Reviews I write on this humble weblog will now also be posted on Blogcritics.org which is a self-described "sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, and technology". My last review is over here.

You would think that a book called “How To Write Songs On Guitar” would be relatively simple and straightforward, but you would be wrong. Maybe you would notice that it's sub-titled “A guitar-playing and songwriting course” and would think that it's instead a more rigorous step-by-step guide to playing and writing songs on guitar. That would be wrong too.

This book isn't a course or a “how to” guide, but instead a grab bag of ideas and observations about songwriting, mostly expressed using a lot of music theory. If you don't know much about music theory, this book probably isn't going to give you much help. While I personally can figure out various musical things on paper if pressed, I don't tend to apply it much in the normal course of songwriting. I'm open to learning, but what explanations there were in this book were very brief and not much help.

There are a lot of chord dictionaries and big lists of progressions from other songs. And while the author does touch on some classics and the occasional more modern pop hit in the progression lists, I wasn't familiar with the majority of the songs he held up as examples. And for some reason in most cases only the title of the song is provided as well, making it difficult to track them down the songs if I wanted to.

Perhaps I am biased by being a music dummy, but the sections I enjoyed the most were the ones that talked clearly about songwriting techniques without a lot of theory. The chapters on songwriting methods and song structures were interesting and had some ideas in them that I might not have come up with on my own, but they were very short and probably not worth the price of the book.

All in all, I wouldn't recommend this book to beginners thinking about giving songwriting a shot. I might recommend it to people comfortable in music theory who have no idea about songwriting, but I've never met anyone like that before.

Since I have no budget for videos, you will have to use your imagination. The video for my new song There's Something Wrong is this little guy here:

During the intro he just stands there and then he begins to dance. He pauses at 1:57 during the little break and begins again at 2:14 and does not stop until the very end.

If you watch it backwards there is somehow additional meaning. Good luck.

"I just got the CD today...oh my, does it ever smell reallygood - can only hope that it sounds half as good!!" - Becky Campbell

There's Something WrongGenre: Rock Length: 3:20 Date: 09/08/03

Here's a happy little number maybe about mental illness and maybe about Usenet and maybe about both.

If you felt like it, you could now order Brad Sucks: I Don't Know What I'm Doing on CDBaby. You're really better off buying it from me because it will be cheaper. It's $6 on CDBaby (without shipping) which is as low as I could get it without me actually losing several dollars on each sale. If anybody felt like writing reviews of the album on CDBaby, that would be really great.

Here's a PDF describing what's new in Cubase SX 2. You can also take the tour of some of the new features here. So Cubase 2 is apparently skinnable or something. I wonder how messed up that's gonna be. The Freeze feature looks like it could be most dope. The new mixer is crazy to look at.

I am humbly presenting my middle finger to the RIAA: RIAA to give file swappers amnesty

Every day I try to give the RIAA the benefit of the doubt. Hey, I'm a wannabe musician. If I was living off of it I'd probably defend that as hard as I could too. But I honestly think that machines have taken over their brains and someone dropped a cup of water on a computer in central command. Now the RIAA has gone haywire and needs to be taught a lesson about human friendship by a small doe-eyed child.

Anti-RIAA Flyers from Downhill Battle. I'm just a big softy for civil disobedience.

Universal Lowers the Cost of a CD from $17-$19 to $13.

UMVD President Jim Urie said the move will benefit consumers and the company's retail customers, while invigorating the overall music industry. "Music fans will benefit from these price reductions. Our new pricing model will enable U.S. retailers to offer music at a much more appealing price point in comparison to other entertainment products."

I've been sitting around wondering a few things and then I realized that the people who read this weblog are probably the best source for the answers. Here are the questions: 1. Are there any net radio stations worth sending my album to? I'm on dialup so I have no idea about that whole scene.

2. Are there any independent music magazines/blogs/sites worth sending my album to? I think it would be nice to get it reviewed and have people say mean things about it officially on the record but I have no idea where's hip.

Inquiring artists want to know! Thanks!

I am really really excited about Cubase 2 which was announced the other day. You can watch the kinda lame Flash movie but here are screenshots of the new Project window and Mixer window. The sweetest thing is that it's apparently out on September 4th! That's like totally soon! I'm still looking around for a full list of features.

My mother says that track 9 (Overreacting) is "it" and "could go far" and my dad says that with some more instruments, track 4 (Bad Attraction), "could be a good song". It's also worth noting that while my mother offered to pay for the CD, she made me deduct shipping from the $5 price and I have yet to receive payment. My father, on the other hand, just asked to borrow a copy and then didn't return it.

So with some hesitation I decided today to send my CDs into CDBaby.com. $35 setup fee and they're going to charge $4 markup on each CD, but I'm hoping it will get the album in front of a few more indie music fans who might be Brad Sucks compatible.

Well, I submitted Brad Sucks: I Don't Know What I'm Doing to CDDB (I think) the other night and it has been showing up in Winamp, but I can't find any mention of it on either the CDDB for freedb website. So I dunno what's going on with that.

All the Brad Sucks: I Don't Know What I'm Doing CDs that have been ordered were mailed this afternoon. I assume it'll take about a week or so for the ones in North America and I have no idea how long for the overseas ones. I have a bunch more albums here all prepared and ready to go. So if you order one now you are free of the guilt of making me burn and label a CD. You will have only the guilt of making me address an envelope to contend with.

I slaved over CDs and envelopes and labels tonight to get all the CDs that were ordered ready. Barring some terrible unforeseen obstacle, they should all be in the mail tomorrow afternoon. Thanks to everyone who ordered one and also a big thanks to everyone who has been linking to me!

I've decided to start up forums again, but this time with a twist:

I get asked a lot of questions about home recording and songwriting and music business stuff. I also ask a lot of questions about home recording and songwriting and music business stuff. The questions and answers generally just disappear into thin air.

The idea is to use this forum for question asking and answering and archive everything so that it hopefully becomes somewhat of a Frequently Asked Questions file of music and recording eventually.

Everyone is welcomed to ask and answer questions. The best stuff will be kept and organized so that new people can easily browse through it. While I'm by no means an expert, I will try to answer any serious questions people ask and I will be encouraging musician and industry pals of mine to do the same.

The forums are pretty generic still, but they're open.

Brad Sucks: I Don't Know What I'm Doing now for sale. It's homemade. It's $5 US including shipping worldwide. I think it sounds pretty darn good.

I finished the Brad Sucks album today. It's called I Don't Know What I'm Doing and has twelve songs on it, mostly ones that are on this site though they've been tweaked and improved. I'll post a track list soon. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. After a whole lot of investigation and research, it seems the best option is for me to just burn CDs and mail them off as people order them. It would be nice to have cool packaging, but I really can't find a way to do that without it costing either me or you guys a bunch of money.

Best case scenario is that I come close to breaking even, the album is really inexpensive and it gets into a fair number of people's hands. These should not be crazy goals, but apparently they are.