A few months back there was a thread about board members who play instruments. This thread is like that, but taken to the next level. This is for members to post links to their own personal musical creations. It’s meant to be a place (at least, as I conceived it) where people who have already established themselves as regular posters (meaning not people who signed up yesterday to post here and get more traffic to their myspace page) can share their music. I think everyone should be welcome to respond to the posts, but they should be careful of how they regard and comment on the creation of their fellow members. This way, everyone feels comfortable sharing.

I have tried not to promote my band or this record label before in this community, even though my group has been signed for over year and our debut album is three and half months old because self-promotion makes me pretty sick. But recently people have been asking me questions about it. My solution: create a thread where we all can share and therefore the discussion isn’t only about me. I am interested to see what other people have come up with.

So, with that, I will start the proceedings, since that's basically why I started this:

My band is Ecclesia and we are signed to Arena Rock Recording Company, a label that has released music by: Minus the Bear, Mono, Calla, the Gloria Record, Swords Project, Talkdemonic, et al. www.arenarock.com is their website, and it’s a little outdated and goofy (our page is riddled with typos and askew facts, probably because we aren’t that important of a priority). www.ecclesiamusic.com is our own poorly designed website, which also features some errors that we are too lazy to fix. We initially pressed 1,000 “handmade” copies of our debut album, which was released on March 21 of this year, when I was only 19 years of age (I was 18 when we signed the deal). The artwork is really amazing, and some featured pieces or our art director’s/friend’s work is on our website. The first mp3 listed on our main page is a song that’s been featured many times on Nic Harcourt’s radio show in L.A, called “Morning Becomes Eclectic”, and it was played enough to have actually made the KCRW charts for the month of April, which was pretty cool for me, considering Harcourt’s pretty lauded stature in “Indie” music. The album is kind of half ambient/electro-acoustic experiments turned into almost-pop songs and half is just plain old ambient/electro-acoustic experiments. We have three members, all of whom are primarily guitarists, although we used any instruments we could get our hands on, whether we knew how to play them or not. I basically did all the recording/engineering of the album on my computer. I think it’s really easy to listen to and I hope you enjoy it.

not eric, this is a splendid topic and you laid out the ground rules beautifully, not only in terms of when it's appropriate to post your music, but in your gentle reminder that it's worth thinking for a moment before commenting on somebody else's creation.

I would also like to suggest that this might be a good place to post established members other audio endeavors, podcasts and such.

I'm looking forward to listening, not eric. Thanks!

Now Playing: "Ooh Las Vegas" Gram Parsons The Complete Reprise Sessions

I completely agree with both of you guys. I'm also in the process of forming a band (my roommate and I have been playing together for a few years now), and it would not only be nice to be to receive constructive criticism from people that listen to good music (or, at least, what I think is good), but also, it would be nice to get advice on recording/promoting/etc from people who kind of know what sort of sounds and direction you'd like to go (rather than from some long-haired metal dude at a music store who is in a local Motley Crue tribute band).

not eric, thanks for the band name drop....i'm glad you had the courage (for lack of a better word) to do it. i'll definitely have to check out your music.

Noteric, I've listened to some of the music off of your site and on emusic, and it is definitely a nice easy listen. I also really like the website layout. The scans of art are really beautiful. But now, a very important question: Which one are you?

I've been in a band, but left it, on not so great terms with the singer, because I didn't actually like the music we did (which is a pretty immediate issue). Since then I've become a prolific artist on the beautiful program that is GarageBand. I'm currently learning guitar, after having already learned the piano and the drums. I've always imagined that, if I do enter the musical business, it would be as a drummer or a producer, a job that has always interested me.

haha i'm the dude in the robe in the 100+ degree heat of the phoenix summer. that was a looong afternoon.

i definitely hope that once the "music bug" has more or less passed me by that maybe i can continue to be involved with music as a producer. it can really hard work (and it call also be mind-numbingly boring), but it's usually pretty rewarding i'd say. and with your multi-instrumental skills, pak, you can buy some decent DAW hardware and produce yourself (a great way to learn...when you screw up you aren't screwing up someone elses song which takes the pressure off for sure).

i'm glad everyone likes this discussion.

Even though I'm kind of embarrased, I'll throw in my old band for the sake of the thread. Be warned, the recording isn't very good (what can you expect when it's free?) and we weren't together long enough to get very tight.

The name of the short-lived band was Squanto. We were only around long enough to play 7-8 shows before most of the members left for schools in other states. We recorded 5 songs, three of which ended sounding slightly less horrendous (the other two were basically unlistenable.) Unfortunately, the guy who was supposed to mix them bolted on us. We were pretty close to spliting by that point, so we did a shabby mix job and left them as the jems they are now. ^^

We were kind of a weird mix of punk/synth/hardcore. Lots of piano, synth, loud quitars, punk beats, breakdowns, and screaming. It all sounds terribly dramatic, and believe me, it is. I played keys, which was actually pretty fun in a heavier band.

Anyway, we never made a real page before we split, so you can only find us at myspace - Here. You're welcome to be as hard on it as you want since we've been split for a couple of years. -_-

I like this Ecclesia stuff, Not Eric. It's nothing to set the river on fire, but quite nice nonetheless. Are you guys working on a new album? Do you have any ideas on where you're gonna head next with your music? I'd be interested to hear.

Hey not eric, I think you guys have a really good grasp of creating interesting sounds. You get a really full-sounding feeling when listening, and you manage to get to the highs/lows/changes without it being boring. A lot of ambient music can be boring and take too much time to develop, but you guys aren't like that....basically, you do a nice job of keeping the interest of the listener so that they want to see where the sound/music is going.

I know there's gotta be some more people out there with recordings that are holding back. Trust me, nobodies is going to be as embarrassing as mine.

Don't be bashful!

thanks. yeah i agree that it's not that spectacular, but that it's dynamic enough to not be a total bore. we sent out to make the best record we could but we felt pretty limited by the technology, or, more specifically, our inability to use the technology with more success.

we are working on a new album, and we have a much better grasp on our medium now and i think it shows. our ambitions are getting loftier, the sounds are getting better, and our guitar skills are at their peaks (so far). this second album we've been working on for almost a year now, it's becoming a monster. we really only have about 8 minutes of music basically finished, but we have about 2 disks worth of songs started/half-finished. the album is several longer pieces (one psych-drone-rock-ish, one shoegaze to ambient, one more electronic) and a few of these shorter 2 minute "interludes" that are acoustic based and then electronically manipulated.

this song is one of the interludes. it is unmastered (and needs a final mixing, i think), so if you're using like iPod ear bud type headphones it might distort a litte. it sounds pretty solid on a good pair of headphones though. it is yet untitled: http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=DB99CEB219281CF4

quote:

Originally posted by not eric:
thanks. yeah i agree that it's not that spectacular, but that it's dynamic enough to not be a total bore. we sent out to make the best record we could but we felt pretty limited by the technology, or, more specifically, our inability to use the technology with more success.

we are working on a new album, and we have a much better grasp on our medium now and i think it shows. our ambitions are getting loftier, the sounds are getting better, and our guitar skills are at their peaks (so far). this second album we've been working on for almost a year now, it's becoming a monster. we really only have about 8 minutes of music basically finished, but we have about 2 disks worth of songs started/half-finished. the album is several longer pieces (one psych-drone-rock-ish, one shoegaze to ambient, one more electronic) and a few of these shorter 2 minute "interludes" that are acoustic based and then electronically manipulated.

this song is one of the interludes. it is unmastered (and needs a final mixing, i think), so if you're using like iPod ear bud type headphones it might distort a litte. it sounds pretty solid on a good pair of headphones though. it is yet untitled: http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=DB99CEB219281CF4

hey, i never said it wasn't spectacular! haha.

anyway, yeah, definitely good headphone music. let me know if you ever travel to washington, dc for a show. i'd like to see that kind of show live.

yeah i'd like to see that kind of show live too, so then i could rip it off and be able to play shows myself. until then i guess dc will just have to wait awhile for ecclesia. but i'm glad you like the song, maybe i'll post another new one some time soon.

Hello. I'm lame and only have myspace... I figure the real site thing can wait until after we start playing shows regularly. My alter ego is Nagilly Bumpkin, but I'll be rerecording three of the demos on the page in Denver with my band the Congress All *s - hopefully just before school starts again. I don't really care about self promotion or whatnot at this stage (so no pressure to listen , cos so far it's really just a hobby and I'd still do it if nobody listened, but I figured what the hell. I might as well throw it out there.

I also do musique concrete style stuff with recordings of dishwashers and other household appliances (under the moniker "la fee electricite"), but I haven't put those up anywhere yet.

Cheers!

here

I saw this thread and I thought hmmmm... I wonder if my old band from the early 90's has any music on the net and lo and behold it does!

If anyone wants a good laugh at some of the stuff I was doing back in 1992 click the following....

R!Society

I remember the day we drove up to Calgary and recorded Cold World in an actual studio! Man... what memories!

quote:

Originally posted by vitunkrapula:
Hello. I'm lame and only have myspace... I figure the real site thing can wait until after we start playing shows regularly. My alter ego is Nagilly Bumpkin

Do you realize that the download option isn't working on your Myspace site? It could just be my computer, but I don't think it is.

quote:

Do you realize that the download option isn't working on your Myspace site? It could just be my computer, but I don't think it is.

I am finding myspace music pages hit and miss lately. One visit and the songs will not stop buffering and play but other times the songs will start as soon as the page opens up.

Vintunkrapula.... your music is.... intriguing. Human Race and knife chasm and son... are great and the other two are quite interesting!

I hear a lot of potential in the music so good luck with the Congress All *s (fabo name too)!

Yeah - if the download's not up I'm afraid there's not much I could do - even if I knew what was wrong. Myspace has been crashing lately. Oh well - just another reason to get off my ass and make a real site.

thanks for listening! As you probably realize, all of the songs up are 'under construction.' They will be improved, deficencies will be genocided (with the possible exception of knife chasm/danger song - I'm having a tough time beating the first recording of that.).

well while the rest of our musical metacritic members have been deciding wether or not to post their music (i know there must be a couple more of you out there!), i started a whole new project... www.myspace.com/ericanthonygraf

only "tape noise" is a recent song and even that's just a re-interpretation of a song i wrote 2 years back for the first ecclesia record. i would guess all of these are about two years old. hopefully, ecclesia will start recording again and this will be put on the shelf, but if not, this page will be a hot bed of new music. and in the meantime, tonight i'm playing with my church's black gospel inspired praise/worship band in front of a thousand people at a church conference. holy crap!

Apparently there aren't alot of us out there that are or have been in bands... or maybe they don't have anything online...

If anyone hasn't listened to my stuff, (it's a good laugh... ) we were huge Depeche Mode and Erasure fans, its a throw back to the cheesy synth you heard in the '80's. Warning though.... Cold World can be stuck in your head for a long time!