Bringing your creativity to the masses

My friend, (formerly Buffalo-based) hip-hop producer and artist Chae Hawk has released an EP in the ever-popular iTunes Music Store.  Chae—Chamus, as I know him—recently left Buffalo to see where his music and even producing career would take him.  But he’s got Buffalo in his heart, as he shared with us back in May.

I find it so exciting and almost unbelievable that artists today can get their independently produced music recorded, mastered and manufactured on their own.  It’s not that it doesn’t take a great deal of work and help, but the days of needing to be discovered by a magical Hollywood guru are but a mythic memory now.  Artists who get their work out there, in even just simple, basic ways (like an e-mail or MySpace page post) can connect to record companies’ independent music departments, and get their work distributed in limited but nevertheless big-time ways.  Take Chae Hawk, or my friend Jasmine Jones (who was featured in our January/February issue of Block Club with her husband and little boy) who released an album in 2004 and got an independent distribution deal on iTunes.  Both are proof that if you’ve got a great product, one that says something original and is credible in its own right, you can get yourself through the doors that would have been previously closed to you.

We’re not even taking into account the fact that traditional ways of distributing and selling music and other media are becoming nostalgic, as local record stores and even large media retailers are closing their doors in deference to the huge popularity of the downloadable media market.  It’s not a good transition, some say; but it’s also what’s happening.  So embrace it or be lost in its shuffle.  Your choice.

But you don’t have to be signed to a label’s independent distribution department.  You don’t have to be on iTunes to be out there.  The advent of Web 2.0 and the multitude of internet-based media creation, sharing and sales outlets are astounding.  You can make a legit movie on your Apple computer (with a good enough digital camera, of course), add a soundtrack, titles and some powerful enough effects to look not as homemade as that tape of you running into your sliding glass door in 1986.  You can make some legitimate-enough artwork on your home computer, upload it to YouTube, print it at your local photo studio, design and make CD packaging with labels and cases found at Office Max, and even publish your writing in a book with sites like Lulu and Self Publishing.

It gets me thinking… maybe I’ll start putting those trumpet and baritone oratorios polished and up online.  I could remix them, too.  Okay, I have music to make.

Posted by on 10/16 at 03:33 PM