As far as copyright and publishing is concerned,  a ‘songwriter’ is the person that comes up with the lyrics and the melody to a song. There were quite a few instances on Reality Jockey, however, where I felt the guest musicians contributed so substantially to a song that it created a vibe I never could have achieved on my own. For this reason, I’ve decided to give these players writing credit, so they can shower themselves with pennies after the songs get played on Spotify, or maybe pay a bit of their rent if one of these tunes lands in a film or a tv episode.

If you followed along with my RPM Challenge in February of last year, you will remember the song Shangri-La. I wrote the chords and the lyrics, but invited Traci Weingardt to play bass and sing backups. The bass part she came up with totally transformed the song, and she should definitely get credit for that.  Traci also came up with her own backup harmonies, which were much different (and definitely cooler) than what I would have come up with for this song.

I asked my friend (and Boolean Knife member) Mike Koelling to play bass on the song Rookie of the Year. Once you hear the song, you’ll see why I felt he should get a writing credit as well. I’m no slouch at electric bass, but Mike just blew this song out of the water. He built an incredible groove, essentially pulling the whole track together. I can’t imagine how the song would have turned out without him.

Mike’s brother Tim Koelling is a bad-ass sax player and has appeared on many songs of mine over the years. On Reality Jockey, he appears on three. For the song Decidedly Blue, Tim took my chord chart and rough recording home and arranged parts for Tenor and Alto sax, both of which he played on the recording. The song was released awhile back exclusively to my Patreon patrons through the Kaleidoscope project, but the song was too good to not be on this album.

Finally, I invited my friend Zach Smolinski to play finger-style acoustic guitar on the song Clothes of the Devil. All the guitars, actually. Even though I told him what chords to play, Zach went about his parts in a way I never could have, and came up with a rhythm figure that I built the entire song around. While not really a by-the-letter ‘writer’ according to common standards, he definitely deserved credit.

As I mature as a musician (and a person, probably) I’m learning more about the magic that collaboration can bring. Reality Jockey, like all my previous albums, visits many different sonic lands, but all of these musicians and their contributions take my sound to a whole new level and, going forward, I can’t imagine recording any other way.

I finished the principal recording for my Reality Jockey album last summer, but had been waiting for funding to release the album properly (mastering in a great studio, vinyl & cd production, radio promotion, and publicity). Well, my freelance work has been amazing lately, and I’ve hence been able to fund the entire project.

My 44.1k 24-bit wav files went off to Chicago Mastering Service today along with some general notes about how to approach each of the eleven album tracks. I had to acquire ISRC codes for the songs which serve as a kind of digital fingerprint that helps with tracking plays and any royalties that might come my way. My preferred mastering engineer, Margaret Luthar, will prepare the tracks for vinyl pressing, cd manufacturing, as well as digital distribution.

After all the mastering is finished at CMS, they will cut a lacquer that will be sent to Chicago’s brand new vinyl pressing plant, Smashed Plastic. They will coordinate the plating process, where the lacquer gets turned into plates from which the vinyl LPs are pressed.

What’s left for me to do? I have a medium-sized list, which includes finishing the album art (inner and outer jackets, and the labels that go on the record itself) and also the art for the compact disc booklet. Before release, I also need to register my songs with a performance rights organization which helps collect royalties. In the past, I’ve used ASCAP for this, but there is a newer artist-focused company I’m also looking into. Then there are the Library of Congress copyright forms I need to fill out.

When I can determine the exact turnaround time for the vinyl, I will coordinate with my publicist and my radio promoter to determine the best schedule for releasing the project to radio and press.

The wild-card here is the music video. I have a writer/director whose work I love, but I can’t find any good contact info for him anywhere. I’d like to at least start a conversation with him, because the general idea is to release the music video a couple months into the promotion cycle.

All in all, I’m thrilled to get the ball rolling here on the album. If you’ve been following my blog at all, you probably know by now it was hard to sit on new material for so long! Soon it will see the light of day. Finally!

For the past few months, I’ve been brushing up on my Spanish using the DuoLingo language-learning app. Along the way, I’m gaining XP points and earning the virtual ‘Lingot’ currency as I complete goals. Yesterday the app gave me the option of doubling my Lingots if I could run an uninterrupted 7 day streak. I chose to take the bet (does not involve real money). I’ve found myself even more driven to keep up my studies.

The XP, Lingots, and various badges in the free DuoLingo app are an excellent and positive example of ‘Gamification’ which is defined as “the application of typical elements of game playing (e.g., point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service.”

A few months back I noticed that the Shazam app (which identifies songs by their sound via the phone microphone) also displays lyrics to many of the tunes. Shazam is connected to musixmatch.com, which is a lyrics database. I know that my own songs pop up in Shazam, but was pretty sure my lyrics wouldn’t. I went to musixmatch.com and saw that users can enter lyrics to songs. I found 70 or 80 of my tracks on their site, and went to town cutting and pasting so my lyrics would be in their database, and consequently, the Shazam app.

Along the way, the system would give me positive reinforcement for each song I would enter. Currently I have 141 ‘points’ and am a level 6 ‘Insider’.

Gamification has a different slant here. My goal was somewhat self-serving… I just wanted to get my own lyrics in the database. But still, I am participating in an unpaid data-entry task that musixmatch.com relies on to make its product work. In the case of MusixMatch, the points, levels, and badges make free-labor into an engaging video game.

I entered lyrics to about 25-30 of my songs and received 141 ‘points’. Even though I was cutting and pasting, this still probably took about an hour of my time.  Here you can see the MusixMatch ‘leaderboard’ (another mainstay of gamification). Our buddy Rosyid is at number one with 12786 points. By way of a little rough math, that’s about 90 hours of pro-bono data-entry work. But hey. He’s a ‘Hero’. The leaderboard says so.

While the Disney Amusement park is beginning a (relatively harmless?) app to gamify the process of waiting in line for rides, the megacorp had already tried using it behind the scenes in their laundry services department, where a leaderboard kept track of the fastest employees, and marked the names of the slowest in red. At its worst, gamification can ruin workspace morale. and even lead to physical injuries. This gamification did not feel like a game for most, who reported that increased competition deteriorated workplace relationships and increased on the job accidents.

I get the flashing buttons. I get the endorphin rush. I appreciate that it helps me to sharpen my foreign language skills and e-learning in general. During the summer, my RunKeeper app inspires me to get out and hit the pavement. But in the same way any helpful tool can be used for a negative purpose, for every positive use of gamification there seem to be a handful of harmful ones.

What kind of gamification is going on in your favorite apps? Is it helpful? Harmful? Let me know in the comments below.

When I’m doing work and need a chill soundtrack, I most often turn to the music from the 1982 Blade Runner film, composed and performed by Vangelis. Lately I’ve been digging a little bit deeper into my ripped cd collection, and recently realized I have the Chariots of Fire soundtrack that Vangelis composed (and won an Oscar for) a year earlier in 1981. The mood is surprisingly not that different than Blade Runner. Meaning to say, you could take the theme from Chariots of Fire if you hadn’t heard it before, and put it over the final scenes of Blade Runner and it would fit great to picture.

I remember Chariots of Fire as one of the first compact discs that my dad bought. I think it had the fancy designation of being a fully digital release back when that was a little rare. So not only was it recorded digitally, but also mixed and transferred digitally. The disc had printed on it the corresponding three letter code to represent this: DDD.

I think I had only ever heard the theme song (called ‘Titles’) before. The majestically synthy lead over an echoic snare drum, with a simple and earnest piano melody. You’ve heard it.

The second song, ‘Five Circles’ which must refer to the Olympic logo (as the film is about Olympic runners in 1924), begins with a borrowed familiar melody… “rockets red glare… the bombs burst-” and then diverges into Vangelis’ own theme. The melody is carried on a synth that would normally be played by a french horn in a regular orchestral score.

The song ‘Abraham’s Theme’ could totally be on the Blade Runner soundtrack, as it is more atmospheric and in a minor, moody key, with little descending shrieks falling in the background.

Conversely, ‘Eric’s Theme’ is more majestic. Here Vangelis is doing something interesting with his approach. The main melody is played on a bell-type sound, but at one point doubled with a synth that has ‘portamento’ on it. That means that when switching between notes, the sound slides up or down from the previous note to get to the next. It stands out against a soundtrack we’re interpreting on a classical music level. Usually when somebody plays a french-horn type sound on a keyboard, they take care to replicate the nature of the french-horn. You don’t dial up a horn sound and play the keyboard like a piano. It was an interesting aesthetic choice for Vangelis to let us step out of the imagined synth orchestra and use a feature that’s purely synthesizer. Hear what I mean around 24 seconds in.

On ‘100 Meters’, Vangelis takes a break from the orchestral, and goes total synthesis. His trademark analog lead sound makes an appearance, but the background is out-of-the-park spooky. Rando percussion and audio spiders crawl around the mix, when all of the sudden: church organ? Vocal choir? We’re right into the next track all the sudden and we’ve got a transition that’s at once pleasing and eerie. An interesting choice and I”m very interested to see what the heck was happening in the movie when this happened in the score. This tune, ‘Jerusalem’ is wrapping up the 6 featured songs. Track 7 is 20 minutes of the film’s actual score, but I’ll save that for another time after I watch the movie.

I’ve been reading “The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic”, gifted to Maureen and me by our friend Jenny. For the book, author Jessica Hopper has compiled 50 previously-published articles on everything from the lack of woman-forward roles in Emo lyrics and Jim DeRogatis’ ongoing R. Kelly exposé, to varied and colorful memories of the Chicago scene over the past 15 years. The articles stretch from Jessica’s time writing for zines (Punk Planet, TinyLuckyGenius) up to her recent work for major outlets (Chicago Reader, Spin, Village Voice).

Choice excerpt:

“[Lady Gaga] one-ups all those who decry her work and platinum pop as not ‘real’ music- because it’s all “fake”- by making it the most fabulous fake that ever faking faked. To be sure, Gaga’s “fake” is at least as real as the “real” of any self-conscious Brooklyn beardo ’bout to be discovered by Pitchfork.”

I love it! Since my own blog began, I’ve been writing a bit about some of the shows I’ve been attending, but haven’t spent much time reading other coverage or criticism. It’s great to read about art from the perspective of another writer- and especially a woman- who often brings up points about music and lyrics I never would have noticed before due to my privileged position as a white dude. Jessica is an amazing and entertaining writer, and I’m thrilled to have my hands on a book I can’t put down.

Follow Jessica on Twitter and pick up a paperback copy of Collection of Criticism today!

I decided last night that although at this point it doesn’t seem very exciting to me, I really need to put a live act together in the service of my new album. I just need to take the leap. More than likely, I’ll totally get into it and really enjoy the process of playing out again, but right now I’m seeing the live performance aspect as more of a vehicle to spread awareness about the Reality Jockey album. The songs are awesome and I want to get the most mileage out of them as possible, and the biggest way to do that is to play live shows. The bonus about playing out is that I could probably find a label to help me release and promote the project properly- rather than my trying to come up with all the money on my own, which is proving to take longer than I initially thought.

Tomorrow I am talking to a great drummer named Pete, and will go from there. There are a few hurdles I need to overcome, and I’m not sure how I’m going to surmount them. I’ve managed to do it in the past so I know I can do it again. The big one is that I don’t personally have a place to practice, and don’t have a spare $250/mo to rent a rehearsal room. There are ways around this… I may not need a dedicated room and could manage renting a room by the hour. My initial thought is to have a drummer, a keyboard player, a guitarist, and bassist. I would like to *not* play guitar for once, and focus on just singing. That sounds like a fun challenge to me, and I could pour my efforts into my vocals rather than worrying about playing an instrument the whole time as well.

Usually when I go about putting a band together, it’s just a matter of picking whoever is available that wants to do it. This time I’m taking a little more care, and reaching out to professional players that I admire (who are also available and want to do it!). It’s touchy because- while I’m happy to split gig money equally- I’m not in a position to pay the players for their practice time. This means that they’re going to have to really dig the project if they’re going to invest their time in it. I’m also thinking about presenting the recorded songs to the players and inviting them to participate in bringing the songs to life in new ways, taking into account each player’s particular style.

I have a great guitarist in mind too, and will maybe email him tomorrow after I talk to the prospective drummer. He is a teacher and composer, as well as a very versatile guitar player. I jammed with him a bunch of times back in junior high, as a matter of fact.

Since I’m focusing on advanced players, there will be less practice time needed. To build a local following, it sounds like we should be playing a show in the city/burbs about once a month. I’m thinking to a player who finds the music interesting and the participation rewarding, this isn’t that huge of a commitment.

That’s it for now. I’m excited to get this ball rolling a see where it goes. Will update you again soon!

When I first built williamsteffey.com in 1999, my goal was to create an immersive multimedia adventure. There were no clues about what the navigation glyphs meant. You had to click on them to find out where they led.

Even still, the names of the subpages were also a bit fancy. All of my writing was under the header of ‘Script’ and all my music was under the header of ‘Sound’. The subtitle of my website up until recently had been “The Esperanto Pages” not because any of the material was in the Esperanto language, but because I felt my work at the time was speaking to the human condition. Maybe I thought that my art touched on some universal language of its own.

I think many people landed on the site looking for Esperanto learning materials. In November of 2016, I launched my new website, ditched the glyphs, but kept the name “Esperanto Pages” and the oblique site sections.

Since I’m trying to reach a larger audience, I feel that I should keep my site simpler. So people know what they’re getting at first glance. It’s not the old days of the web anymore, and attention spans are very small. People coming to a site with music and writing aren’t necessarily going to want to play Myst. Last week I ditched the Esperanto title and replaced it with “Words and Music”. The ‘script’ section is now called ‘words’, and the ‘sound’ section is now called simply ‘music’.

I don’t feel like I have to be all esoteric as I did before. I feel my songs and stories are pretty whacked out to begin with, so it’s much better to have that balance- have the presentation of the songs and stories more straightforward. People landing on the page are going to understand right away that I make music.

This reminds me of something I’m horrible at that I really need to get straight. I rarely have a good answer for people when they ask what kind of music I make. It’s totally cliche (not the music, I hope, but how nobody likes to be pigeonholed).

So I was out a few months ago with some people, and there was another musician in the crowd. Somebody asked him what kind of music he made and he waffled for a few minutes and ultimately conveyed zero information about what his music sounded like. (And I saw how ridiculous I look most of the time when I try to dodge that question myself).  Am I really that unique? Precious? Get over it, man!

Most people want to know ‘who’ I sound like. I could name my influences, but the main guy is known universally for his anomaly one-hit-wonder, and not his other six albums. (hint: SCIENCE!) If I mention him, people are going to walk away with a totally wrong idea about what I do. But I guess they’d at least remember something about me that might inspire them to look me up when they get home.

I dunno. I’ll be thinking about this more and will come up with something good. If you’re familiar with my music, feel free to leave your ideas in the comments. I’d love some input!