Tag: Monthly Notes

July was spent in Greece, primarily on Crete. Musically, it was all about getting my album tracks finished to the point where I can hand them over to the Mix and Master engineer. There’s something about working in boardshorts and a singlet, whilst sipping a beer in a Greek taverna, that lends itself to the detailed work that is needed to take a track from ‘Done’ to ‘Ready to Release’:

In reality, I think it was the fact that I had paused all other music activity for the last 7 weeks that has allowed me to focus on the final tasks for the album – no daily splurges (daily idea generation), no weekly BandCamp releases (R.A.W.), no compiling and rehearsing of any live sets, and no chasing down new opportunities for some live gigs (in Greece or back in Sydney).

So, all that is left to do on the album is those bits that I could not do remote from my home studio – mostly all the hardware synth (Moog Sub 37 and Novation Peak) parts (the baggage allowance doesn’t let me take the heavy guns on the sabbaticals unfortunately). The plan is to have that all done by the end of August to hand over to the Mix and Master Engineer.

….AND prep for a live gig I have coming up in Sydney on 11 August:

Grab your tickets here!

…AND prep for Burning Man 2023, to do more of this:

Busy month ahead!

Later…

So, it was 5:30 in the morning and I was getting ready to head out for my morning training run, and I put on my Bluetooth headphones and selected my Daily Mix #5 from Spotify, first track Question Reponse by Worakls, an artist I have only recently discovered (another live electronic muso!

So, imagine my surprise when it sounded really familiar, just like something I would do, although a bit more tweaked and better mixed than I would do. Then the Rhodes electric piano starts, and it’s exactly MY RIFFS! F#@king Hell! The dirty French f~%ker has stolen my track! How the hell did he mange to get all the parts to rework in such a cool way, where did he steal it from….and, I admit, I was just a little bit chuffed he’d thought my track was worth plagarising!

It was only in the lift down from the apartment when the track fizzed out as the bluetooth connection was lost that I realised my headphones had connected to my iPad that had started playing my track Bluez, at exactly the time I pressed play on Spotify on the phone (with volume off!)

With over 350 tracks produced in the last 10 years, I sometimes forget some of the cool tracks that warrant a rework and to be played live. This is one of those tracks – Bluez from November 2014:

We’re still in Crete on the #mustfinishthealbum sabbatical, with progress going fairly well on getting the 12 track album ready for the mix/master engineer when we return. Here’s where all the magic happens:

A much reduced set-up, which is coming with its own issues when I need to tweak the parameters on the Moog Sub37 part….and it’s resting back in Sydney (add it to the Todo-when-back-in-Sydney list).

So that’s about all the news for now. Back in Sydney from 1 August when the focus will shift to crafting my sets for Burning Man 2023 which will only be 4 weeks away….Eek. And somewhere along the line I will need to catch up my BandCamp Release-A-Week (R.A.W.) production…I’m about 8 weeks behind schedule on that – last quarter of 2023 is gonna be BUSY!

The G.O.A.T.?

Well it was for me. Last weekend’s set at our first Cirque de Nuit was (for me) the greatest of all time (so far). OK, so there’s a few caveats! I just finished putting the video together, you’ll see what I mean – what an amazing crowd:

Thanks to all those who supported, not just during my set, but also for being such an awesome crowd the whole night! And thanks too to my co-organisers and music providers – Go South (Anet), Funkytronic (Jean-Marie) and Goldilocks (Chris)…what a team. Jump on Facebook to follow our community page for plenty more news of some crazy circus fun to come – Cirque de Nuit.

That’s about it for the month’s news. Cirque de Nuit planning and doing was pretty much it for May’s music news…that’s more than enough.

It’s all happening at Cirque de Nuit!

I’m super excited to be teaming up with 3 good friends and purveyors of fine music on May 20th, to put on a night of DANCE, MAGIC and MYSTERY. Our playground will be Boogie Mountain (previously the infamous Kit and Kaboodle), right here at the Pottz Point Hotel (well that’s what I think it should be called).

There will be DJ sets from: Go South (Anet Redmer https://soundcloud.com/gosouth), Funkytronic (JM Guitera https://soundcloud.com/funkytronic) and Goldilocks (Chris Kreis  https://soundcloud.com/goldilocks_syd), and of course, a Live set from me, sprinkled with dance, magic and mystery. If you’re not already on-board, head over here and grab your tickets: https://undiscovered.events/cirque-de-nuit

Ok, so that was not strictly April music news, but it’s the main focus right now. April kicked off with one of my best ever live sets played at Sunset Town’s – The Good, the Bad, and the Burners event. 4 amazing days spent on the most spectacular site, with equally fantastic people….too good. Here’s a snippet of my closing track (full set can be seen here – https://youtu.be/uHrEBEZf7BQ):

Burning Man 2023 is all booked in for this year, so the annual Playa set preparation will be starting very soon.

That’s it for the April Monthly Notes update – Ciao!

Wow! Today is my 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY working extremely hard (for meagre pay) for Fine Tune Pty Ltd. Ten years ago I swapped out my corporate office for a music studio.

And the worst thing is that my boss is withholding all my long service leave (not even sure that’s legal!).

So it’s on we go, nose to the grindstone. I’ve played at a bunch of parties so far this year and loving getting back into the Live groove.

Right now I’m working hard on my set for the Easter event – The Good, the Bad and the Burners! Get your tix from this link.

Also, the album is coming along (fairly) well…albeit a little behind schedule with all the live playing, but that was always going to take priority.

So, it’s a short, sharp musical notes post this month…work to do!

Right, it’s 2023 and about time we got a few dates locked in.

Save the date – Saturday 10 June 2023, for the Steve Pottz – Album Release Party.

“Live” will officially be available for download on that day and we might just have to a have a bit of a party to celebrate. Venue details to follow. For anyone who’s interested, I am going to track my process through regular posts here and in my email shout outs. If you’re not yet signed up and want to see the behind the scenes process in creating an album, then get onboard here.

I am going to use the album production process to also take a deep dive into my live performance set-up (hence the album name – “Live”), as well as my production process. I want to see how I can adopt a practice mind-set to establish ongoing improvement and development, in both these areas.

What does that mean?

Well, there’ll be plenty of live stream of me ‘practicing’ my craft. No! not endless playing of scales and pesky arpeggios! I have a long list of skills I want to improve and will use musical games whilst streaming to practice those. Things like “How to capture ‘those moments’ when jamming live”, “How to incorporate some funky jamming on the Moog Sub37”, “How to inject more dance floor energy into the live set”. Tune in if you want to see how that all works….or doesn’t as is often the case.

2023, as for every year, is going to be about getting out to play “LIVE”! No more hiding behind the COVID excuse… time to get out there again.

I’ll also be continuing with my R.A.W. series starting R.A.W. ’23 right away. All the tracks from R.A.W. ’22 are available here:

R.A.W. stands for Release A Week and it’s the tracks that I complete each week and upload to Bandcamp. It’s also Raw because the music is not in a commercial release format – I am done with the creative process (it is ‘Done’) and have created a quick mix and master, but there could still be a number of tweaks and updates to do to the music. From this selection of music I make later decisions on whether I want to include that track in my live repertoire (take it from ‘Done’ to ‘Live’) and/or whether I want to do a commercial release of the track (take it from ‘Done’ to ‘Release’). So it’s a warts and all collection of Everything I finish….caveats abound as to the quality of the music. Anyone who downloads one of the R.A.W. tracks automatically gets the commercial release for free download if and when I release that officially.

Ok – that’s enough banging on for the start of 2023. Happy New Year everyone – here’s to a great year of living and music.

Ciao from Rome. Finally I have escaped the Murphey’s Law vortex that ensued in the month before we managed to leave Sydney and get over here. My temporary studio for the 3 months is set-up, and the creations are flowing.

Unlike my previous overseas creative sabbaticals, I haven’t yet worked out what the music goals will be for the time over here. Probably due to too much craziness in the exit from Sydney, but I will work it out over the next week or so and report back here.

I’m still on the hunt for some live playing opportunities, but it seems the Rome dance music scene has been hammered by Covid and pickings are slim. Still I have a few leads to chase down, including playing at a local bar/pizza spot…watch this space.

I’m back on track with my Release A Week (the R.A.W. series) and am rapidly catching up the 2 months I missed with Burning Man and Sydney-exit missions. It’s Bandcamp Friday again this Friday, which means ALL proceeds from sales go directly to artists. So you can jump on my Bandcamp Page and grab any of my official releases and/or any of my Bandcamp studio releases from the last 2 years. Subscribers can get a 90% discount too which means you’ve basically getting it for free – Yay! (Hit me up for the discount code if you’re a subscriber and have lost the code I sent).

That’s all for now, I’m off to see the Pope Meister today to get some god help with the music business!

So many people say they don’t know what I do. The subtext is – they don’t know what I do all day ‘working’ in my studio.

Well, I’ve decided that I will say I’m practicing music from now on. Because that is basically what it is. Practicing producing new tunes, with a view to producing a high volume and, over time, just trying to get each track a bit better than that the one before, or not to make the same mistakes as I made in the track before. It’s a long slow process with few bit leaps in improvement, normally small increments that add up over time.

It’s the same with practicing my live act, practicing the live streams, practicing the communications with supporters and soon-to-be supporters, practicing trying to get more live gigs (my constant pain!).

And today I got some reinforcement that all that practice is yielding results. Small results, and small results over long periods. I got my Spotify artist Unwrapped year in review. The numbers are still paltry (I’ll include them in my end of year musical notes), but the main thing is they are better than 2020 numbers! Onwards and Upwards…slowly!

Release-A-Week (R.A.W) is on track (sic) with week 49’s track coming out tomorrow. Watch the socials for that release or follow me on BandCamp to make sure you’re in the loop.

That’s all for this month, back to practicing. Practice makes Perfect Constant Improvement!

So close to end of lockdown and you and almost taste it!

Bugger!

I’m one of those miserable gits who has actually quite enjoyed lockdown, this recent one and previous.

Why?

Well firstly lockdowns mean I get to do 7 days a week, 24/7 studio time without needing to invent creative excuses as to why I cannot go out. Well almost 24/7. Ms Pottz gets a little grumpy if I don’t emerge from the studio every now and again.

Secondly, lockdowns remove the only major stress I have musically, and that is trying to secure the next gig! That’s always a major stress and a sweat especially as a “I’m not a DJ” Live performer. In lockdown, I have as many gigs as the most sought after DJs….NONE!

So here we go with some level of normalcy returning (and already a gig locked in for December). Whoot, whoot. I have shedloads of new tunes I’ve been working on during this down time that I am bringing into the live set repertoire so keep your eyes and ears open for any new shows.

And of course the monthly release funnel is locked and loaded with Cumbiatto just out 30 September, and plenty more due out the end of every month:

Have a look around BandCamp for this Fune Tune Records release as well as my weekly R.A.W. (Release A Week) tracks.