Stamp! Beats: Opportunities and development
Something that we have learnt from embarking on this project, in a similar manner perhaps to say a music producer or songwriter creating a truly unique sub-genre or set of songs (say Jamie Woon?), when you create something unique, in our instance, a new way of thinking with regards to the running of an independent, artist-run, record label, opportunities you could never have foreseen or imagined will arise. Since embarking on the '12x12' journey in April 2010, as HeavyFeet, we have been offered a number of unique opportunities that had we spent a minute thinking about pre-October 2009, would have thought were highly unlikely to happen within the timeframe that they have done. We feel that the reason for these exciting developments is largely down to one factor: You get back what you put out.
This can be related to your content and/or conduct. If you radiate fresh, original music to the world, opportunities that are also fresh and new will gravitate towards you and your musical output. If you present a forward thinking, professional attitude towards your business, it's highly likely you'll attract similar minded persons who want to work with you and your project.
Since we have undertaken the '12x12' we have completed additional production on a pop track that was previous unsigned but had label interest (it is now signed and being released this summer), presented the working model of the runnings of Stamp! Beats and the '12x12' project to the In The City music conference (more to come on this in a later blog post soon), an internationally renowned new UK music showcase and gathering of industry persons, confirmed a new project to launch with the BBC in summer 2011, completed several remixes for major labels/pop artists, and this is largely without getting started on the last few months... or wanting to appear like we're overly blowing our own trumpet, because as we keep saying, this series of posts isn't about that, or us really, it's about putting experiences we have lived and information we have gained out there for people to read about, and hopefully go and do something even more pro-actove with their time than we have.
A point worth noting in relation to the paragraph above. Ewan Pearson mentioned this in a blog post recently and it rung a bell, but some days you wake up and you listen to a totally finished piece of music that you were 100% confident of a few days beforehand... and you absolutely hate it. The point to be taken from his point is, some days you just wake up on the wrong side of the bed and have a bad day, or week, or month, whatever, it happens. The really relevant point to this though is that we also have these days and if you're reading this series of posts and you've just read the paragraph above about all these amazing things that are going on with HeavyFeet at present and you're wondering how the hell you can do something similarly positive, well, tomorrow is a new day and you can make new music, decisions about your goals etc happen then. Maybe you got out of bed on the wrong side today, who knows? Everyone has days where they feel muted about what they're trying to achieve, seriously. A semi-interesting point, some of the biggest artists we know or have met doubt themselves and their ability on an alternately daily basis, having one positive day, followed directly by a negative day. Heavy!
So, to go back to the point of this section of the blog... You get back what you put out. If you go out there as a music maker and/or business owner, with a positive mental attitude about making your personal goals happen whilst always looking for new opportunities and channels to go down, you really are able to achieve whatever it is you are trying to make happen.
Passion, positivity and perseverance (or persistence, if you prefer). It's all about the three/four P's... depending on how you see it.
With the original instrumental, we had the challenge of bringing something to the table production-wise that could work in the club, if so desired, as well as a vocalist recording to something structured (to suit verses and choruses rather than a simple hype vocal). Whilst Serocee has obviously recorded on club tracks prior to the track with us, we wanted to create something that could also showcase his vocal ability and innate sense of humour, plus having a full vocal track that was more in keeping with the ethos behind the whole project. A note probably worth mentioning also, having a vocalist of Serocee's presence within the scene to come on board and believe in what we had created, and understand the direction we were taking with the project, was a good moment for the project's morale and momentum through late 2010.
When revisiting the track now, there is a definite sense of achievement in creating something that worked so successfully, yet was so far removed from the musical output we had been associated with before starting the '12x12'. There was, however, a large dose of irony when it came to starting our club version in that we really struggled to settle on the direction in which to take it. Because of our indecision we chose to get the guest remix sorted for the release first, before we tackled our own version. From being very familiar with Edu K’s releases over the past 4 years or so, he seemed like an ideal candidate to twist the original track into a more appealing club friendly version that still retained the vibe of the original. Upon receiving his remix there was no doubt that he had succeeded in doing that, and it also meant that we then knew we had to try a different approach stylistically if we to maintain the theme of not having two remixes on a release sounding particularly similar. The old school breaks infused remix we eventually completed seemed to strangely work with some of Serocee’s vocals, however, looking back on it now; it is perhaps a slight shame that we didn’t go for an even more jungle influenced remix!
