Week 3...the Voice in my head

Continuing on with my music success in 9 weeks blog.

I wanted to urge all independent musicians looking to take their career into their own hands to check out Ariel Publicity. In the world of the crashing record labels there have been some people making a living and a name for themselves by helping the DIY musician. One is Derek Sivers, who Esquire Magazine calls "One of the last music-business folk heroes." Derek is the owner and creator of the massively successful CDbaby.com and has made digital and physical distribution painfully simple for the independent musician. Another is Ariel Hyatt who is teaching her brand of Social Media marketing and the DIY ethos through an abundant amount of resources in her books and website. 

I am taking part in the music success in 9 weeks blog challenge, based on the book of the same name, in effort to be selected to win a free marketing campaign. Basically I read a chapter, write a blog and spread my music further while making fans in the process. I hope through these posts I can share what I have been learning and hopefully inspire to do the same and take on DIY in the new social age.

Optimize my website.... Optimization!

I followed all of Ariel's suggestion in this chapter and as usual everything is spot on. One thing I wanted to talk about a little further in detail is the use of "Intro Pages" and Flash. These 2 things are super annoying. Anytime I come across an Intro page on the web this little voice in my head says, "no shit i reached boringsite.com, that's what I typed into the address bar". Back in the day intro pages were on so many websites and I could not be happier to see them disappearing. With so much web surfing being done on Iphones these days, intro pages even make less sense. They typically do not offer any information and they slow down the loading of the site.

Flash...ugh. So annoying. GET ME THE INFORMATION!!!! We, the collective WE.... the Royal WE, have no patience. "We" should be able to view your website on the lowest common denominator P.O.S. computer, on the slowest dial up line, in the seediest Internet cafe from a third world town. I don't want to download any software to be able to get simple information on anything. Flash not only takes long to load, but it seems way outdated to me and cuts off access from anyone checking your page on an IPhone.

Other things discussed in this chapter had to do with maintaining the consistency of your brand through online and offline media and an important suggestion to make your website load within 3.5 seconds or be dammed to loose the majority of your audience. I also learned about the need to satisfy the Whats in it for me factor of the Internet.  I decided to give away a MP3 a week for awhile until i release at least 20 and make them available only to my mailing list members. After I have released enough, I will let the mailing list vote on what songs should be re-produced and then included on my follow up album. I thought this sounded like a cool idea and a way for fans to take part in the record.

Since I have started this blogging challenge I have come across a lot of Blogs that deal with DIY promotion and wanted to share some of that information as well.  Tight Mix is a great site that I found that that also offers some great advice and interesting blogs including an inspiring video of Young Guru discussing the state of the music industry.

Tommy

Benefit Show in Encinitas Friday Night

We were invited to play a benefit show tomorrow night for Daniel from Slightly Stoopid. He underwent a pretty massive surgery a few weeks back and was back on stage in 10 days playing with Stoopid. He was left with massive medical bills so a bunch of San Diego musicians are getting together for a benefit show. Members from Stoopid, Tommy Dubs, Mike Pinto, Shoreline Roots plus many others will be performing. We play at 11:00 and could not be more stoaked to help out.

For more information click here

Huge thanks to Earth Steppers, Dj Carlos Culture and the whole Club Kingston Crew for the great show last night. We had a great time, played for about 2 hours and had a wonderful turnout. 

"Oh Lord, Won't you buy me a new Genz Benz"

Just kidding, I would never buy Genz Benz....

BUT!!!!.. I saw a used Fender Japanese P-Bass short scale with a hip shot and wanted to buy it. I have had the same Bass for 10 years and thought I was due to upgrade. Anyway, I go home to sleep on it and when i decided that I should buy it, I call the guy and ask him to put it aside and he told me he was unable to sell if for 17 DAYS. Ugh.... Who knows what I will be doing in 17 days???

Bleh!

Spread the word about our show at Winston's this Wednesday and we will be posting more dates by the end of the week. Also, don't forget to sign up on the mailing list. I will be releasing another song this week called "Everyone Goes" which is brand new and old available Free through the mailing list. Thank you to everyone that has been signing up so far.

See you at a show!

Week 2 - Ariel Publicity Blogging Challenge

This week was all about creating the perfect "pitch" to describe your sound. For a musician, describing the sound of the music you create can be a challenging ordeal. I think an artists natural instinct is to want to be undefined or outside of labels. I totally understand this, but unfortunately bookers, press and labels run off of this narrow minded machine that insists on categorizing everything. After thinking about this and taking part in the exercises in Ariel's book, I started to see how essential it is to be able to hook someone with a pitch about your music.

I could have struggled on this for hours, trying to figure out the best way to sell my self and still sound "cool", but instead I figured i would get some help from my smart ass friends on Facebook. I came up with an idea, posted it on Facebook and asked for peoples ideas.

"Punky Reggae and dub influenced urban sounds. "Sounds like the Offspring of a Manu Chao, Diplo and the Clash threesome", was my first attempt and right away some errors where pointed out by my smart ass friends.

First thing is the word "sounds" appears twice and it makes the sentence to wordy, the second thing is someone could take the, "sounds like the Offspring", out of context and equate me to sounding like one of the bands I hate the most.

After some tweaking I we came up with "Punky Reggae and Dub Influenced urban sounds, the bastard son of a Diplo, Manu Chao and Clash threesome."

I am pretty happy with what I came up with and think it does a great job describing my sound.

Thank you to everyone who has been signing up on the mailing list, I hope you are enjoying the free downloads.

New Pages

Check out the new pages on the blog, the Store and the DUB page which is dedicated to Seismic Leveler and our weekly DUB show live and direct from Winstons in Ocean Beach. Videos and a link to download and subscribe to the podcast on ITUNES.

Believe (she tell me everything)

Let me know what you think of this new Demo track. I will be making it an exclusive download for my mailing list members later this week. This is from my soundcloud page where I have some other remixes and demos up as well. Sooundcloud is a great website and they have a killer IPhone app as well. I highly suggest checking it out, there are tons of remixes and full dj sets up there for fans of Dub, Dubstep, electronic and the like.

Believe (She tell me) by Tommy DUBS

DO WORK!

If you are just coming across the Tommy Dubs Website for the first time, you may find it odd to see me posting about my career goals in plain site for everyone to see. Well to be Honest it is a little weird, but I am taking part in a 9 week program intended to drastically increase the success I obtain in the music industry. Ariel Publicity is an excellent resource for musicians and she is hosting a blogging challenge that will end up awarding a custom marketing campaign to the winning musician. After re-reading music success in 9 weeks by Ariel, I noticed that I did not include my goals. in the next year My goals are:

Expand my live performances into every market within a 3 hour drive
Sellout of all of my remaining Gadfly Stock. I have boxes of Gadfly records in my garage that are Taking up valuable instrument space.
Get regional radio play
Book 1 high profile Producer gig
Sell 100 downloads a month continually
Place 1 song on TV or film
Have a mailing list totaling 1000 readers
Consistently pull 250 people to shows

According to Ariel's book only 3% of people write down their goals and actually taking the time to complete this step drastically improves your chances of attaining your goals. This, however is not the only step to be taken. It is obvious to me that consistent reminders of my goals and small steps to be taken daily are going to be the key to reaching them. Another great point that I took away is celebrate daily success's and stop beating yourself up. The book suggests writing down daily success's and then reading over them. Doing this a few times so far has really been eye opening and motivating. Well I hope you take something from these blog posts and I am really excited to look back over the next 9 weeks to see what I have accomplished.

If you feel so inclined to help, buy a CD, tweet this, subscribe to the blog, contact me via email or show up to a show.... Or show up with a million dollars and that can be a shortcut!

This video that I am posting is something I recorded today. It is an version of the song "True love will find you in the end" by Daniel Johnston and just like the last one, it includes audio from a different crazy neighbor. I live in the Warzone... OB.. Where the Ghetto Meets the Sea.. and I LOVE IT!

We Will Walk

Last week the Seismic Leveler Crew and I got together to record some acoustic versions of a few tunes at the old Beach Pad. Well Ocean Beach is a loud place with airplanes, trucks, motorcycles, drunks and other loud noises popping off all the time. We got together and jammed for 2 hours until the crazy Russian lady that lives across the street started threatening us. It was comical. Well here is one take from that session complete with us getting yelled at. Enjoy :)

Ariel Publicity Blogging Challenge

As a lifetime musician I have always searched for ways to improve my career, or better yet, someone to do it for me. I am sure many musicians out there can relate to getting smoke blown up there ass by some hopped up promoter wannabe and their promises of fame. I have always taken the same approach to these people... I would rather they show me versus tell me. Where am I going with this? Well I guess it goes back to the old adage, "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself". I first became aware of Ariel Publicity over 5 years ago when I was searching for Internet marketing for my band at the time Gadfly. Well for one reason or another I did not hire Ariel, but I kept following her progression via social media and now she has turned into somewhat of a marketing guru and is highly respected in the indie community. She still offers great marketing campaigns for indie bands at a pretty good price.

A few months ago I bought her book, "Music Success in 9 weeks", which basically empowers us musicians to take our careers into our own hands. There are many principles in this book that I have not thought of and it breaks down a daily process to successful marketing. I thought the book was a good read but have not since put the principles into practice. The other day I also read her "indie Maximum Exposure Guide" which is an Epic read. This last week I have been about putting these ideas into practice.

Today, I was poking around on her site and saw the Blogging Challenge and decided I wanted to take part. The challenge is to blog about her book and my progress in implementing it's suggestions and if I win the challenge I get a free marketing campaign. I figured this was a great opportunity to further my career by following the steps in her book as well as possibly being rewarded by winning the challenge.

Over the next 9 weeks I will post weekly entries about the steps in the book, my weekly goals and what ever else i decide to include along the way.

Step 1. Get my book back from Touch of CAS....

Exclusive Free Downloads

Put your email into the widget below to join our mailing list and receive some exclusive downloads from Tommy Dubs. These songs are only available to our mailing list members and we included the new single "Bring Fire on You". We also included our version on "Crazy Fool" by Mano Negra. Sign up, listen and enjoy. Also, we would appreciate any help getting your friends to sign up on the mailing list as we will be making free music available all the time. Thanks :)

Winstons OCT 27 Ad

BRING FIRE ON YOU

So I made the switch! I have changed and maybe I have grown up a little. I have joined the ranks of millions of fixie riders, thousands of bad electro rock lovers, hundreds of Miami vice t-shirt wearing fashionistas, dozens of artists and a handful of normal people. I have left the side of pirates, champions of free information, hackers and cheap-asses and joined the legions of legitimized “owners” of software and reliable computers. I have bought a MAC. My PC sits in the corner ashamed and distant as my fingers caress the keys of a much newer, sleeker and exciting IMAC. I double click programs… they open… I run plugins, record audio and mix on the fly and not one hiccup! Will I ever see the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) again? Will I ever have the feeling inside of me of rage burning in my belly with my actions stopping just shy of throwing my mouse at my monitor?
Drama aside, I have been recording on PC for 12 years now which means I have never paid for software and have never had a reliable setup. This is not to say that my PC system with a good working version of Protools did not do me good, but moving to Protools is a game changer. I do not like to make things hard for the sake of it and this jump to Protools and Mac has been an eye opener. I am writing/recording/mixing much quicker and I think the quality has taken leaps forward.
Here is a song I recorded last week called “Bring Fire on You”. This is either going to be on an EP or my next full length. This is a demo Version!
Bring Fire on you (Bigga Rhythm) by Tommy DUBS

Una Vida Sin Fronteras

Back around 2005 or 2006 I was part of a project called Sin Fronteras where 3 bands got together in Argentina and locked themselves in a studio in the center of Buenos Aires and recorded for 3 days. Some of those songs made it on to my solo release "En Los Campos" and some did not. This record sold out in Argentina, but we never released it in the US.

GO LEM System was one of the bands that took part in the project:


The other band was Aztecas Tupro from Argentina who are like brothers to me. They showed my band all over Argentina while we toured there and also performed Gadfly and Stucky songs as my backing band while I lived there: