the dotmatrix project

Photo by Tanya Peterson

Josh Neas and I had a blast rapping about DMP, talking ConvergeSouth and listening to some of the live tracks by veterans of the project on his Wednesday night, 6pm to 8pm show on 90.9FM WQFS.

Check it out:

A shout of thanks to Mark Burger for the well written story. You never know how these things are going to turn out…

In newsstands tomorrow!

Photo by Tanya Peterson

In between cutting up tracks, designing album covers and coming up with structured tagging approaches for our media files, I’ve been trying to reduce my explanation of everything that surrounds DMP down to an elevator speech.

It’s a great exercise in communication design and a hell of a lot harder than it sounds:

• There’s the collaborative angle of what we’re doing — bringing together disparate creative communities to work together leading up to a live event and beyond. Mad fun, growth and hyper-local networking.
• Then there’s the promotions angle — providing an opportunity for the same folks to record and create media that can be pimped into perpetuity online and within local, meat space environments. Opening doors for future opportunities.
• And there’s the exposure angle — presenting local, original acts to a community for zero cost, which reduces the barriers for enjoying local acts to absolutely nothing. Hell, the show is free, the photos and video can be experienced online and the live albums can be download for free. Broadening the market for live music.

And that only touches upon the most obvious angles of the project. So how the hell do I go about collapsing all that into a 2 minute, understandable, oral description that I can drop in an (imaginary) brief elevator ride for a journalist, potential sponsor or interested participant to digest straight away?

Eh… I stopped trying to force it, and instead jumped straight to a tagline to describe the essence of what we’re doing:

FREE. LIVE. MUSIC.

Take it as “hey! there’s free, live music over here” or go deeper with something along the lines of, “it’s time to free up live music for people to enjoy everywhere” or something more elemental like, “be free to live in music.” Any way you read it, it speaks to our core values and approach, but delivered outside the staccato context of a banner or poster can it communicate enough?

Probably not.

As chance would have it, I stumbled across a Techcrunch article today by Michael Arrington from October 2007, which presented a well thought out position on recorded music’s inevitable march towards being free.

While I don’t buy into the absolute take on recorded music becoming completely free — label music is being affected as such, but with the cost of recording a CD being so low now, anyone can create one for the masses of people outside of San Jose who aren’t yet close to being 100% digital — the conversation that ensued in the trackbacks and comment thread was thought provoking.

This one comment by an anonymous “Aaron” made me stop in my tracks:

As someone who has been involved in the live music scene - as a fan, performer, producer, stage manager, and mixer - I really hope this does cause labels and even more artists to push for performances as the ‘real’ medium of the music. There are millions of people who would download for free albums by artists they would pay up to a hundred bucks to see live.

I’ll probably buy Radiohead’s new album for five or ten bucks (hopefully 95% profit for Yorke and the guys)… but if I drive down to the Shoreline to see them live I’ll end up paying thirty to eighty dollars.

The byproduct of this, I hope, is that people will get more interested in local music. Right now, it’s a chore for most bands to bring anybody (besides friends and family) out to a show, and the better venues have a pretty harsh chicken and egg policy in terms of letting new bands in (you cannot play shows unless you can bring 100 people, you can not build up a fan base until you’ve played shows!).

If this can create a push for a larger emphasis on live shows, which creates a demand for national headliners to bring in more local openers, that could encourage people to go see the locals when they headline shows, thus exposing them to even more local bands and hopefully turning them into people who are fans of local music in general instead of just specific bands. [...]

Exactly… sort of… I mean, people will always gravitate toward certain genres of music and they’ll always have favorite musicians and bands, but if we can cultivate the bug of simply enjoying the experience of a live performance, then we’re doing much more than promoting individual bands, putting on live shows and creating art within the framework of a music industry gone awry.

Not to be grandiose, but we’re actually contributing to a movement; one dedicated to focusing the wandering eyes and ears of music appreciation towards live, local and original music.

If musicians can bring it to their performances, consistently, they’ll build their rep within their communities — both local in the meat space and online where they choose to interact. Those artists will be able to make a living off their art. And if that movement takes hold — artists making “a living” as essential components of their communities — we’re then talking about independent musicians having access to the production and distribution tools — once only available to large labels — at an extremely affordable cost. This continuing advancement of technology allows such artists to independently grow their community of fans, both online and off, near and far.

Since the aggregate of music fans seem to already be moving in this direction of supporting live performances — rather than purchasing the prefabricated products of label marketing divisions — the hard work of convincing people of the value of live music is somewhat behind us. The work remaining for next gen-labels is similar to what every stage performer attempts to deliver to their audience — the goods.

So back to work we go in both defining what exactly that means and then executing on our vision.

Saddle Creek Records is the label for Sorry About Dresden, one of the bands the dotmatrix project put on this past April. Before watching this film, I knew Matt Oberst was from Omaha, but I had no idea how tight-knit and communal the Saddle Creek effort has been since 1993. A bunch of kids loving, playing, recording and distributing music evolved into the label and a group of lifelong friends that we outsiders couldn’t possibly appreciate without the back story.

Well, I’m appreciating the fuck out of them now.

We’re doing so many things differently here at DMP, yet covering so much of the same “building community” ground.

These guys ran super hard with analog recording, distribution and marketing — because it was all they had available to them at the time — to pimp each other and their community.

We’re pimping local and regional bands — some we know well, many we don’t — using state of the art live, digital recording techniques and editing software that wasn’t available to the consumer market in the 90’s. Our distribution and marketing goals are hyper local, but they’re also available for global discovery simply because of our use of the internet.

I’d bet the Lumberjack guys would’ve lost their shit back in the day playing in the sandbox we now take for granted.

It’s just so very cool to experience the story behind a living, breathing idea 15 years deep into its evolution. Thank you, Jason Kulbel and Rob Walters, for bringing Spend an Evening with Saddle Creek to life.

UPDATE: You can buy the full DVD documentary here.

UPDATE: We’re shooting to have the music videos in play on July 7th, but that date is not absolutely solid. More soon…

Rob McHone, Director of Operations for the Carousel Cinemas on Battleground Ave in Greensboro, is a big supporter of independent filmmakers and the local film community.

The back half of his building — the four theaters surrounding The Bistro — is dedicated to showing independent, foreign and art films, even though the demand for such films isn’t anywhere near the demand for Hollywood films. Rob is also about to launch a collaborative blog as part of his new web presence, where he plans on engaging with local filmmakers by offering free access to the theater for their every now and then take on movies, film, movie-making and similar type posts.

I tell you all this because quite recently, Rob agreed to partner with the dotmatrix project to help spread the word of free, live, original music in downtown Greensboro, while exposing the talent of local filmmakers. Check out this very cool community cross-promotion:

• Before every film is shown in the Bistro section of the theater, Carousel Cinemas will show one dotmatrix project music video in its entirety. Yes, that includes the film/editing credits for participating filmmakers (you do the math as to how many people in Greensboro will see that).
• Before each mainstream film in the front of the house, Carousel Cinemas will show a 20 second trailer of the dotmatrix project. And it won’t be the kind of ad that makes you groan at a movie — we’re talking about seeing your neighbors doing something cool that you can be a part of too.

We’re probably going to have a yearly show over there as well, showcasing the music videos created over the course of the previous year. Not quite sure how that’ll work, but it’ll definitely be set up as a huge public thanks to all the hard work put in by our ever evolving and talented media crew.

If you’re a Triad filmmaker and this project sounds like something you’d like to become involved with, check us out. And if you’re a local entrepreneur with your own ideas for cross-promoting the dotmatrix project — we’re putting out live albums and show photographs as well — feel free to hit me up at sean {at} dotmatrixproject {dot} com.

I’d love to chat with you.

Photo by lillyspad75

What would you do to grab foot traffic if you were putting on a monthly music event — featuring local, original musicians — within a downtown culture that doesn’t exactly go out of its way to support non-cover bands?

You’d do what you have to do, which in my case included climbing up to the roof of the venue and dropping a big ass banner over the side with two Cornhole bean bags tied to the bottom so the wind didn’t blow it down the street.

Not exactly an elegant solution, but it did the job.

Next month, I’ll reveal our coup de grâce, secret weapon for pulling in a crowd. Or did I just do that…

Poster by Justin Reich.

[photograph by Michael Dunn]

Above is the working cover for the 14 track live album we recorded last month at The Green Burro for the Greensboro-based, Southern Rock, alt-Americana group, The Radials. Our featured act on opening night, Sorry About Dresden, will have their 10 track live album finished sometime this upcoming week.

Each band we put on receives a live album, professionally recorded, mixed and mastered in downtown Greensboro. We record live on 6 to 8 separate channels — depending on the amount of vocal mics and mic’d instruments needed — through our Mackie Onyx 1620 w/ a Firewire card straight to Tracktion 3 on our MacBook Pro. Dan “Mixmaster” Bayer, our resident sound engineer, has been mixing both live and in the studio for years with outstanding quality.

Once the album is complete, we license it with a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. It basically means that anyone can use the music, even remix or sample it, as long as they give proper attribution and don’t use it commercially. Of course individual cases of copyright permission can still be managed individually, so the artists have complete control of their product.

Our distribution plan is where we shift away from the traditional label route — not to say that we consider ourselves or strive towards being a “label” on any decipherable level. Each album will be uploaded to the Internet Archive, where fans can download the tracks for free. We’ll also work with artists to get their albums out to spots such as Last.fm, iLike and AmieStreet while schooling them on how their fans can help them in the internet age by doing simple, free things like scrobbling tracks to their Last.fm account when using iTunes or their iPod, tagging tracks, recommending tracks, etc.

We’ll provide a package of audio tracks to the musicians — along with cover art, a professionally mixed video and professionally shot pictures of the show — but it’ll be up to each band to get their music to online stores such as iTunes and CDBaby or physical retail spots. We’re not interested in managing the machinations of music sales. Our profit margin is much greater designing software.

Once the product has been delivered, we’ll provide a free download of each album, along with links off to corresponding media from the evening back here at HQ. All we ask in return from people downloading the tracks is their email address and an optional PayPal donation to help us recoup our initial costs.

All of this is a designed effort to build community around diverse local artists, with local music fans, while still providing access to people around the world with overlapping tastes of music.

Prego, baby. Prego.

The Radials Live at the dotmatrix project by the dotmatrix project is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Another John Ford special is hot off the presses and ready to be served. Yes, John Ford is a front-end engineer God. No, he does not pay me to say such things. He simply makes cool shit work on the intertubes, super fast and to spec.

I swear I could take on Silicon Valley if I only had 20 John Ford clones.

What we have to the right is a dotmatrix project event calendar. As new gigs are scheduled, we post the event to Upcoming.org, add them to the dotmatrix project group over there and this fansy, shmansy, customized badge dynamically displays updated show dates within our custom design. It’s not revolutionary or anything, but I dig it.

The super cool thing about this particular pimped badge is that now you can use it as a promotional widget on your own blog, Live Journal, web site, etc.

Yes, you — the person who says that he digs live music, but never seems to finds the time to hit a show. I know you — you tell your girlfriends that you’re going to check out this awesome underground band at this totally cool spot, and then you bail to watch a Sex in the City rerun.

Tell me I don’t know who you are.

So now that you blog and participate with every social network known to man, you can wash away your live music dissing sins by simply posting the following code into the sidebar of your WordPress, TypePad, MovableType or Blogger blogs:

<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://www.dotmatrixproject.com/badge/"></script>

For those of you whose sidebar is a different size than the default 210 width here at HQ, simply use the following code and customize the width setting to your liking:

<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://www.dotmatrixproject.com/badge/?width=210"></script>

Down the road we’re going to support various visual themes and potentially accept styles submitted by you, our loyal readers. We do things like this because we love you. And because without your uncontrolled fanatical support of this here project, it’s not going to go anywhere.

So if you love music and want a pain-free, cost-free, time-free, guilt-free way to support your neighbors trying to gain exposure in an industry that’s tougher than ever to catch a break within, well, you know what to do.

-Sean

(originally uploaded by Rikke Moltisanti)

If you think you can capture the essence of a live show like in the above picture, we need to talk. Same thing goes for filmmakers with the following video:

Sorry About Dresden: Shake Your Fist from Sean Coon on Vimeo.

We’re putting on a monthly show in the Back Bar of The Green Burro in downtown Greensboro. The bands are playing for free, a sound engineer is recording the live show for free, photographers are shooting for free and filmmakers are shooting/editing music videos for free.

Cost of admission: FREE

The idea is that if we all collaborate to create art and release it into the wild — online and off — we’ll be opening doors for each other that might never have been opened otherwise. And over time, if people dig the concept, maybe we can turn it into a sponsored event with a sustainable business model to support live, local music in downtown Greensboro.

Along these lines, we’re looking to build a community of photographers and filmmakers interested in participating at least one time. That means you’ll be joining up with a media team and collaborating with the bands before the show on shot ideas. If you want to do more than one show, we’ll do our best to schedule it. If you want to work with a specific filmmaker, photographer or band, we’ll do our best to accommodate that as well.

We’re good like that.

Photographers: We’re looking to meet photographers who have access to DSLR cameras and can really craft a shot. If you have a great eye, you’re in. There’s no pledging involved, no hazing, no sleeping with farm animals. And while that last sentence read like an extremely male perspective on stupid things adolescent men might have to do in order to join something potentially cool — though this ain’t a corny frat — we’d definitely like the talented ladies in our community to participate just as much, if not more. So I promise, no more horrible analogies, ladies.

So if you’re interested in participating, please follow these two steps:

• Join the dotmatrix project flickr group and then contact Mike Dunn or Stephen Charles to get assigned to a show
• Join our dotmatrix project Google Group to ask questions of or communicate with anyone on the project

Filmmakers: While we’d like to have professional filmmakers participate on the project, we’re very open to amateur filmmakers and videographers. All we ask is that you know how to use a modern digital video camera, have a good eye and have at least some experience editing on non-linear systems. dotmatrix HQ has a digital editing bay with Final Cut Pro, so you’ll be able to edit with your co-filmmaker on top notch equipment.

If you’d like to join up, please follow these two steps:

• Subscribe to the dotmatrix project Vimeo channel and contact either Jason Pierce or Andy Coon to get assigned to a show
• Join our dotmatrix project Google Group to ask questions of or communicate with anyone on the project

Cross-Promotions We’re currently working on finalizing deals with local establishments to cross-promote the material created from the show. I don’t want to jinx the potential deals in the works by naming names, but I will say that we’re close to finalizing we’ve finalized a deal where a major movie theater with Carousel Cinemas on Battleground in Greensboro to present still shots and music videos from our show prior to the trailers run before each film shown in the theater. We’re also working on establishing a quarterly photo exhibit in a well known downtown venue to present the best shots of the previous three shows.

Both of these cross-promotions are in the works to market the name and work of our participating media creators.

So are you down or what!?