Well, it’s the new year and 2008 has been a truly incredible one for me, with more traveling than I’ve done in a long time, so I thought I’d go through my top five moments from 2008 as well as my one most memorable moment of the year.

1. Completing production and release of Elika Mahony’s Fire and Gold CD
2. Traveling to China for the first time and then getting to go again the same year
3. Getting to experience the most amazing and modern city on the planet, Hong Kong
4. North American Theatrical release of feature film I was sound designer for, Sweet Amerika
5. Launch of my new, innovative record label, Pro Soul Alliance

It was hard to pick just five amongst all the incredible things that happened this year, like the exciting new music I produced for Heather Dore, my trip to Las Vegas with Felisha, the collaborative music promotional project with talented artist, Laura Harley, ‘enjoy the cylons‘ which was viewed by over 16,000 people, the california Baha’i music weekend, Working with the talented Phil Morrison & Keith Williams, Jing R, and Cheng LIn in Beijing, and the completion of various other video and music projects…

If I had to pick one most exciting and incredible moment though, It would probably have to be getting stuck in the middle of a raging Nahatlatch river with my nephew Aaron while Whitewater rafting and getting out of it with barely a scratch!

I had a really tough year in 2007, so I had decided this would be an amazing year of travel and exciting things, and it sure was! Amazing how when you really set your mind on something, it happens.

As for last years resolutions unfortunately things didn’t go so well with them. In fact I actually managed to offend some people I truly care about with some of my blog posts and other casual blunt remarks…  So this year no resolutions, except a determination to improve balance in my life, and drastically simplify things over the next 2 years so I don’t have to work so damn hard all the time.

This first blog post of 2009 is particularly exciting for me because it’s the first one I’ve done using speech recognition software, Dragon MacSpeech Dictate, the best in the world. My typing is terrible ever since I quit that pre-widespread computer use high school typing class (because why on earth would I need to type people letters?)
So yes I actually spoke everything you just read, which I feel gives things a little more personal touch don’t you?

Enjoy 2009, and all the best to you!

So after dusting off some 80’s analog synth hardware, and researching licensing internationally for digitally released cover songs, Heather Doré’s new song is finally released and available online! Listen here!

She is a great lover of 80’s music, so it seemed fitting to remake an almost forgotten 80’s classic, so we chose The Human League, ‘(Keep Feeling) Fascination’ which I have always loved since I was a teen. I wasn’t sure how I could do justice to the fantastic original production, unique sounds used, and great male and female vocal tracks, but a little ‘future disco’ treatment, and Darryl Kromm of Strange Advance on background vocals turned out to be a winning combination in my biased opinion!

We have some very exciting things in progress for Heather‘s next songs, so look forward to more soon!

I’ve just finished producing a fantastic new cover song for Heather Doré’s Pop music debut. I’ll tell you more about it soon when she launches it. She is a 21st century artist, so she is releasing her music, as it is completed, from her website, and you don’t have to wait, you can get it right away!
But releasing a cover song for digital distribution only from her own website has proven to be complicated as many simple things are in the music industry as it is overrun with paranoid obsession and unbelievable bureaucracy…

If you want to release on CD, or on iTunes within the country it was produced, then it is much more simple, but on your own website, where anyone in the world can buy it? Problems.
This is because the music industry works on a per country basis, that’s why it took forever to get iTunes in most countries because of all the deals and paperwork they had to do for practically every song.

That’s right, the corporate music industry complains, bitches, moans, publicizes and sues about losing money, but they make you jump through hoops and practically give up your first born child to help them make money with their music! Just give us what we want! How simple is that? It’s what, the first rule of business or something? Give the customer what they want. How could scores of billion dollar corporations worldwide forget that rule? It seems intense greed and lust for power blinds one quite severely, and this is why they’re losing money, NOT because of downloading. They would rather destroy their entire business before making it easy for you to give them money.
Good, change is good, and this is all causing music business to move back in the hands of the artist, making the importance of good music key. And that is a very good thing! Ok, rant over.

Basically I am still on the phone with the Canadian Music Rights Reproduction Agency and the song publisher regarding the song, so I don’t have any definitive answers for you. (The CMRRA doesn’t even have anything about digital distribution on their website, but at least we have such an agency to make some things a bit easier than they would be with payment of mechanical royalties in Canada)
What I can tell you is iTunes has done a deal where they pay out royalties as required for sales in each country for cover songs sold, so that simplifies things when releasing cover songs digitally this way.
But if you want to sell the songs on your own website to the world, which is my recommended method of selling music (NOT on myspace or facebook, but on www.yourname.com personal website), you have to obtain special rights for the world to sell the song, AND pay monthly royalties to the publisher yourself with detailed financial statements. And you may have to negotiate with different publishers for different parts of the world. Imagine having to negotiate with 3 or 4 publishers for each country in the world just to sell a song digitally from your website! Within 5 years, most music will be sold electronically!

So you think, ok how hard can that be, you just pay online at the publishers website with a credit card, right? Sorry, you must be taking about an industry that is efficient, progressive and meets the needs of it’s customers, and that’s not how the music industry works, and that is one of the many reasons why they are losing money.

Needless to say we aren’t going to work on many cover songs any more, as fun as it may be.