Category: About B-sting

  • DIAY: Perfect, the music video

    Remember I released the song Perfect back in March (you can still download it for free here)? Well, it now has a music video I produced all by myself:

    The reason I made the video was to make a simple point: making music videos is something you can do all on your own. Just like you can do many things as a musicia/one-man-band yourself. I like to call it DIAY: Do It All Yourself. Granted, making it yourself means it won’t be as flashy and slick as one from a record label. And maybe it’s not something people will want to watch over and over. But actually creating something and putting it up on YouTube requires nearly zero budget.  The rest is creativity, resourcefulness and hard work.

    I’ll let you in on a secret. I shot this video with in one afternoon with just one camera. And not even a video camera, a digital still camera with video option (a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS6 if you must know). I used a microphone stand as a tripod. No really. I planned out what I wanted to shoot and what shots I needed. Then just filmed myself like crazy. I edited al the shots together with Lightworks, a free video editing program. I’ll admit, it took me a weekend long of swearing and cursing to learn how it works and to get it to do what I want. But I did, and got a result. Kudos to the guys at Lightworks.

    Due to being busy with work and other stuff , it took me a month to complete, but if I’d add up all the hours I actually put into it, I think it could’ve been done in three 8-hour working days, maybe even two if you worked all day. I could’ve picked any of my songs, I picked the one that was currently easiest to make a video for at this moment. Plus now I have some practice and know what the possibilities and limitations are when I want to make something better. And I especially know to watch out for continuity errors now. LOL

  • We had a (secret) launch gig!

    Just now I did my very first and rather exclusive live gig. It was both a try-out and a show-case of something I’ve been preparing for a while: headphone gigs at any location with a very small audience (maximum of 4 people). I’ll be giving more details about how it works in a week or so and if you’re interested how you can get me to come play for you.

    In attendance for the gig at my home were three very special friends who serve as consultants for the project. This was my way of saying thanks to them for their ideas, some of which were generated even after this gig. Donja, Elouise and Jeroen: thank you.

    I also have a few potential gigs lined, but since this is still in negotiation & planning stage, can’t say more about that just yet. I’ll keep you posted!

  • I am B-sting

    I am B-stingLet it be noted that I am B-sting, electronic musician, producer, bass-player and on a very rare occasion a DJ. You might say “well duh, we know this.” But apparently it’s not universally known. Thanks to my Google alerts, I occasionally notice there’s other B-sting’s. If they’d typed their name in Google before they chose theirs, they would’ve noticed my various websites are the top results, for a reason.

    I’ve been using the name B-sting as an online name since I built my first website around 1995 on the now defunct De Digitale Stad (DDS). When I got my first chat account (on icq), I was B-sting. Other B-sting’s later joined, but even if you look now, you’ll notice I have the lowest number. Still. Every forum I ever joined: B-sting (or Bsting if the dash was not allowed). Years later I got B-sting.nl and eventually B-sting.com. Because I am B-sting.

    I don’t own the name B-sting. There’s multiple Mr. Smith’s out there and not all of them are LL Cool J. There’s a photograper with the name B-sting, there’s multiple gamers with the name B-sting, a consultancy firm, a blogging mom, a painter, a golf club, a meme, there’s even an EP by an Australian band named the Testeagles entitled B-sting (which came out in 1998, after me mind you). Good for them. But it kinda annoys me there’s other musicians who still pick the name B-sting. How hard is it to check if a name is unique, before you chose it?

    I can’t blame the English jungle/garage-DJ the Impeccable DJ B Sting, since he started using the name around the time I did and Google wasn’t around back then to check it for either of us. Also I have the dash, he doesn’t. And he’s Impeccable. Good for him. We invented the wheel around the same time. It happens.

    But apparently there’s also an unsigned South-African rapper who recently decided B-sting was a good name. I’m sorry to disappoint you Brandon Jason Gow, but I am B-sting. You were 2 years old when I became B-sting. You can’t stop me from being B-sting, but then I can’t stop you either. I just think you should have checked your name before you picked it. I wish you good luck moving on up on the Google rankings (you’ll need it), but I think picking another name might be easier. Especially if you want to be signed. I mean when you registered your ReverbNation-account, you could have noticed the name B-sting was already taken. Did you look it up? It is me.

    Hey, Nirvana didn’t check their name, but if they had access to Google in 1987, I don’t think they would’ve used the same name as a British rock band from the Sixties either. It’s just bad marketing, even if eventually they did become more famous than the other band. Even Bad Company eventually changed their name when they got sued by the other Bad Company. And who can forget about The Originals/The New Originals/The Regulars? Just saying.

  • B-sting.com in 2010

    The year 2010 marked the beginning of me writing B-sting.com and making music all on my own. To wrap up the year, here’s an overview of everything that happened since the launch.

    Making Music

    The site and blog launch on April 1st. Between all the blogging I introduce the Buy Me A Drink-feature. By July in finally realise I need to start finishing up some music. I announce EP01 is coming. I keep the blog posted about the progress: part 1, part 2 and part 3. As promised, I release the EP before the end of the month (on the last day even): If You Want Some Thing Done. Everything (including the cover) is done by me, proving DIY works. Okay, so I used one sample.

    In between recording, I help out on a blues cover band, which is not so successful. I visit the Muzikantendag in The Hague. While I keep working on stuff, the blog remains pretty much silent on it.

    Notes of interest

    Throughout the year, I also post about curious things relating to music I bump into.

    The first to be discussed is untalented singer Florence Foster Jenkins who became famous by sheer persistence. I love a documentary about the original Music Radio Pirates. Henry Rollins explains how not to be an asshole. I find out the Asian Susan Boyle is a man. Pendulum does a 360 video. Kane are pretentious pricks. The Blood Red Shoes share DIY tips. We find out selling out is harder than you think. I love Brett Domino’s Timberlake Medley. Sharing only breaks a broken industry. I’m excited about the Banksy film and Trent Reznor’s new project.I follow up when How To Destroy Angels is released.

    In May I declare the Zombie Dance Parade dead and a few days later, the organisers come to the same conclusion. I also dislike the Di-Rect photoshoot. I also disaprove of frauding your way to fame. Thom yorke says NO to majors. I give props to Diego Stocco and his bizarre instrument.

    Can an algorithm beat a DJ? I play with the game NameDropper. Even majors make very little on albums. Slowing down songs 800% is fun. Not so fun is that three songs by pop singers turn out to be the exact same song. I give out 10 tips to do something new. Interestingly, artists make more in the file-sharing age. Sigur Rós are tired of every commercial cloning their songs. Piracy is not stealing.

    I already noted in May that Quit MySpace Day was coming, but in October I actually declare Quit MySpace Day. Quit MySpace Day creates a bit of a buzz in the music media world, so a few days later I round up the Aftermath.

    Because of VAT changes, some crazy pre-sales are announced and result in record breaking sales. It also results in this joke announcement.

    I also review some tools to make music like Aviary Myna, iNudge, Audiotool, The Swinger and Aviary Roc.

    The Origin of Samples

    Starting the end of April, a repeating fixture of the blog is the weekly post on Monday in the series The Origin of Samples. In it I dig into the links between song from across decades, some times even centuries and how they are all tied together because parts of one piece of music is used in another.  The subjects that were covered:

  • “Buy me a drink” explained

    You may have noticed the “buy me a drink”  link that shows  below every post (also in all the places besides b-sting.com where it is crossposted, like Livejournal and Facebook). Two people now have asked me what that’s about. I’ll explain in case it leads to misunderstandings.

    B-sting.com is my music website where I not only talk about music, but also plan to release my own stuff some day soon. A lot of the music will probably be given away for free (partially at least, with an option to ‘support the artist’), so as a business model for my ‘internet venture’ that’s kinda sucky.

    “Buy me a drink” is basically nothing more than a donate button. The cap a street musician puts in front of him where you can toss in a coin if you like it. But “donating” sounds like I’m a starving artist, a charity in need of financial help. I don’t need money, I have a well-paid day-job and this is blogging/musician thing is what I do because I love doing it. Any artist with stars in his eyes dreams of one day ‘living off art alone’, but I’m realistic, so for now happy with just a complimentary drink. And who knows, maybe one day all the drinks combined make up for a bit of the expenses I make to do what I love doing.

    So I liked the idea of the “buy me a beer“-plugin for WordPress (except that I don’t like beer, but luckily you can customize the plugin). It’s like saying “hey, I like what you’re onto there, let me buy you drink, my friend!”. Just like in real life. For those familiar with Facebook, it’s sort of the ‘like’-button of my website.With the difference that you can buy a drink and you decide what you pay. Two cents, 2 euro’s, doesn’t matter, you can toss a Zimbabwean dollar in the hat if you like. You can even buy me a drink irl, if you want.

    Let it be clear no one needs to press that button and buy me drinks. It is completely optional. It’s not like when every one buys a round and you have to too. And even though I do admit I greatly appreciate the gesture if you do, I won’t like you any less if you don’t. To be quite honest, so far no one has bought me a drink at all. So no, I’m not raking in big dough. But that’s to be expected since there’s no music yet, only blog posts for one and a half months. And if you don’t want to give money, a “great post!”-reply or a “Like” on Facebook every now and then suffices too. Not that lack of replies has ever stopped me from blogging either though.

    P.S. Has any one ever spotted a street musician who plays Gimme Some Money? They totally should.