Wordpress.

Well, i’ve made the switch over to wordpress. The reason: it looks a whole lot more appealing than blogger.


The blog can be accessed by typing in this address:
ericbraunmusic.wordpress.com
Or still by a link on my website, or directly:
blog.ericbraunmusic.com

I’ll play around with the look of it for a while until i find something suitable.

Bandcamp.

So i've just finished the process of getting The Medium EP on Bandcamp, which is a website which distributes an artist's music to their fans. It's nice because it's really simply set up for fans, and I don't have to do much with it after the setup process. So here's how it will work:

-Songs (individually) will be free to download.

-Whole albums will be available for free, or you can set your own price to pay for the album. There is a minimum of $1 for albums, if you choose to pay. The very important reason for this is that Paypal charges for each transaction, so if someone decided to buy an album for 50 cents, I would end up owing Paypal money because I need to give them roughly that much plus a percent as well. So, simply put, either download the album for free or pay anything over $1 for it.

It is a bit too much for me to put future albums on itunes, plus the fact that people shouldn't have to pay $10 for an EP. (To those who did with The Medium EP.... thank you. thank you.) This way, with Bandcamp, they can be free, if you want them to be. Or, if you feel like paying for it, by all means do. Pay what you think it's worth. The money will all go towards the recording of future albums and upcoming shows/tours.

So The Medium EP is there as of now, so if you don't have it and want it, go ahead. The albums that I'm releasing this fall will be on there as soon as they're released, and the same stuff will apply to them as well.

Thanks again for your support.

Eric

Shed What Was Left of Our Summer Skin

I cannot believe that it is now nearing the end of August. This summer has absolutely flown by. Rediculous.

I guess when you don't go to school, and your summer consists of working monday through friday, it seems a bit different. But regardless, fall is approaching, and that means one thing:

New music from Eric Braun.

There will be 2 albums released within the next little while. Both will have roughly 7 songs each. I felt this was better than releasing a full length just for the fact that I can concentrate on one at a time and not have 14 different songs with different styles all crammed into one album. The other good thing about these albums, for all you financially-minded people, is that these will be free. Which also means I probably won't end up releasing them through iTunes, because I don't think you can sell music for free there. So I'll spend the next little while trying to figure out how to get it into people's hands. It won't be printed either, for the reason that I can't spend $400 to produce and print copies and then just hand them out. I may be dumb, but i'm not that dumb. So it will probably just be available for download in some manner, and then feel free to burn and distribute as necessary.

I'll be starting the recording within a few weeks, and I'll make a concious effort not to spend any more time than I need to in the studio. I'll release more information on the albums as the recording process takes shape.

Now i'm going to go and try to enjoy these last few days of summer....

I Need You So Much Closer

Apparently this show was a year ago, but i'm just seeing this now.

I can't even imagine being at this show. I knew what was coming, because the video title says "fireworks," but if I didn't expect it, and I saw it in person, it may have changed my life.

It maybe actually did anyways.

Greater Things, Still to be Done in This Citayyyyyayy

For those who don't know, I work in downtown Calgary. Today, I went for a walk. At first, it was just to find an Arby's. Eventually it turned into exploring. I walked through Eaton Center (a mall downtown which, yes, had an Arby's), some sketchy back alleys, Chinatown, and got lost in the basement mechanical room of some run down parkade.

The point is, I actually started to like this city again. Not that I had begun to dislike Calgary, but after months and months of just living in the suburbs, it starts to really feel exactly the same as most other places i've lived in my life. Just white or beige 2 storey houses with nice Nissan Maxima's parked in the driveway, and nice people mowing their lawns and commenting on how nice the weather's been.

So there's a difference when you venture downtown. Yes, I'm there every weekday, but I seem to have tunnel vision just walking from the train to my office and then back at the end of the day. When I start to actually look around and take in all that's happening, is when things start to seem different. And not always perfect. But there's things you miss about a city when you keep in a rhythm of the same thing every day. The city's so huge that it's easy to miss things. That's why even taking an hour today to explore part of downtown was so eye opening. Maybe i'm missing a lot of things in my life by just sticking to what i did yesterday and the day before. Figuratively and literally.

Go. Explore.

Just don't get lost in the basement of a sketchy downtown parkade.

The Deal

So here's the deal.



I haven't done much here. for a long, long time. But that's going to change.



I'm going to start getting my act together. Blog posts, Videos, and yes, albums. I have a couple ideas that are just moving past the planning stages, so that means i'll be recording soon. And i'll be posting stuff as soon as i can. I feel like after this long of not recording, i actually have so many ideas bottled up and most of it is going to be unleashed to you very soon. Look for an EP later this year. and free this time. because iTunes won't let me charge less than 9.99 for an EP. and that's only a few songs, so it's quite a ripoff. From now on all EP's will be free. Bam.



Hope that was enough of a public service announcement for you. And now, you may go back to your other activites on the Internets.



Thank you.



Eric Braun

What You Mean To Me

**EDIT**
It seems I had written this post long enough ago that I actually purchased a new guitar in the time after I saved it and then posted it. So, here is the edit, including the newest.***







Surprisingly, this post is not about a person.


I thought i'd take this time, and this opportunity to update my weakly updated blog, and write about my guitars. Notice I said weakly, and not weekly.


This will go in chronological order. Starting with number one:



1) Yamaha Pacifica







This is first on the list, and it was basically inherited by me when my brother moved away. It originally had some electrical issues, and was given to many different people when they asked to borrow a guitar to learn with. It has a good clean sound, and a terrible neck and tuners that can't hold pitch for much more than a few minutes of playing. But it looks nice.










2) Martin DCX-1kE


I got this guitar at Picker's Alley in Sarnia, Ontario. I saw it there, played it a few times, and traded in my Taylor 110e for it. The main difference between this guitar and the Taylor, was that this one felt solid. It was built well. And it sounded a whole lot better. Although laminate, the Hawaiian Koa on the back and sides simply blew me away. Plus the Fishman pickup was exponentially better than the pre-expression system pickup in the Taylor. Right now I have this guitar tuned down half a step as my backup guitar. (no, not to play Green Day covers)







3) Peavey JF-1





Yes, it's a Peavey. I understand that. But, it's also an electric guitar, so I had my mind made up that looks won over the name. And this guitar was very, very, pretty. And, when you plug it in, it sounds....like an electric guitar. I got it at a weird music store in Edmonton, hidden away off the main roads, and made up of just a big carpeted warehouse. Pretty strange, but they had decent prices and this guitar caught my eye from across the....warehouse. I traded in my Takamine jumbo acoustic for this guitar, which was a hard thing to do, but sometimes you just have to move on.

4) The Lyon

Guaranteed a laugh will exit your mouth when I tell you where i got this: XS Cargo. I saw it in the flyer for the crazy boxing day sales, and I ended up getting one. For $40. And the best part is, it sounds pretty good. For 40 bucks, to get a solid-top acoustic guitar with a pickup, and a case and a guitar stand, was actually pretty amazing. Right now i'm using it with the high octaves of a 12 string set, to give it almost a mandolin sound. It's basically the experiment guitar, and so far it's turning out to be the best 40 bucks i've spent in a long time.




5) Martin 000C-16RGTE


My favorite of the bunch. I saw this at a music store in Calgary, and immediately I was blown away by how good it sounded and how well it played. I had been planning on spending around $1400 on a Larrivee L-body, but that was before i saw this. It had the same body shape, what I consider a much better sound than a lot of the Larrivee's I had been trying, and it had a price tag of almost half of what I wanted to spend on a Larrivee. And the rosewood on the back and sides can't be beat.








6) Epiphone SST Studio


This is the latest guitar to be added to the collection. I have wanted one of these for a very long time, and finally Epiphone started bringing them back into production. This is the guitar (well, the Gibson version at least) that Dave Matthews used for the beginning of the band's career, up until he made the switch to playing Taylor acoustics live. It is amazing because it has the feel of an electric guitar, yet the sound is of a really expensive acoustic guitar. There is no sound hole, instead there are computer designed chambers inside the body that create a sound that really closely represents an acoustic guitar when it is plugged in. I played a few Taylor T5's in the last couple of years, and I always found I had to play around with the tone knobs for a long time until I found a sound that was somewhat decent and not completely hi-mid driven. With this SST, It sounds great with everything right in the middle, and even with no EQ on a P.A. or acoustic amp. The best part about all of this, is that it is the least amount of money i've spent on a guitar. (Well, not less than the LYON, but that doesn't really count.)




Hope that wasn't too boring for some of you. But sometimes I can't think of what to write about, and this is, at least, something.


Eric

Not Worth Reading

Well, only the true fans will read this. Mostly, because it includes no interesting content AT ALL.

I was on the train the other day coming home from work, and these junior highers came on and were swearing up a storm and screaming at each other and just generally being obnoxious. Now, I don't know if maybe i'm just an old man now and these things bother me, but I guess that's the case. I remember that I was the coolest person in the world in Junior High. Nobody could tell me what to do, and me and my friends were unstoppable. But then I grew up and realized that was absolutely not the case. The opposite, in fact. I wish I could see these people in 10 years and give them a recording of what they were saying, because guaranteed they will be completely embarrassed. "I said that? I thought I was that cool? Now I work at Tim Horton's trying to make enough money to support my bastard child who's father bailed on us after we graduated 11th grade?? My how the table's have turned."

On a lighter note, I think the girl working at the Big Rock Brewery gift shop had a visual affair with me today.

Catch Up

Hello again.

Remember when I used to have a blog, and hundreds of thousands of people would check in on a regular basis to see my regularly posted insights? Yeah, it's such a long time ago it's hard to remember.

I'd like to say that I was taking that time to prepare a surprise for my fans who have so patiently waited these months without an update, like an album that's ready to go or some sort of feature-length movie about my life. But that's not it.....

Or I could tell you that I've been taking this time to rest after many years hard at work to bring you quality music, and I've worn myself out but now after a few months of laying low, I'm back and better than ever. But that's definitely not true.....

Truth is, I've been doing nothing.

But that's not right. You know it, and I know it. So I'm back. And I promise I'll be better at this. I've exhausted the amount of time I can go without making a recording of something that I've been working on. And I have been writing. Some stuff that's a lot more grown up than songs in the past (we've got some fireworks--to light up their smiles........what?!?) So I'm excited about that. I'm also excited about this:

The new guitar.

It's a Martin, with rosewood back and sides and a really nice tone. I'm very excited to start recording with this baby. Which brings me to my next point:

The new records.

I've put a lot of thought into this in the last month or so, and it's still coming together. Basically the idea looks like this: There will be 4 EP's that will be released within a very short time frame as each other, and each will have it's own unique style. I often find myself in the middle of recording an album, and I start to change the style in which I want it to sound. I'll be recording a nice folk acoustic album, and all of the sudden I feel like I need a full orchestra and layers and layers of electric guitar with heavy distortion. But with this concept, If I need to record a heavier song or want to add some electric to a song, I'll do it on the heavier album. If I write a song that's very simple and pretty, I can leave it be and put it on the acoustic album. I'll write a post later about the individual albums and what their styles with be, but for now it will be an alternative record, a very simple acoustic record, an in-between acoustic rock record, and finally either a live album or a collection of covers. I feel like this is going to be a good step and I will be able to do it with the gear I have. Which brings me to my last point:

The new recording gear.

I am planning on purchasing a Mac Pro to record with. This will add so much possibility to what I can do, and make things just a hell of a lot easier. Along with this, I'm going to be purchasing a new audio interface so that I can record more tracks at the same time, so when I attempt to record drums I will be able to have more control with the sound and less problems in the studio when trying to record drums on only 4 tracks. I'm very excited about this new gear that's going to be coming my way, and as soon as I get it, work will start on the new EP's. My plan is to get these records out for free, as I save up to do some work in a real studio on a real full-length record, so that I can create something that is worth putting up on iTunes for $9.99 and feel okay about people putting their money towards. But that will be a while after these 4 EP's are released, so patience will be required. Hopefully these 4 collections of songs will be able to suffice until things work out for a full length record in the future.

A website update is probably also due, so I'll work on that while I'm waiting on my gear. Any suggestions on website ideas, or any ideas for the EP's for that matter, would be awesome. Sometimes I get tunnel-vision when working on this stuff, so advice from outside is always appreciated. Just comment on this post or email me at ericmichaelbraun@gmail.com and let me know if you have any ideas or complaints or suggestions.

I hope that we're still friends even after this long time apart.

I'll see you again soon. I promise.

Eric

Swing

Well it looks like i'll be playing a few songs at "The House" coffee shop here in Calgary tonight. It will be good to get into the swing of playing some regular shows here. Develop a fan base, and eventually take over the world.

In time i'll get some video and recordings of live stuff up. In the meantime, if you're not around for the show, just imagine it. Set aside an hour or so and try to imagine what song i'm playing at that moment, and whether or not i've incorporated a french horn somehow.

Also, if anyone has a used french horn for sale, that would be great.

EMB

The Album

Well, I figured I should talk about the album. The time has come.

There was a point this last year when I was certain that the record would be finished at this point. Recorded, mastered, and distributed. Obviously this is not the case, because millions of screaming fans don't have their hands on a copy.

I've made a decision that I want to do this. I still do. But I want to do it well. I'd rather give you a really good sounding and well put together album in 6-7 months than give you a handful of crap now. I hope you feel the same way. I've been working on some new stuff and i'm getting really excited about recording it, but I want to make sure it's worthwhile. I have thought about the possibility of recording another EP within the time the real record comes out, just for kicks and giggles. Maybe that's what I'll call it........ I feel like I need to satisfy this craving to get recording, so I don't rush into something with sketchy songs and not quite enough substance. I'm looking to work with other musicians on this one...I've realized that recording by myself may be easier at times but we were built to play music with others in order to brew creativity, and I got very lonely and frustrated when I was trying to do this all on my own.

It's late, and I've written down all of my thoughts for the night. Hopefully we're on the same page about the record, but if not, it doesn't matter. This isn't a democracy.

Close Call

Well, I'm here, with one day to spare.

Not that I have anything important to say....

I never really watch music videos anymore. Not since the days where I could spend hours and hours in front of MuchMusic, entertained beyond words. Now it's a different story, however.

But, I did notice this video recently, and it's pretty awesome. Take a look. And, since I can't embed the video, there's just a link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb9X5jMofEo

Stalemate.

Apologies all around.

I've been through quite the transition point in the last weeks/months/quarter and I've been lacking quite a bit on these posts. Not that I'm trying to make excuses, but:

1)I moved to an acreage

2)Before I could finish unpacking from my move, I started packing for camp

3)I worked at camp

4)Before I could unpack from camp, I was packing for my move to Calgary

5)I moved to Calgary

6)Before I could unpack from Calgary, I had to buy a cowboy hat

7)I bought a cowboy hat

But now that that chaos has passed, I'll give a solid attempt at rekindling my love affair with blogging. And I mean love affair in the most sexual way possible. Sorry if that makes you uncomfortable.

I will talk about the album another day. It needs a lot of space to be talked about. Then we can discuss it in a civilized manor.

If I don't have another post within 5 days, I give you all the right to never listen to my songs again. Then at that point you can stop flattering me and we can quit kidding around about the whole "musician" thing.

......Give me 5 days.

On Tour?

No, i'm not on tour. Just moving.

My life has been pretty crazy the last few weeks...and hopefully within a week or so things will start to slow down and i can start putting the pieces back together.

And then, maybe a tour.

Like Tonight

Often i find myself in the following situation:

Sitting, listening to music on my computer. My interest in whatever i was doing on the computer has dissolved, however my desire to continue listening to said music remains. I am caught between the horrible boredom felt (there's only so many wikipedia articles you can read) and the intense bliss of a genius playlist created from Patty Griffin's "Be Careful."

So, to combat that boredom while continuing to listen, i'll write a blog post.

Angry Letter #1

Dear The Comedy Network,

You suck at picking new shows to put on your network. Your job should be to find funny shows, not necessarily shows that were created in Canada. Those two often don't go together. Trying to help the Canadian TV, Film, and Music business by continuing to choose every pitch that comes in the door and every pilot that is dropped on your desk is not helping the industry.

On a side note, I have a pilot that i would like you to look at.

Please stop sucking.

Sincerely,

Eric Braun

Busy.

Sorry about the lack of posts lately.

As you may see by this photo, i'm up to my ears in boxes. Some empty, some full. We're in the middle of moving out to an acreage, which would normally be fine, but i'm also trying to finish a full-length album and figure out my life for next year. It's looking more and more that the release of the album could be pushed back a few months. Deal with it. I could put out a really bad sounding album right now, or i could wait and release something that i can be proud of. And, since it's obviously all about me, i'll go with the latter.

I'll try to be a little better at posting more consistantly. I've been trying to put together some more video blogs, but i've been having problems with video files not working, and it's been taking a very long time. But, it's worth it, for a 2 minute video that may or may not make a maximum of 4 people laugh. Right?

And now, back to my boxes.

Cool/Not Cool

Whoops

Hey folks

Sorry it's been a while since i've posted anything. And no, i don't need to apologize to you.

but i just did.

You see, when you're a successful rock musician like myself, you don't always have the time to write blog entries. Even micro-blogging (twitter) eats up too much time. Sometimes i just need to take a break from life and seclude myself in the mountains where nobody can find me. There i'll befriend a bear, and we'll work together to fight crimes in the National Parks.




See, when i have nothing to say, i say meaningless things. Sadly, when i do have things to say, they're still meaningless.

The ABSOLUTE coolest thing i've ever seen.