It's always amusing to me that given the right opportunity when you appear to slip up there are those who wait in the shadows like an annoying itch that you just can't scratch to try and see it as an opening of "Gothca!", but eventually they just fade away into the abyss as before. 

When they appear their words are filled with bile, jealously, bitterness, and ignorance. These highly passionate words they use are the type that is driven from the inner rage they feel for their own failures in life and hatred they have for your motivation and success, and get ready cause they got a posse! 
Oh boy lol!  

Together they feed each others emptiness of failures, the same way a drug addict is co-dependant with other addicts. And while they think they are getting the better of ya, the truth is their own anger and rage is translucent for all too see like looking through a window pane and they expose themselves for who they really are.

The only thing I can think when I think of them is this image of the Emperor and knowing that I must be doing something right because when they appear, because all it does is motivate me more to keep away from people like that. These are usually the people that if you allow them to dictate the direction you're going you will wind up in the same place that they are now. Let them vent. Agree with what they say and walk away slowly and move forward realizing what attracted them to come out of the wood work anyway and don't do it again. 

We all get angry and emotional, but jealousy and bitterness is a horrible emotion. When it's used in a way to try and make a point all it does is counter whatever it is that was trying to be said in the first place. In the end the only people who will care are others who are just like that who live their lives in a dark place instead of focusing their energy on the positive.  

The greatest thing about making a mistake is learning from it. Not becoming bitter, jealous or hateful towards others for their successes and then pounce when they slip up. But to embrace your own misgivings and understand what it was that got you into that scenario to begin with and move on and try to be inspired by others who are doing what it is you want to be doing. 

If I had a dollar for all the mistakes I've made in my own life where I've learned hard lessons I'd be a rich man, but the last thing I need to be doing is spewing hateful bile towards anyone when they have made a mistake for the sake of trying to boost my own ego with the hopes of getting some attention for myself.  

At the end of the day we are accountable for our actions, we are all human. How we choose to deal with that is up to us. How others choose to deal with you is up to them. But at the end of the day, I am going to choose to man up and say yeah I fucked up but I am never going to tear down someone else for having success because all that is going to do is keep me from achieving my own. 

Ric~

I have always been a nerd. I will aways be a nerd. I can not imagine not being a nerd. One thing about being such is that I have always had a love for film. Not just in the sense of oh boy I like to watch movies more in the sense of "holy shit I need to get that special edition super box set of the Aliens bluray and watching every fucking disc so I can understand how it was made" sense. So pretty much I have spent a good portion of my life with my ass planted firmly in front of the TV watching, enjoying, studying and enjoying film from all genres and all eras. I have always been a fan. 

It was not until last year when Girls That Dance debuted that I decided to dabble in giving a go at doing something myself in the realm of film and jumped head first into writing the treatment and directing the music video for Many Nights. Needless to say the experience open a Pandora box of desire to want to do it again. It's just I've been so busy with other band related stuff that having the time (and the coin) to do so seemed like it would take Forever.

Enter the handy dandy super duper Samsung Galaxy Note 2. You're like "Wha?" How does a cell phone play into this whole yarn I am yapping about? Well that little device (Actually it's quite large for a cell phone 5.5 inches of glory) is the device that opened that Pandora box even more, then took the cover off and threw it away. See the Note 2 films in super fine 1080p HD at 30fps (frames per second) with amazing clarity. Once I realized how awesome my new cell phone was and knew that I was taking a trip out to the Grammy Awards it got my head thinking "What if I take a chance and try and film while on my trip out west and I used that footage to make a new music video?". 

So with a little research I found a lens attachment and mini tripod for my phone on Amazon for $40 and all I need now was some locations and fancy camera work to pull it all together. 

There are plenty out there who will argue endless about the technical aspects of why you should not film with "this" or record with "that" but that is just either someone giving you a sales pitch for their own snake oil tech of why they can do it better with what they have or just a lack of creativity because their ideas are too rooted in the educational aspect of art and sound.  I am here to tell you it's all a bunch of steaming bullshit straight out of the bulls ass.

It does not matter what you record on, or film with, mix with, or how you get to the final result of what it is you consider to be your art. All that matters is do the eyes and ear approve. 

Most of the trip out West involved RT66 and a lot of "HEY lets stop here and shoot", get out of the car, set up the camera, find the shot, film and move along. The result is the new music video that will debut on MTV.com in Spring for the song Forever all shot with that little big cell phone. I'd love to show you the whole thing right now, really I would. But because of the fact that I am trying to build some hype here (with your help of course which is most appreciated more then you know since we are a DIY outfit in the purist form), what I got for you here is a teaser. I went a little self indulgent on this teaser and had some fun ;-) Enjoy!

Attn all my musician friends in the Baltimore/DC region and abroad.

Would you like to become a member of The Recording Academy and eventually get to vote on and go to the Grammy Awards?

Well here's your opportunity because I am looking to actively grow our local chapter and see more of my musician friends get involved.

The Recording Academy is offering open enrollment to artists who are serious about their music career and want to take it to the next level. We are looking for musicians who want to be involved with our institution that is recognized around the world as being the pinnacle representation of what it is we do as artists by giving all musicians the potential opportunity to be awarded by our peers with a Grammy Award. 

Some may scoff at this and think it's nothing more then a trophy, but it really is much more then that and it does change the lives of the artists who win them. You could have a role in that process! Being a member be it a voting member, or an associate member has it's privileges. For one you will be able to attend exclusive Recording Academy Events and mingle with some of the top brass within the music industry, including past Grammy winners which can expand your knowledge of the industry by giving you the tools which can help in having a more focused career path by learning directly from the people who really do drive the music business. The benefit to The Recording Academy having you as a member is us having fresh new talent in our organization that could inspire ideas which dictate the future of the industry as a whole. 

For instance the push to have an EDM (Electronic Dance Music) category would never have been possible without it being presented from within The Recording Academy from some of our newer younger members. The challenge is maintaing awareness behind the scenes so that the artists who may not be known to some members get their light in the sun from the insight that new members can provide. You'll have access to our private website on Grammy365.com which is pretty much like a facebook just for musicians without the annoying ads! There you will make new "contacts" (friends) from within The Recording Academy who have years of experience and wisdom that could be the decider that gets your band or you to the next level.

If you are a looking to be a career musician, producer, engineer, or you are already there and not a member yet, it's time to take the next step.

Reach out to me if you're interested, and I'll personally help put you on the path to getting you in if you qualify so we can grow our local chapter!. My email is ricjaypeters@gmail.com

I look forward to hearing from you and helping you on a path towards becoming a member.

Ric Peters~
A Voting Member of The Recording Academy - Grammy Awards


www.grammy.com | www.grammy365.com

No one can blame someone for wanting to push their product. Be that a band, art, book or what have you. We live in a day and age where the digital domain has taken over. Where the way we reach people is by what they call "Social Media". It is a beautiful thing. All of this of course when it comes to marketing plays a factor in what can happen if what it is you are pushing takes root. You are able to see your hard work come to fruition and you see people taking notice of it and that feels good.

One of those mediums of course is Facebook. It's played a major role in how we look at life now exposing all our secrets and of course from a musician perspective opening a door that was once closed. The originator of this of course was Myspace. Back in the Myspace days it was well know that in order to achieve a level of visibility as a band you needed friends and if those friends visited your page they were sure to listen to your music. They had bots which would allow a band to reach out to people and attach a message inviting them to check out and please friend their band. This in my opinion was ok since the people the band was reaching out to had to actually add themselves as your friend. Now granted a lot of people would add themselves just to increase their own friend count but for the most part this still paid off in spades because it generated real users checking out music which generated into a real following if you had the goods to back it up.

Fast forward to 2012. Facebook fan pages much like Myspace music pages offer a similar experience but now there is an exception to the rule. You can get "likes" on your page many ways. One way, the correct way and there are a few is by word o mouth of others posting about your band on their page inviting their friends to check it out. You can run ads on facebook to target certain interest groups or bands who's fans you feel will enjoy what it is you have to offer. Or you can pay someone or buy a bot that "adds likes" to your page increasing your number exponentially in a very short amount of time making it appear you have a lot of fans and have quickly risen to the top of the food chain within your market. This also increases a new metric facebook implemented called "people talking about this"

Here's the rub with that. For one the "likes" are false accounts. Sure it makes you look good to someone who is naive and does not know how the formula works on facebook and you may indeed attract a few real fans this way. But the downside to this is the other metric which cannot be altered and that is how many "likes" you have on your actual posts verses how many fans/people talking about this. If you have a page with over 15,000 fans and 1700 people talking about your band logic would say that when you make a post you are going to get a crazy amount of hits, right? Just look at some of the legit artists out there who have succeeded and visit their pages to see what happens when they make a post. The amount of interaction from the fans really equals the amount of "likes" and "people talking about this" in real numbers making it legit.

While bands may feel that by taking these sneaky measures they are somehow fooling the industry the truth is what they are doing is shutting a door and turning away opportunities. The way you achieve real success in this business is many different factors. One factor that does not work and will guarantee that your band stays "local" and does not achieve the long term goals you'd love to see is from deception. It never works out. Only through the real hard work of making a great product, being sincere, and building your fanbase through the tools that are available on social media that are legit (meaning you have to spend money to advertise) can you get what it is you're looking for. There is not such thing as a "Sudden Victory" until you reach that point that you've earned that lucky break. Everything else is nothing more then smoke and mirrors ;-)