I Gotta Consolidate

In fact I may even use that as a song title! 2010 began with the resurrection of the Weekly Songcast, but I feel it’s current format and aimless direction is restricting me creatively and it’s also one more thing to get done when I could incorporate the same kind of thing into my main musical blog.

After completing my third FAWM Songwriting Challenge I feel that I have grown as much as I can, simply putting out songs by myself. I’m really pleased with my progress and my results over the last couple of years, but there is something I haven’t done enough of and I finally realize why I haven’t.

That thing is collaboration. The FAWM community does a lot of collaboration and on the few occasions I have participated it has been very rewarding, but I usually shy away from doing much of it and I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t into sharing the creative process more. Well I think I have the answer:

This website!
Yes really. Not that it’s doing me wrong of course, but I realize how much emphasis I have put on the importance of writing songs all by myself, probably to make for all those years I didn’t do it. I guess it’s what I have created as an identity for myself and everybody has issues when it comes to breaking down any kind of identity that we have created for ourselves.

To be honest I think it’s an ego thing, but it’s definitely stopping me from being more connected with many people who share the same interests as myself.

The truth is that to be a great songwriter, a great anything in fact, you have to share. I already have written well over one hundred songs since I started and I want to record many of them properly, so I can proudly say to myself that I am a songwriter, now I want to be the best songwriter it’s possible for me to be.

So I’m taking away the cause of this dilemma of "Do I keep this great idea for myself as a song or do I allow someone else to play a part?".

So, what liberated me in the beginning has really outgrown it’s purpose and is now holding me back. I’m really happy with this realization. There’s no woe about stopping the weekly songs because I’ll still be posting them over at the musical home of Boy at Heart and what’s great about that is I’ll be able to post the collaborations too and I’ll be able to post them weekly, daily, monthly or whenever I want to.

An extra little service I’ll be able to provide in doing so will be to help promote some excellent musicians and songwriters that I have come into contact with around the world. Even better for me is the fact that they cover many different genres of music, so I will be able to learn from them too.

This is just speculative right now. FAWM is nearly over and my mind is a bit blank right now, but I’m looking at doing this outside of FAWM too. My dream now is to connect with other musical alchemists and establish a really cool, creative relationship with those who I seem to particularly click with, so as to create some music that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

It’s time to let go of the "Lone Ranger" style that I seem to have created for the Boy at Heart and become more connected. I’m also up for working with other types of creators like: animators, film makers, writers and who knows what else.

In the future this could see me making some in-person collaborations too which would be cool. I’m building a new studio this year, so I want to make sure I’ve got plenty to do in it!

Thanks to all those who have contributed their time and comments to the Weekly Songcast. It was a great ride and it served a great purpose. This is just the closing of a chapter, not the end of the story.

More Music for 2010

It is getting closer: The time for making empty promises to yourself (New Year’s Resolutions – sorry for the cynicism), drinking too much and asking yourself the question, again – Where did the last year go?

It is also the time of year (well this once anyway) for the Weekly songcast to rise from it’s ashes and take flight again. Yes I have banged on about it already, but after deciding to take down the countdown page, which was messing up the rest of this site due to some boring technical details, which I don’t really understand I’m putting this post up now as the precursor to the relaunch, just so you know!

So mark it in your diaries if you haven’t already. December 30th at 18:30 GMT there the program will resume! I don’t know how it will develop over the course of the next year. Hopefully into something good , but for now it’s business as usual, as it was between December 2007 and August 2009.

To be honest, this website is as much for my benefit as it is anyone else’s. If I know I have a deadline then it gives me more impetus to fulfill my obligation to myself: To continue and to improve my songwriting. It keeps me writing. Who knows, it may even help me develop a knack for telling stories, which is something I would love to do.

Comment, add, follow, listen, download and Enjoy!

Planning a Return!

I’ve missed you. I’ve missed posting here every week a new song to document my development as a songwriter.

I felt that I had peaked with my songwriting and didn’t feel that I could bring anything new to the spirit of the WSC, so I stopped doing it. Also there was the distraction of having other projects on the go.

Well some of those projects have been completed and a couple of them have brought me to the conclusion that they are so boring I’m going to lay those to rest instead because I want to feel in the flow again with my songwriting.

What a tragedy. I got swept up in doing stuff that I find unbelievably boring, which I thought would be liberating initially, but turned out to be just the thing I speak out against in my posts here and elsewhere on the internet. What I try and encourage people to do is listen to and follow your heart and what did I end up doing? Not following my heart!

Having said that though I have been doing some stuff that is in my heart and it is the fact that I have been listening to it that helped me come to the realization that I was on the wrong path. No biggie, just a relief that I finally got some answers to my own questions.

I haven’t written a song for quite a while and it got me thinking about the fun I used to have with the WSC, even on some occasions when I thought nobody was really listening. I still loved doing it because I was writing and that’s all good.

I am still busy, trying to figure out how all my creative output can sustain me financially speaking, so as far as supporting myself I may still have to do a few things that are not as exciting as creating music, but only for the short term. With the time I can allocate to it, the WSC will be redesigned, rebranded and relaunched on December 30th 2009 at 18:00 GMT (UTC), marking the 2 year aniiversary of the very first post.

What will (may) differ is the content of the posts. This is really a tool for me to keep the momentum of my songwriting and creativity going. It is first and foremost a tool for me to consistently write. I missed it. I was very disappointed in the fact that I only wrote 2 songs for the 50/90 challenge in the summer and it made me feel bad.

So this is my way of seeing if I can patch up the wounds of not honouring my heart’s desire for a while and getting back to being who I want to be.

It may have been a different story if the site had more comments. I would probably have kept it going, but I thanks those who did comment because it really did make a difference to me. This time though I am not so concerned with the number of comments. I am here to write songs and if you like them, great, thanks. If not, great, thanks.

So 2010, much like the beginning of the WSC (that started 2 years before) It will kick of the year in style. The feelings I had doing the WSC became ingrained in me on a day to day basis, so that even when I wasn’t writing or posting on the site, it still contributed a good feeling. I want that back.

I am now focused on providing more with my music writing and production talents for 2010 and, once and for all making music my job, in whatever form that takes. Who knows exactly how, but I’ve got it and I’m ready for it.

Expect to see me just writing my songs, putting them here and hopefully improving all the time.

Are you with me?

Thanks!

Rob Cooke – Boy@Heart

Enjoy the New Website

Rather than simply leave everything standing here I want to just make sure that you are aware of the fact that you can still experience my work over at the Boy@Heart official website, which is going through some big developments.

I would love to attract a thriving community of people there by providing a membership area – something that I think will provide a sense feeling of trust and friendship with you rather than simply a case of listening to the songs and reading the articles of a stranger.

Quite how it gets implemented is not 100% definite yet, but that is where you come in. If you have any suggestions you can leave them on the site. There is already a fair bit of interactivity already.

What I am thinking of doing too is revisiting the Weekly Songcast over at the other site. I did a rough, performance video of Don’t be Afraid of Your Shadow, which gave me the idea of going back over the songs here for people who haven’t discovered them yet.

Apart from truly inspirational moments when an amazing song just comes out I have put writing as many songs as possible on hold, so I can have a chance of recording the songs I have written properly. There’s a lot of them! Inside the member’s area (once it is ready) at www.boyatheart.com, the music will be available for free download.

It is not all about music though. The music has a purpose to inspire you and help guide you in following a more empowered path in life, one of your choosing and one that will see you achieve what you truly desire in life, so I am excited about that because I know how good it feels to have achieved what I have so far.

So make sure you get over to where it’s happening, connect with me, whether it’s via Twitter, RSS or on the VIP list and I’ll see you there.

Enjoy!

Rob Cooke – Boy@Heart

The first 2 volumes of The Weekly Songcast 2008 are available to buy as downloads from Nimbit. Depending on demand, they will be available on CD in the future and from other online digital retailers like iTunes etc…

Bonus: The tracks on both these albums are the same tracks featured here in the weekly episodes with a few exceptions and differences:

First of all the tracks have all been re-mastered to sound better, especially together as an album. Also 3 tracks on Volume 2 are alternative recordings, previously unpublished here. Details of which are given in the store.

If you want to buy, simply follow the links below and the rest is easy!

• The WSC Volume 1
• The WSC Volume 2

Enjoy!

If you have read The Story page and the Manifesto in the homepage box then you will know how this project came about and a little about who The Boy @ Heart is, so if you have read that much already and you are still here reading this then, thank you, but also you may be interested in how I aim to be as unique as I can be with my musical output.

Apart from being a bit of a self-growth junkie I am also into having a mission rather than just writing songs and releasing them without really knowing why. This may alienate some people from getting my music, but that’s OK because I’m not trying to appeal to the entire World. I’ll be open about my philosophies, insight, inspiration for what I write and just stuff I like, who I am, that sort of thing.

What I hope people find intriguing here is that these songs are laid bare and almost without exception they are all recorded live as I write them, so what you get to hear is the song as it is born, almost as I do when I hear it for the first time, before it is refined and polished. I do believe that many artists wouldn’t dream of presenting their music in this way, but I want to authentically express myself through my music and this just seems like the most natural way for me to stay true to my philosophy of expressing the music first and foremost rather than giving the songs a make-over before showing them off. My image is myself, as you would find me on any given day in any given place.

I will apply my own production techniques to what I have written; improving, modifying and adapting the lyrical ideas if necessary and recording them in my studio, releasing them as albums and giving some of them away, but these versions will always serve to remind me and anyone else who listens that the heart of my music is exposed without anything to hide behind or be shielded by. Some people, no doubt may prefer the songs this way.

That is how I aim to be myself. Every week between Friday and Sunday a new song will appear and be available to download for free. I will also make these same songs available for sale for those who feel compelled to support the cause and any other interesting ideas I come up with to make the experience at The Weekly Songcast richer I will include here.

As things progress I would love to this to grow to a point where it is viable for me to travel to wherever there is a demand to play live. That is a big ambition of mine; to be able to travel overseas for a few weeks at a time, playing a handful of gigs to people generous enough to want to support me, picking up new supporters as I go and returning home for a while to get back to creating more inspiring material and I know that I could do this without having to put up with being really famous.

I can’t think of a better job!

Lastly, I am still digging deep in my imagination for an idea for a business that serves independent musicians & artists so well that it enables anyone who has the talent and a true desire to make a living doing it. We have to make this world a better place. We can only do that if we all encourage, support and guide each other to find what we love to do and to do it. If we are doing this then we need not spend any time thinking about things that we do not want in our lives. I can do that in the field of music because I love it and I love those who love music, so I will as best I can.

All songs are now directly downloadable via the small "download" link in the player. My tropical studio is almost ready for me to start production on these songs and allow them to really bloom. I will be making them available as a download-only quarterly collections, which will contain 13 songs each (lucky for some eh?). What will also be available for sale in the future will be final productions of my compositions as albums in their own right. The songs will differ slightly or a lot depending on how much they have evolved since being published here. A new website network is also being developed to give more information about what I do and to gather all my current and future projects together. I might even get adventurous and make some videos!

So once my studio is fully operational (I have had some electrical power issues) I will be doing what I have been dreaming of doing for years; recording music in my studio in a tropical paradise! The next part of the dream will be to make a living doing that and forgetting what the inside of a typical office really looks like!

Download to your heart’s content (it’ll also give me an idea of which songs are the favourites)

Enjoy!

After some evaluation I think I was asking a few too many questions, so I have reduced the survey down to two. It should take no less that 1 minute to complete this survey, so please feel free to do so. I am mainly interested in finding out what type of people are into my music, which will allow me to effectively direct my promotional activities.

The survey is here.

I appeal to you… or maybe I do not. This is what I need to know.
I would love to discover who and where my ideal listeners are, so that I can pander to your every whim and provide all the value you demand as dedicated followers of cool music!

I am about to start promoting this website properly and the more information I can gather about the kinds of people who actually like this music, the better I will be able to hone my craft to make it as good as it can be for its chosen audience.

Its like this. In order to effectively get the word out about my music I need to spend as much of that energy on those people I know will enjoy and feel some benfit from listening to the songs instead of wasting time and energy on a trial and error basis. What use is there of writing songs for a living and sharing them with people who might not appreciate that sharing? Much better to take the time now to find out those people who want to invite The WSC into their music library.

I encourage all visitors here to leave feedback. I would really apreciate you take the short amount of time to fill it in. I also encourage you to be very, honest with your feedback. If you hate my music and you decide you never want to return to this website and you tell me so. I will be very grateful fro the feedback because you will giving me valuable information about the kind of people I am doing this for.

don’t hold back on the comments. In fact I will most likely publish the funniest response in the future, so if you’ve got something to say, good or bad say it because to me it is all good because it is all enlightening information to me.

Get critical…. Here!

If you use the Podpress plugin for your podcasts, wait before you update WordPress to 2.6! I found out the hard way today when I discovered my media file attachment was not saved in the post, thus no song!

I had to revert back to 2.5.1 to keep continuity on this website. If you don’t use podpress every week, you may be OK. News is that is should be fixed in about 10 days from now.

You can read more details here at WordPress support or here at Podcasting News.

For information from the developers of Podpress, look at ths thread from the Mighty Seek Forum

Keep podcasting regardless of the hurdles!