Some of you may already be familiar with his blog, mattrobertsmusic.com, where he blogs about his life as a trumpet player, including his annual European invasion along with the rest of the Quarter Notes, his brass quartet. Each Christmas the Quarter Notes busk their way around Europe and video the results. And those results are, especially if you are a musician, even more so if you are a brass player, very entertaining. The videos are edited and generally massaged into a releasable format at the end of the subsequent year. Matt has recently started to release the videos from Christmas 2008 and the first episode, featured below, already sees the quartet getting their collars felt by an overzealous community support officer.

It is my intention to slingshot Matt’s blog, which I designed but is currently in need of an overhaul, into orbit in the next few weeks, putting him in a very strong traffic position to further propel his career. The blog makeover, including a Genesis Rocket powered social media makeover, will be documented here at Brass Revolver and also at Upstart Blogger, each blog examining different aspects of the makeover process.

Until then, sit back, grab a drink and enjoy the video, courtesy of Matt. If you like it, tune in next week for episode 2.

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Yesterday, however, things turned a little ugly.

I was booked to play a big band session, taking the solo chair. Whenever I get called for this kind of gig I’m always a little apprehensive. Trumpet players have some of the biggest egos in the musical world and, since everyone wants the solo chair since it gives them the biggest chance to shine, some of those egos can get out of hand.

Add to that the fact that my trumpet was made for me by David Monette, a fact that is always guaranteed to rattle a few cages, and those egos, especially the ones of the trumpet players who can’t blow there way out of a paper bag, really start to rear their ugly heads.

Yesterday’s session started innocently enough but after just 1 hour the trumpet player sitting to my right, let’s call him Jon, since that’s his name, asked me the following question.

Aren’t you that blogging guy who made Lily Allen run away from Twitter?

I told him that I was that blogging guy and that I could, just maybe, be partly credited with making Lily Allen run away from Twitter, although it was more likely that Lily ran away from Twitter because she got caught with her metaphorical pants down.

And then, for no apparent reason, he opened his mouth and let the following pearls of wisdom pour out.

You suck man, you suck! Where the hell do you get off telling everyone to download music for free? People like you are killing this industry from the inside. Lily Allen wanted to protect musicians and you just took shots at her and made her look dumb. How would you like it if people stole your music?

Oh, I forget, you make money all day long by giving away your music using that stupid micropatronage thing you keep pushing like it’s the way we can all start to make a living from music.

Seriously man, you suck. You sit there with your 5 figure 24 carat gold plated trumpet, driving around in your flash car, telling other musicians what to do. You suck.

He went on for a little while. I tried to ignore him but it was tricky since he just wouldn’t shut up. Eventually I decided to reply to him and tried, unsuccessfully, to explain to him how real independent musicians can make good money by distributing their music for free, how listening to music isn’t the same as stealing it, and how, if he just calmed down for 5 minutes and thought it through he would see that he was wrong, very, very wrong.

Needless to say, he didn’t agree.

I persuaded him to shut up for the sake of the recording and, amazingly, he agreed. He was clearly upset, however, and continued to mutter under his breath and generally act like an amateur.

Jon will never get it. Jon will always fail.

For the record, and for all the trumpet players who read this blog waiting for this next piece of information, Jon plays a Taylor Chicago with numerous superfluous sleeves, caps and other weight adding accessories with a Vincent Bach mouthpiece.

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Just follow these steps to replicate my success.

Step 1. Start a blog and write about your project.

Step 2. Open a Twitter account and network with like minded individuals.

Step 3. Accelerate your Twitter account with Genesis Rocket to grow your followers and drive traffic back to your blog.

Step 4. Ask for micropatronage donations on your site using PayPal and reward anyone who donates with a free copy of your finished product upon release.

That’s all there is to it. The established order of the music industry would love you to think that it wasn’t that easy, but it is.

Try it. It worked for me and it will work for you.

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Fans of the original series will be very happy to see that the Ice Warriors haven’t been forgotten and, if you like your Doctor Who a little on the scary side then this will definitely leave you with a smile on your face. The robot, Gadget, is definitely thrown in for the kids.

Flashbacks, flashforwards, even classic series references make this an episode to watch closely, paying attention to every detail. Especially the opening line.

However, it is a little depressing in places. Ok, so we know that we are going to get a regeneration in a few weeks time and that 10 will become 11 in a blaze of CGI glory, but this really does set the audience up for a very tragic ending this arc, with the potential cruelty and fragility of some major characters really highlighted.

The Waters of Mars is a classic that will please Doctor Who fans old and new and a fitting start to the final stretch.

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Spinning the metaphorical plates that make up every individual piece of my professional life had left little time for personal blogging. In fact it had left little time for anything outside of my professional circle.

And that had to stop.

I had always planned to spend 2009 building an empire and then, for 2010 and onwards, the plan was to reap what I had sowed and spend more time with my family, more time blogging rather than building and designing, and more time playing.

Thankfully, things have gone to plan.

It’s an understatement to say that I have been busy

The installation of this new red theme, Genesis Red, marks my return to personal blogging.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

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I’ve been a Mac user since 1989.

If you’re a Mac user, especially one who can remember what it was like to be a Mac user before the internet, back in the heady days of Mac user groups, this film will make you smile.

The narrative takes the form of a series of interviews with notable members of the mac community and interesting characters with stories to tell. Guy Kawasaki and Violet Blue are particularly entertaining, the latter providing the following wonderful soundbite.

I have never knowingly slept with a Windows user.

Only one thing ruins the whole experience. The Macheads website is ugly, unusable and generally something that would make any self respecting Mac user cover their eyes. What should have been a clean minimalist blog is a cluttered mess.

However, if you can fight you way past the retina damaging exterior and purchase a copy of the DVD you won’t be disappointed.

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A little while ago I recorded a couple of solo tracks for some friends at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts.. The brief was simple. They wanted something outrageous. And that’s what they got. The photograph, along with a handful of others that I will upload in due course, was taken on my Canon 350D and Cannon ef100mm prime from the other side of the studio glass with no flash. The room was pretty  dark so the shutter had to be open for a reasonable amount of time allowing a lot of movement to be captured.

The heavy isolation headphones were very reminiscent of a 1970’s cyberman, hence my choice of title.

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Interesting stuff, don’t you think? But there is a problem. Remember the guy in the video, the one in the Mutant Maniac shirt? He couldn’t play the drums and was, presumably, pretty clueless about any of the musical or technical aspects of drumming.

Whilst the samples in the Reason Drum Kits 2.0 Refill are very professionally recorded, using Reason’s ingenious Hypersampling technology, they are still just samples. They only provide sound, they don’t, can’t and never will be able to provide creativity and musicality.

From a remixing perspective Refills like this are wonderful. Projects like Panthalassa, a Miles Davis remix experiment, thrive and depend on this sort of software. But, as in the aforementioned example, the creativity of real, flesh and blood, musicians must have created the original source material if the result is to retain any musical and creative integrity.

Can this software replace a live drummer. No. Can it augment a studio and become the backbone of a high quality remix project. Yes.

Am I going to purchase Reason Drum Kits 2.0? Maybe.

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Mixing and mastering is a black art. I’ve recorded in enough studios to know that it is almost always best to let the musicians worry about the music and the engineers worry about the mixing and mastering.

But that doesn’t fit in with my approach for 2009. Having taken full control of the promotional side of the business, with various blogs and marketing initiatives already in full and very successful swing, it is important for me to have as much control over the recording process as possible.

The market is awash with music production software but two stand out as the natural choices for someone in my position, a jazz trumpeter in need of as much control as possible. Logic 8 and Reason 4.

Software is cheap. Recent movements in the currency markets, restoring the US Dollar to more sensible position against UK Sterling after 4 years of mindless stupidity on the part of both Governments, has made purchasing software easy. Simply use US Dollars, the currency of my online income, to buy the software from UK distributors.

The Doctor, the name I give to my iMac, now has a few more icons sitting in the dock. Logic 8, with all it’s individual components such as Soundtrack Pro, WaveBurner and MainStage, and Reason 4, complete with a handful of Refill demos which look very interesting.

Next stop, monitors and a firewire interface. And maybe a new microphone. Buying gear is addictive.

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I’m a big fan of writing things down. My organizational skills are legendary, but for all the wrong reasons. Maybe it comes from growing up as a child in a decade where pen and paper really did rule the roost. I don’t know, all I do know is that I function a lot better when I have access to a simple, old fashioned, paper notebook.

For many years I’ve been a Moleskine devotee. I’ve paid a premium for having what can only be described as the most famous luxury notebook of all time. Trouble is, Moleskines have become the de-facto standard for any one who wants to be perceived as cool. And as anyone and everyone knows, that isn’t cool.

Once the preserve of artists and creative types, the Moleskine has now found its way on to the desks of business people in ill fitting suits and bad ties. Worse than that, it has become mainstream.

Thankfully there is an alternative. The Ciak is a an Italian leather notebook that comes in a range of sizes and style. The photo above shows two large plain notebooks in Red and Yellow leather that arrived yesterday from my preferred supplier. Beautifully finished and quite rare, a Ciak has another ace up it’s sleeve in the notebook wars. The quality of it’s paper. Use a fountain pen on Moleskine paper and you will be sadly disappointed. Lay down ink in a Ciak and the quality starts to shine through.

Understated elegance that won’t become mainstream anytime soon.

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