COTTON AND CHINA

It would probably be a good start to explain why I have titled this blog post as 'Cotton and China'. Cotton is described as the 'traditional' gift of a second wedding anniversary and 'china' being the 'modern' gift of the same. Well, for the past two years I have been married to the music industry and I thought that I should mark the occassion with a little gift for myself. I am going to interpret the 'cotton' as going into town to buy myself some new clothes and I'll meet a few friends for a cuppa to honour 'china'. Then it's time to move on and prepare for year three of this marriage. It looks like a pair of 'leather' trousers are on the cards for next year's anniversary gift!!

Mine will be slightly 'shorter'

I have discovered that the people who enjoy reading the 10,000 blog are people interested in getting an understanding of some aspects of the music industry, maybe some people starting out in it and hopefully some people who enjoy keeping up with my own adventures in it.

2012 was a strange year for me. It began it with complete burn out. Having worked on three projects (3 single releases) throughout 2011 right up until January 2012, I had no option but to stop for a few months to take stock and find out what exactly had worked, what hadn't etc etc.
It was March before I started to think straight again and before I knew it, I was overloaded with ideas, with 10,000 being the idea that I loved the most.

I knew the volume of work and time was going to be incredible but I was hopeful that the concept alone would pull a few punches for me. (please see previous blog posts for all the info on the 10,000 project). I began with great gusto and sense of spirit for the project and spent from April until September knee deep in the 10,000 experiments.

With hindsight, being one of the great 'wonders of the world' of course, I have come to the conclusion that the project idea was excellent but the work involved in achieving all of the experiments was over ambitious. I am not going to make excuses either. I don't do trying to explain my way out of things. It was a superb idea and worked on many levels but I also experienced another period of burnout from September to October and normally life dutes were difficult to fulfill, never mind trying to achieve targets. So with that in mind, I would have set the project targets for a period of 12 months rather than 3. So with that knowledge, I decided to keep the 10,000 project ticking over into 2013 and make the most of a product and project that I am extremely proud of!

Over the past two months, after I caught up on my sleep, I decided to open up my eyes and ears to everything else going on around me musically and I discovered some gems. I had the pleasure of playing a traditional music set in PJ O'Hare's in Carlingford every Tuesday night for a couple of months and rediscovered my love for Irish traditional music, especially a contemporary style of it and one of the acts I discovered doing this very well are 'Ciorras'. CIORRAS

I also got back to listening to music from some popular piano artists such as 'Gavin De Graw', who I am a big fan of. Gavin De Graw LIVE with 'Chariot'

I also had some time to think about some things I had overlooked, such as a website!! www.sineadmcnally.ie
I got the ball rolling and through the magic of 'Twitter', I accidently found a web designer whose work I really liked. Within just days of correspondance with him, the web design was created and we launched it on the 19th October. It is a work in progress with pages etc to add to it. I'd like to give Ross a plug here as he was a pleasure to work with! ELECTRIC KIWI WEB DESIGN

Whilst enjoying the time to listen and watch and take in the successes and failures of my projects in 2012, I have enjoyed some correspondance with the 'Lady In Red' man himself Mr.Chris De Burgh who got in touch to say he enjoyed listening to my music. I was delighted to hear of my five nominations for the Music Review Unsigned Awards being held this December 16th. With the shortlist for each category being announced next week, I have my fingers and toes crossed that I make it on to one of the shortlists of 5 acts. You can check out Ireland's FIRST ever unsigned music awards event here: MUSIC REVIEW UNSIGNED

I have also found myself laughing a lot over the last month or two and it is true that laughter is the best medicine. So with that in mind, I'll leave with a piece from Mr.Tommy Tiernan that cracks me up everytime I watch it. Anyone who grew up in Ireland especially will get this. Enjoy and take care. I'll chat to you soon xx

TOMMY TIERNAN LAUGHTER MEDICINE

 

 

 

1,000 WORDS PUBLISHED

So the idea behind this experiment was to write my own press release about the 10,000 project, hopefully make it interesting and convince journalists to write about it over the 12 week period! All the experiments in the project are based on aspects of the music industry, so this one was all about PR skills and the task that is learning what to target, who to target and how to target them.

I hadn't used a PR company for any of my releases so I took the risk of doing this launch again myself plus the budget wasn't there anyways so I had to make the best with my own literacy skills. I had written press releases for the first three singles and 'Dance With Me' managed to get on 'TV3' and 'RTE Radio 1' so I knew I obviously wasn't that bad at writing my own! My leaving cert English teacher Mr.Murray would be proud. Although, don't ask me anything about Shakespeare. 'King Lear' tortured me for my leaving cert. My answer to that part of the leaving cert paper was 'nothing can come of nothing!!'

I scheduled a few different press releases over the course of the project. However, the great news was that the first press release I sent out managed to find it's way onto a few newspapers including The Argus, The Newry Reporter, The Drogheda Independent, The Wexford people among more and the 1,000 words published experiment was met within the first two weeks of the project going live! I didn't continue to add up the words once I went over the 1,000 marks, which I probably should have done but as soon as I had that experiment in the bag, I just left it and moved on..

This was actually the easiest experiment overall. 1,000 words is actually a small amount of words in terms of newspaper articles but in saying that, it was the concept of the experiment that made journalists interested and one thing I always bleat on about is the 'thinking outside the box' side of the industry. So many bands and artists are out there doing pretty much the same thing, hoping to get picked up by management or a label so the problem is trying to stand out. I come up with ideas all the time. Some are crazy, some are great. I get dissappointed when the ideas I get that I think are great, don't come to be because I am not physcially able to manage the project on my own or the financial costs of it are too much. So you have to decide what's 'do-able'. At times, this whole project got too big for me but in saying that, a lot of it was achieved and it was a lot of fun.

Special thanks to Margaret Roddy, Martin Hearty and Jim Hayes who were the first journalists to get straight in there and write about the project.

1,000 FACEBOOK LIKES

 

Ok so this would seem relatively easy too to achieve. I made a decision when I set this target to try and get the 'likes' in a genuine way, as in not paying FB for ads etc. Apparently the correct term for that I have learned is 'organic' likes.

I have an official singer/songwriter page as well as a personal account on FB. So my challenge was to build 1,000 new FB page likes and use the page more than I use my personal account. When I set the challenge I had 840 likes on my page. It currently stands at 899 which is a fairly miserable increase of 59. Long way off 1,000.

Honestly, I wasn't expecting the result to be so poor. The week that I started the experiments was the first week that I noticed people posting about changes to FB pages and that in order for you to be successful with your page, you had to pay for ads. Well, I'd agree to some extent, I probably could have popped a few quid in the FB advertising accounts and bought myself some extra likes. But I also know that I didn't spend enough time myself. I mean, you really need to be on your page everyday posting events, links, videos, sharing the page on all the other sites you have.. twitter, reverbnation, bandcamp, soundcloud and really focussing your attention on increasing that number.

So this experiment, out did me. I wasn't expecting to have to put much time and effort into it and definitely underestimated how difficult it would be! I have learned through this experiment that the social media end of promoting your acts requires a plan of action, a disciplined routine and perhaps a person to actually work on this on your behalf.

Chat soon xx

1,000 YOU TUBE SUBSCRIPTIONS

I might as well have been looking into a ditch

Result: Fail

Grade: Disastrously

What I learned: I am useless at utilising YouTube..

1,000 BROADCAST MINUTES

This was a risky one by all means. 1,000 minutes of broadcast time is the equivilent of 16.66' hours. I had also given myself the added challenge of setting a timeline of 12 weeks. Basically I was relying on any kind of radio or tv plays of my music and included any live interviews/performances too.

So how did I do????? Well I have to be honest and say that although I knew it was going to be tough, I had a really good feeling and yes I met the challenge. It's mid October now and whilst it doesn't count anymore, I have over 1,500 minutes of airplay accumulated. I had just over 1,000 at the end of the 12th week.

So how did I monitor it? Well the lovely people at Nielsen music were very helpful in getting me set up with them so that any plays of my music on regional or national radio are automatically registered. So each day I was able to go into my account and check if my songs had been played, where they had been played and I rounded each play off at 3 minutes although all of my songs actually last around 3'20 or 3'30. NIELSEN MUSIC

The long and short of it is that there are some seriously supportive radio stations in Ireland, who are only too happy to play unsigned acts and will do their upmost to get them heard. I have to say a very special thank in particular to the following stations. There were many stations involved but the following few had an enormous impact:
C103 www.c103.ie
LMFM www.lmfm.ie
SOUTH EAST RADIO www.southeastradio.ie
DUNDALK FM www.dundalkfm.com
NORTHERN SOUND/SHANNONSIDE www.northernsound.ie
GALWAY BAY FM http://www.galwaynews.ie/galwaybayfm

There is an ongoing argument about the lack of support on Irish radio for Irish acts. I don't want to go too heavily into it here, other than to say that I of course agree there are many stations who could be doing a lot more than they are. However, I also believe that you shouldn't focus on what's not being done, but rather what is being done and who is doing it. Get to know the radio stations, get to know the dj's and you will find that they usually want to help out. Sometimes, the powers that be don't give individial dj's a chance to play what they want so get to know those who can play what they want and take it from there!

Before I go, I just want to mention IASCA www.iasca.ie  who have a PLAY IRISH initiative that is really worth checking out if you are an Irish singer/songwriter or band.

Chat soon xx

1,000 KILOMETRES

So one of my experiments was to travel 1,000 kilometres promoting the release of the EP. This was a relatively simple experiment and we had it covered within days rather than weeks. I didn't include my trip to London, thought that would be cheating but great too that I did get to the UK as part of the promoting tour.

It really isn't all that hard to cover 1,000 kilometres. I travelled mostly by van to places including Dublin, Cork, Wexford, Tipperary, Athlone, Monaghan, Cavan, Meath, Westmeath among more. Being on the road is great in so many ways. The opportunity to meet and perform for people and to just to get out of the house and away from behind the computer. The downside of it of course is the expense. It cost hundreds of euro to visit those towns and the sales of CD's never quite cover the long journey expenses. There were also nights that we had to stay over so we had to fund accommodation ourselves too. One trip in particular saw us travel from Dublin to Cork then on to Wexford and back to Dundalk in the SAME day!! Most venues don't pay original artists to play, which is without question a bone of contention with me now considering the fact that so many people have told me that in other European countries, they are very good at looking after the artists financially.

Anyways, I did enjoy my 1,000 kilometres experiment despite the cost of it! I enjoyed passing through the counties and seeing a bit of Ireland and saying things like, "well at least we got the good roads of the the celtic tiger". My highlight of being on the road was finding myself doing my make up in some stop off garage on the way, grabbing a wee roll and a cuppa to keep you going on the next leg and tuning into all the different radio stations passing through the counties. It's probably those times that will mean a lot in the future.. good times indeed!

And we smashed the experiment with over 2,000 kilometres travelled in the end..

ALPACAS, CHOCOLATE BARS AND SERVICE STATION STOP-OFFS

With so much happening and so little time to write about it, I thought a little summary of the past week's events and a little update on some of the experiments was the best way to tell you about the first official tour week of 10,000.

The week saw me visit so many counties in Ireland, not necessarily stopping off in all of them but I have performed or stopped off to promote in Dublin, Tipperary, Monaghan, Wexford, Cork and Louth since my last post. The 1,000 kilometres travelled experiment is already well over 1,000 and with visits to Galway, Donegal and possibly Antrim this coming week, the experiment is going from strength to strength. Whilst being on the road is expensive, (diesel, food, tolls), nothing beats getting out there, talking to people and being able to perform for them or even just tell them about 10,000. I have just accepted that I cannot afford to be embarrassed about handing out flyers with my face on them or sticking them to random notice boards, doors and walls wherever I go!! The last place I got to stick one of my flyers is on the noticeboard in some fairly stinky mens Gaelic football club changing rooms in Monaghan!!!


Have you seen this face...!!


I got to perform at the legendary Ruby Sessions in Dolyes Pub in Dublin during the week. I had waited so long to be invited to perform that I actually built the sessions up in my head and on the night didn't perform to my best, which was dissappointing for me but I accepted that there will be good days and bad and that performance for me just wasn't up to scratch. A few hours of frustration then I let it go.

Ruby Sessions Website

Ruby Sessions Performance

 After a few hours sleep in a questionable 'hotel' in Dublin west, we were on the road early to visit C103 in Mallow. There was a storm warning issued but it didn't cause us any bother except for a few big puddles on roads into Mallow and Fermoy. C103 were one of the first radio stations to play 'Moody Blues', my first single. I always feel my late grandparents are looking after me, getting so much play in their home county. I feel part Corkonian so it was great to get down there to say hello and thank you.





Me and Colum McGrath C103



We were straight back in the van by 12pm and on our way to Wexford. I called into say hi to Tony Scott at South East Radio who again have been supporting my music since the very start. I can only imagine how difficult it is sometimes for head's of music deciding on what music to playlist, especially coming from independent artists who may not ever have been heard of in their locality. It takes a lot of courage to take a gamble on someone unknown so I am always very aware of that!



Me and Tony Scott South East Radio



On Wednesday night before I performed at the Sidedoor Sessions in Wexford's 'Chocolate Bar', I listened to singer/songwriter 'Charlie McGettigan' feature 10,000 on his radio show as his CD of the week. I had a lump in my throat listening to a writer I always admired talk about my music so highly. I have great belief in my ability as a songwriter but it just brings it home when someone so experienced makes a point of letting his listeners know so much about me. We drove home after the gig in Wexford, at which stage we were exhausted and tired of service station tea and deli grub!

There was lots of admin catching up to do on Thursday morning so not much time for rest. There were lots of emails awaiting responses and still some CD deliveries and posting out to do. I also popped in to the drivetime show on Dundalk FM for a chat and a song. The rain poured out of the heaven's on Thursday night as I rehearsed with the boys in Drogheda. I love rehearsing and getting into the songs, working out new ways of delivering them and hearing them performed as a group and not just alone as I would more regularly hear them!

On Friday, I had another private function to perform at in the afternoon, which was a good distraction from 10,000 for a few hours. I was a little nervous ahead of my gig at the Spirit Store as I had discovered during the week that the gig I had organised could not go ahead as planned due to the venue renovations not being ready in time. The gig suddenly became a free acoustic set in the bar downstairs and it took a little bit out of me to get my head round the fact that my 'hometown' gig was not going to be what I had hoped for. To my surprise, it was actually a super night. Myself, Dave, Aaron and Tadhg worked with what we had to work from in a confined space and put on a really good show. Lots of people turned up and it really was just like singing the set in someone's sitting room. The atmosphere in the room was electric and we had a great night all round. The nice thing being that a lot of people turned up to the bar not expecting entertainment and found themselves involved in the gig. We sold loads of cd's and the feedback was brilliant! The best part of the night where the moments when the audience were singing my songs with me!! Couldn't believe how many people knew the words..

There wasn't much sleep before we were on the road to Longford to visit Charlie McGettigan who asked me to be a guest on his Saturday Show on Shannonside Northern Sound. I was feeling very very husky and my vocals were weak so I had three cups of honey and lemon before I left the house. I actually don't like the taste of honey but it certainly helps. Some chewing gum and warmish water also helped improve things along the journey. I sang three songs on Charlie's show much to my surprise as I didn't believe my voice was going to hold up!

Me, Charlie McGettigan and guests!

From there we meandered the roads of Co.Cavan and Monaghan to get to the Tydavnet Show in north Monaghan. We made the mistake of going through Cavan town on the way and the fleadh traffic delayed us by about thirty minutes. It was a beautiful day and the same has to be said of the people at the Tydavnet Show. They went out of their way to say thank you and make sure I was looked after. Thanks to Joe who made things easier for me too by keeping his PA set up for me to use. I got chatting to country performer Brendan Shine who said he heard me performing on Charlie's show on their way to Tydavnet so he gave me a great plug when he started his performance. I got to wander round after my performance and spend some time chatting to the locals. One little girl spotted me, which was a weird moment and her Mum called me over. They told me that 'Moody Blues' is a great 'milking' song and that for me was the best moment of the week!! I left Tydavnet with my faith restored in the kindness of people and the reminder that it's the simple things that count. I got to pet an 'Alpaca' while I was there too and took home some home-made local Irish whiskey marmalade and pineapple chutney courtesy of 'Pollocks Pickles' Co.Monaghan! Yum!!!

The 'alpaca' I met in Tydavnet!

On a final note for this week, the success of 10,000 is going from strength to strength. I have managed to achieve 735 broadcast minutes from airplay and interviews and live performances. 'Something Has Changed' had 23 plays on regional Irish radio over 3 days alone!! Newstalk 106 are going to give it it's first national radio spin this week so looking forward to that. The 1,000 kilometres travelled is getting smashed and 1,000 live audience is doing so well, already at 620. So things are great and having a little bit of rest today gives me a chance to recharge the batteries for week two!

Till next time xxxx