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(photograph by Dan Bayer)
Serving, mixing, recording, crafting and shaping Triad musicians one act at a time. That would be Danny Bayer.
Dan is also a Photojournalism student Randolph Community College in Ashboro, NC. A rockin’ self-portrait, no?
I know how very lucky we are to have Dan serve as sound engineer extraordinaire on the dotmatrix project. Thanks again, man.
[photograph by Michael Dunn]
Above is the working cover for the 14 track live album we recorded last month at The Green Burro for the Greensboro-based, Southern Rock, alt-Americana group, The Radials. Our featured act on opening night, Sorry About Dresden, will have their 10 track live album finished sometime this upcoming week.
Each band we put on receives a live album, professionally recorded, mixed and mastered in downtown Greensboro. We record live on 6 to 8 separate channels — depending on the amount of vocal mics and mic’d instruments needed — through our Mackie Onyx 1620 w/ a Firewire card straight to Pro Tools on our MacBook Pro. Dan “Mixmaster” Bayer, our resident sound engineer, has been mixing both live and in the studio for years with outstanding quality.
Once the album is complete, we license it with a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. It basically means that anyone can use the music, even remix or sample it, as long as they give proper attribution and don’t use it commercially. Of course individual cases of copyright permission can still be managed individually, so the artists have complete control of their product.
Our distribution plan is where we shift away from the traditional label route — not to say that we consider ourselves or strive towards being a “label” on any decipherable level. Each album will be uploaded to the Internet Archive, where fans can download the tracks for free. We’ll also work with artists to get their albums out to spots such as Last.fm, iLike and AmieStreet while schooling them on how their fans can help them in the internet age by doing simple, free things like scrobbling tracks to their Last.fm account when using iTunes or their iPod, tagging tracks, recommending tracks, etc.
We’ll provide a package of audio tracks to the musicians — along with cover art, a professionally mixed video and professionally shot pictures of the show — but it’ll be up to each band to get their music to online stores such as iTunes and CDBaby or physical retail spots. We’re not interested in managing the machinations of music sales. Our profit margin is much greater designing software.
Once the product has been delivered, we’ll provide a free download of each album, along with links off to corresponding media from the evening back here at HQ. All we ask in return from people downloading the tracks is their email address and an optional PayPal donation to help us recoup our initial costs.
All of this is a designed effort to build community around diverse local artists, with local music fans, while still providing access to people around the world with overlapping tastes of music.
The Radials Live at the dotmatrix project by the dotmatrix project is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Another John Ford special is hot off the presses and ready to be served. Yes, John Ford is a front-end engineer God. No, he does not pay me to say such things. He simply makes cool shit work on the intertubes, super fast and to spec.
I swear I could take on Silicon Valley if I only had 20 John Ford clones.
What we have to the right is a dotmatrix project event calendar. As new gigs are scheduled, we post the event to Upcoming.org, add them to the dotmatrix project group over there and this fansy, shmansy, customized badge dynamically displays updated show dates within our custom design. It’s not revolutionary or anything, but I dig it.
The super cool thing about this particular pimped badge is that now you can use it as a promotional widget on your own blog, Live Journal, web site, etc.
Yes, you — the person who says that he digs live music, but never seems to finds the time to hit a show. I know you — you tell your girlfriends that you’re going to check out this awesome underground band at this totally cool spot, and then you bail to watch a Sex in the City rerun.
Tell me I don’t know who you are.
So now that you blog and participate with every social network known to man, you can wash away your live music dissing sins by simply posting the following code into your sidebar:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.dotmatrixproject.com/badge/"></script>
For those of you whose sidebar is a different size than the default 210 width here at HQ, simply use the following code and customize the width setting to your liking:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.dotmatrixproject.com/badge/?width=210"></script>
Down the road we’re going to support various visual themes and potentially accept styles submitted by you, our loyal readers. We do things like this because we love you. And because without your uncontrolled fanatical support of this here project, it’s not going to go anywhere.
So if you love music and want a pain-free, cost-free, time-free, guilt-free way to support your neighbors trying to gain exposure in an industry that’s tougher than ever to catch a break within, well, you know what to do.
-Sean
(originally uploaded by Rikke Moltisanti)
If you think you can capture the essence of a live show like in the above picture, we need to talk. Same thing goes for filmmakers with the following video:
The Wigg Report: It Won’t Take Long from Sean Coon on Vimeo.
We’re putting on a monthly show in the Back Bar of The Green Burro in downtown Greensboro. The bands are playing for free, a sound engineer is recording the live show for free, photographers are shooting for free and filmmakers are shooting/editing music videos for free.
Cost of admission: FREE
The idea is that if we all collaborate to create art and release it into the wild — online and off — we’ll be opening doors for each other that might never have been opened otherwise. And over time, if people dig the concept, maybe we can turn it into a sponsored event with a sustainable business model to support live, local music in downtown Greensboro.
Along these lines, we’re looking to build a community of photographers and filmmakers interested in participating at least one time. That means you’ll be joining up with a media team and collaborating with the bands before the show on shot ideas. If you want to do more than one show, we’ll do our best to schedule it. If you want to work with a specific filmmaker, photographer or band, we’ll do our best to accommodate that as well.
We’re good like that.
Photographers: We’re looking to meet photographers who have access to DSLR cameras and can really craft a shot. If you have a great eye, you’re in. There’s no pledging involved, no hazing, no sleeping with farm animals. And while that last sentence read like an extremely male perspective on stupid things adolescent men might have to do in order to join something potentially cool — though this ain’t a corny frat — we’d definitely like the talented ladies in our community to participate just as much, if not more. So I promise, no more horrible analogies, ladies.
So if you’re interested in participating, please follow these two steps:
Filmmakers: While we’d like to have professional filmmakers participate on the project, we’re very open to amateur filmmakers and videographers. All we ask is that you know how to use a modern digital video camera, have a good eye and have at least some experience editing on non-linear systems. dotmatrix HQ has a digital editing bay with Final Cut Pro, so you’ll be able to edit with your co-filmmaker on top notch equipment.
If you’d like to join up, please follow these two steps:
Cross-Promotions We’re currently working on finalizing deals with local establishments to cross-promote the material created from the show. I don’t want to jinx the potential deals in the works by naming names, but I will say that we’re close to finalizing we’ve finalized a deal where a major movie theater with Carousel Cinemas on Battleground in Greensboro to present still shots and music videos from our show prior to the trailers run before each film shown in the theater. We’re also working on establishing a quarterly photo exhibit in a well known downtown venue to present the best shots of the previous three shows.
Both of these cross-promotions are in the works to market the name and work of our participating media creators.
So are you down or what!?
Wow.
That’s pretty much all I can say. Today, I just got back from my first trip to Boston. It was cold and rainy for the most part but a very interesting city.
I was in the walking city because Inflowential, an artist I manage, won first place in an mtvU competition to open up for Wyclef Jean at UMASS. It was my first time seeing Wyclef perform and it was definitely the most exciting concert I’ve ever been to.
He is the most passionate performer I’ve seen live and everything he did was with such amazing ease.
He kept us on our toes for the entire performance with the surprises of:
The picture above that I took from backstage shows right where he got everyone to take off their coats as well and wave them above their heads as we chanted “O-O-O-O-O” to a particular tune in support for Barack Obama.
The video below is very simple but touches my heart. I put together a quick video of two of my favorite clips of the concert, one from the beginning and one towards the end where his head was steaming in the chilly weather.
I had never seen something like this before.
I really hope you get to check out his live performance one day, it’ll be well worth it.
(originally uploaded by paulcollinsbeat)
We’re coming down the homestretch to the first show and yes, I’m feeling a bit antsy.
Nothing is wrong, I mean, so far we’re all on point — the media crew is collaborating with the bands, the bands are actually putting together set lists so we can make sure we film the right songs, Andy just bought a light fixture for the filmmakers at the show to use, Justin is knocking out posters to go out this weekend around town, Molly has been contacting the local media…
You know what it is? I just want everybody to have a great time. And as the show approaches each day, I guess I’m realizing that I have less and less impact on that happening.
I’m not performing. I’m not shooting. I might be helping with sound, but probably by simply staying out of the way.
I’m not used to this — this not doing thing.
Which is fine, because each and every one of the people who are making this gray matter burp a reality are ridiculously talented people, who have all done this before.
I need to get over myself and stay out of the way.
Being a pseudo-geek — I can’t claim, nor am willing to accept true geek status — I promise you that if you hop on board and participate in a monthly dotmatrix project gig, you’ll be privy to the most organized show for a non-HBO Concert event in the history of live performances.
Basecamp is becoming our communication hub, and while the idea is new to most of the non-tech folk I’m working with, I’m sure they’ll warm up to it as ideas start to flow and we all feel prepared on the night of the show.
The magic of a live performance is created by the talent — musician, filmmaker and photographer — in the heat of the moment, so I have no anal plans of over controlling the evening, but I do refuse to allow us to go live unprepared.
That shit isn’t “laid back” or “chill” it’s simply lazy.
