Saturday, September 25, 2010

DJ Paul Pritchard feat Evey Styles - Without You (2010)

One night, I found this artist on Reverbnation by the name of DJ Paul Pritchard.  He produces some amazingly complex melodic, yet hi-energy, trance tracks.  His music seemed to mirror the style that I had fallen so in love with years before, and that had inspired me to begin trying to produce my own music, which is why I loved it, and really couldn't get enough.  So I wrote to him just to let him know how much I loved his music.  He wrote back saying that he liked mine too, and if I ever wanted to collaborate just to let him know.  Well, of course!  I love collaborating with like-minded artists...so he sent me a track called 'Without You', and asked if I'd write some vocals for it.

Well, I was on a little vacation at the time but told him I'd get back to it.  When I got back I listened to it a few times and could hear singing in my head...no words, just singing.  That's always a good sign for me, but I was busy working on 'Sublime' and another track at that time and wanted to let it mix around for me before I tried tackling it.  Finally, one day after work I sat down with my pen and notepad and just wrote.  I wanted to keep the theme of the title 'Without You', but was trying not to make it into a supersad love song at the same time. As usual, the words came flowing out and it was written before I even realized it.

(People might wonder what it's about...or who.  It's not exactly about anyone in particular. I did sort of have somebody floating around in my head while I was writing it, but it's also more about a situation I found myself in...several times.  Being with somebody and discovering yourself and your potentials and growing and moving on...and noticing that person isn't really moving along with you.  So it's up to you to decide whether you want to stop moving to stay with that person, or move on without them.)

I sent Paul the 'rough draft' and waited with baited breath and fingers crossed.  I was in love with the song and lyrics, but I remember thinking, "Oh, he's going to hate it.  He's not going to want those kind of lyrics associated with his song!"  Wow, was I wrong.  He loved it and couldn't wait to hear the final cut!  And I couldn't wait to get it to him, but the first take always seems to be the best, and I could never quite match that.

This was in early July.  After many attempts at rearranging the vocals in some spots, recording and re-recording both the main vocals and backing ones (I'm thinking probably at least 30 takes on the main vocals alone), sending the track over the net back and forth, and reconciling some slight issues with mixing, the song is finally complete!  I hope you like it.

Song to listen to:










Lyrics to follow along with:

I didn't realize
How hard it was for you to perceive
This passion, this pain, this life, this love that
Was conceived...
I'm drifting alone, far from home,
Made up of my own
Words and stories, oh...

Oh, what a mess, but I must confess,
There's something about you that makes me feel alive,
And not for the first time,
It's ever after...
What would I do, without you
To remind me that no matter how often the story ends,
I can write another chapter...

I'm crossing the threshold,
Into a new way, a new mind, oh
And even though I know you don't wanna go
It's so hard for me to say goodbye
It doesn't matter anymore, anyway
I'm turning inside,
And even though I know you don't wanna go
I just gotta make this mine
I'm crossing the threshold,
But if you should ever change your mind,
I want you to know that I'll help you flow
Ever after with me on a new tide, oh...

How could I have known 
How easy it was for you to ignore
This passion, this pain, this life, this love that I've been hoping for?
We made this bed, let's lie instead
And simply fill our heads
Full of verbs and allegories,
Let's write a different story, oh...

I'm crossing the threshold,
Into a new way, a new mind, oh
And even though I know you don't wanna go
It's so hard for me to say goodbye
It doesn't matter anymore, anyway
I'm turning inside,
And even though I know you don't wanna go
I guess I just gotta make this mine
I'm crossing the threshold,
Into a new way, a new mind, oh
And even though I know you don't wanna go
It's so hard for me to say goodbye
It doesn't matter anymore, anyway
I'm turning inside,
And even though I know you don't wanna go
I just gotta make this mine

Oh, what a mess, but I must confess,
There's something about you that makes me feel alive,
But not for the first time,
Ohhh,
What would I do without you
To remind me that no matter how often the story ends,
It doesn't always mean goodbye...

I'm crossing the threshold,
But if you should ever change your mind,
I want you to know that I'll help you flow
Ever after with me on a new tide, oh...

Friday, September 10, 2010

I'm Not Your Promoter

It started getting annoying on mp3.com and it's driven me away from Myspace completely. Now I'm getting this shit on Reverbnation. (I don't like to swear often on public forums, so this shows you how pissed off I am about this.)

What is it? People (artists) sending me messages and comments. Not about me or my music...about themselves. I log on today. I see that someone was kind enough to send me a message, or leave a comment. "Oh," I think. "Someone appreciates my music enough they wanted to talk to me about it." Then I click on it:

HI my name is _______ ,
I was hoping you could come and stop by my profile to take a listen to my music. Any feedback is also appreciated and if you like what you hear, become a fan. Thanks so much,
have a great summer,
all the best,
Hi,have a great day,

NEW ALBUM
AVAILABLE ON : (insert 20 links to where you can buy the EXACT SAME ALBUM)

That's a message I just got.  Obviously, very personalized and sincere...the capital HI with the space after it and the secondary Hi at the end proves it. I'm glad this person cares about me so much to include not one, but 4 closing lines. And I'm positive I'm the only person who got this message...that makes me feel special.

Ugh. You know what? This disgusts me. It's shameless at the least and downright disrespectful to me at the most. I'm NOT going to go to your page based on some anonymous message you send. Therefore, I'm NOT going to listen to your music and I'm NOT going to become a fan. And I am most definitely NOT going to allow you to put your shameless self-promotions on my page. My page is for me to promote myself, not you. What I WILL do is report your spam. I'm not even going to get to the comments I have to sift through and not-approve because I really don't like people trying to use my page just to promote themselves.

This is one of the less aggressive ones, but considering I get 3-4 of these a day it becomes aggressive to me.  Does this even work? Judging from the amount of messages I get like this, I'm sure through the wonders of statistics it does (I'm probably one of hundreds to get that message). But then again, I don't know for sure since I try not to do it.  Ok, yes..I do use what someone once called 'guerilla tactics' to promote my music now by posting songs on certain people's Facebook pages...but I post them only on the pages of people I know will enjoy those songs and I see no difference between doing that and posting some Youtube video of a song I really like and want them to hear on their page, except for the fact that it's my creation and not someone elses'.  If their friends want to check it out too, that's fine by me, but I don't ask them or tell them to.  It's up to them.

I'm not going to say I didn't imbibe in my own little bit of shameless self-promotion back in the day (over 10 years ago...hell, I was probably one of the pioneers of that), but I never felt good doing it and now my days of spamming message boards are far beyond me. If I really enjoy someone's music, I will let them know and hope that they decide to check mine out. I don't ask them to...I just hope they will. Maybe my passive form of self-promotion isn't the greatest, but at least it's honest and has a bit of integrity to it. I'm not in it for the money or the fans (although both make me happy to have), just the music and the hope that you will enjoy the little piece of me I gave to you to hear.  I prefer to make more friends than fans.

I'd rather know that than ask some anonymous shred-metal band to listen to my music.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot:


:D

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Ha.

I just realized that all my music-making outbursts come once every five years...at least since 2000.  Weeeeird.

Monday, September 6, 2010

pretty songs

Now up for fee-based grabs:

pretty songs by Evey Styles
(Hey, look!  If you click on the picture, it takes you to the place you can download this from!  Neat.)

I made up a small CD back in 2006, simply titled 'pretty songs' (simply because they are just that), to give to friends and presumably family...although it never even got that far. It contained 12 tracks ranging from oddly ambient to a couple remixes. My plan back then was to get this shipped to CDBaby and sell it online. But I was on a music making kick and with every new song I made, I wanted it on the CD instead.  So that obviously didn't happen either. 

So one day while I was googling myself (and don't tell me you've never done that!), I came across a comment from someone somewhere in tha intrawebz that simply said, "Does anyone know where I can buy pretty songs?" They were referring to my CD, of course...something I was advertising on one of my sites somewhere when I was all gung-ho about it and never did anything about. I felt kinda bad that somebody, somewhere, wanted to buy this CD that didn't even exist...even in cyberspace.

Well, that got me thinking. There are a lot of 'fans' I have that have been around since my mp3.com days. And yes, I put 'fans' in quote marks.  Not because I don't think of you as fans, but the thought of me having 'fans' is a little unnerving (If anyone can think of a better term that doesn't unnerve me, let me know....we'll talk).  Anyway, when mp3.com became defunct, my 'fans' sort of scattered along with me, but a couple of them stalked and managed to find me again (you know who you are!).  The only thing that kinda kept me going was the knowledge that somewhere on the net people were looking for me. And as much as I'm not a big fan of stalking in most aspects, that's kinda cool to know (again, you know who you are and THANK YOU for loving my music...it's all that kept me going for a while). I was still making music (some of it crap, IMO), but had nowhere to showcase it until 2005, when I got a Myspace page, which could only allow a certain amount of songs at a time back then. So most of these songs appeared on Myspace, but only for brief periods at a time only. And you couldn't download them anywhere.  Until now.

So, in an effort to try and fund my latest attempt at music-making:


 COMING 10/10/10!!1!

I thought I'd put something out. It's relatively low-priced, mostly because half the music on there is no longer available in any format on my computer other than 192 kbps mp3 (without me re-recording and remastering most of them, anyway), so the sound quality probably isn't the greatest even though I did try to make it the best possible. Also, I want you to buy it.  The sales of such can go into the production of real, actual, shiny CDs that you can touch and scratch up to your hearts' content, plus advertising for sales of such others, which in turn can buy me new equipment, etc. And why the hell wouldn't you?  If you really loved me...lol.  But seriously, it's a good price and you'll feel awesome knowing that there will be a little bit of you in the next little bit of Evey that drips into your ears within the next decade or so. :)

With a total of 12 tracks and 2 bonus songs, we got a good thing goin'.  Only $5.99 to download all 14 tracks.  Yeah...this is like bargain bin at Walmart kind of pricing. If you don't want the whole thing, you can download the songs you like individually for $1 each but really, why do that when you can get everything for half the price and probably less the effort?

Oh, and in a silly little twist, I removed some of the songs off the original and added some different ones. Mostly because a few were a remixes and I don't have permission to sell them, and also because 4 years later I'm not too impressed with some of the tracks I had.  The timespan of all songs is 2000-2006.

Yet are all still just...pretty songs. :)

I plan on coming out later on with another album like this of my older tracks that I keep getting requests for (1997-2001) so as always...stay tuned.