Remember me writing last week about my negative customer experience with CD Baby? This morning Don Dokken made it so I could only buy his second solo album Solitary ($9.99, been available online since Feb 2008) through the service Snocap via dokkenstore.com.
Didn’t go through as many screenshot motions as I did with CD Baby, but Snocap wouldn’t let me add my credit card in Firefox so I could finish the order. I kept hitting the ’submit’ button and nothing happened. Grrrr.
When I fired up Internet Explorer things seemed to work correctly, but minor gripe, why as a first time customer do I have to do the following:
1. check box next to the song to order 2. confirm order 3. be taken to another browser window — hey I’m already in one — to visit Snocap to register for the site and add payment information on file. Why not open in a tab? And why not wait for the other browser window until we actually add payment information and can verify we are on a secure page? 4. In IE I saw an option to use PayPal. After authorizing, did the system take me back to finish the order? Of course not. So back to the other browser tab to try the order again. 5. This time it went through and asked me if I wanted to download the Snocap download manager or download the songs direct. By all means to anybody reading, choose to download the songs direct.
From experience I should have done that, but didn’t. Next, the order screen turned into a message saying there was an error returned from the software. Meanwhile, the Snocap download manager was still installing. Huh? When it fully installed and ran it didn’t show any music for me to download.
[sigh] Here we go again. Didn’t we just do this a week ago with CD Baby?
6. I went directly to the Snocap site and checked this out:
The ultimate website NON-confidence builder: big, broken image. The screenshot might be a bit small but there is only a ‘profile’ link and ’sign out’ — nothing about account or transaction history. They lose points for not making this more clear. When you click on ‘profile’ you can then navigate to your transaction history.
7. And there, finally, I can download the songs one at a time without having to use the download manager. I didn’t see any way to add the songs to the snocap download manager. Fortunately all the songs from Solitary downloaded.
Why is buying music from some of these online music sites a hassle? I’ve had very good experiences with AmazonMP3, iTunes and Zune but my last two experiences with services I haven’t used before has not been good. I was pleased to see the artist, Heavy Jack, reply this morning to my experience last week and say they are looking into it.
I’m starting to understand, but still don’t think it’s cool, people who go the bittorent route to get the hard to find music. Enough of this, what about the Don Dokken solo acoustic album, Solitary. Is it any good?
It’s mellow, I’ll say that. Have to listen to it more to judge but I’ve always liked Don Dokken’s mellow stuff. On his first solo album the song "1,000 miles Away" is one of my favorites. With Dokken who doesn’t like "Alone Again?" And pretty much the entire Under Lock and Key album (ok, not every song is mellow on there, but that one seemed like one of the most mellow Dokken albums) with tracks like "It’s Not Love" and "Jaded Heart." Then there are some more rare and less commercially appreciated albums like Dysfunctional with excellent songs like "The Maze" and "From The Beginning."
In the official Dokken podcast #2 and elsewhere Don Dokken keeps saying that this year’s good selling Lightning Strikes Again (my favorite track off that one is "Oasis") is probably the last Dokken studio album. He wants to do something outside what he feels are the musical confines of Dokken. Something "harder." Rhino, the company who published Lightning would like another Dokken album but it doesn’t sound like Don Dokken is interested at the present time.
One request, whatever you do, Don: please make it easy and hassle-free to buy whatever album you make going forward. This is something for musicians to keep in mind with how they choose to distribute their music. If you make it too much of a pain in the ass, some (many?) fans will take the path of least resistance. A quick search engine query reveals tons of illegal avenues to acquire Solitary.
Solitary Track List
1. "In The Meadow" 2. "I’ll Never Forget" - the ID tags in this MP3 were not set correctly and I had to manually fix. Good thing it’s easy to do these days in a wide variety of software. 3. "Where The Grass Is Green" 4. "Ship Of Fools" 5. "You Are Everything" 6. "Venice" 7. "Sarah" - Don Dokken says this song is about a "first love" he had in the 80s. One of the better tracks. 8. "The Tragedy" 9. Someday
If you like the harder Dokken songs like "Breaking The Chains" then Lightning Strikes Again will be more satisfying. If, like me, you enjoy the mellow side of Dokken, roll the dice with Snocap or attend one of the Don Dokken solo shows when he starts doing them again (he’s out touring with Dokken in support of Lightning now). He is selling Solitary at his shows. I wish he’d consider using a service like Tunecore.com which will get his music out on iTunes, AmazonMP3, Rhapsody, Napster, EMusic and more.
2008 is a great year to be a rocker. A new Metallica album available next week and the next — and possibly last (hope not) — AC/DC studio album Black Ice will be available October 20. Oh yeah.
You can grab the AC DC what happened in history widget for your blog or favorite social service here or using the ‘get & share’ link in the embed above (RSS Readers: visit the page to see widget embed).
Black Ice Track Listing
1. Rock ’n Roll Train - you can listen to this track on the widget page
2. Skies On Fire
3. Big Jack
4. Anything Goes
5. War Machine
6. Smash N Grab
7. Spoilin’ For A Fight
8. Wheels
9. Decibel
10. Stormy May Day
11. She Likes Rock N Roll
12. Money Made
13. Rock N Roll Dream
14. Rocking All The Way
15. Black Ice
When I buy digital music downloads from places like iTunes and AmazonMP3 the music is available, as expected, for download right away. This morning I bought an album in MP3 format from an indie rock artist, Heavy Jack, from CD Baby. Believe that this was my first ever CD Baby purchase.
One of the things I like about CD Baby is they take a very small percentage of the money from the sale. Via their artist signup site:
For digital sales, we keep only a 9% cut, paying 91% of all income directly to the artist. For physical CDs, we keep $4 per CD sold.
Good deal for artists/bands, I’m there. So yesterday I checked out this music discovery service and came across Heavy Jack. Loved their song Fly Away (Black Crow), particularly the Hendrix-like vibe, embed is below for readers from the blog (won’t show in RSS feed):
Good stuff, I wanted to show them some material ($) fan love and thus went to their website this morning and saw I could purchase their album in CD or MP3 format. I went for the MP3 format which cost $9.99. I used PayPal and received confirmation that CD Baby was paid right away at 7:02am PST.
What I didn’t receive as expected was a download link from CD Baby or explanation of when the download link would be coming. I waited. And waited. Waited. Started to wonder around 10 minutes if the order didn’t go through on CD Baby’s end. Hey, sometimes things happen.
30 minutes later I decided to write an email to CD Baby with a copy of the transaction number and ask them how long it took to get the download link? I didn’t expect to receive a response to this email right away. If I got a response by the end of the business day, I’d be happy. Through experience have learned to set expectations lower when emailing customer service of any site online. It’s a pleasant surprise when somebody responds right away, but a business day is reasonable.
49 minutes after the sale, I received an email with the subject line: "CD Baby loves Tdavid" and order # confirmation:
Nevermind being anal about their script failing to capitalize the ‘D’ in my name, that’s just nitpicky, what does matter is that the download link they provided in their email didn’t work. The page just errored out. Waited a few more minutes, figuring maybe there was another delay before the download link was activated. As silly as that seems, have seen that situation before. Nope, didn’t matter, still didn’t work.
In their ‘love me’ email they added the message:
If you’re not able to use that link from this email or just not ready to download yet, you can always log in to your account at http://cdbaby.com/account and find all of your MP3s in the "Your Downloads" section.
Hello, I was able and ready 55 minutes ago. If you love me, just give me a download link that works already. Where is the music I paid for? WTF is up with this place? I don’t walk into a music store and pay them for a CD and then come back and hour later and still can’t get the CD to take home. This isn’t ordering a pizza on a Friday night when the parlor is getting slammed and they are understaffed, it’s an automated web order system for a digital download.
1 hour 25 minutes (8:27am PST) after the sale and all I see when I click the download link in CD Baby is this:
At this point I thought maybe, maybe the download link would work on another computer. Tried it on my laptop. No work in Firefox or Internet Explorer.
1 hour 42 minutes here I sit still unable to download music from the link. If I was into BDSM I’d try buying another MP3 download from CD Baby for a different artist just to see if this negative customer experience was an isolated case. Instead, I’m making this blog post for others to tell me their CD Baby MP3 purchase customer experiences. Did you get your MP3 download right away? Did it take more than a couple hours? Did the download link not work at first and work later?
1 hour 53 minutes. Still no working download. I’m getting ready to hit publish on this post. Some say you should never blog mad, I say when your wallet is impacted: screw that! This is a bad experience.
2 hours. Wow. The download link finally worked! I’m going to publish this as written anyway to see if this is the norm for CD Baby MP3 purchases. If this is the normal customer experience, CD Baby is one torturing lover. If you run a music delivery service, don’t make your customers wait two hours for digital downloads. Two minutes, fine. Two hours and it’s time to hire new programmers.
Update 10:02am PST: Received an email response from “pony” at CD Baby apologizing for their servers being down this morning while they did some work.
Music and gaming are enjoying a strong synergy in 2008 that could be witnessed nearly everywhere at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle 2008 this past weekend. We spent three days there collecting video, pictures, playing games and rocking out to video game music, most of which I’ll be sharing at VTOReality.com. Here I’ll try to give a brief overview of what we experienced.
I’ve attended dozens of concerts but experienced a first at PAX 2008 being able to see a couple bands perform video game songs live. The OneUps opened the Friday Night concert at PAX and were impressive. No singing but plenty of six-string bass, violin, drums and guitars.
The OneUps were so impressive that we went to see the bassist, Mustin, the next day and bought both their CDs (Volume 1 and Volume 2).
Also signed up for their MySpace page (warning: sound onload). The only other videogame-related music I remember buying has been Buckner & Garcia’s Pac Man Fever.
Our sons entered the Guitar Hero tournament on Saturday and the youngest was eliminated in the first round. Our 17 year old son made it to the final 8 in the tournament. They also did the Soul Calibur IV tournament earlier in the day and were both eliminated in the first round.
We performed as a Rock Band both on the show floor and in the after hours Rock Band event Friday Night. Didn’t wait in line to play Guitar Hero World, but that booth was very active throughout PAX.
Also got to check out the Wii Music drums where you play with the balance board and drumming into thin air with the Wiimote and nunchuk. On the way to lunch away from PAX we stopped by Gameworks (conveniently located a block away) which had the first guitar game by Konami called GuitarFreaks and DrumFreaks (although this one was out of service).
Back to the show floor and one of the 10 spotlighted PAX games for the Xbox 360 live arcade was called AudioSurf. This games looked a little bit like the old Atari puzzler Klax and sounded like a full-on music game.
AudioSurf’s description from the PAX guide:
"Ride your music. Audiosurf is a music-adapting puzzle racer where you use your own music to create your own experience. The shape, the speed, and the mood of each ride is determined by the song you choose."
It seemed like at almost every turn at PAX there was some kind of music videogame being demoed or played. Did I mention the Sony booth where Singstar contests were happening? Or how about the Intel Booth where you could play against a ringer to win a PC version of Guitar Hero?
Music games are everywhere and I love it. Forget the RIAA missteps and DRM issues, there continues to be a huge opportunity for bands to have their music heard and purchased in the videogames area.
Among the list of bands I’d like to see get completely back together, Dennis DeYoung with Styx is near the top. He might be 61 but there is no reason — other than personality conflicts — I can tell anyway that he couldn’t and shouldn’t still be singing with Styx. I saw DeYoung perform for the first time at the Rockin’ The Rivers concert in Montana earlier this month and they rocked the place. His voice is in great shape.
Rockin’ The Rivers is billed as the biggest rock concert event in Montana of the year and this was the 10th time they’ve had the concert. It’s three days of bands that play from noon until 2am. People camp overnight, drink (lots) of beer and have a great time. At $120 for three days or $50 for one day this is among the best value concerts out there. Here’s what the official concert guide looks like:
The Van Halen cover band Hot For Teacher was impressive as well as Fran Cosmo singing Boston Songs. Wasn’t as impressed with Manny Charlton with Nazareth. We didn’t attend day 1 or day 3. That’s the only bummer I can think of regarding this concert: it’s like 650 miles from here. We’re planning on going again next year and maybe doing the camp out thing. Lots of fun.
Dennis DeYoung Rockin’ The Rivers 8/9/2008 Setlist The Grand Illusion Lady Loralei Don’t Let It End Castle Walls Light Up Mr Roboto Desert Moon 100 Years From Now Rocking The Paradise Sweet Madam Blue Babe Best Of Times (encore) Come Sail Away
When I saw Matt Wardlaw post the House of Blues 8/24/2008 setlist from the band Styx including members Tommy Shaw, James “J.Y.” Young and Chuck Panozzo I was reminded to get this post out of the draft bin. Check out the same songs played by both bands, marked with asterisk, as well as the order:
House of Blues 8/24/2008 Setlist Blue Collar Man * The Grand Illusion * Loralei One With Everything * Lady Too Much Time On My Hands Snowblind I Am The Walrus Boat On The River Man In The Wilderness (Shaw acoustic) Crystal Ball (beginning acoustic w/ Shaw only) * Suite Madame Blue Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man) (Chuck Panozzo on bass) Miss America * Come Sail Away (Panozzo on bass)
Interesting to note that both bands closed with Come Sail Away and The Grand Illusion was Dennis DeYoung’s opener and the second song Styx played. Must admit I missed Tommy Shaw singing "Snowblind" and "Crystal Ball" and would have liked hearing Blue Collar Man in the Dennis DeYoung line-up. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the extended guitar solo version of Desert Moon and wouldn’t have wanted that axed in favor of Styx doing a Beatles cover.
I realize Styx sans DeYoung had a bit of success with their covers album but I don’t go to a concert with a band the calibur of Styx and want to hear songs they covered by The Beatles when that is in place of other, better songs like "Castle Walls" which DeYoung said Styx never played when he was with them.
What a haunting, beautiful song from the same album as "Come Sail Away."
The YouTube video of Desert Moon shown above (taken from the Arlington Heights show on July 6, 2008) and the one of Castle Walls (Chicago Ridge, Illinois on July 25, 2008) don’t do the live performances justice but are included here to give you a sampling of what it was like.
DeYoung played the title song from his new album 100 Years From Now that’s out in Canada and available via his website. He said it will be coming out in the states in January 2008. My wife didn’t care for the song, but I liked it. I’ll be buying this one when it comes out in the states, if not sooner.
A sweet moment in the DeYoung concert was when he dedicated "Babe" to his wife of 38 years Suzanne and she came out on stage and danced with him. Come on Dennis and Styx, mend those ties and get back together already!
Yesterday, we were teased with the release of track 4 "The Day That Never Comes" (Windows Media) which sounds like it might be the ballad (the only one?) on the album. Enquiring music minds like Matt Wardlaw want to know what people think of the song. I read through a hundred or so of the Blabbermouth comments and it seems like a mixed bag. Matt says "The good news is, it’s pretty good." I sensed more reservation from other fans than delight.
My favorite Metallica album to date has been Ride the Lightning and this track almost feels like if had started with 12 and 6 string acoustic guitars it could have come from around that era (but not on that great album), but instead it’s all electric. I’m a little puzzled why they didn’t go more classical? The song in predictable Metallica fashion gets harder a la "Fade To Black", "Welcome Home Sanitarium" and "One" but it isn’t as stylistic as any of those three songs.
What we’re left with in "The Day That Never Comes" is an appetizer of what makes Metallica mellow metal ballads unique. Not very original for them but better than most of what is on their last album St. Anger. An album which didn’t have any ballad-like tracks. With that said, I’d still take "Frantic" though over this track, even with the tinny sounding drums because it’s more exploratory. Just listening to music that sounds like it came from something on an older album isn’t what I look for from a new album. I also am expecting some level of exploration and trying new things. I’m not sure "The Day That Never Comes" quite fits that description.
Metallica played track 6 "Cyanide" live (for the first time?) at Ozzfest in Dallas, TX on August 9, 2008. This song showcases former Ozzy and new Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo and of course it’s on YouTube already (no idea if or when the boys will order it taken down, but I would encourage them not to):
This track jams. I’m looking forward to hearing the studio version. Would like to hear "The Day That Never Comes" played live for that matter.
There’s also a subpar quality compilation of "fly on the wall" clips on YouTube but I wouldn’t recommend that. It’s not a song, it’s simply a bunch of raw clips Metallica shared through MM that some fan cobbled together.
For now we can only judge Death Magnetic by two songs. I’m waiting for the other 8 tracks. People who are declaring these two tracks as indicative of the album as a whole are being way too premature. Wait for it. I know it’s easy to draw early opinions, but I want to hear the whole album through a dozen or more times at least before making any final judgment on where Death Magnetic ranks in Metallica’s overall studio album discography.
I will say this much for Matt and others curious: These first two tracks are promising. I am not expecting this to be another Kill ‘Em All or Ride The Lightning, but will be disappointed if the rest of the album is as devoid of soul as most of St. Anger. I’d be totally stoked if Death Magnetic turned out to be anything close to their early to mid era album releases.
My son has been asking about guitar solos lately. In past posts I’ve talked about how I think it’s a mistake when first learning to play guitar worrying too much about scales and theory, but as you progress in skill level and want to start improvising and soloing, scales are no longer optional. He has already learned some basic chords as well as how to read tablature and play a few parts of songs. He hasn’t learned any scales yet.
This brings up questions like: what is the best first scale to learn on the guitar? What’s a good way to memorize this scale? My recommendation is practice, repetition and keeping the information in front of you:
The blues scale shown as a desktop background above is a common scale used in a lot of music. Not only blues, but good old rock and roll. Staring at it as a desktop background might help to burn the pattern into your brain.
The blues scale can be played in any key with the root note (circled in red) indicating the key you are playing. For example, if you are playing on the fifth fret, E string, you’d be playing the blues scale in the key of A. Drop down to the third fret E string and you’re playing in the key of G.
The pattern on strings is as follows (shown playing in key of F), note for beginning guitarists that the 6th string is the top most string from top to bottom and is the lowest sounding, while the 1st string is the high E and often denoted in tab as a lowercase e:
One of the first things I learned about the guitar was that a note 12 frets above is the same note an octave higher. So if you do an open E string and move up to the 12th fret and play on the same string, that is the E key again, on the 13th fret that would be F and so on. Here is a list of the notes from fret 0 - 12 on the 6th string:
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
E F F# G A♭ A B♭ B C C# D E♭ E
These notes repeat themselves on frets 12-24 like this:
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 E F F# G A♭ A B♭ B C C# D E♭ E
Tip for beginning guitarists: if you want to make it easier to solo high pitched notes, be sure to buy/play a guitar with 24 frets. I believe most, if not all Ibanez electric guitars, have 24 frets. That’s the guitar I bought for my son to practice on. The Gibson Les Paul guitar I bought has only 22 frets. You can reach 24 fret notes on a 22 fret guitar, you just have to bend the strings. This can significantly increase the difficulty of soloing these higher notes.
You can see from the blues scale chart on my desktop that if you played the root note (circled in red on the screenshot) starting on the 7th fret 6th string, using the following pattern you’d be playing in the key of B:
Got it? This is the very first scale and pattern I’m showing my son. I’ve recommended he start each practice session by playing the blues scale front and back several times saying aloud the key he is playing in, working his way up the fretboard. At the same time working on his speed and alternate picking (back/forth/back). Through repetition one can become quite fast at playing these notes.
Once he’s practiced the pattern, I recommended to him to play the notes out of order, adjusting the speed and bending, hammer-ons and pull-offs. This is the stuff that guitar soloing is made of and a lot more fun than just repeating the scales over and over again. You have to start somewhere.
This basic knowledge coupled with memorizing the scale pattern above comes in very handy when riffing, improvising and soloing on the guitar. You could also make music in any key by sticking with this scale. So if you were playing a chord and needed a little riff to go along, the blues scale could help.
This could get me ejected from the Tablet PC club, but it’s videos like this one by Rob Bushway at GottaBeMobile which make Tablet PC evangelists look silly and detached from reality. I’ve met Rob, he’s a good guy, and am hoping he’s not seriously pushing this musical keyboard application as something useful? This has to be tongue-in-cheek.
Playing a keyboard — that doesn’t even allow multi-touch — on a Tablet PC is a sad substitute for making music with a real keyboard. $2,000 will buy you pro-quality keys. Heck, you can get Pro Tools Lite, USB interface and a PC notebook computer to record your jams for that much scratch. Rob writes:
"I’d like to see folks with regular laptops do this …"
My answer? What regular laptop user would want to?
I’m not knocking the fun/cool factor for an application like this, it looks neat, but I can’t see a person go out today and buy a Tablet PC because they want this type of application. Is it a gimmick or intended to be a useful music device? Is this a motivator to buy a Tablet PC for you? This doesn’t make me scream “I gotta be mobile.” Heck, it would be a lot less expensive for somebody to make music using the Guitar Hero controller. Don’t laugh, some folks already are. Isn’t there an iPhone musical keyboard application that does have multi-touch?
I don’t see anybody doing any serious music creation or live playing on their non multi-touch Tablet PC keyboard screen. Please somebody, anybody, prove me wrong. Not even in the next Revenge of The Nerds sequel. LOUIS! GILBERT!
If I haven’t mentioned that the weekly Gibson newsletter is my current favorite email newsletter, let me share my appreciation again. I read this newsletter cover to cover every week and look forward to each new edition each week. Are they pitching me on Gibson? Absolutely. Is this old school marketing 101? You bet, it still works.
If you want to learn guitar there are hundreds of different techniques. I think the fastest way to learn is getting a few lessons from another guitar player. Somebody who will show you how to play songs and techniques and teach you music theory, not only the latter.
I’m in the camp that says don’t spend too much time on learning the scales right away. Eventually scales will be your lifeblood, especially for things like improvisation and soloing, but when starting out you just want to learn to play something or it will be frustrating. For that, learn how to read tablature and pick up a handy tab read/writing tool like Power Tab Editor (freeware) or Guitar Pro (free demo, commercial). After that you’ll find tabs for popular songs all over the place.
Gibson provides a good business example website Getting back to Gibson, business owners should look at how they have done their website as far as features, not so much as functionality. They are a fairly progressive company with links on many of their pages to digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc. They offer podcasts and blogs (kind of weak, from what I’ve seen thus far) as well as have wiki (generating a lot of errors, not so good) and fairly active forums community area. Their newsletter provides a great example of how to soft sell with value both your prospective and current customers.
The world needs more thinkers and tinkerers like Hiroyuki Manabe, who wants to find the next great phone interface, via Wired:
Manabe wired a pair of headphones to a system that detects the electrical currents produced by the rapid movement of his eyeballs. The invention is so precise that he can actually turn up the volume on a music player by rolling his eyes up or down, and he can fast forward tracks with a couple of quick eye jerks to his right.
This type of eye-powered interface could also be helpful to the disabled. Although the prototype looks ridiculous and needs serious fashion tweaking, I’d like to see more eye-powered devices.
Could be a few problems though if it tied too much activity to blinking as we tend to blink our eyes a lot of times every day. If it’s 16 times a minute, or 15,360 times over the course of 16 hours (hey, we have to sleep the other 8, right?), that’s a whole lot of unintentional activity. I’m lucky if I consciously think about blinking once a day, never mind over 15,000 times.
But you could do some sort of switch for closing your eyes and keeping them closed for a period of time. Close eyes and hold for five seconds to play Metallica "Enter Sandman" for example.
Here I have these glasses on every day, why can’t I get an eye-powered or eye-enhanced set of glasses that help me multi-task easier? Such a contraption might border on looking like some Borg apparatus and make even Manabe’s headphones look cool.
How about using our eyes to control a 3D viewer like PicLens (left) someday? Is Piclens neat browser eye candy or a glimpse at the future?
Remember me writing last week about my negative customer experience with CD Baby? This morning Don Dokken made it so I could only buy his second solo album Solitary ($9.99, been available online since Feb 2008) through the service Snocap via dokkenstore.com. 
