Written by Andrew T

Good Morning Angels,

In less than two hours last Friday night I formed a band, wrote and recorded thirteen songs, and distributed an album. What did you do last Friday? Did you party? Study for a midterm? Watch a movie?

Am I bragging? Yes. But I’m also trying to teach a valuable lesson. That lesson is that we are living in some damn crazy times for music making. What started out as a night of sitting around the table, eating delicious homemade pasta with shell noodles (because they really are the best) turned into arguably the second best music venture I have ever been in. Move over Grade 7/8, junior high school band! Sayonara that band I was in for one day in high school (aka Black October)!

We’re called Bicentennial (www.myspace.com/bicentennialisus) and we are Guelph’s supreme 4-piece acoustic improv band. Don’t think so? Please prove me wrong. Let’s have a band off!

Now, I’m not just sitting here in my bed relishing this past weekend, trying to incite a riot and not be sad that it’s currently Monday. This article is about the economic and technological ease with which bands can do their thing.

Granted, not everyone can afford a laptop. And it’s also true that instruments are expensive. But compared to back in the day, it’s way easier to record some music than ever before. I’d just fumble my way around a 4-track, and don’t get me started on the complications of a mixing board, but I, like millions of others, can press record in GarageBand and then export the song to iTunes. And being a student on the University of Guelph campus, I find it hard to believe that you don’t have a friend with some recording software on their laptop that you can punk for an afternoon. You know why? Because I’m your friend! Wanna start a band? We can use my “home studio!” Then we can meet for “practice” and maybe crank out some “tunes.” The quotation marks are to show my skepticism about the quality of my music, not for any sexual innuendo. We clear on that?

As for the distribution portion of this production, all I did was .zip the album, upload it to Mediafire, and post the download link on my tumblr (desirefortiger.tumblr.com). I spent five minutes doodling to come up with the cover. Easy peezy!

Probably the most important thing about this process is that we exist in a musical landscape that values improvised sounds. Thank Charles Dickens for that! Because, check this, I can’t play an instrument. Sure I can physically play one (I have hands and a mouth), but I don’t really know what I’m doing at all! And that’s okay! It’s improv! It is just as valid a record as any jam session I’ve ever heard recorded. The album (titled That Refuses to Die) has moments where the songs are actually “good,” but it’s mostly just a grand artistic statement about Friday night and the four friends who spent it together. There’s still some art in there. I’m just sad that Scott wasn’t with us…

Again, am I bragging? A little. Am I hyping my own band? Also a little. But what I’d like to think I’m doing more is kicking those of you in the butt that need butt kicks so that you go out there and record that damn song you’ve always wanted to record. It’s not hard to make and release music. It’s just sometimes hard to accept that you can make awful, awful songs. I know I can! And before March is out I plan on recording and releasing an EP of some more awful songs. With it being so easy to put out music, what’s The Arcade Fire’s excuse? An album every two years? Give me a break!

If you want to hear Bicentennial (and believe me, you don’t) then you can hear some stuff at http://www.myspace.com/bicentennialisus or download the album from http://desirefortiger.tumblr.com/post/429553300/tonight-paul-tommy-cayley-and-myself-formed …Dang, that’s a long link…