Houston to go to The Bay Area, where I was accepted into the Master’s program at Stanford’s famed “CCRMA” (Center For Computer Research in Music and Acoustics), but I was still really sad and lonely from the breakup.

I used to ride around on the BART train a lot (it’s really the best way to get around out there). I did some poetry slam, I did some going around playing the piano at open mics, but generally I was just in school or riding around. I could have gone to hang with my friends who were hanging around with Green Day all the time, but instead I kind of rode around on the train.

As I was finishing Stanford and going back to our insane loft in Oakland, I decided to get the hell out of dodge. I’d been invited to play piano with Buddy Wakefield, who if you don’t know was an individual national poetry slam champion who had just signed with Strange Famous Records, which is the label owned by former Epitaph rapper Sage Francis. I’d done the piano for Buddy’s poem “Convenience Stores”, which turned out to be super popular. So I went down to Austin for the National Poetry Slam, where Buddy was opening for Sage at Emo’s. I remember standing in the audience while another opener did their thing and seeing this insanely pretty girl who I couldn’t take my eyes off of. She seemed to feel the same way because without a word she came up and put her arm around me. I really enjoyed the next part – she turned away for a bit, and it being time to do so, I disappeared and the next time she saw me I was on stage! 🙂 That won me points, clearly, but then she was ALL about getting me to get her into Sage’s green room, and I’m sorry, but I’m a professional. No dice! Besides, I was tired! Time for bed, yo! Heh.

ANYWHO, after I played Buddy’s piece, Sage invited me to come out and play with one of his tunes. I asked the guitar player the key, and he didn’t know, he just yelled a couple chords in my ear. So I made some stuff up on the fly and was digging on the 2000 candles being held up. It was phat.

After that, I did some other stuff and I was back home in Oakland. I forget how this time line goes, but I remember being at the same triangle corner desk when I sent Suzy a set of lyrics for a new possible song as when I got a call from Buddy saying would you like to do some dates with Ani Difranco. (YES!!). I sent these lyrics, to this thing called Third Rail, which was about all the feelings and thoughts that had been swirling around while I rode around on the lonely BART trains at night. I tried for it to be a slam poem, but it came out too rhymey.

It starts with “I see a flash from the third rail, and I wonder where it’s from, it’s like a pinhole shot from a .38 that broke the aching sun”.

Well I sent it to Suzy to see what she thought, and she wrote back right away and said she’d been crying. She liked it. It moved her to tears. That kind of thing doesn’t happen every time, but when it does, MAN, that’s cool stuff. So I made it into this song, which is kind of odd because it has no choruses. It has pianos and guitars by my friend Eric and this ethereal feel (I think). And I learned to play it (VERY SIMPLY) on the piano, and did it around Oakland sometimes. The point, I guess, is that it was kind of an exciting time. Bigger shows, people being moved, etc. I did five dates with Buddy and Ani Difranco where all I had to do was play 4 minutes and take in the sights. I even got paid twice as much to handle merch sales at Buddy’s table! HA! The funnest show was at The Mountain Winery, where my fingers were slightly slow from it being a chilly outdoor venue, I’d forgotten my sustain pedal but Todd (Ani’s bassist) couldn’t tell, and I didn’t have to sell merch because the venue handled it, so I got to watch Ani’s whole show from the side of the stage. YEAH! Or was it L.A.? That was cool because Buddy and I went swimming at Todd’s apartment’s pool, got some good eats, and everybody sang happy birthday to Ani before the show and ate cake. She was 7 months pregnant and we got to meet her husband and everything. It was fun times.

Anyway, the song Third Rail is on an album (Bleed) and such, but I thought I’d give it to you for free here. Because why the hell not? This here is the “dirty single” version, which technically is unreleased although it’s not really different than the album version (it just has a crazy intro cut out but it still has swear words 🙂 ).

So here – download the Third Rail dirty single here (it’s not that dirty).

I think things have gotten a lot less lonely and more inspiring since then, so if you want to hear how that progression has gone, you can check out my new thing Livin Is Bling here. I’d be delighted to hear what you think!

Cheers,

Aaron

I’m NOT About Music

November 4, 2015 by Aaron

connection, hit music, love, music, not about music, top 40

“Well then what ARE you about, Aaron?” you ask. I’ll tell you at the end of this little story…

I was talking with (several) somebody(s) recently about Top 40 hits and whether you could call them “better” than other songs. It keeps coming up because lately I’ve been talking a lot about how cool it would be to have a Top 10 hit song. I used to hide that desire (even from myself) thinking a variety of thoughts like “it’s wrong to be ambitious” or “that’s just sell out crap” or various other things about how super high brow intelligent music or poetry was a higher calling than trying to be some pop star.

Recently, though, I’ve thought about it differently. To be honest, I’ve thought about it differently for about 2 years, since I had my famous double lung transplant. Surely I’ve told you about that?

Oh… well if you don’t know me…I had a double lung transplant. The end. 😉 Heh. Ok ok. On July 4, 2013 both of my lungs were replaced in what is now a pretty common but still utterly miraculous surgery. At that point I’d already been doing what I do for..what?…18 years or so? But obviously things in the music and performance world had gone dormant for me. I’d been in and out of the hospital for about 6 months, after having never been in the hospital (which is an outlier accomplishment when you have Cystic Fibrosis – btw this could be the last time I mention that diagnosis – I don’t particularly want to be identified with it). I got pneumonia in November 2012 and kept being out of breath – constantly – for months. In February 2013 I finally gave in and let my family take me to the emergency room, where I sat for 10 days in ICU. After that I’d get out for a couple weeks, flare up, go back in. I was suddenly on oxygen 24-7 and it took me 45 grueling minutes to walk half a mile around my neighborhood park. Conversations were had in hallways where it was admitted that Aaron is dying. Let me tell you, for a four sport high school athlete and a (low level terrible 😉 ) college ice hockey player, that was a DISTURBING existence.

Clearly I needed a transplant, but I’d been such a non-compliant, defiant sumbitch my entire life, it took a LOT of work to get the doctors to refer me for transplant. I had to walk the walk, talk the talk, do the work, document the work. I had to let people coach me, groom me, manage my image so that I would be a good candidate. It was like being a politician or – dare I say it? – a rock star. I was totally “handled”.

And I’ll tell you a secret: I loved it. Besides not being able to breathe and being on death’s edge 24-7, I loved having a team around me, and when I realized I was actually the LEADER of this team, and that most of what I was doing, with the fundraising and the talking and the grueling pseudo workouts and the thank you notes, was inspiring people, I really got inspired myself. My story was MOVING people. It was like I’d found my calling. I became a transplant athlete and won a bronze metal in the 100 meters 1 year after transplant (which is kind of ahead of the curve if I do say so myself)…

But wait – that was already my calling. I’ve been a musician arguably all my life, but definitely since I was 14, and in the world of trying to be professional since I was 19. I was also a slam poet, which I did as my full time gig (along with some acting) for about 4 years.

In fact, I was the 10th ranked slam poet in the WORLD. I was actually world class at it! 🙂 And it was the same calling. Moving people. Not even just inspiring, but MOVING people. There is absolutely nothing like being in a dingy old warehouse in the dead of summer, Houston, TX, no air conditioning, industrial sized fan blowing everybody’s hair back, a gritty old PA blasting over the fan noise, and just f**** stepping out of your soul’s own way, opening up your arms, and basically stepping outside of your body to watch as a room packed to the gils with folks simply ERUPT, screaming and cheering and clapping so loud you can’t hear that fan, and all collapsing in for a hug or a handshake or a victory lift – except maybe a heartfelt “thank you” from that one dude or girl in the back of the room after the noise has died down. Or being told “I said your poem to my partner and it fixed our relationship”, or simply having someone walk up to you with tears in their eyes after a show.

Coming back to Top 40 songs – there are a lot of definitions of what “good” is, and it really depends on the context. And Top 40 songs can almost never be defined as “good” by a LOT of standards. I looked at my A-list poetry slam pieces and thought about it, and when I was talking to those aforementioned somebodies, something smacked me in the face. The two poems that had made me the 10th ranked slam poet in the universe (see what I did there? 😉 ), were, from my point of view, MY WORST SLAM POEMS. My most effective slam piece, Blink, the one with which I could decimate any competitive field in the country on any day, was amateurish. Repetition, sparce imagery, and pedantic little devices. It really is nowhere near the level of later pieces I’d written once I’d learned how.

But it was HONEST. And it was raw, and poignant, and vulnerable – and it was about love. Specifically about being afraid to tell somebody how I felt. It doesn’t posture or pose – in fact, I say repeatedly “I’m so afraid of you…”. It MOVED people.

Finally I realized, that whatever you can say about a Top 40 song, the thing that it succeeds at is MOVING people. That’s what it’s good at, and if your definition of “good” is “does it move people?”, then the Top 40 is a great place to look for how to do that.

Now suddenly I have no qualms about dreaming of a number one hit. I imagine the people that would be moved by that and the interactions I would have and I think “holy crap”. It could be done a lot of ways – but I’m really into making tracks and performing, so I’m gonna keep doing that, for my sake, but really that’s just a means to an end.

So – the deal is – I’m not really ABOUT music (or poetry, or being a transplant patient). I’m about YOU!

You – being – people. The people reading this. I’m about moving you. Who knows if I’ll ever reign myself in enough to make a Top 40 hit, but hopefully I can start by moving you.

You be the judge though. If you want to listen to my latest try, “Livin Is Bling”, just click here. And email me up and let me know what moved you, if you hear anything you could imagine on the radio, or whatever else you feel like sharing really. I’d love to hear about it!

— Aaron

Keeping it going…

June 22, 2015 by Aaron

aaron trumm, development, free music, nquit music, programming, toptal, toptal test

I’ve very rarely held down a 9-5 job. When I was a touring performer, it was simply impossible. But sometimes being on the road or at home in the studio doesn’t lead to enough money to sustain or grow. Sometimes it does, but it can be stressful to have to monetize every creative impulse.

So, for most of the 20 years I’ve been running NQuit Music, I’ve also been a freelancer. It makes perfect sense to sell the skillset I’ve been building working to build the dream of NQuit. It also makes sense that the most lucrative of those skills is software and web development. NQuit was one of the first labels to have an internet presence, starting when it was hosted at UNM as unm.edu/~murphurd. Over the years I’ve used NQuit as a platform for building a formidable development skillset, not only by doing projects for NQuit, but also by using that same business structure to hire myself out. Of course I’ve done plenty of audio and such, but the great thing about web dev is as long as I’ve got my laptop (now I actually use a PC-Powerful tablet), I can be on the road (or at a park or the zoo) and still work. It’s good to have this flexibility!

I used to rely on word of mouth and Craigslist searches, but those methods tend to dry up at times, and Craigslist has become overrun with scams and bad clients (clients who won’t pay, who don’t understand the value of the work, or who make helping them impossible). I started to grow very tired of small time, disorganized clientele a few years ago, so recently I thought I’d check out some freelancing sites like upwork.com, elance.com and freelance.com (among others). There’s still some small clients, but so far it seems promising.

Now I discovered an exclusive platform called Toptal, which has a thing called the Toptal PHP Freelancers Group and this seems extra promising. I’ve already noticed through upwork that this new environment causes me to try to deepen my knowledge and organize my pitch and portfolio better, so that’s a good thing, and it’s exciting to think I could find a platform that will really lead me to solid clients, and maybe even to some cool projects.

So, I’ll be getting all competitive about getting in with Toptal, and hopefully income can stabilize. Wish me luck!

**EDIT** Holy crap that was lame and hard but – since then I’ve learned some things. And I just want to say, grab some free music from me, ’cause that’s what I’m really doing dude: HERE aarontrumm.com