My new website!

I HAVE A NEW WEBSITE!

It's so much better than my old one, it doesn't look as messy, it's all nicely divided up into the right places, and it's all short and straight to the point.

Design wise I feel like it reflects my futuristic personality and my obsession with electronic music.
This is shown also with my bright and shiny new logo which looks like something straight out of Tron! (One of my favourite films)

I wanted everything to be concise, so I limited the amount of space I use on the website to a rectangle in the middle. I got this idea from Chicane's website, where all his information has been restricted to a panel in the middle of the screen. The transitions between his different pages often include nice little animations as the panel expands and contracts to fit in more or less info from page to page, and the theme fits electronic music perfectly.

I'm glad that the creator I used to build my website isn't littered with ads (bar the small one in the bottom left advertising the creator itself) because there are many sites I've been on by similar artists that are littered with ads all over the place, even though they might be ads about their label or even their own music, but they make the site messy and difficult to read and I wanted to avoid that.

I wanted to be minimal but at the same time avoid being plain. I feel that the white background with the few words and picture is overdone and slightly cliche, so I wanted to head for a futuristic minimalism, and I feel like I've attained that quite well.

Fortunately for me, the creator makes editing my website quick and easy and so the website can evolve as my music does, taking on the artwork for my latest project.

The site is currently split up into 7 sections.
The entrance page just feature the logo I created for myself. It's almost like a sign or a welcome mat to say "You've arrived at the right place".

The home page (which is accessed simply by clicking on the logo on the entrance page) is in introduction to myself and showcases my current project as it is developing.

The info page contains details about me and what I do, from my music projects to my collaborations and outside work.

The Audio page contains links to my albums and my bandcamp page where all of my releases can be downloaded and listened to. This page will showcase only my best or most recent work, and then lead people to the bandcamp page to find more.

The Visual page contains videos of my work and a link to my Youtube page, and in the future a gallery of still images or my liver performances and project work.

The network pages contains links to various other artists I know personally, like, or have worked with.

The contact page does what it says on the tin and provides contact information and links to my other sites including my facebook pages.

Future pages will include a remix page showcasing my remix work, a guestbook for users to provide comments and feedback, a news page giving a regular and brief update of my work as it starts to move forward faster, and a live page, providing information on live performances and other public events.

This website essentially acts as a portfolio and news station for all of my projects. It's a place where people can come to see what I do, what I have done, and what I have planned for the future.
The site will act as my home on the net, and I intend to push fans and traffic towards the website for all the info they could need. Perhaps with a forum later down the line as more popularity rolls in, it will provide a home for fans, too, somewhere where there they can get all the news and info they require the moment it comes out. I intend to incorporate a mailing list in the future, too, although bandcamp already provides me with one for people who have downloaded my albums in the past.

At the moment, there are still a few bugs to iron out, primarily that I'm having issues assigning it to the domain name I bought. Until this issue is fixed the website still seems to retain the unprofessional looking domain name given by the imcreator website itself upon creation of my own site. This issue is currently being dealt with and should be fixed within the next few days, leaving the website with the official domain name of judahcarvanna.co.uk.

I'm hoping that as my music career expands, so will my website, and I'm hoping that it will improve with every incarnation hereafter.

In 10 years time...

There's a lot of technology coming out of the music industry at the moment, and a lot of it is still in early stages, but when I get my hands on it, I'm hoping I can be one of the first wave of modern musicians to really put this new tech through its paces and help change the face of the music industry!

There are plenty of examples out there, including projection mapping audio-visual artwork, interactive music, reactive music, generative music, live gig streaming, live studio sessions over the internet, recording from the other side of the world.

One of the things I'd like to do is incorporate music and games together, but not like Guitar Hero or Audiosurf where you play according to the music. Instead, I'd rather create a game where the music changes according to your in game environment and what you do.
I intend to invade a Game Design lecture at University one day and get those guys involved in it all.

I would like to try the live streaming thing one day, but not just to homes, but also to cinemas and some of the massive TV screens you get in big cities (I know there's one in Manchester and one in London), and not just the UK, but also across the world. A worldwide gig would be a pretty amazing event, especially if you can get numerous clubs across every city and town involved, too.

I also like the idea of releasing an album on a multi-platform app where the music changes depending on how you manipulate it in the app. Add multi-player (or multi-listener?) modes for a much more interactive experience with friends, and even an ability to save the 'remixes' that are produced and upload them to a profile on the website for other people to enjoy. Maybe even add the ability to mash songs together from the same album, the same artist, or even just any songs at all.

I'd also like to try the above idea in a live situation, by having a line of MIDI controllers at the front of the stage that can control the music in some way. It would have to be restricted somehow so as not to let someone completely destroy the song live, but it would be an interesting concept to try out.

These are all things I'd like to try out in the future, and I'll certainly be developing some of these ideas further, as well as coming up with new ones.

One of the main things I'd like to do however, it to break the artist/audience barrier in live situations. I want to find a way, or multiple ways, in which the audience can feel far more involved with the gig, than just dancing and watching and listening to it.

Buy some merch for some free music!

In a previous post of mine, I mentioned how illegal downloading of music makes it very difficult for musicians to make any money from selling music - which is the traditional way for a musician to make money, after all, they are musicians, and that's what musicians do, right?

However it seems like a new business model is coming about. If people aren't willing to buy music, but will still download it because they like the artist, they might still buy a t-shirt or a badge or a gig ticket or some random crap with the band logo on it, just to show support and/or look cool.

After all we all know that you can't download T-Shirts, Badges, Cups, Hats and Toilet Paper.

Fair enough, it is possible to make these things yourself, you can buy blank cups and shirts etc and all the stuff you need to print/paint your own logos onto them, or, if you're really showing off, you can buy the fabric yourself, buy the clay yourself and scratch build everything yourself. It might look awesome, but it might also cost more in the end. Or it might just look crap. So thankfully, human laziness and a need for quality ensure that the vast majority of fans would rather buy good quality merch from the band, rather than spend time and effort making something themselves that might fall apart at the blink of an eye, or look like someone blew up an Abakhan store and glued some of the bits together.

However, there are some people out there who actually can't be bothered to order things form your website either, and when getting your merch into store on the high street can be more difficult than trigonometry, we have to find another way to sell merch and get our music out there.

It might come to a point soon where some artists are selling a t-shirt with a limited edition of the album they are promoting FREE with the t-shirt and some bonus tracks. It's selling out on a new level and could ultimately damage the artists rep. It's the same as your Mum saying "If you don't eat your veg, you won't get any ice cream." (which is a fair deal for me since I don't like ice cream.) Instead we're just saying "If you don't buy our shirt, we won't let you have our music." We have to make money somehow, and I'm expecting someone to try this idea at some point. It's an idea that pushes the music to the back of the product, and starts to turn the musician into a fashion icon or a trendy brand label of sorts.

Aside from this, the pay-what-you-want model appears to work, as demonstrated by bandcamp who stated that artists who release their albums with a set minimum price actually get 1.5 times more income than artists who just set a price. This model works if you're not releasing your music for free or with a minimum price of 0.

It also appears that the physical CD will become something of a novelty, and that the vast majority of music will continue to be acquired online.

The good thing about going completely digital is that the 'album' can be reinvented. It no longer has to be a certain number of songs, or a certain length, etc. It can be as short or long as people like now there is no CD to be restricted by. The size of an album is only restricted by the hard drive its going onto. It also opens up entirely new formats of music - interactive, reactive, modular, as opposed to traditional linear music that we are all so accustomed to in everyday life. Imagine a song that you can change as you listen to it, or even a new generation of music games that involve you manipulation an environment in order to change the music, as opposed to just pushing the right buttons at the right time to recreate the music as best as possible to the original.

Many people are complaining about the death of the album, but the people behind applications such as RJDJ are bringing in a new era or music listening experience. Albums of the future might well start to incorporate more senses in the experience - we will no longer just be listening to music, we will be experiencing it.

This might be the answer to problems selling music. People illegally downloading music might be a sign of the times, a sign that people are getting bored of linear music and don't see its value anymore. the future of music sales may well be that people buy an app to play the music on, and the music is something they play with, as opposed to music they just play.

I am personally looking forward to the evolution of the album, and I intend to jump on the new media bandwagon as well as try to develop ideas of my own.

Time to burst the filter bubbles?

I've just been watching a video of a talk at TED by Eli Pariser all about his idea of 'Filter Bubbles' and it got me thinking (as many things do).

Promotion has never been a strong point of mine. When I have made my music and I want to get it out into the big wide world, to get it to my target audience, I stop dead. I go blank, and my eyes glaze over as I sit staring at the screen thinking to myself "Where are these people and how do I reach them?"

Now I know that there are hundreds if not thousands of platforms out there on the internet I can use to release my music, but just uploading my music to these platforms and letting them go won't be enough. I'll just be another name at the bottom of the dubstep list, or hiding at the back with the cybergoth kids, or one of another guitarist struggling to knock Slash and Clapton of their thrones, or another abstract remixer that is trying to make their name of remixing as many people as possible, but still only getting in the other people at the bottom of the list.


I also have to remember that a lot of these platforms are completely redundant and most of them are overshadowed by Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Tumblr, Spotify and Wikipedia.
I could go to the high school kids of today and ask them if they use MySpace and I'd expect to either hear "Yeah right, that's dead!" from the older ones, or even "MySpace? What's that?" from the younger ones who have been indoctrinated by Facebook.

So I've been looking for other ways to help get through to my target audience when I discovered the idea of filter bubbles. Now these filter bubbles can be both a curse and a blessing, depending on what you want.

When we use the internet, all the sites we use pick up on what we are doing, what we click on, the links that interest us the most, the things we buy the most, the people we talk to the most, where we are using our computer or phone or laptop, what times we use them, and the sites then use a filtering algorithm to advertise to us the content that it thinks we want to see.


For example when I look on Amazon now, most of the suggestions I see for what Amazon thinks I would like to buy are CDs by artists such as Netsky, Noisia, Nero and Skrillex, or books about web design and the theory of everything, all because I have bought and viewed similar things on Amazon. However, it DOESN'T show me the things I might find interesting, not gadgets, no clothes, no games, no synths or computer parts, because I just haven't clicked on them enough, and it also doesn't show me things that are way out of my 'norm' for online shopping but I still might like anyway.

This is what a filter bubble does. A filter bubble is essentially the result of the internet reading your interests. It gives you what you've been looking for time and time again, it gives you what it thinks you want, but not what you need. If I were to search Splitting The Atom on Google, I would get Noisia's album as my top hit, however if my friend Alan were to search Splitting The Atom, he's more likely to get a documentary on nuclear power. This is because I spend most of my time on the internet looking for new music and production techniques (and my recent obsession with dubstep will put Noisia above science) whereas Alan spends most of his time on the internet watching documentaries and reading science articles.

This doesn't mean that particle physics doesn't interest me (because it really does), it just means that the internet thinks that I'm not interested in it, so it won't bother showing me it. This also means that the news sites that I (very rarely ever) look at do the same thing, they will show me news I think is interesting, for example if a famous DJ has died or an artist is releasing a new album, I'm going to be given that information, but information about the economic and political state of the world will be hidden from me, all because the internet thinks I don't care. Something drastic and life changing could be happening on my doorstep, and I wouldn't know about it because the internet is hiding it from me.

This does pose another problem for me, personally.


Over the years, I've evolved in my taste in music. I've always said that Aerosmith are the first band I ever listened to, and classic rock such as Bon Jovi and Bryan Adams is what I was brought up on. Then I discovered metal such as Iron Maiden and Trivium, and extreme metal such as Meshuggah, Ektomorf and Mnemic, and soon after old school 80's goth in the vein of The Sisters Of Mercy and The Mission.

After that was when I actually really got onto the internet, and while searching for more goth bands, I discovered the wonderful world of Cybergoth. I'd finally been introduced to electronic music, and I loved it! Powernoise, EBM, Industrial, Futurepop, Synthpop, Aggrotech, it was all amazing, and still suited my dark alternative tastes. It wasn't long after that that I slowly shifted into the pop, dance and trance region of music, but by this point I was well and truly ingrained into the Cybergoth scene, the internet had picked up on that effortlessly, all my feeds were rammed with information about VNV Nation, Infest, Covenant, Cyberdog and so on, so when I wanted to explore an entirely new area of more mainstream electronic music...I suddenly found myself stuck and very lost.


The internet wasn't giving me anything, it wasn't showing me where to go, I didn't even know where to start - I realized that I knew a lot of artists from the genres I was gaining interest in, artists like Tiesto, Armin Van Buuren, ATB, Ferry Corsten, but I knew nothing about the scene at all (and I'm still pretty lacking on that side of things, even now), all because every time I searched for trance, I got results for 'Dark Trance Vs Neo Goth' (a popular cybergoth compilation album). When I searched pop I got results for synthpop and futurepop acts such as Depeche Mode and VNV Nation respectively, and when I searched dance I got result for videos on how to dance industrial style. I was locked inside a filter bubble that was making searching for my new target audience incredibly difficult.

So when it comes to spreading out, looking for new information, the filter bubble is a problem. But there is an advantage in advertising when wanting to get your product into other people's filter bubbles. With a combination of the right buzzwords on the right websites, from the right people, my music could be easily breaking through to the right people very quickly, and that is all about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - making sites like Google push my product to the top of the search results list, using the right buzzwords to push my product through the filter bubble right onto someone's news feed.

I could tag my music in all the right ways, but I still need to know the best places to put it, and I still need to know where it's going even if the audience is going out of their bubbles and stumbling across it - when they find it, where are they likely to put it? I might not know at all, and this poses a problem for me.

I personally think it might be time that we burst the bubbles, or at least the webmasters of Amazon and Google etc. adjust their algorithms to include things out of our comfort zone, as well as what we are used to, or at least give us a way of bypassing those filters, quickly and effortlessly. It might reduce the effectiveness of the buzzwords on a whole, but it'll certainly make it easier for me to find what I'm looking for and better promote my music from there on in.

Copyright and how it's generally ignored.

Something really hit home for me a while back while talking to the rest of my class during a very philosophical lecture...the thing is that when talking to fellow musicians you can talk about what your music means and what copyrights you use and how you release your music to generate the best income etc., but when talking to the target audience...they really don't appear to care. They'll illegally download our music, illegally distribute our music, illegally remix our music, and that generally pisses off people in the music industry, particularly the major record labels who are doing everything they can to stamp out this new 'free music' culture we seem to have going.


A lot of people blame the internet for this sudden change in customer ethics and are fighting to have hundreds if not thousands of websites shut down in order to save the apparently dying music industry.

What a lot of people seem to forget is that has happened before in the past with the invention of recording. The moment recording studios, recording and playback devices etc., musicians all over hit the roof claiming that these new records that were being produced would detract from their income as a live performer. People would stop coming out to see them, they'd no longer be able to fill out a concert hall because people could get the same experience at home.

What they didn't realize is that the home recorded experience is completely different to the live performance experience, and people were still coming out to see their performances as well as buy their records. Anything these performers lost in tickets sales, they probably more than made up for in record sales, and so the music industry adapted to this new technology quickly and effectively. It was a scary jump, threatening the collapse of live music, but we made it through and today our live performances just continue to get bigger, louder, more elaborate and more exciting, despite having unlimited access to all the same music at home.

Rather than try to shut down all the sites that are allowing illegal distribution of music, it might be better to use them to our advantage, or at least learn from them. There is a music revolution staring us in the face, and the music powers that be are breaking into a sweat over it. Anyone would thing change was bad thing, but if it wasn't for change, we wouldn't have some of the immensely popular genres we have today that the powers that be are happily milking for all they're worth.

A lot of artists are now allowing free download of their music from their own websites with an option to donate to the artist rather than force a set price that people may not be willing to pay. This will serve as a view of world economy for a start, showing us how many people are willing to pay and how much they are willing to pay. Maybe if we weren't in a recession, people would be more willing to pay more, or even pay in the first place rather than just download for free, but it also shows us how people see our music, how much they believe it is actually worth and in turn speaks more than words. If people persistently pay £3 for an album they would be paying £10 for in HMV, that says that either they feel they are being ripped off by HMV, or the music isn't worth that much. Or Both.

But this still doesn't solve the illegal distribution. Current Copyright says that you cannot make copies of our work, you cannot distribute our work, you cannot broadcast our work or profit from our work among many other ridiculous restrictions. Copying music from your CD you have bought to your PC and then to your MP3 player or iPod is technically piracy as you are making illegal copies of the original work, but when have you ever seen anyone get arrested for owning an MP3 player?

One way to get around this is with Creative Commons Copyrights. CC isn't just a way of 'dealing with' the illegal distribution problem, but is also a sign of change in the music industry. CC is a way of musicians saying that they accept that they can do nothing to stop this illegal distribution and copying, so rather than fight it, they're effectively making illegal and okay to do it to these selected works under CC.

Creative Commons has started to be something of a badge or respect for artists, too. Artists using the standard 'All Rights Reserved' copyright can often be seen as greedy and just in it for the money. They are effectively saying "You can buy the CD and listen to it on a CD player and nothing else. Don't make any copies, don't sell it on, con't copy it to any players of any forms, don't play it publicly - that CD is for your ears only."
An artist using CC has a variety of licenses they can use to distribute their music, including 'Attribution', 'Attribution Share Alike', 'Attribution No Derivatives', 'Attribution Non Commercial', 'Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike', and 'Attribution 'Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives.'

The license with the most freedom is the 'Attribution' licence which allows other to distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, so long as they credit you for the original.

The next licence is 'Attribution Share Alike' which is the same as attribution but all new works based on your works MUST carry the same licence as the original work, with credit to you.


Next we have 'Attribution NoDerivs' which allows for both commercial and non commercial distribution provided that is remains unchanged and shows credit to you.

Alongside this there is 'Attribution Non Commercial', which allows people to remix, tweak and build upon your works, and redistribute them non commercially, with new licences, but does not allow them to profit from their new creations based on your work. Again, you must be credited.

Above this there is the 'Attribution Non commercial Share Alike' licence. It's a bit of a mouthful but it's simple enough. Other people may remix, tweak and build upon your work and redistribute it non commercially provided that they credit you, do not profit form the new work and that their work shares the same licence as the original.

Finally, there is the 'Attribution Non Commercial, NoDerivs' licence, the most restrictive of the licences. This allows others to download and share the music, but they cannot change them or use them commercially at all.

These licences allow for a lot more freedom than standard copyright, and also brings into debate the legality of downloading and distributing music freely. This won't solve the problem entirely, but will certainly help along the way. People will still defy some of the more restrictive licences, but since the CC licences can often be seen as a badge of respect for the artist, showing that the artist is more open minded, more in it for the music than the money, then people will be more likely to consider how they treat the product and what they do with it. People may also find that artists that use CC may be willing to make exceptions to the licence if they are asked beforehand.

I personally do use the most restrictive licences for my work, but I do it in order to keep track of what is happening to my work. I clearly state in the credits to my albums that I do not allow people to build upon my work or remix it etc., but I also state that if they want to remix or build upon my work, then they should message me, and I will most likely allow it. I personally have no problem with someone remixing my work and using it for commercial purposes, but I would draw the line at my music being used to promote something I don't believe in, for example, anyone wanting to use my music in Nazi propaganda can get stuffed straight away and there will be hell to pay if I catch any people like that using my music to promote racism and sexism etc. Using the most restrictive licence in this sense is just my way of being fair, saying that if I'm not making money of off this product, why should they? It also allows for communication between me and the fans and people I could possibly one day work with, which in turn promotes a much healthier music network.

I should also mention that so far all my music is free download, and selected releases do have the option for donations. Having discovered some of my music on illegal download sites, I decided that it's best not to fight it, but rather use it.

A lot of people's first thoughts upon seeing their music on an illegal music download site might be "THOSE CHEEKY SWINES!" or something to that effect. However, when I saw my music on one of these sites, my first thoughts were "If my music is here, then someone obviously thinks my music is good enough to be distributed to other people, they think it's good enough to be spread around, showcased, talked about, downloaded and listened to - no one is going to waste the time and effort to upload shit music!"
I saw this violation of copyright as quite flattering, and when I went on to read the comments below my music, I found that they were all positive and that they had all downloaded the music and enjoyed it, and even gave constructive criticism! I had found a part of the music world where people appreciated my music! the release was a free download to begin with, so I wasn't bothered that they weren't paying, and the download link was to my bandcamp page, so I still got the hits and the demographics from it.

I have essentially cut out most of these people's work, giving them an easy ride. The music is already up for free d/l on a platform that isn't likely to get shut down, there's no need to re up load, no need to sign up to get faster download speeds, it's all there waiting for them.

Fair enough, I'm not making any money off of this, but at the same time, I'm not a huge artist, I'm currently very underground, still building up a fan base, but I've also come to the conclusion that releasing music won't be my main source of income, and that I will have to look for alternatives. But that is something for an entirely different post altogether, and I feel like I've waffled on about this enough now, so here's a link to my FREE music, I hope you enjoy it, I hope I've given you some food for thought on the copyright issue =)
http://music.judahcarvanna.com/

MYSTERY SURPRISE BUILT IN HEADPHONES!!!

I bought a bright green (just like the text colour) sleeveless body warmer jacket thing for £20 from Sports Direct today. It's awesome (pics to come soon), I just saw it and went "Wow! I'm having that!"

Little did I know that when I got home and I was exploring the pockets...I found a headphone jack in the left pocket...my housemate Alan saw this and traced the cable up the body to 2 little pockets by my neck on the inside of the collar...

We opened them up and out popped 2 little green and black in-ear headphones!

Now, normally, I don't like in ear headphones, especially if they go too far in, they can get uncomfortable and gammy and horrible...but I don't care because they're built in!!!
They're also not bad quality. Nowhere near as good as the massive pots I normally have strapped to my head, but still not bad, and very handy for when I can't be arsed taking my headpots around with me everywhere I go.

This amazing discover has blown my mind and made my day - I bought a jacket for £20 that had these mystery surprise headphones built in! They are the kind of headphones that you can buy for £10 somewhere anyway, so the jacket itself, in effect, was £10, too - BARGAIN!!!

I'm well impressed, and I wanted to share this with the music world. That's how this relates to this blog, it's got something to do with music, and it's awesome.

I'm blown away. Love it. =)

New blog, let's get it right this time!

Hello!

My name is Judah, and this is my new blog!

I've had 3 blogs on here in the past, but they needed to go, so I'm starting again and this time I'l actually have things to blog about!

Not that I can think of anything to blog this time around.

So how about some basics?

I'm at the University of South Wales, Newport and I'm studying Creative Sound and Music.

I'm a second year there now, and I'm specializing in the media pathway of Audio Visual and Generative Technologies since were were given a path option. The other option for me was the performance pathway which contains Global Perspectives and Advanced Production techniques. As useful as APT was going to be, I felt that the media pathway was going to benefit my performance and my 'neophilic' view on music, that and my tutor for those sessions said it's also great for the money making side of the music industry.

I made that word up, I think, neophilic. It's supposed to mean that I love change and new things and advances in technology. Technophile didn't quite cut it as I'm not bothered by old technology. Neo is Latin for new and Philo is Latin for love, so that's what I'm on about there! I consider myself a bit of a Neophile, and even wrote a song about being a Neophile for my Digital Faith single "Twin Flame" (Digital Faith being a Futurepop side project of mine).

Musically, I'm into trance, dance, pop, rock, electronica, industrial, powernoise, synthpop, futurepop, EBM, darkwave and much, much more. I mainly produce trance, futurepop, powernoise, synthrock and some electro-industrial, but sometimes I'll just go off on a tangent and do whatever I feel like, so half the time you never know what you're going to get from me!

This blog is here for me to talk about what I'm doing, interesting things I've found on the net that kinda relate to what I'm doing and what other people I know are doing. It's going to be a running log of my uni work, my music 'career' and other similar stuff!

Also, this is my website that I will be trying to incorporate this blog into at some point: www.judahcarvanna.com

And if you click on the music tab, you go to my bandcamp site where you can download my music!

I hope you'll find it all interesting, and I'll be posting again very soon =)

-Judah.