BRING ON THE DANCING WHORE, SIS!

It is with no great shame for me to announce that I certainly am not a musician. I have said it enough times before. So what am I? How do I classify whatever it is I do?

Well, I used to be a DJ, but hung up my headphones years ago. Anything that I do nowadays which happens to fall into this category is just a one off. I still have the passion, but no real desire.

I used to be a radio presenter (as opposed to "radio DJ" - I so hate that phrase!), but hung up that microphone shortly before working 18 hrs a day, running a team of 40 (commission only) sales people for a marketing company in Cardiff, Wales.

In recent years I have tried my hand at podcasting. It is the closest I got to doing my favourite job of all, but it's not live. It's all edited and loses that excitement, no matter how many times I edit the excitment in (or out!). I have been searching for the perfect podcast software that records a show all in one go (i.e. live), but no luck yet. Anyway, no new podcasts for over a year, so I am not one of those podcasters really.

I have, for the past 7 years, been remixing other artists' songs for my own gratification and pleasure. It's an extension of being a DJ, as I used to mess with other people's music on the turntables in the clubs. Even "remixing" is a term I tend not to use often. I like to call it "post-production". Posh eh?

That leads to production itself. Meaning 'producing other artists'. In simple terms, it's a lot like remixing, except the brief is not all mine. Then there's producing my own creations. Remember, I am not a musician. So what does this now make me? An artist? Me? (Yes, I am laughing at the prospect!).

There are many ways for people who make music to have their creation heard on the web. But now it's becoming a bit of a joke with certain social networking sites. Sometimes it's due to copyright issues, which is fair enough. But other times it's just plain pathetic. MySpace used to be a good platform for me to promote my 'work'. It seems that this is no longer becoming an option, as even the act of uploading a new tune hits many unexplained brick walls.

I use my Internet provider's podcasting service to make tracks available for downloading and streaming on my site. But I need a good embedded music player.

Step in ReverbNation. I'm giving this one a trial run as it links to my pages on FaceBook, Bebo (didn't know about that one, did you?), MySpace (!) and a few others I have yet to discover. I have a link, but I am blogging this via email (a first!). So let's try the link: http://www.reverbnation.com/carty

UPDATE: My site's pages are all back online, I just need to creating a new "landing page" (the page you see first) to link to the important (i.e. non-Ant) stuff.

The Carty Blog