Dyniss

All entries in the music category

I’m Going Corporate

I’m joking a bit with the headline. Yesterday I finished my new website to support organizations with my live show concept. The new website is alive as of today, so check it out! Creating everything from start to finish took around 2 weeks of hard work, but the end result is nice ‘n simple.

I struggled with the idea of spending a ton of time building that website, then spending a ton of time re-building this website (www.dyniss.com), which is overdue for a facelift. I decided that it would be smart to be as efficient as possible, i.e. I will eventually clone my new organizational website and use the clone here. Of course, there will be different pages, but it will save me a ton of future work. I’ll blog more about the other site soon because it’s a big bold new move.

Dyniss Keynote Concerts

Dyniss Keynote Concerts

Canadian Music Week follow-up

The last time I thought, “That was some of the best money I ever spent,” I had attended a Tony Robbins weekend. CMW2014 was an intensive 3 days of information absorption and networking. As for who I met who will create something mutually beneficial with me, it remains to be seen. I met so many people whom I will be in future regular contact with, that it is highly likely one or more of them will develop a synergistic relationship with me. How exciting!

Bruce Cockburn, one of my idols, was also one of the keynote speakers this year.

Bruce Cockburn, one of my idols, was also one of the keynote speakers this year.

Canadian Music Week Preparation

Around March 2014 (2 months ago), I wrote — for the first time ever — a short imaginary “movie script.” Writing such a thing was related to the concept of creative visualization. I jumped on the idea (although I was very aware of creative visualization in general) after seeing a YouTube video where one fellow was interviewing Jack Canfield about his success. The young fellow said to Jack that he had written a movie about meeting and interviewing him just like he was doing.
In any case, in my own movie, I meet a person or persons at Canadian Music Week’s 3 day Summit who will seriously benefit me. I will of course also seriously benefit them. That’s what all ideal relationships should be like. How this will come about and in what form I have no idea. I suppose that’s part of the fun. I shall follow-up in this blog with the magical result!
CMW 2014

Who are you?

“Who are you?” is the sort of question I’ve noticed most people struggle to answer. “What do you mean by that?” is the most common comeback. The answer is: If you had to put yourself into only 1 or 2 sentences that explained who you really were in the universe and/or what your biggest goal was — could you do it? Most folks I’ve seen reply with their names and career titles. Life of course can be much more than a career, although some people are 100% defined by it — and that’s cool too! But if you thought about it — would your career only define you?
I’m writing this post because I struggled over the last few days to create a TAGLINE for my name/brand. This isn’t EXACTLY the same as what I’m describing above, but I had to go to the very root of what I am trying to do / give / share with the world that is authentically me. PS I slightly updated my logo as part of the process. So here it is: “Dyniss the Man of Song: Transcending the live audience relationship.”
Cool, eh? And you are left wondering (in a very good way IMHO) what the heck I am talking about in the tagline. You’ll just have to see me live to find out. 🙂
Dyniss Logo

Video Demo Time

I had two full (and successful) test shows a week ago. But when I reached out to a booking agent I had never met, I realized from his response (and at least temporary rejection) that he didn’t fully comprehend what I was providing. Therefore, I decided that I must provide a clear video demo to book new shows. After editing a demo at home, I shared it with a few friends/family, asking for feedback. Wow — there was a lot of constructive feedback. I got pretty upset at first — not because of criticisms — but because I realized that I had to do it all over again. Time feels so short and I’m missing some of my primary goals with these detours. I don’t even know if the demo will capture anything for me.
Correction — after typing that, I know it HAS TO capture stuff for me! This ain’t no boring, “Listen to my mp3” way of doing things. Onward!

Photo by Vanessa Aquarius

Photo by Vanessa Aquarius

Soon Time to Test

As part of following the Lean Startup method, I’m letting you know that I am 2 weeks away from testing something new in front of a live audience. The attached thingy came in the mail today and is part of the cruelty-free test.

iguana plush

He’s almost cute.

Endless Audio Preparation

I have been surprised by an invite to go overseas. Flight and accommodation are basically taken care of and I am incredibly grateful. However this will be a trip less scenic, brief or relaxing than Sedona recently and I’ll probably have to park my “official” business work. Therefore, I have been preparing for DAYS to record some of my songs while I’m there. I want to do the work on my little MacBook Air. For all you audio geeks, I planned to use my ULN-2, AT4050 and upgrade to Logic Pro X. As part of the Logic upgrade, I had to also upgrade all of my plug-ins to 64-bit versions. What a cumulative set of headaches. For example, did you know that a legacy ULN-2 won’t receive enough Firewire power from a MacBook Air through a Thunderbolt-to-Firewire adapter? Extra DC power as recommended by the manufacturer wasn’t helping, either. So after several days of installations and troubleshooting, I have shocked myself by deciding to DOWNGRADE my fancy equipment to one little Apogee USB microphone. Me — audiophile — recording on significantly cheaper gear than I already own. Oh well. The convenience in the end in my mind outweighs the technical hardware and software issues which I couldn’t tackle in time for my departure. Will the compromise be worth it?
Trusted AT4050 (left) vs new wee Apogee Mic

New song created

In Canada a few months ago we learned that the famous long-running CBC “Hockey Night In Canada” theme song would not be renewed or heard on the network again. There was much passionate public debate over this development. So CBC created a music challenge to find Canada’s next hockey anthem. Yours truly wrote and recorded an original anthem and submitted it. Semi-finalists will be decided upon in coming weeks. It was mega-fun to make a quick instrumental new song while keeping the quality high.

“X” takes the “Christ” out of Christmas

The title of today’s entry was something a teacher once said to me and other students, asking us not to remove “Christ” from “Christmas” by writing “Xmas”. It is a fair and interesting comment.
Right now I’m getting about 20 unique visitors to this blog page every day. I find this surprising. And people rarely comment. I must be boring. Actually, I must definitely be boring. I mean, I talk passively about my basement-only music career and my sick cat. La, la, la. Perhaps I should talk about racier things like “anal sex porn lovers”? (Hmm, now that I’ve typed that, I’ll have to see how many more visitors show up here on the statistics page.)
But now since you want to hear the exciting music news, you’ll be thrilled to know that I have continued to work on my synchronized video collages for my songs. It’s been slow-going, but a lot of fun. I just finished a collage for my song, “People are Porn” (“Porn” again! I didn’t mean it!) — which comments on our sexuality and how human nature and the media influences it. But the images I’ve assembled are non-pornographic — I’ve used medical diagrams and things like Budweiser ads to explain things. The Pope even makes a photo appearance!
However, I might find myself in Copyright Hell with my video fun. Will I end up selling DVDs of my cute little collages and then get sued to death like legendary copyright deviants Negativland?
I figure I’ll have some time after Christmas during my one week off to complete maybe 2 more video collages if I’m committed. I’m pretty revved-up for the eventual new live performance format I’ll have with all these collages. I’m technically creating a crappy music video for every song, which is some sort of bonus.
Oh, back to Xmas Christmas — if you need a gift quickly, you MUST check out my PERSONALIZED CHRISTMAS SONG. It’s pretty darn cute. I can e-mail you a copy in a jiffy to give to your loved one.
Hmm, having typed the words, “Christ”, “Pope”, “Catholic”, “Hell”, “anal”, “sex”, and “porn” in the same entry could get me in trouble, too.

October Update

I have been very busy between my day job and the time spent on an adopted cat who became very sick after I adopted her. I’m spending 2 hours per day force-feeding her through a tube that goes to her stomach. But hopefully she will be tube-free within a couple of weeks.
In music news, I did indeed have my first show using synchronized video. It worked out rather well! It definitely added to the show’s entertainment value. I saw people pointing at the screen, giggling, all sorts of interesting reactions. My plan is to perfect these first 4 slide-show songs and then do some more for about 10 slide-show songs in total. I dumped money into a small screen, a projector, and a portable dvd player. I believe that this will also influence my future songwriting since there isn’t a lot of meaningful visual stuff that can go along with general love songs and the like (unless I want meaningless images or MTV-style productions). My “opinionated” songs are much more appropriate to make use of visual assistance.
I also realized that I have a LOT of equipment to lug around now, and it will take me at least 30 minutes to set up. These will be serious considerations for future gigs.
In any case, I am looking forward to what will come…