today at hitplay

Today at hitplay we worked on the music. The songs for ELisa Girlando's first album are complete and ready to be mastered. Phil spent the day working on final mixes and arranging the order of the songs on the CD so the music flows. We have a CD that we believe will be very special and the songs will be coming to the Internet soon.

hope to bring the music to RED by mid February then we'll pick a release date.

I arranged a meeting with our booking agency. Bringing Elisa Girlando out live is very important. She has a powerful live voice and the band Out Of Truth is killer. So we want to discuss the venues and shows that will be available to a new artist to maximize the impact of each live appearance.

Our feeling is to have the agent to the hitplay studios. Play the videos and the music then discuss the best venues and start the booking process. I think this will get the agent pumped up once he hears the material.

Ill keep you posted

dave.hitplay

on being a musician or something

I run into a lot of "musicians" now. Some are good, some well they suck. But they enjoy what they do. Music is amazing it makes us happy: happy to listen;happy to watch; and happy to play; it hits us "primeval". 

When I was not playing and just doing medicine I felt empty     (half full) not in balance. The music fills the artsy side of my pee brain.

If music is so good and makes so many people so happy, why are so many assholes in the music industry?? What attracts lowlifes to music? I've met my fill over the years tell me what you think.

If you want to play music or do music for a living then do it, do it all do not pigeon hole yourself don't play one thing or with one group play around be a "musical swinger" that's how people will see you and who knows you might learn something from a different style of musician.

I play with some of the best musicians in the world-no joke ELisa Girlando and out of truth, but if I'm available I'll play with anyone because it makes me better.

and that's what I think today!!!

peace,

dave.hitplay

small steps

I'm a firm believer in small steady steps building a career. For Elisa Girlando that has been our approach. Build build build one step at a time. Today I broke from the mold!

Today I worked on a proposal to build our business very quickly. HitPlay specialty records has a unique way of bringing commercial advertising to the digital music world. We worked on a proposal today going for a home run. Cant wait to tell you more.

a strategy meeting

Last night Mike Lewis (our director of Internet marketing), Phil Garland (our CEO), and myself had a strategy session. E-Girl made an appearance to say hello. The meeting focused on three issues: 

First, you tube videos. Three of the videos are finished and we took a critical look at them seeing how they would represent Elisa and HitPlay. We were very pleased with he results. I feel they show the diversity of E-Girls sound and vocal ability. Her personality also transfers very well onto video. One video is particularly powerful an a capella version of the song "songbird". I cannot wait until I can share this song with the world. We had some technical issues to straighten out and the Emerson team are working on them now. Video should be ready next week.

The second issue was a long critical look at the HitPlay website. This was very useful as we had to look at the site and decide if it was meeting the goals we want our site to show when people log on. Once we agreed on how we wish to present hitplay to the world the editing of the site became easy. When the goal is know the task of getting there becomes easier. So true.

Finally we discussed publishing and how we can develop this area of  our business. I found Phil's insight very insightful:) 

Go over to the site and give us your feedback. HitplayLLC.

dave.hitplay

back to work

I've been away for some much needed rnr this past week but I'm back and we are ready to get back to work. Have a working meeting with our director of Internet marketing Mike Lewis and Phil at Hitplay tomorrow.

While I was away e-girl peaked at number 32 on the reverb natio blues charts approached 12,000 hits to her myspace page so there was a lot going on sorry I wasn't there to keep you up to date.

Phil Takes Command at HitPlayLLC !

We had a great meeting today at Hit Play to discuss the hit play web page. My man Phil coming off 6 weeks of intense production moving onto promotion wanting to know about the web page. Well its coming out great so see you all over there next week

Emerson College comes to Hit Play

We had another fun day at the Hit Play studios. Today award winning video and tv production senior Albert Carpenito came to the studio with fellow senior Tricia Carabba. The two worked in conjunction with Hit Play writer Amanda Carl and President CEO Phil Garland, to produce 6 videos.

The videos, for you tube promotional release, include three from Elisa Girlando's upcoming release "voices", and three a capella songs. It was a great experience hearing Elisa belt out songs live for the video. This should really help to introduce Elisa's great voice to the world.

Rounding out the video where performing cameo's by "Out Of Truth" keyboardist Bob Rubestello and violinist Phil Garland. Of course the ever present E-Girls (Elisa's longtime female fans) where there to offer support.

Another great day a Hit Play.

peace, dave.hitplay

you tube production day tomorrow

Met with Phil tonight.We have a production team coming to the hit play studios tomorrow. The goal is to shoot enough video for three you tube videos.

Creating content for the internet is crucial for Elisa Girlando's marketing plan.  Our goal is to utilize the video in two ways. Firtst is to show a depth and character to Elisa as an artist. Secondly, we have two songs for the album that are Etta James covers. It is our hope to get some viral marketing off of the songs. When people "google" etta james we hope E-Girl will show up on the search page. Again if the songs suck it wont matter, but we believe our material can stand up with the great ones. We shall see.

In the meantime E-Girl is up to 42 on the reverb nation blues charts so thats good news.

peace,

dave.hitplay

The Word from RED

Received follow-up email from Alan Becker senior VP at RED. He is awaiting finished content and then RED will help introduce the E-Girl to the world.

It very gratifying knowing people are waiting to help us. Our job is to bring them the best material we can. Once that's done and the music gets out there it will be up to you to decide if E-Girl has a future or not.

In the meantime the music we released is doing great with Elisa Girlando now at 43 on the reverb nation blues charts.

EGO the Great Band Killer

A sure fire way for a band or artist to fail almost every time is: unchecked EGO. Now some folks are great and they know it, and people keep telling them their great, and they believe it, and them comes the destructive attitude that comes with the belief in your own greatness. Some people just think their great and they suck, and for them they usually get nowhere, so they are irrelevant to this discussion.

A belief that the world only revolves around you is very destructive in any relationship: marriage; friendship; work; or band. Fortunately at Hit Play, as the principals are older and more grounded, this issue is less of a problem. For others it may take up the majority of your time.

I remember when the deal for E-Girl first came through two of our players Bob (Hammond organ) and Brian (harp n bass) both approached Phil Garland (our leader) and said whatever he needed to do to be successful whether its replace them or get extra players its cool. This was a great thing. It immediately allowed Phil to concentrate on what was best for all of us(making the best music) and not have to worry about hurting ego's along the way. I was amazed that such great players would so willingly step aside for the team. With that attitude its hard to fail.

so whats the point?

we were thinking about signing a great local singer to the label. He's 16 years old and sings with a maturity that you cant believe. But he thinks he's great, and his friends tell him he's great, and his ego is not developed enough to "handle" the acclaim: so he was impossible to work with; refused to learn lyrics; would miss rehearsals; change songs night of shows; refuse to take instruction from people who new more than him. The result we all walked away. He may "make it" but if he doesn't check his ego forget it. Who will want to work with that?

 When I think of the really great musicians in Out of Truth and how willing they were to do whatever it takes, and this kid who wouldn't even learn the lyrics to songs I laugh.

So check your EGO or it will defeat YOU.

 Tell me what you think.

peace,

dave.hitplay

End of another week

A lot happening today at Hit Play. E-Girl jumped up to number 51 on the reverb nation blues charts so that's great. We also had a percussionist into the hit play studios today to finish the track "rise-up". I worked on the Hit Play web page tightening the first page a little. I also released the photo of us at RED music onto the wire today.  Everyday we do something positive.

This coming week we have meetings with ad agency about hit play specialty records. Cant speak about this until it develops a little further. All for now.

dave.hitplay

the making of hitplay

Chart movement

E-Girl rose to 57 on the reverb nation charts last evening! Thats up from 389 two weeks ago.

dave.hitplay

 

Basehits not homeruns a strategy for making a music career

Many times when trying to "make it" we go for the home run. The song that commercial radio will play, the press release that the voice will write about, etc. With this strategy your probably doomed to fail. The reality is most of the time when we swing for the fences we walk back to the dugout. If you should get lucky and hit a home-run is it a sustainable thing or will it be another "one hit wonder"? 

At hit play we hit a home-run when our first release "woman" caught the ear of some folks at SONY/BMG and ultimately RED, but that does not make a career. What makes a career are base-hits. Small definable improvements to your career that build on the steps before.

Our strategy for building E-Girl is not home run ball its singles. First we began to build Elisa's Core Internet platform. Twenty or so pages on the web that are frequented by music fans. Once these sites are operational we began to add content. First a couple songs, then a biography, then a few photos. We did not need to have it all at once because we wanted people to check back and see more: one hit at a time.

As the core platform took shape we began to "work" a single site. We choose my-space.On my-space we began to go out to music group pages and invite people to have a listen to E-Girl. It starts slow one hit at a time but after awhile (3 month for us) we had a steady flow of people checking out E-Girl on her my-space site. As E-Girls my-space page began to grow we began to cultivate friendships on the site. Elisa would answer every fan that joined the site and send out blogs about her career at regular intervals.

With the my-space page building a fan base we then began to work a second page. The reverb nation page. With a targeted bulletin on my-space and a targeted email from E-Girls fan email list, we had a simple request. The request was go to reverb nation site, sign up as a fan, and listen to some tunes: another base hit. This was an easy task and a lot of people did it.

Enough people went to the site to place E-Girl onto the Blues Chart. At reverb nation she moved from 389 to 99. And then something interesting began to happen when she hit the chart people from reverb nation that were interested in blues music started to click onto E-Girls page. One hit at a time she moved into the 80's on the chart and as of this morning she's coming in at 75!

Its not number one but its climbing (12 spots in 24 hours) no home run just hit after hit and after we seeded the field its doing it on its own: that's because the content is good. 

So now with E-Girl moving up the reverb nation charts we can move onto another site and try to hit a few more singles. This is not glamorous but I cant wait until next week when I email RED and tell them E-Girl is making a move prior to the digital album release. That's the stuff that doubles (and RED resources devoted to Hit Play) are made of!

peace, 

dave.hiyplay

music biz thought: "when your up"

Today I received a call from a booking agent wanting to hook-up with Phil and discuss the future and it got me thinking. Music biz is tough: when your down nobody wants to help you but when things start happening everyone is your pal. People at RED where great to us, now booking agents are calling us; but remember this is not real, this is the biz, and when your down they wont return your calls. Its not because they're bad people its because you cant help their business. 

Soooo keep a level head and remember these two things:

1. your not as great as everyone is telling you 

2. when your up run with it as fast as you can.

peace,

dave.hitplay

"RETRO FRESH" OUR MEETING WITH RED MUSIC

Had our first major meeting with RED music today met with Alan Becker the VP and Bob Morelli the CEO RED Music. It was a great experience. Phil, Elisa, and myself took that long drive from Vernon NJ into NYC in an ice storm. We were a little nervous about the meeting but that did not last long.

Alan brought us in and he was great, very supportive and gracious. We then were brought into Bob's office, Big corner office 15'th floor, that's the mark of success!! Bob was very gracious as well taking time to ask Elisa about her plans, is she touring, influences etc. all good. Bob wanted to hear music and we just happened to have some tunes straight off the presses. Played three songs and you could immediately see that they were psyched. Alan said the songs have a style that make Elisa and the band very cool. It's a 'retro fresh" sound; meaning we use real rooms with real drums and real Hammond's but record with new equipment and get big modern sounds. I like that analogy it fits. It's the HitPlay LLC sound!

Anyway after the listen Bob wanted team members into the office: promotion people; radio people; Internet and marketing folks 8 all together; and the boss made it known that E-Girl is too be a priority at RED. They even pulled the head radio guy out of a conference with a big name act to meet with us. I cant say the act but he is one of RED's biggest so yes we felt very important and in the music industry at our level that is hard to come by.

Meeting finished with a set of places RED would arrange in the city for E-Girl to perform when she's ready and I was given the go to get RED production team working with us on Internet development. We then spent a few minutes with Alan and talked game plan and made arrangements to come back with finished music and have E-Girl sing live at the RED offices!

For those interested what makes a meeting is having intelligent people represent you, with a plan on what they want out of the meeting, and having the material to blow people away. Alan told us it cant just be good, it has to be great, so when you get your chance make sure the stuff is great and people around you are people others want to do business with.

The days don't get better than this one.

peace Dave

how did this happen?

There is no substitute for talent, although at times it is very hard to appreciate it. In today's music world it seems talent has less and less to do with what gets heard. This is a story about some very good musicians and a killer vocalist, who get a shot. 

When we started playing together, I was amazed at the talent of the musicians I was playing with. "Out Of Truth" really had world class players, and not one, we had 3 or 4 of them. I love to play and listen to them they really are terrific.

 

We also had our secret weapon dubbed "the meal ticket". Elisa Girlando is a voice you all will hear soon enough, we just affectionately call her E-Girl!

But how did we go from playing the occasional bar or club to having our own label on SONY/BMG/RED music in two years? Well that's a story.

And how do we actually make our affiliate label functional? Well thats what this is all about.

dave.hitplay