gwenzilla: (performing)
Last night, I put a brand new song up on my Patreon site, available only to patrons. It's a scratch track and not release-quality, but that's where all my new stuff is going, and my plan is for it to remain there for a week before it's released to the Bandcamp site, if it gets released there at all.

Patreon is pretty simple: patrons pledge to give $1 per song I release there. Eventually, it'll be a repository for a lot of live recordings, stuff I don't intend to record, and new things I do intend to record.

Here's the link to my Patreon page. If you can contribute and want to, please do. Once I get five or six patrons there, I'll start adding some more incentives, like custom songs, opportunities to request recordings of things, etc.

And if you just want to check out some more polished material, I'm trying to put something new up on Bandcamp every few days. Here's a link to my Bandcamp page.

None of this costs a lot of money. But every little bit helps me work toward relying less on my day job and more on creating cool stuff.
gwenzilla: (Default)
Done yesterday:

So now the question is, "Where to go from here." Now, I'm lucky in that I have access to good computers and friends with loads of knowledge about things like recording and engineering and mastering and stuff like that.

And the fact is, if you consider that I haven't released a new album in 12? 13? years (OMG), well. There's some material out there, and you might not even need all 5 of the new songs (or the unruly 6th one, which is in the poetry refrigerator at the moment).

I'm looking at how other artists promote themselves on Patreon. In particular, I'm impressed by South African Nate Maingard, whose goals are tightly organised, whose page is nice and slick without being super commercial. Now, obviously the guy is a hipster and much younger than I am, but I like the structure he's created. If you take a look at the goals and levels of patronage along the righthand side of the page, you'll see that not only does he offer a lot, but people are taking him up on it. Some items are limited, and you can see exactly how many patrons he has at that level by checking out the information there. He also writes for hire, which is something I've considered as well. Sonnets For Hire! ;) Also obviously, this guy travels and I don't, really; that's not a possibility for me right now for a lot of reasons. But I wonder: How possible would it be for me to move in this direction, positively and probably kind of slowly?

What do you guys think? Am I grasping at straws?

ETA: This is not pay to play. You can get anything on BandCamp for free. Not so sure I'll take the same tack with Patreon, but possibly take a leaf from my South African (not a) pal's book and release some teaser tracks, because otherwise how will people know what I sound like?
gwenzilla: (Default)
So, because [livejournal.com profile] tollers mentioned it, I actually set up a BandCamp page and put something on it.

It's just something that I've offered here for free, and of course it's offered for free there as well. But if you're interested, here's the link:

https://gwenknighton.bandcamp.com/releases

Respite!

Nov. 9th, 2014 02:27 am
gwenzilla: (Default)
I'd forgot that weeks ago I had requested four days of holiday at the end of this week, because [livejournal.com profile] bardling was meant to be here and I wanted time to spend with her on musical activities.

So tonight when I checked my work HR page to see what time I needed to be in tomorrow ... I found that I'm not scheduled for work! With the time I've had signed off plus the four days of holiday, I don't have to go to work at all this week!

You guys cannot imagine how good that made me feel. Or maybe you can: I am just happy to have another week to get things sorted.

And I will make those phone calls. And I will get this sorted. And I will finish song number six, because song number six is being difficult and needs help!
gwenzilla: (Default)
Yeah, I told you guys I was writing songs, right? Heh.

Mistral Wind )
gwenzilla: (Default)
So I think this is finished. I don't think it needs a bridge, probably just an instrumental break.

Paint )
gwenzilla: (Default)
I've never done the whole NaNoWriMo thing. While I understand that the communities behind this movement are pretty good, I always felt like every month should be writing month. Of course, encouragement is good and communities are good, and I love all the different writing things that go on in Second Life during November. I know I don't write as much as I should, though this past month -- indeed, the whole period since LonCon -- has been full of songwriting.

So, with that said, I think I can do my own little writing challenge for November. I will write at least one song a week for the duration of the month. Now, since it's unlikely I'll finish a song in the next hour, we could count anything more I get done on this fragment, or this one as the song for the first week, since there are only two days in that week and it's going to be over an hour from now, at least in London. Both these songs have been set to music and partially scored, so it might be cheating a little bit. I guess the one about children was actually started this week as opposed to the other one, which was started sometime last week, so maybe we'll only count that one.

Anyway.

9 November
16 November
23 November
30 November

Those will be the due dates for the songs, since I tend to tell my diary to start my week on Monday.

Now... for those of you who are interested in such things, what sorts of subjects would you like me to write about? Inspiration is beautiful and comes from all over the world. It never hurts to borrow someone else's. ;)
gwenzilla: (Default)
Ultramarine

Lyrics below the cut tag.

Ultramarine )
gwenzilla: (performing)
The year after [livejournal.com profile] keristor was killed, I purchased a guitar that belonged to him at the Filk Fund auction. It took me two and a half years to write this song.

Still not OK.

Lyrics below the cut tag

Keris' Guitar )
gwenzilla: (performing)
This song surprised me by making me cry when I performed it. I am quite a seasoned performer, and I really, really don't cry onstage. It was ... odd.

Lyrics below the cut tag.

You Don't Look Back )
gwenzilla: (performing)
This is the one about the Second Life roleplaying game. Lyrics below the cut tag.

Gwyneth's Dream )

May 2018

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