There is some historic shit going to go down around here in 2012, so you’d better hang around to be kept up to date! I will make a quick mention of a few of the things I will be involved in:

1. I am releasing a new record in February containing the songs from that musical that I’ve been talking about. I have been working on it quite a lot, and, hopefully, it will hit the stage soon enough. In the meantime, I will present my record, containing the very songs from that play.

2. We are filming a video with my band for a new song, called “Why”. I am really proud of this one, it might be one of my best so far. Keep watching this space to keep in touch, or subscribe to the Indie Folker channel on YouTube.

3. I’ve also worked on a song with a songwriter friend of mine last year, and we will be making the results of that collaboration public soon enough also.

4. I will be touring Finland in April! Yeeey!

As you see, there is a lot happening in the Indie Folker universe. So keep reading and keep watching!

I need to get back to work!

I would like to thank all those who have supported Indie Folker with donations and by spreading the word about my music. A little help can go a long way.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and I am looking forward to all the great things that are going to happen around here in 2012!

Greetings!

MONSTERS IN THE CHRISTMAS ALBUM

You can still download the Indie Folker Christmas release for free
All you need to do is head on over to the Indie Folker music page and get it before January 15, 2012!
You could also boost the viewcount of my featured video for this release if you listen to “The Eyes, The Beard, The Nose, The Stomach, The Lungs” on Youtube.

SUPPORT INDIE FOLKER

I truly appreciate all the help you can give!

FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/indiefolkermusic
YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/user/indiefolker

The album has been released for a limited amount of time in 2010 and it generated quite a nice response – that is why it is up again this year, and it is still free, as you’ve surely noticed.

The EP was recorded in exactly one month, in a super-exhausting writing and recording session in my house, here in Transylvania.

I wrote The Eyes, The Beard, The Nose, The Stomach, The Lungs at the police station, in my head, when I was doing some paperwork for my car – - – don’t even ask. I made up all of the first verse and was really struggling not to forget anything by the time I got home. By some odd chance, ideas for other verses started suddenly popping into my head, and I had to struggle not to let them in. Because once that happens, I totally lose the first verse, I thought. Which I wasn’t going to let happen, I thought. Naturally, I had no pen/paper with me at the time, so I had to remember the entire thing for about three hours. And I did let all those other ideas in eventually. By the time I got home, I had all three verses done in my head. I penned the chorus later that evening and recorded the thing the very next day. The video took about 2 hours of shooting and 4 hours of cutting and mashing in Movie Maker.

Is Christmas Time Just A Dream? was originally going to be a slow, mellow kind of tune, but I just couldn’t get it working the way I had imagined. So I just gave it a shot in this manner, and it all came together. It’s one of my favorites on here.

To Get Away From Everything was intended to be this way. Simple, finger-style guitars, easy melody and straight-forward lyrics. Also, a Moldavian kaval and old radio sounds/noises in the background. I love that instrument btw.!

Christmas Is A-lookin’ Good was an attempt to break out of my usual songwriting approach. It worked. I have moments like this every time I record something. At one point I just start doing things I was never supposed to, nor thought about doing. I think it’s important to take these kinds of “risks”. I really like the result here. “Work @ It Together” from my “Monsters In Rome” record was born out of the same kind of approach.

Taste Like Candy had a totally different chorus at the beginning. I had already mixed the entire song and had prepared to call it “done” when my girlfriend suggested I’d spend some more time with it – that’s her way of saying “it’s shit”. So I wrote this chorus in about half an hour after that. The Transylvanian shepherd’s flute stayed after I had decided to have the typical Transylvanian folk-ish intro with the drums and bells.

Christmas Song is actually the first song that I wrote for this album. It took me a week to get it totally finished. I struggled with it every step of the way. Just like “Monsters In Rome”. I always fall in love with songs that give me a hard time.

Have a Merry Christmas, dear everyone!

Here’s the latest issue, titled The Solo Career.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

You can download the songs as 16bit WAV files, that you can then write onto a Compact Disc. These are the very files I would send to the company that does my CD replication. So don’t download the mp3’s, if you want to write an audio CD! You can have true CD quality, if you just pick the right format. In short: if you want to write an audio CD, download the 16 bit WAV files, and burn those.

One thing about mp3’s: they are a lossy format. They sound a lot worse than they would sound on a CD. Some of you know this already, and don’t care that much about it. Well, those songs on the CD sound a lot worse than they do in our studio. Are you still with me? We, musicians, record at 24 bit/96000 Hz (or 44100 Hz, in most cases), while the so called Red Book standard (this is what you’ll find on all audio Compact Discs) is 16bit/44100Hz – a much lower quality than what we have in the studio. It’s just something the industry settled upon, and so it stuck.

But it doesn’t necesseraly have to stay this way. And it probably won’t. So don’t just go and ruin the sound for the sake of saving space… if you can afford to. That sonic sparkle is worth it, trust me. Try and keep the files at a steady 320kbps, if you must keep your music in mp3’s. Please! In the name of all musicians out there!

But FLAC is better! You can have my music sounding the way it does in my studio, if you choose to download it in FLAC. Many devices already support this format. Check out some devices that support the FLAC format on this link.

In conclusion… when you download any of my music, you can have the option of any format out there – and I do understand that you have to make some compromises from time to time – but do keep in mind the fact that you could have these things sounding every bit as good as they do in my studio.

So there. I hope this helps.

Greetins, Friends!

What else I’ve been doing, you ask?

Well, December brought forth an opportunity I have been long awaiting: my first gig in Budapest.

I really like playing in Hungary, I have played there a few times before, but I never got to play the Capital, so I am very glad that this is going to happen on the 14th.

As far as new music and new videos, I will have a whole bunch of stuff to share very very shortly! Here’s what I’ve been working on lately:

- My first collaboration with another singer/songwriter on a recorded track is complete! I’ve joined a friend of mine on one of his songs, and we will be recording a video and sharing this bi-languaged single in January (he sings his parts in Hungarian while my parts are in English… you’ll see, it’s fun ).

- I have also finished recording all songs for the MUSICAL that I’ve been talking about since last year. I had some ideas in my head for a long time, but it is only now, in November 2011, that I finally managed to make time for it (thanks to Hmtpng, again). The piece will be presented on stage sometime in January/February 2012 and it will be in Romanian. But not on the album. That is in English. Kind of.

- Aaaaand… we are also working on a VIDEO for Why, the song that will be making all David Gray fans go !HAEY… Just kidding, it’s a great song – and it will probably make your jaws drop . Heh. I am working on this one with my band, and they will be in the video also, as you’ll see shortly (but not before next year!).

- Remember my first album? Monsters In Rome? Well, those monsters in Rome are going to have their own video very soon also. And not just any video! A good video! A goooood video. This, again, sooooooon.

Tataaa! And another blog post written! Now I can resume my duties as a musician.

I’ll write again!

Greetings, Friends!

P.S.: Keep spreading the word on my indie Christmas album, if you liked it! Please. It means a whole lot!

There is one video that we’ve managed to shoot last year:

…aaand, hopefully, there will be another video coming very soon for the song Is Christmas Time Just A Dream. That’s this one:

Have an indie Christmas dear Friends!

Christmas Time is almost upon us… once again…

In the meantime, Halloween has passed, and I am very happy with what my Halloween song, Where Kindness Be, has managed to do for me as far as subscribers go. And I am very happy with the song also!

But now, it is time to move on to new projects – and here’s what I have planned:

If you remember, I have recorded my “Monsters In The Christmas Album” EP about a year ago and it was available for download on my website for one month. If you haven’t had the chance to get the album then, I will be re-releasing it again this year – November 7 is the date you have to watch out for! The EP will be on my music page for a limited amount of time, and it will be free, as I have already mentioned.

The writing and recording of these original Christmas songs took up about one month of my life – it was an intensive time, I must add – and I also managed to shoot this be-low-budget music video for the first track off the album.

I am hoping to get a second video done before December for the song Is Christmas Time Just A Dream?, so I definitely urge you to keep watching if you don’t want to miss all this good stuff!

You can subscribe to the Indie Folker Youtube channel to keep track of new videos I upload

OOOOOOOOOOOR

you can subscribe to my Newsletter, where you will be notified of these things before anyone else.

Here’s a direct subscribe link, for the lazy ones: http://bit.ly/tSgBsF

I will most likely have some new video material from the two gigs that I will be doing this week, which I will also upload, plus: we are preparing a new song and video with my band, so I strongly advise you to keep an eye on my Youtube channel.

Here’s that direct subscribe link again, for the really lazy ones: http://bit.ly/tSgBsF

Indie folk at its best? Well, you tell me! Comment below, comment on the video, wherever you want. Make yourself heard! I am listening…

If you want to give a struggling artist a chance, share my stuff. Share my Halloween vid with your friends on Facebook or show it to your children. There’s a load of stuff you can do, but sharing my videos and spreading the word about me on social platforms is a good enough start. I will upgrade you to super-duper-intendent (just learned that from Simpsons) of PR if you do good on this first assignment!

My favorite singer-songwriters have been doing shows like this for as long as I remember, it would be very uncool (read: un-indie folk) of me not to give this a shot.

A few of my favorite videos of such events below:

Mumford & Sons did a Bookshop Session a while back

Beirut had their Tiny Desk Concert not long ago:

Alexi Murdoch played a record store session at Vinyl Fever – I know, this is not a bookstore, but it kind of feels the same

I am also about to record a video for this weeks Halloween super-search – that I very much expect to happen – on Youtube. I will most likely have that up for you by Wednesday, so stay close.