mike monday Archives - Mike Monday

2011 is the Year Of…

It’s been a long time since I’ve made New Years Resolutions. You shouldn’t either.

You’ll break them within a couple of weeks. And kicking off a year with broken promises to yourself gives your inner critic ammunition and will feed The Fear.

So this year I’m taking a leaf from Chris Guillebeau who gives each year a theme, and Chris Brogan who picks three words to focus on throughout the year.

These approaches appeal to me as when you’re not sure that what you’re doing is right, you can refer back to these words and themes.

2011 is my year of transformation. While I spent much of last year flying blind; not knowing where I was going or what I was doing, I’m now on a mission.

It involves working, thinking and acting in many ways that are unfamiliar to me and which I find hard. I think “transformation” just about covers it.

My three words for 2011 are:

Community – building a community of like minded people who I can help, and creating a situation where they (once I’ve worked out how to make the technical side of it work) can help each other. This also extends to the broader community. For instance I gave blood for the first time last year, and will continue to do that and find other ways to give what I can this year.
Passion – I’ve often “ended up” doing stuff, and “fallen into” projects. Many of these have been successful but I’ve never committed to anything with all of my being or for the long haul (i.e. my lifetime). This is because I’ve not summoned the courage to truly follow my passion. This changes now, even if it involves failure at first (or at second, at third, at fourth etc).
Practise – my playing, my performance, my writing and becoming a better individual. What’s hard about practise is that it is incremental and you don’t see the fruits of your labour straight away. You’re flying in the face of the 140 character “results today” society we live in. Without immediate tangible results it’s so hard to do it every day. But here’s the simple truth – the only way I’m ever going to pursue my passion is to practise.

What about you? What does your 2011 hold?

2010 – My Year in Review

Uber overlord of the blogosphere Seth Godin just published all he’s shipped in 2010, and asked us to publish a list of what we’ve got out the door this year:

“This might be a useful exercise. Doesn’t matter whether it was a hit or not, it just matters that you shipped it. Shipping something that scares you (and a lot of what follows did) is the entire point.”

Along with half the internet, I view Seth Godin as my personal guru; even though his blog is read my many thousands (maybe millions) of people, he has an uncanny ability to talk directly to me and inspires me multiple times per week.

So when he asks me to do something I do it. Here goes…

This website. I started working on version 1 of mikemonday.com in October 2009. That iteration didn’t do much that was useful, had an appalling design and hit the web in late January 2010. Since then I’ve done two major redesigns and numerous tweaks. I like it now.
10 tracks 10 weeks. This was the ultimate exercise in “shipping”. And I did it. I wrote my third album one track a week for ten weeks. I rarely had time to “make sure” and try out much more than my first ideas. This scared me senseless. But doing this made me physically experience what I’d suspected. It’s way more important to get it done than make it perfect.
My favourite blog posts. It often takes me longer to press publish than to write a blog post. That’s because I’m scared. Sometimes I’ll wait for days after writing a piece; the longest was about three weeks. But almost without exception, the posts where I felt most fear became my favourite.
The Music Success In Nine Weeks blogging challenge. This blog series vanished from this site when I transferred my blog to another service and I haven’t got off my ass and put them back up. Suffice to say that I read and implemented the steps in Ariel Hyatt’s book and blogged about the experience. For someone used to only writing and performing music, marketing myself was hard but talking about it in public was much harder.
Other music. 2010 was the year where I moved from from releasing music on record labels to doing it myself, and there were some bits and pieces that went out through traditional labels. Looking back, there are some advantages to someone else releasing my music, but these are completely negated by how disconnected I am from my audience.
My first YouTube video. I meant to do more of these but only managed one. I *hate* watching and hearing myself speak but I’ll just have to get over it. I need to work on my delivery because video is the ideal way for me to talk about and play my music to you. Expect much more of it in 2011.
You lot. Until recently this site has been largely about me broadcasting and releasing my shizzle. But I’m shifting my focus to your shizzle. After I got over my internal resistance to writing it, I finally sent out my first mailout yesterday and got an overwhelming response. I’m in the middle of answering all your wonderful emails and they’re still arriving (keep them coming). So far I’ve received replies from UK, Iraq, Kazakhstan, all over the USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Russia, Portugal and Spain. And after just one mailout, this is the part of my business that excites me the most. I now have a much clearer idea of what you need and want me to do. I just wish I’d overcome my fear earlier and got on with it.
The birth of Harry. Not a work thing, but my review of 2010 wouldn’t be complete without a mention of the little dude. Although it’s more accurate to say that Mrs. Monday did the “shipping” on this one (I guess I “shipped” 9 months earlier in 2009 – ahem), becoming a Dad is easily the most scary and wonderful event of my life.

So that’s me more or less done with 2010. If I was to sum it up in a word? Transition.

How was yours? What did you ship this year?

Oh and have a very Happy New Year…

Happy Holidays

One of the most thorny and guilt ridden issues for those who work for themselves is when to stop and have a break.

But this year my decision is much easier as I have a young son who’s about to have his first Christmas.

So I’m signing off for 2010. Here’s wishing you a very Happy Christmas and wonderful New Year!

I’ll be back, bright and early in the new decade on Monday 3rd January where I’ll continue my mission to help, motivate and inspire you to write, promote and release your music.

And I’ll let you know how you can win the opportunity to write a tune with me. Yes you! Make sure you subscribe to my newsletter to stay in the loop.

Festive Cheer – Mike Monday Styleee

Tis the season to be merry!

And I’m doing my bit to add to this merriment with my suitably festive remixes of four tracks from my third album.

Tried and tested last weekend where they almost caused a yuletide riot, these house mixes of Do Be Do, Robot Go Disco, Old Joanna and Contains Nuts are sure to get you dancing around the turkey, and the emphasis is most definitely on the “parrrtay”.

How To Make The Same Music More Effective – #7 of 100

The individual parts are great. They work together beautifully. But you’ve still got a niggling feeling that the finished whole is less than the sum of its parts.

Face it. It sounds flat and boring. Why?

Your music lacks contrast. There’s no light and shade. Contrast creates tension and release, the driving force of music. Without it your music will sound lifeless, no matter how brilliant the parts.

I learnt this from Nirvana. The first time I heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” I was blown away. Two contrasting sections – the sparse laid back verse and the heavy distorted chorus. Extremely simple yet unbelievably effective.

In house and techno there’s often a slight nod to contrast in the form of a break. The rhythm comes out. Everyone’s supposed to put their hands in the air and then (usually with an almighty woosh) the rhythm come crashing in again. But there are more interesting ways you can create contrast.

Remove almost everything

Taking stuff out is often more effective than slamming in with everything you’ve got. Not only does it make for a huge moment, it gives you somewhere to go.

In my forthcoming club remix of Robot Go Disco I build the track to a point where it’s almost noise, then (with an almighty woosh) take nearly everything out leaving just the kick and bass:

Add chord changes

Create contrast compositionally.

If you’ve got a section which stays on the same note, add some chord changes. Or if you already have some, do the opposite (or change them).

I wait until almost the end of my Robot Go Disco remix to get to the chord changes, which after nearly six minutes on the same note, creates impact:

Change instrumentation

In week 4 of my 10 tracks 10 weeks album project I got completely stuck. But by concentrating on creating contrast I finished Crush, and it ended up as one of my favourite tracks off the album.

The early versions of Crush had two distinct sections – one with chord changes and one without, but sounded completely flat:

But in the final track I contrasted the two sections by changing much of the instrumentation:

Simple to complex

You’ll also hear that I didn’t just change the instrumentation of the two sections in Crush.

If you make one section that’s rhythmically, harmonically and/or melodically simple then make another that’s more complex. You’ll end up with a piece of music that sounds technicolour, not black and white.

What other music uses contrast to devastating effect? How much do you think about contrast when you write music? What techniques do you use to create contrast? I’m sure I’ve made some glaring omissions – feel free to share below in the comments.