Writing about music

I thought I was falling into this pattern where I would write band reviews on Thursday and Friday, and other content on the other days, until I was done. That will still be the overall pattern, but there are a few glitches.

First off, my writing on Monday and Tuesday this week instead of Thursday and Friday last week was that I did not feel like I had gotten the material down well enough yet. They were both bands I had not seen, which was certainly part of it, but also, I want explain my process a little.

What I like to do is listen to all of a band’s available catalog a few times. Ideally, I will listen to it backwards and forwards. No, not checking for hidden messages. I mean that I think there is some value in listening to the music in the order of release to see how they’ve grown, but also value in listening to the newest first, to see who they have become. I’m not sure that the order actually makes that much difference, but if you are listening more than once, might as well change it up.

Ideally I will have two listens, as well as checking out videos and Twitter accounts and such, and then I will write a draft of the post. On my third listen, I will have the draft up and add notes about my reaction to specific songs, and if there are any key words or things that pop up, and I will incorporate those.

Since that is a lot of listening, and I still want to listen to things I already know I love regularly, I can’t really do more than two a week. Well, I’m trying to figure out what to do about the Killers concert, because there were two opening bands, and I might do three reviews that week, or combine the two into one post, and I will figure that out after next week when I cover the Gin Blossoms concert.

I do always tweet my blog posts when they go up, and use hash tags for key words. I have gone back and forth on whether to actually send it to the band: @ versus #.

First of all there is the question of whether they will care at all. For the bigger ones, it probably doesn’t matter as much, because they will be getting some press anyway. For some of the smaller ones that are coming up, it could be important. Okay, maybe only nine people will read the post, but they could easily be nine who had never heard of you before, and I post all of the pertinent links. Well, I don’t post to iTunes, but if you have any links at all, and are on iTunes, you surely link to it yourself, and besides I really hate them, possibly unfairly.

If I say good things I think, hey, you can show your Mom! However, I have not ended up doing straight reviews. There is always this inclusion of my personal reaction, or how they fit into the overall scene, or how they can improve. Generally I end up being fairly positive, but I am not raving.

Also, I end up feeling very inadequate a lot of the time. Sometimes I just don’t have the vocabulary or the background knowledge. Oh, I really like that…is that a slide? What do you call that? I’m not even sure that I’m using the term bridge properly. (Though, depending on my readers, it may actually be better that way.)

So, those are the concerns I’ve had, and a reasonable concern might be to add that I am inviting every one of those bands into my head, because after all of that listening, they are a part of me. I have songs from Parachute, and Boys Like Girls start playing in my head all of the time now, without that ever being intended. I’m not too worried about that. Plus the entire question of whether it even matters.

However, I am encouraged by a few things. One is that I have been picking up new followers who are not only bands, but also that do promotion or music software or things like that, with a general interest in music. Alright!

Also, I got a tweet from someone yesterday asking if I had ever heard of Sunderland, and giving me links to them. Okay, she is a fan who contacts many people, not someone who has necessarily been reading me and certainly had not read that post. Anyway, I told her I had reviewed them and gave her the link, and this is what she wrote back:

“Well said. Fair and honest. Glad you gave and continue to give them a chance.”

I had a lot of doubts about that one specifically, because of the focus on their youth, but someone who reached her Tweet limit trying to get people to pay attention to the band she loves (I don’t know if she has a personal connection) thought it was okay. So, maybe I’m not so bad.

Which is good, because it is pretty much what I feel like I need to do, and based on material I will be doing it for a long time.