Showing posts with label Music music music. Show all posts

Goodness, it's been almost a year! I've been updating folks over on my Patreon page, which is not entirely behind a paywall now that Patreon is offering a FREE tier. Join me there if you don't mind, please:) But that's not why I come to you today ... today I'm just updating because I realized there is a whole crew of you who still get updates when I post here and that may be the only place you receive my updates. So!

I'm going on a music tour in England and Scotland beginning January 31.
Tour dates and ticket info click here
I'm playing a lot of smaller towns this time, so take a look at this map and see if I'll be anywhere near you.
If you can't be at a show, but you'd like to help out some indie musicians touring Kentucky music abroad, consider being a Tour Sponsor ... any amount buys us tour sustenance.

Steve Cooley, Banjo Legend, will be joining me on this trip, and we're thrilled to bring my quirky tunes and Steve's banjo pickin' to folk clubs and house concerts and even a couple of theatres all around Yorkshire, Merseyside, and Edinburgh.

Other life updates!

I was commissioned by the Governor of Kentucky to create the official artwork for his inauguration. I'm pretty proud of my art here ... strange that it's not music, but I'm beyond honored. Prints are available on my Etsy shop. (Did you know I make art? I've always done it, but I only started doing it professionally during COVID because music was a bust.)

Graham's film, Monica, had a great theatre release and is now making all the awards blogs as the most-snubbed-film of the year it seems ... not exactly the accolades one wants, but Hollywood doesn't seem to be ready for a trans-lead just yet. Shame! He's proud to be part of a film that is opening doors, nonetheless.

Angus's film, Unsung Hero, produced by For King & Country and distributed by Lionsgate, will be out April 26 in theatres everywehre. It's going to be huge ... like, really, really a big deal. He's even got a line in the trailer:

That's me with quick updates and sending lots of love to you!

brigid

FREE ways to support an indie artist: Follow me on all the social media: TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook. Follow me on Spotify.
Share my posts or music or art.
Very cheap ways to support an indie artist: Buy me a coffee, Join my Patreon page, Tip Jars!

My new single came out at midnight - i didn't set my alarm to wake and midnight and check the iTunes charts, which meant by the time I saw the charts it was at #180. I'll never know how high it started, but I don't care ... because honestly i didn't expect to break onto the charts at all. I pushed the pre-save campaign on this one, but i didn't ask people to buy the iTunes song. Bandcamp is more of a help to artists, but it's still pretty cool that enough of y'all (I assume it was y'all?) bought the song that I squeezed into the charts at all!

Unexpected victories making me feel great - thanks.

If you haven't heard the song, here are all the streaming ways to hear it: https://onerpm.link/211160667299
Here's a BandCamp download if you prefer. https://brigidkaelin.bandcamp.com/track/kentucky-with-you
Here's the official YouTube Music Video:

I'm busy packing and freaking out ahead of my UK Tour. I leave on Tuesday, and I'm SLAMMED with To Do Lists. But I got my taxes filed, my recording files completed (i do a lot of recording for other musicians and film composers), and am now packing my merch and compiling detailed homeschooling tasks for my children for when I'm gone.

Today I delivered Matzoh Ball Soup to a dear friend with COVID and after that porch drop-off, Graham and I stopped by the secret graveyard where my ancestors are buried. We talked about genealogy and Russian armies and the persecution of Jewish people and all kinds of history. Hands-on schooling is the best schooling.

Thanks for the love and support! I'm so thrilled to be back to doing what I love. The last time I was on tour, my dad was dying, but he joined me for 3 weeks of shows in Scotland. Since then I've had cancer treatment myself and somehow managed to survive a pandemic (so far), so believe me when I say I take nothing for granted.

Here are my tour dates:

If you'd like to sponsor any leg of our tour, you can venmo me a donation @brigidkaelin or:

buy us a gallon of gas!
buy us a dram of whisky!
buy us a full English Breakfast!
buy us a dinner!
buy us hotel rooms!
FREE ways to support an indie artist: Follow me on all the social media: TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook. Follow me on Spotify.
Share my posts or music or art.
Very cheap ways to support an indie artist: Buy me a coffee, Join my Patreon page, Tip Jars!

6 things you can do FOR FREE to support an independent musician.

Times were tough for indie-artists BEFORE pandemic. We were already struggling, knowing that live performances was the only consistent way to earn actual money. Then pandemic hit, and there went our only source of income. Perhaps you, too, have lost your entire source of income since the pandemic (and if you haven't, then what is stopping you from joining Patreon? It's $10/year, friends!), and in that case, here are some TOTALLY free things you can do to support an indie musician.

1. Follow them on Spotify. Seriously, just clicking that "follow" button is a MASSIVE help. (Could you do that for me, please, like right now?? I've only got 225 followers as of this posting. Please help those numbers grow!)

2. Subscribe to their YouTube channels. YouTube has stopped paying artists for views, unless you have 1000 subscribers and thousands of hours of views. If you hit "subscribe," that gets artists closer to getting paid for their music, and it doesn't cost you anything.

3. "Like" them on Facebook.

4. Follow them on Twitter.

5. Follow them on Instagram.

These social metrics aren't terribly important in and of themselves, but they add up. Brand collaboration is a potential source of income to an artists, but they can't get paid by brands until they have a certain number of followers. The same goes with spotify and other streaming platforms: you have to have X number of followers before the algorithm starts adding you to playlists or suggestions.

6. Leave their YouTube channel or Spotify albums playing in the background of your device. If it's on mute it doesn't count, but you could really help an artist by just streaming their albums all day long on that random old iphone that you let your kid play with. Put it in a closet, but stream, stream, stream.

7. Shop their Amazon Storefront. If you shop on Amazon (and yes ... I understand how problematic Amazon is, but also, having been disabled during a pandemic, Amazon made my life liveable, so I consider the ability to boycott a massive privilege), then please just click on a musician's Amazon affiliate link if they have one. Amazon will give a few pennies from each purchase to the musician, and we never know it was you who shopped or what you purchased. You don't even have to buy from the recommended products -- just use the musician's link to get to Amazon and they will earn click-revenue.

Hello, I've been blogging for FIFTEEN YEARS. Would y'all consider dropping me a tip? Thank you. All my Tip Jars and more are here.

Click to hear a first master of a NEW SONG! It's called "18 Months Later," and I wrote it during that odd waiting period when my mom was living long past her prognosis. I'd already turned down a leading role in a National Touring Broadway show because she was supposed to be dying ... but then she lived ... so how long can people live with life-on-hold? Anyway, sounds oddly familiar to pandemic-living, when we can't make plans. Have a listen to the preview (it is not a final master, but the song is there, available to my wonderful, loyal blog-readers!).

It was created by Patrons -- the reason I can pandemicly-record (which is shockingly expensive, even in the era of Garageband!!).

Now let's discuss homeschooling pods.

I'm hesitant to commit to homeschooling other people's children because part of why I need to do it this year is more to do with freedom of schedule than pandemic. I'd been leaning towards homeschooling for years because the public school schedule does NOT jive with the performance schedule of a singer-songwriter like me.

Pandemic has changed things a lot. I'm grateful to be able to keep my kids home without much collateral damage, but I'm having horrible feelings of guilt (as usual) about community. I want to find a way to go around from neighborhood to neighborhood offering FREE performances to other kids who are homeschooling this year not by choice.

Anyone out there care to set up OUTDOOR shows for your NTI/neighborhood pod? I don't want to live in a bubble, and I don't want my community to be the only one that benefits from my LOVE of teaching and my ability to MariaVonTrapp a pod of kids.

Also, what is the proper term for a "pod of neighborhood kids?" Like, a murder of ravens, a pride of lions ... hmmm maybe it's called a "privilege."

LOVE to you.

Seriously, someone please become the neighborhood-tour-booking person. I miss singing at schools. Let me sing in your yard. Masked. From very far away.

Seriously, can I convince you to join Patreon today?? What will it take? Do I have to shave my head? You can join anonymously.

Today I’m releasing a video I’m quite proud of: THIRTY musical saws playing my orchestral arrangement of “Happy Birthday to You”... in a minor key. I recorded it on my dad’s Death Day, and I’m releasing it on my mom’s birthday (which is just a few weeks before her Death Day).

Now is the part where you ask: Brigid, ARE YOU OKAY??

Why, thank you for your concern! I am. I think. Adulting is hard.

Last month I glanced at the kitchen calendar and noticed my 7-year-old had scrawled “Grandude’s Death Day” on one of the boxes. It made me smile, which was nice on a day I certainly didn’t need reminding of.

And so, rather than weep on that one-year-anniversary, I demanded time alone, sat with my musical saws and decided to conquer something I’d wanted to for over twenty years: record track after track, overlaying sounds and pitches, using my 20”, 26”, and 30” saws to see exactly what an orchestra of thirty musical saws would sound like.

Why musical saw and why thirty? My dad was the first to show me the saw, around the time I started playing the cello in elementary school. When I eventually read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, a paragraph jumped out at me, something that most readers likely just glided past:

It was an incredible sight. The dungeon was full of hundreds of pearly-white, translucent people, mostly drifting around a crowded dance floor, waltzing to the dreadful, quavering sound of thirty musical saws, played by an orchestra on a raised, black-draped platform.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpImnRaYbD0

The main characters had gone to the dungeon of Hogwarts to a ghost’s 500th Death Day party. It was apparently a weird and spooky event, as you’d imagine a crowd full of ghosts would be.

It was also the first pop culture reference I’d seen to the musical saw, and I swore one day I’d make a video like the one I’m releasing today.

This was 1998, before Harry Potter had been licensed, before the films, etc. I hoped that maybe I’d be able to record 30 musical saws for the movie someday, if ever one was made. (Imposter Syndrome struck hard: I know now that I absolutely could have found a way to get to Warner Brothers and create a musical saw orchestra for the film, if I’d been more confident!)

I hope y’all enjoy the video and find it charming, useful, maybe a little tearful, but not flippant. My mom’s 2nd Death Day is several weeks away, but I’m releasing this on her birthday instead.

Recorded on my dad’s Death Day; released on my mom’s birthday. My birthday is at the end of July (just like JK Rowling’s), and I acknowledge that this a weird way of dealing with grief. It took me trying to celebrate my first birthday without my parents to realize that birthdays are not a celebration of the day you are born; they are a celebration of the day you meet your parents.

As I’m not particularly looking forward to a birthday without my parents, let’s do this year in a minor key.

***

The Making Of!

How did I do it?

From a musical standpoint, I switched the melody from a major key to a minor key. People tend to associate sad things with minor keys and happy things with major keys. I typically play "Happy Birthday" in Ab major on my favorite Stanley 26”, so I switched to Ab minor (G#minor if you are a transcription-geek like I am) flattening the Fs and most of the Cs. That’s why the song itself sounds mournful rather than joyous.

From a video/audio standpoint:

There’s not really a way to record THIRTY split-screens easily, but the ACapella app has 9-part and 6-part screens templates. Basically I made four separate Acapella videos, each set to the same metronome tempo. 9+9+6+6=30. Yes!

I recorded the melody once, then put on headphones, switched saws and played along to my first recording while recording a second video. The Acapella app makes split-screens a LOT easier, but it does require you to do a perfect take; no mistakes, no “punching in” or auto-tuning. Here’s a link to a Tutorial on How to Use the Acapella app.
I arranged 3-5 melody parts (each slightly different depending on the saw) and layered track after track. There are 6 videos playing some version of the melody, but in various octaves on different saws.
Next, I created a new 9-part split-screen entirely composed of some alto lines.
Repeat for tenor harmonies, with 9 videos, since the tenor parts are typically the most interesting to me.
Repeat for bass harmonies, only six videos of these, and most played on my 30” baritone saw.
I added some reverb and mixed the audio -- I wanted the melody line a little louder, and for the bass & tenor parts to come at you from both sides (which only really matters if you’re listening with swanky swanky headphones, but, hey, I am a music geek!).
I downloaded each video to my phone, then to my laptop, where I used iMovie (hoping to earn enough Patreon money to justify purchasing a better software program soon, hint hint!) to put the pieces together.
The trickiest bit was lining up the sound wave files from each video, but i did that by stretching out the media files and making sure the wave forms matched, then listening obsessively just to make sure.
I used the “picture in picture” function on iMovie to make the 30 videos go together. I’ll make a youtube tutorial on that someday because it’s too complex and boring to go into that now. It involves exporting the mixed video four times and layering it.
I added some title cards! That part was mostly easy, though would have been much faster in Adobe or FinalCut. (I had to create some transparent PNG files in Google Docs to layover the final video in order to get the titles in the right part of the screen. The title cards that come with iMovie weren’t cutting it for me.)

I’m now just THRILLED to release it, and I’m even more thrilled to release it on my mom’s birthday. She was born in summer, and she died in summer. My dad was born ten days after the winter solstice and died before the summer solstice. There is so much magic in dates, even when we’re not looking for them and even when we don’t believe in them.

*The reason I’m proud of this video is NOT because of the musical prowess it took to arrange and perform; I’m proud that I finally recorded it. You see, I was taught by the music and business world that I should play dumb, and I’m tired of that. I’ve got skills, y’all, and I’ve wanted to arrange a thirty-part musical saw orchestra for YEARS.

Enjoy this blog? Maybe you've read it for years and want to buy me a cuppa coffee? $1/month (you can stop anytime!) and I'll love you forever and send you treats from time to time. Patreon is my lifeline.

I'M #1 ON ITUNES SINGER/SONGWRITER CHART!!!!!

How to support!

6 things you can do FOR FREE to support an independent musician.

Now is the part where you ask: Brigid, ARE YOU OKAY??

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