Travis Dickerson Recording Studios Forum

  that's a way cool groove Travis - DV has a great jam, I dig DJ's marimba it's like he is telling a story with it. Also diggin' on the lap steel, I didn't you know you played but it doesn't surprise me. Have a happy Aloha-Fiday!

Thanks Duck. DJ is a great player and it great hearing marimba in contemporary music. Lindy built the Laptop your hearing here. You can hear him playing it on Iconography and I'm using it on this CD with DJ. The cool thing about it is it's amazing tone and the fact that Lindy built it by hand. Here's a pic of it in front of my early 50's fender. He clued up some old walnut and cut it out by hand on the band saw, neck and all. He hand made the fretboard and installed an old early sixties P-90 and gave it the fade finish. It's a pleasure to play.

^ That's awesome that Lindy made it, handmade things are the best! I like that it looks like a canoe paddle 

I've listened to the tracks a few more times and the marimba is really great to hear, you & DJ really jam well together. Danny Elfman playwd marimba live alot with Oingo Boingo and I remember X opened for them a few times. I wonder if Dj picked up some tips or vise versa?

I'm a bit confused. Is the name of this album ''DJ Bonebrake and Travis Dickerson'' ?

At the moment it's Les Filles Dans les Nuages, but that could change, it's still being worked on. I just though it would be fun to release a CD one song at a time as it's being worked on.

Just wonder, what is the status of that project? Are there any updates yet?

Yes, still working on it. I probably shouldn't try to do so many records at the same time as it really slows the process down. But I hope to finish up a couple of more tracks this month and post those and I'll continue to post them as we complete them. Same with the Vince project, getting that fired up again, it's close. Viggo and I just finished a new CD and it will be available this month. We are setting up to shoot a couple more songs for video next month. Hope to include Cameron Stone as well on this one. A bunch of other stuff as well in the works. 

Really excited with all of these new projects, especially the Viggo one, THAT will be cool to hear! And I'm very curious. Will there been any future collaborations planned with Buckethead? My dad and I love hearing the music you two put out!

Thanks Travis, glad to hear about the upcoming projects

I wonder if there are any updates in the meantime

Thanks for your interest. You may want to read my PO post because they are somewhat related. I'm still working on this collection and the one I started with Vince DiCola. I know it has literally been years but this is the reality of the market place and the time I can devote to what amounts to music we make for our own amusement.
In the past funding for the creation of these CDs was made by selling CDs and sometimes pre-selling to pay for pressing. Now real CDs probably are not feasible. Just not enough demand for the CD format. I see from the Bandcamp stats that there is a real interest in the project and thats enough reason for me to continue working on it. In fact, I like it so much I probably would anyway. But that means working on it when time allows and I have lots of other project that I'm working on at the same time. I have a couple more tracks almost done and I'll probably post them to Bandcamp soon with the others and continue doing so till all of them are complete.  And thanks again for your continued support, I appreciate it.

Thanks for the reply and nice to hear that the project is still on the way. Looking forward to hear some more tracks

Also, what a great surprise to hear that Population Override finally is in stock again! That's like birthday and Christmas together

About pressing CDs: I find it really sad that there are no more plans for CD (re-)release, because I prefer buying music on CD and have been collecting CDs for many years now - I only buy downloads where not possible otherwise. But of course I understand that the demand for CDs is much lower these days and the focus definitely is on downloads (or streaming) now. Still I find it hard to believe that it's really not possible to get over the threshold for CD pressings. That's because the "hardcore" fans would certainly be very happy about CD releases, even if the price is a bit higher than usual. Don't know how closely you have been following the Buckethead "Pikes" series. But he is now throwing out a new record like every two weeks. And those are offered as download, as "limited edition" CD-Rs and as pressed CDs. Don't know how well the pressed CDs sell, but I guess they wouldn't be creating them, if it didn't work out for them. And from the pictures that people post on the internet, we can see that they sell at least a few hundred discs of the "limited edition" CD-Rs alone - and those go for 25$ to 35$. So obviously there still is some demand for physical discs among the fans.

Finally, what about crowdfunding? A lot of "niche" and "independent" projects that would not have been possible otherwise have been realized thanks to crowdfunding. And there's not much too loose, except for the time that it takes to setup a Kickstarter (or whatever platform people prefer these days) project. Should be much less effort and less risky than dealing with pre-orders or pre-selling yourself...

Well a lot of this has been discussed over the last several years as the landscape has changed. I'm not saying in no case is it possible to press a CD but I'm thinking of projects like the topic of this thread. I love doing these records, small experimental collaborations. Also, the way I make records is I spend a lot of time massaging them and using the best equipment and enjoy the process of old school record making. I also pay my musicians for their work and I have a lot of studio overhead, all old school and i would say fading ways of doing things.  I would suggest the Pikes thing is a case in point. It's a strategy to deal with the changing landscape. It relies on a small but loyal fan base and no overhead at all.  Its download and CDR driven ( I would doubt anything is "pressed"). It's a smart way to deal with the times.

The bottom line is the days of CDs are over. Think about it. Why do you need in this day and age a piece of plastic to transport your ones and zeros from my digital portal to yours. Your really talking about the very human need to hold something, anything in your hand.  This is something that humans need to get over being as it is the root of all evil  .

I'm as interesting in trying new things as anyone so thanks for your input I appreciate any ideas .  I really do enjoy observing the way technology  changes the way ( and always has) everything works. But for my generation and yours, the age of hot molded plastic music is over.

Quote from: Travis on April 08, 2014, 10:49:29 AM
Well a lot of this has been discussed over the last several years as the landscape has changed. I'm not saying in no case is it possible to press a CD but I'm thinking of projects like the topic of this thread. I love doing these records, small experimental collaborations. Also, the way I make records is I spend a lot of time massaging them and using the best equipment and enjoy the process of old school record making. I also pay my musicians for their work and I have a lot of studio overhead, all old school and i would say fading ways of doing things.

Especially with all the blood, sweat and tears you put into creating these records, I feel like these records deserve to be released on a nicely packaged disc.

Quote from: Travis on April 08, 2014, 10:49:29 AM
I would suggest the Pikes thing is a case in point. It's a strategy to deal with the changing landscape. It relies on a small but loyal fan base and no overhead at all.  Its download and CDR driven ( I would doubt anything is "pressed"). It's a smart way to deal with the times.

Just for clarification, all the "regular" Pikes releases available so far are pressed original CDs, only the "limited editions" are on CD-R.

Quote from: Travis on April 08, 2014, 10:49:29 AM
The bottom line is the days of CDs are over. Think about it. Why do you need in this day and age a piece of plastic to transport your ones and zeros from my digital portal to yours. Your really talking about the very human need to hold something, anything in your hand.  This is something that humans need to get over being as it is the root of all evil  .

I'm as interesting in trying new things as anyone so thanks for your input I appreciate any ideas .  I really do enjoy observing the way technology  changes the way ( and always has) everything works. But for my generation and yours, the age of hot molded plastic music is over.

Well, I think the reality isn't that black or white. People said Vinyl is dead when the CD came out decades ago. And still Vinyl is around these days. Surly, it has become a niche product, but there is constant fanbase and even kind of a "renaissance". Probably with CDs it will similar. After all, most "popular" music very short-lived, intended to be consumed and forgotten. So it doesn't make much sense to put this kind of stuff on a physical disc. Downloads or streams fit perfectly. But things are quite different with experimental/avantgarde records, that you can still enjoy listing after many years.

For me it still makes a big difference whether you put a disc in the player and take your time to listen it all the way to the end or just throw a random file onto your MP3 player. But maybe that's just me

BTW: While I would agree that our society is too much focused on owing things - just think of all the status symbols - collecting CDs, books, etc. is quite a bit different. Has very limited monetary value, but can have a huge sentimental value...

I see you are a passionate collector. And I was jesting a bit about possessions being the root of all evil. I have a huge vinyl collection and my vintage recording equipment collection will be the doom of me. So I can't cast stones. I think we have transitioned from talking about DJ and my record and music distribution to collecting. I know as you say at this level (really small) its more closely related but I still think hard copy distribution is at an end and CD and even the resurgence of vinyl is really becoming and is a small fringe. Making things to be collected is a whole other thing and though not necessary any more for music distribution I under stand the desire.

For a truly pressed CD you need to start with 1000. And if we are talking fan bases in the hundreds, we have a problem right away.  All the CDs we have ever sold 1000 were pressed. Several hundred would sell right away and then over the span of a few years for popular CDs the 1000 would sell out. Here was the dilemma of repressing as the market was now down to selling just a few  a year you would never recoup the pressing costs. An even smaller percentage would be interested in vinyl. So I think I'm asking would CDs on demand be an option? When professionally produced they are very hard to tell apart from replicated CDs. In your example jpg you attached, that "pressed" CD looks all the world to me like a Taiyo Yuden or other silver back CDR, I think I can see the laser burn even with the jpeg. Is there really a IFPI number on the matrix? The reason I doubt it is there would be stock in the 10s of thousands if these are pressed, way, way more then would ever be consumed. The storage alone would be problematic, do you know how many square feet of space just 1000 CDs occupys. That may not be the case here and if thats working in this case, great, i hope it is,  but that would be my dilemma.

So the really interesting question for me is, would a professionally printed and packaged CDR be something a collector would purchase? I was thinking of producing some Axiologys to see if there is any interest. I've also thought of selling a professionally  packaged USB thumb drive with all three Thanatopsis CDs plus some bonus stuff all in 24 bit files. Now if you want to listen to CDs as you say you like to, just burn your own, and when it wears out, burn another.

So, if I'm just interested in distributing music, digital downloads is whats happening. If I want to create a collectable form of distributed music, this is were it gets interesting.
And their are lots of interesting alternatives to distribution a collectable form of music that don't involve committing valuable resources to pressing unneeded CDS.

Thats for your contribution to the post I appreciate your opinion.