New!
stand-alone AYoS player
Tired of accidentally shutting down mp3s playing from AYoS pages? Use this standalone player to stream AYoS while you surf -- here or across the web.
Q How can I find a list of all your songs and find links to all the blog pages for them?
A Funny you should ask.
I just posted a beta version of the new online version of my AYoS database. It's still a bit primitive but you can sort on song title, date, and whether or not the track is an instrumental. There are links to the AYoS page for each song, a link directly to the Mp3 and, with recent works, links to more download and streaming options at the Internet Archive.
Additionally, I've added a way to search for a word or phrase in a title.
And -- I'm happy to report our site searches by Google are now pretty running well, again. You can use it to search for lyrics or bits in the AYoS blog posts (a bit of of a crapshoot).
Q Where can I buy annoyingly cute AYoS memorabilia?
A Try the new AYoS Swagateria.
Q My band wants to cover one or more of your songs. What do we have to do to get permission -- and how do I find a specific song?
A Now, first, let me say how deeply flattering your question is. (Even if I did have to write it myself.)
I'm happy to report that it's easy to cover TK Major songs -- and now it's even easy to find them.
There are a three main ways to find a given song on AYoS:
- AYoS
database - sort on
name, date of AYoS post, or
whether a track is instrumental --
and search using a word
or phrase from a title
- Song Index Player -
presents the songs in easy to find alphabetical
order --subsorted on my highly syncratic self-rating
-- unlike other AYoS players, it doesn't advance automatically
to the next song
- Search AYoS via Google using
the search field on most AYoS pages -- good for searching for
lyrics or for the content of AYoS blog entries
You can read about how easy it is to cover my songs in the Cover Me sidebar on the Song Index Player Page .
In addition to these options, you'll find links to our embedded media player on most AYoS pages -- with different sorting options (alpha, date, shuffle, etc.) and direct click access to the original blog (and lyric) pages for each song.
Q How does A Year of Songs really work?
A That's like a whole website, right there... in fact, I created a page just to answer that question.
Q How come the URL I see when I'm here has changed?
A What? Damn those @!$#%@ domain highjackers!
No.
Actually it has to do with RSS feeds and search engines and shortsighted decisions by AYoS management (that would, of course, be me) back in the heady days when A Year of Songs was just a gleam in the eye of the crazy old man in the mirror.
Q I really like the player you have embedded on many of your pages -- how can I get one like it for my own web site?
A That excellent -- and free -- player is from Jeroen Wijering. It's fairly easy to customize and offers a lot of great features. Heartily recommended!
Q Is it my imagination, or has AYoS been falling down a bit at the "a song a day" thing?
A Who said anything about a song a day? And what's this business about for a year... We do what we want. When we want. We're bigger than the calendar. We're... moody artists. We're referring to ourselves as "we" — and that's always a bad sign.
But we — and I think we speak for all of ourselves on this — we promise to try to get ourselves back in line and at that big Grindwheel of Song. (Don't look for that with a dot org on it a while.)
This question just in...
Q Are the facts you assert and the events you describe true? Is there exaggeration, distortion, obfuscation, or outright lying in your stories?
A Yes to both questions.
No. Seriously, I would estimate that 95% or so of what I say is more or less literally true, 2% or so is distortion for the disguise of personal details (mine or other folks'), another 2% involves standard autobiographical devices like compound characters, telescoped events, and poetic exaggeration — and the last 1% is just complete, utter lies. And it goes without saying that it's up to you to figure out which percentile this answer falls into. (Hint: think smaller percentiles.)
Q Just what is A Year of Songs?
A Every day for a year I intend to post a newly recorded acoustic version of a song from my suitcase of songs and scribble a little something about the song, or the time I wrote it, or just whatever crosses my mind.
A number of these songs have been recorded before and are already available online in more or less fully produced versions — but most have not.
The performances and recordings here will be highly informal, raw (all right, sloppy) readings by the songwriter — sometimes, of songs he'd just as soon forget. But that's kind of the point -- to document the good and the, uh, not as good.
Oh — and all the music here is free, whether you download, stream, or subscribe to our podcast.
Q What's the point of your project?
A Why does the caged bird sing? Why do mighty oaks groan in the wind? Why does Grandma's rocking chair squeak? And... well, do you want to be the last kid on your block to have your own podcast?
Q If the songs you'll be posting are, as you say, informal-to-sloppy, it seems their promotional value will be compromised. Are you worried that you're shooting yourself in the foot by not putting your best one forward...that is to say, doesn't this defy show biz wisdom?
A It does and I don't much care. I just wanted to get the body of my existing songwriting work in a decent archive (at Ourmedia.org, a cyber-sibling of Archive.org [on whose servers the actual files are stored]) where it would be available for some time to come (for free). If other musicians want to cover any of my songs they'll probably be able to find at least a version or two here (certainly, by the end of the project), complete with more or less official lyrics. (As though you heathens care.)
I also wanted to experiment with RSS and podcasting. I've been playing (and working) with computers for a long time. There's always something new and you can't meander down every promising pathway, but it's clear that RSS and other XML feeds will inform the information flow infrastructue of the evolving web. And, of course, who hasn't wanted to play radio?
Q I keep seeing the word "subscribe" when people talk about RSS and podcasting. Yet you say you're giving your music away for free. What gives?
A When you subscribe to a podcast or other RSS feed, it just means you're telling your newsreader to seek out that source and download whatever type of info or files you've decided you want to automatically download. It's possible to charge for a podcast or other material, of course, but that's a peripheral issue.
Q So, how do I subscribe to your blog/podcast?
A There are a number of ways.
You can use web-based newsreaders (also known as aggregators) like My.Yahoo or Google Homepage or you can use a standalone newsreader program.
Visit http://feeds.feedburner.com/AYearOfSongs to subscribe using My.Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines, Raja with a simple click or get more info on RSS and newsreaders.
Or cut and paste that URL into your newsreader or newservice's "Add Content" or RSS/XML field. (On the Google Homepage, click the "Add Content" button and a sidebar content dialog will open.)
If you want to download each day's song automatically, you'll need podcatcher software. If you want to use iTunes, you should find A Year of Songs listed in their podcast listings.
Q What? No announcer?
A Call me naive, but I was thinking this [podcasting] was supposed to be an improvement on conventional radio. People pay good money to get music streams without announcers. Now if I had something to say, maybe...
But, yeah, I may break down and break out my radio voice. It's... amusing.
Q So, are these definitive versions of your songs?
A Not at all. In fact, I fully expect to do some songs several times, perhaps in different styles. The versions I'll be posting will always be very spontaneous and not polished at all. Rough. Even sloppy. Look... it's a blog. I am rough and sloppy. I'm not going to lie...
Q Is this the only place I can find your music?
A No. You can find more than 30 of my one blue nine tracks at www.soundclick.com/onebluenine. You can also find a handful of 'hi-rez' (192 kbps) versions of those songs at download.com/onebluenine. And, of course, you can check out the developing body of AYoS recordings at Ourmedia.org.
Podcasters will want to check out the page I just started at www.podsafeaudio.com.
Unless otherwise noted, podcasters are hereby given permission to include any one blue nine or TK Major works available through Soundclick, Download.com, or Ourmedia.org — as long as the listener can easily discover the identies of the artists played.
Q What if my hot new industrial noise band wants to cover some of your tunes -- but we want to make sure we get the chord changes right. How can we get the proper chords without guessing?
A Just use the contact link on the AYoS pages (or click here) and let me know what song you want to do. As soon as I can figure out what they probably are, I'll email you back directly. (Make sure you give me a valid email address!)
Q Is there a precedent for the A Year of Songs project?
A Yes. While I had posted audio on my websites as early as 1995 (a 17 second, 8 bit audio burst of barely comprehensible electronica), I kicked into gear in 1998 when I posted a song a day (or so) for many months. The project, named (with a peculiarly deadpan humor that escapes me now) The Song of the Day Project, was burdened by the technology and limited bandwidth of the era. Still, it was also an era when bosses thought anyone in front of a computer was obviously working, so we had our fans. (There's that editorial/royal/fake band "we" that's been bugging me so much as I try to get into the style of first person blogging after a decade of creating third person websites and writeups. You'll see it again.)
Q So, you're not going to be writing a new song every day?
A Good heavens, no.
But I have a suitcase of songs — of decidedly varying qualities, to be sure -- maybe not a year's worth, but a slug of them. And, really, I plan on doing some songs several times. Anyone who has seen me play probably has a sense of how little chance there will ever be of hearing one of my songs performed the same way twice. Or even performed with the same chords twice.
Q So how many songs do you have?
A It looks like we're looking at about 125-140 or so songs, give or take, that will make the rather low bar. I had an earlier count that was somewhat higher -- but on closer inspection it turned out that there were a whole lot of duplicates and a whole lot of songs that were beyond even morbid curiosity.
Q Will you be doing anyone else's songs?
A I don't have any plans to at this time. I will probably post new recordings of a few songs with more or less communally written music (from my old band Machine Dog).
Q Your day job has you doing web and database development. Why did you decide to use third party services like Ourmedia, Blogger, and Feedburner?
A Because I wanted to focus on the process of providing content on an ongoing basis rather than getting bogged down in being a service provider to myself or embarking on a sofware development journey of discovery instead of a musical one.
That said, I think I spent a fair bit of time unfudging things I would have sorted out quickly had I been in charge rather than the robots. Anyone who has spent any time with WYSIWYG web tools probably has a good sense of what I mean.
Q You've been doing this for a while, now. Have you received any recognition?
A Well... we don't like to brag. But we've been featured twice on the cover of OurMedia.org. The last time (current as of this writing), three of the four musical tracks featured on their front page were from TK Major and A Year of Songs...
Q I work for an intellectual property management company. If I find one of our images in your blog, whose legs should we break?
A That would be my intern. I had to fire him. Or her. Seriously, many of my graphics come from my own photos. Others were found on the web but I believe are not under copyright control. If you know otherwise, please let me know and I'll remove the graphic in question as soon as possible.
Q Should I check back here soon to see if new faintly amusing Q&A's have been added?
A Well, I hadn't thought of that, myself, but, since you mention it, yes — yes, I do think that would be a good idea.