Self Sufficiency

Seriously, are you really waiting on someone else? No one cares about your art more than you. Period. You need to be willing to make it happen for yourself no matter what. If you have no money, and want to put out an album learn the basics of mastering, the basics of mixing, the basics of design and do it yourself. Paying an expert is better, but that only works when you have money. If not DO NOT USE IT AS AN EXCUSE. In the 90’s I toured in a hard/grunge rock band and we had zero budget. I studied mixing and recording for a year then borrowed a four track from a friend and recorded and mixed our album, it didnt sound great but it was something. Then we found a guy who had a CD burner and we actually made CD’s (not everyone could do that in the 90’s) Then we found through a friend of a friend a guy who had a laser and we convinced him to print our album art. Our drummer worked at a place that packaged and shipped things so we used the shrink wrap kit as his work to shrink wrap every CD and jewel case. Now we had an actual CD to sell at our gigs, again really rare at the time. Also I learned the very basics of html and made a website at geocities (google it) that included *gasp* actual songs you could listen to. So now this bad garage band with no money had a website (almost no one had a website in those days) and a professional CD in shrink wrap. We got so many gigs just for those reasons.

As we made money from the tours we did actually have the money to go to a real studio, and I learned even more. Now years later with the Drunk Pedestrians music I do have the budget to work with a proper graphic designer, and other artists to fulfil my vision of the music, but I NEVER wait on anyone, I did all the design on the early covers. And would tomorrow if the money dried up. The only person that can steer the ship is you. Don’t let ANYONE slow you down if you can help it. Get out and do it yourself and get your art to the world. I would have killed for tumblr, Soundcloud, Wordpress, Google docs, Bandcamp ETC back in the day. We had to do everything by hand. ALL the excuses have melted away thanks to technology. Make your next song completely on your smartphone if you have to just DO SOMETHING!