01-06-09 – Coundown to Apocalypse / I Get Money

Alrighty! End of May! It entailed:

- Starting YAWA’s “Countdown to Apocalypse” – uploading a NEW YAWA song!
- Not getting the Merch through yet! *is nervous*
- Having a YAWA Practice and playing through a new song for the first time
- Looking at the results of my month-long blog test!
- Making my first commissioned Boyinaband Tutorial
- Making the first song for my boyband.
- Playing laser bowling o_O
- lolcat time (choosing a lolcat is actually one of my favourite parts of the week now)

Countdown to Apocalypse.

In a celebration of our release of the EP, we’re uploading 6 recordings from the CD to our myspace in the 6 days leading up to the release date! There will be clips of new songs, and completely reworked old tracks that I’ve been working on for months (If you’ve been following these blogs you’ll know how much time I’ve put into it!)

I’m so excited to see what people think. We uploaded I am the Navigator last night and people already are sending in the positive feedback, we’ve nearly got our first 1000 plays for the new version of Navigator as well and it hasn’t even been up for a day. Frickin’ awesome!

Later today I’ll be putting up a clip of our new track “Space and Time” which, tbh, is ace. One of my favourites – and the first track I made from scratch with the new line up. You can hear Kieran’s influence in the vocal harmonies and the crazily layered guitar, and Jamie’s influence in the frickin awesome basslines (Since there’s so much going on I had to keep the bass low frequency to avoid the mix getting messy… but you can feel the basslines on some good speakers, they are actually amazing). And you can hear my influence in the other bits Tell me what you think when it goes up!

Uh… Kinda hard to have an EP launch without an EP…

Even though both companies said the merch would arrive before June 5th it’s not here yet. There’s still a few days to go, so I’m not stressing just yet, but I hope to heck that they arrive in time ><

EDIT: As soon as I posted this the T-shirts arrived, and I got an email saying the CDs will be here on wednesday! Phew!

Full YAWA practice?! WOAH!

We actually had everyone here this weekend! …for all of 30 minutes. Zak was an hour late since he’d decided to go to the gym and not account for walking back to his, then getting a lift. Jamie had to leave early since he had agreed to watch his friend’s gig back in coventry.

We did manage to go through Space and Time and 25200 Degrees though – the two new YAWA songs from the EP, since we want to play through the EP as our setlist. Zak has said he’ll call me to arrange practicing during the week so he can perfect the drum parts.

Zak, Kieran and I all had a big chat too – Zak explained how since he hasn’t been able to get a job where he works on weekdays, money has had to come before the band so he can pay his bills. I can understand that, but I know for a fact that he goes out drinking with his friends – something that if I was in that situation, I wouldn’t do so I could afford to get to gigs and practices. I realise that I am different to most people in that respect, but that difference frustrates me. It’s difficult to find people who are as obsessed as I am with wanting to work.

Though I do understand a bit more about Zak’s plight now. I get the feeling he wants this, but due to a combination of the recessing making it hard to get a job, and the fact that he isn’t too good at saving money, he’s finding it hard to give his all.

May vs. April – Blog Stats Time!

At the beginning of this month, I said I was going to try posting every day on www.boyinaband.com to see if I could double my blog traffic, and thus guarantee that I could steadily increase my site’s traffic, and earn some money in the process.

I didn’t end up blogging every week, but I did do better than I have done – I made 13 relevant posts, about half of which involved me making a video of some kind, which usually takes about 4-5 hours including research and developing the synths and music as well as putting the video together.

So! Onto Stats. Check out the google analytics graph comparison:

So… in May, I had 41.37% more visits than in April. I posted 13 blogs in May. May has 31 days, so that’s 13/31. Assuming there were no other factors and the increase in traffic was just from posting more, that means 41.37/13 = 3.18% more visits per post. So if I had posted every day, I would have had 3.18*31 = 98.58% more posts – which is close to the 100% I wanted!

I love stats. Even if I’ve assumed a hell of a lot there (exponential growth will only go so far), it shows that I could have potentially doubled my traffic in a month.

Oh, also, I’ve made nearing £100 from commissions and donations this month too. Which is frickin’ ace. There are quite a few other commissions in the pipeline too.

Overall, considering I hadn’t even considered commissions and donations in April as a serious method of income, this website has a lot more potential than I initially thought.

Also, I found it’s a LOT easier to blog consistantly when you have someone else who is also blogging to motivate you. The last week of the month I did a lot of work – I made 4 posts, and started on 2 other making the beat episodes (I had one ready for Wednesday, but then a commission came through so I had to start on that instead), and completed two other tutorial videos. I’m sure the reason that started so well was having the thought that both Scratch and I would be blogging for that day, so it had to be done.

I also contacted this samples company with regards to advertising, but they haven’t replied yet. Maybe I don’t have enough traffic to tempt them at the moment… I’ll contact them again when it’s higher.

So! What’s my goal for June? Well since I have a theory that I can increase my visits by 100% in a month, I’m going to test run it. I had 5215 visits this month, so I want over 10,000 visits by July. I should be getting over 300 visits a day by the end of the month. I broke the 200 visits a day this month, so that’ll be quite a challenge… but I reckon it’s achievable!

Will make beatz 4 cash

Check out this video:

I got paid to make this beat and explain how. Life is good.

Let me clarify how good this is – I get to sit and emulate the coolest gangstuh producers, help other people to learn things that will make them happy, write music that I genuinely enjoy and teach myself new techniques… for money.

Beats working at Tescos for the rest of my life.

Not boy*in*aband… boyband.

Yep, I’m making a boyband. At the moment, it’s me, Scratch, Kieran and Pete. I made our first song – it sounds like a cross between britney spears and N*Sync. Which is absolutely perfect. There will be dance moves in the video. My sister has asked to be our choreographer, which I’m cool with – she knows more about Japanese boybands than most members of Japanese boybands.

The working title for the boyband is… actually, I’ll make that the blogly question, to see if you can make something better.

Laser Bowling?

I went to my homegirl Rebolio’s place this weekend to organise a YAWA gig (yay!) and also to kick her ass at bowling. When we pulled up outside and it said “Xtreme Bowling”, I was sceptical as to how bowling could be xtreme, but they proved it could be done.

It was like walking into a rave – blaring dance music, lasers flying everywhere, and… bowling. Wow. No-one seemed to find it offputting. And neither did I – after a disappointing first game (I lost to some of Reb’s friends… the game must have been broken or something), the second game I kicked ass in. Mostly because I took my shots during the epic buildups of the trance songs, timing it so the ball hit when the music kicked in. That is obviously why I got more strikes that time.

But yes – good times were had all round. Laser bowling – the sport of the future!

Next week on Dave’s Blog…

An exciting week! It’ll entail:

- The big YAWA EP release party! (Where I’ll be meeting Eamon’s lady, Jamie’s Mom and other people I have not yet met but should have!)
- Blogging every day and finishing my remaining commissioned tutorial (I’ve already made the beat, just need to make the video)
- Releasing the 5 other songs/clips from the EP onto the YAWA myspace!
- Finishing the last few Interabang bits and bobs in preparation for releasing the website.

AND THE BLOGLY QUESTION: What should my boyband be called?