Some time ago I started using SugarSync, a great tool for easily accessing, synching and sharing files across multiple computers and mobile devices.

While this sounds a bit techy, in reality there are some awesome things you can do with SugarSync. One of them I particularly like as a composer - and that's being able to carry my music portfolio in my pocket.

Now you might think you could just have a playlist setup in iTunes or something and have that stored on your phone, ready to play when needed. Sure, that would allow you to access your music on the go, but what if you wanted to quickly and easily share one of your tracks with someone? Maybe you're a muso wanting to send a demo track or two to a venue manager you just met. A player looking to join a band you've just seen play live. Or a composer keen to share a demo of your work to a prospective client...

SugarSync not only enables you to access and play your music on the go from your phone, but you can simply tap a button to send a link to that track via email. Sweet.

Here's a rundown of a few steps I take each time I finish a new composition. These quick steps make it easy to access and share my music anywhere, anytime, with anyone:

1. When I finish a new track, I use XLD to convert the large WAV file to a more transportable mp3 version
2. I then drag the mp3 to an "mp3s" folder on my desktop, where all my project mp3s are stored
3. This folder is automatically synched to SugarSync, which means that by just dragging the mp3 to this folder, the next time I open SugarSync on my phone I'll have access to the track - including the ability to play it and share it directly with others.

Hope you find this useful. Now get out there and spread your music to the world!

Around a month ago I wrote an article titled "The Unknowns of the Top 40 Charts - Producers and Front-Liners".

The post contained a summary of some less-commonly-known realities of pop music composition.

After some discussion, I ended the article with the comment "When the power to the machines is switched off, all the samples and pre-programmed loops are lost and all you have is your talent, what do you bring to the table?".

The response to this question was fast-received and overwhelming, including the rather comical to-and-fro which appears in the comments directly beneath my blog.

However some of the most interesting feedback I received was through other forums, namely various LinkedIn groups which are not publicly accessible. I wanted to share these as a follow-on to my original article. I hope you enjoy as I did...

• "Here in Nashville, it's all about the words almost to the point of negating the musical content." - Randy Gabbard

• "I'd rather see more musicians who are taking the risk of NOT using the template get in front of the same demographics of those who do. One of my fondest memories, in response to your last comment, Paul, was a time when the power went out at a Chicago venue I was playing. I stepped off the stage, walked into the middle of the crowd, and performed there instead. When the power came back on, the stage manager turned the lights back off. The machine, literally or figuratively, can bring out the best and the worst...and sometimes make you write too much." - Kevin Mileski

• "Had a great night once at a rock club in central Illinois. The power went out so the lead singer and I (on acoustic guitar) sat on the front edge of the stage and played to the crowd that gathered and sat down on the dance floor. Our soundman used a flashlight to "spotlight" us." - Bud Summers

• "In spite of all that is going on in Top 40 today, I believe that this phase shall pass and we will enter a period in the music business where talent and the ability to connect with an audience will be the defining characteristics of popular and successful artists. Adele certainly demonstrated this." - Tom Netzel

• "I think the pop charts have always been this way - a light sprinkling of genuinely creative artists with their own material interspersed amongst the plethora of manufactured pop stars. The latter often have their music carefully crafted for them by a relatively small group of talented composers and songwriters. Thee factory-line approach can produce music that is a little too similar at times, but that is sort of the point - creating or maybe sometimes just following current trends and cashing in. It can still create some seriously classic, memorable pop songs though and shouldn't necessarily be dismissed as less worthy than the more independent acts...
• Motown and Atlantic in the 1960s produced some great stuff with a seriously conveyor belt approach at times. Stock Aitken and Waterman had a few classics amongst their instant throwaway pop as well...
• Speaking from personal experience - working to guidelines / a tight structure / a formula can often be quite motivating and an actual aid to creativity - gives the mind a specific focus. " - Mark Taylor

_This past week has seen countless mentions of the 15 year old Korean girl, Park Ji Min, singing a cover of Adele's "Rolling In The Deep" on the Korean talent show KPop Star.

This is a talented young singer who did a great cover of the track. However I have a simple question:

Would we be as impressed by this performance if she was singing an original song?

Here in Australia I've seen this footage countless times this week and there are blogs all over the web mentioning the video. The media are certainly captivated by what she has done. But let's just be reminded that this is a very loyal performance of a song we have all heard before. Are we impressed by how like-sounding she is to Adele's original? Impressed by the young age? A combination of both?

I have written before of the way people listen to commercial radio and popular music - as it is generally easy, non-challenging and most of all familiar.

A greater level of talent would be required to not just nail a vocal performance, but to have actually composed the song. Again, I'm not discrediting this girl's performance. I am simply lamenting my belief that if she did compose an original song and perform it to the same level of expertise, we would probably never hear of it.

The sad, beautiful truth is that so much of the world's great original music will never find its audience.

Last weekend I recorded a performance of my composition "Before April". In a strange coincidence, a few days later I read this post about the "Out Back Project", a 15-minute audio piece to be composed from the memories contributors have of their backyard. I immediately contacted the talent behind the project and am pleased to contribute my track as the score.

The title "Before April" refers to the time shortly before the arrival of my first child. At the time I was living in Sydney, in a unit, with a tiny grassed area flanked by a very tall graffitied concrete wall, the only thing separating us from the Gore Hill Freeway into Sydney.

I composed this track thinking of the complete unknown that lay ahead for us with the pending arrival, as I looked out to our very limited living space outdoors. That April we moved to Newcastle, returning to our roots, closer to family, in our first home with a large and varied outdoor environment for our little guy to explore. We have not looked back since, and the concrete wall I once saw from the window of my studio has been replaced with the top of citrus trees, rooves and an expanse of sky.

With that, please enjoy the track via the YouTube clip above. If it connects with you, you can download the track in the format of your choice from here. Enjoy.

In the past 24 hours I've stumbled across two sites in particular which have lead to this post. While I may lose several readers with this sentence, my intention is not to prescribe rules with which to make a hit song, but to question some music industry trends.

Yesterday I read the blog post "The Ten Second Rule: What is it and Why It’s Important!". In summary this article explains why a track needs to grab the listener in the first 10 seconds in order to be successful (generally). My first reaction was to disagree, but then I realised my disagreement was not with the rule itself but with the outcome of an adherence to it.

Anyone who has listened to my music would appreciate that the old adage of "don't bore us, get to the chorus" doesn't generally enter into my composition process! I don't approach music from a perspective of needing to grab attention and impact from the get-go. However, I also appreciate that I am not composing with the express purpose of achieving commercial success - something The Ten Second Rule is clearly a catalyst for.

I agree with the suggestion that there must be near-instant appeal for music which is aiming to be played on commercial radio. The reality is that deviating too far from familiar territory will lead to the listener changing the station quickly. But I question the value of this rule in creating fresh, interesting and truly original music – rather than more of what’s been heard before.

The second site I've come across today is SoundOut. As the website explains, SoundOut offers an online service to provide objective, reliable and rapid music insight. Artists are encouraged to upload a track via the site which is then reviewed by music fans (registered "scouts"). As detailed on the site:

"Every track submitted to SoundOut is fed randomly and in real-time to 80 independent reviewers on our sister site, Slicethepie (or 200 reviewers for SoundOut Pro reports). They are asked to respond objectively with their rating and honest feedback. These reviews and ratings are then automatically analysed by semantic technologies and compared against over 50,000 other tracks that have already been processed through SoundOut to produce a detailed SoundOut report."

Among other things, one outcome an artist is said to be able to gain from the SoundOut report is "How good a track is overall, with guaranteed 95% accuracy".

This service may be the absolute delight of artists looking for a way to receive constructive (?) feedback on their tracks. It's certainly an innovative tool.

I must say though that I am wary of the outcomes of a largely automatic reporting tool determining "how good a track is overall". For an artist with the sole objective of achieving commercial success with their music, this would seem like a god-send. Once you have the big success tick against one of your tracks you just need to figure out exactly what commercial success is - how to monetise the popularity of your track in a world gone crazy for free downloads and music piracy!

As a composer putting heart and feeling into creating music, this tool leaves me cold. But again, I acknowledge I am not SoundOut's target market.

Why formulate and automate the art of creating music?

"I am the entertainer, I come to do my show.
You've heard my latest record, it's been on the radio.
Ah, it took me years to write it, they were the best years of my life.
It was a beautiful song. But it ran too long.
If you're gonna have a hit, you gotta make it fit
So they cut it down to 3:05".
- Billy Joel, "The Entertainer"

I grew up learning to play on an old upright grand piano. Around 10 years ago I remember asking my great Uncle, who is now in a nursing home, if he knew how old the piano was, as it had been in the family for well beyond just my lifetime. To my surprise he stood up from his chair, and as quickly as if you'd just asked for a glass of water disappeared into another room, rummaged for a moment, and returned with the original receipt, dated 1923. 

Amazing. That piano had some history.

As I grew up, the location of that piano shifted. From the front room in my early childhood house, to our next door neighbour's garage while that house was being rebuilt, to the back room of the rebuilt house, where it has stayed loyally for well over two decades.

A piano is not a very transportable thing. I once saw a busker towing an upright grand by bicycle in Sydney's Martin Place, but this is somewhat off the chart... When I moved out of home, that old piano was left behind. I started playing in bands, using synths and samplers, and after some time fell into a groove with music which demanded a wide range of sounds to be on-call, but piano was always passable from a 76 note synth which felt more like an organ to play than a piano.

Sure, I had a digital piano for a while there, which recreated some of the feel. I've recently upgraded my gear to once again include a great-feeling, great-sounding digital piano. But it's just not the same.

When you play a piano, you feel the vibration of the instrument through your fingertips. You feel the sound in your foot as you touch the sustain pedal. It makes the whole room sing.

That old Beale piano still lives in my childhood home. I've known it since I was too small to reach up to the keys. Some of the hammers don't strike the way they used to and the tuning has found its own way here and there. But with my parents currently overseas and a trip to the old house planned, I can't wait to make that back room sing with its sound again.

I got up this morning to find two updates via Twitter which at first I saw as unrelated. On further thought, I believe they are closely linked...

The first was a great post titled "The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're All Going To Miss Almost Everything". I strongly recommend reading the original article in full - it is a fascinating and thought-provoking read.

In very brief summary, the article comments on the reality that we will never come close to scratching the surface of taking in all that has been created before us. Even with the most dedicated effort, no one will ever have time in their life to read even a fraction of all the books which have been written, see all the films which have been made, hear all the music which has been composed.

As the article's title states, the sad, beautiful truth is that almost everything which has been created, even before we each grace the planet ourselves, we will never have the ability to take in.

A big realisation.

And the second post? An update from Mashable titled "Metal Band Teases New Drummer on Facebook To Create Buzz, Score Fans". This article refers to the steps taken recently by progressive metal band Dream Theater to create a "buzz" around the pending announcement of their new drummer, following the departure of Mike Portnoy (something I discussed back in September 2010).

Since Portnoy's announcement to leave the band, they have become more engaged in social media through the creation and active updating of personal band member Twitter accounts and an increased Facebook presence. In this latest move, the band's record label Roadrunner Records has encouraged fans to connect with the Dream Theater Facebook page and provide their email address, to receive updates on the announcement of the new drummer. A 3 minute video teaser is provided as a reward for signing up.

How did I see these two articles as related? It all comes back to what I see as a the most asked question of all musicians - how can my music cut through all the noise out there and find a listening audience?

Virtually every band now has a Twitter account, Facebook page and website to promote their music. Just like every other band competing to be heard.

The sad, beautiful truth is that so much of the world's great music will never find its audience. Unfortunately I don't conclude this article with the silver bullet, the solution to making the connection with a keen listener base. If I could, I would probably be sitting at my musical keyboard right now rather than the one that allows me to type these words!

Personally, I will continue to create, continue to connect and keep expressing myself. If what I'm doing connects with you, brilliant! Enjoy.

Muscle memory is an amazing thing. The process of repeating a movement so frequently that it is committed to your memory, such that you no longer need to think about the action, it can just happen.

I've often thought how great muscle memory is as a musician. When learning a new track you will listen to it over and over - in some cases hundreds of times - before you feel fluent in the performance, not needing to think your way from one note to the next. There's a real sense of freedom when you can breeze through a once difficult part of a performance, later reflecting on how much repetition went into getting it to sound so "easy".

Sometimes I'll sit down at the keyboard and without any effort play through a piece I haven't thought of in years. No sheet music, no accompaniment, no recent listening - just the action stored in the brain... and it can sound as good as it ever did.

Earlier this week a friend of mine, learning piano, commented on wanting to learn the track "Army" by Ben Folds. In particular he mentioned the left hand arpeggios playing so quickly at times (check for example 1 minute 15 seconds into the video below).  

At first this would require a lot of conscious effort, but in time would be done with ease - as this performance shows!

Just today I was playing Dark Knight (below), a composition of mine well over 10 years old. The piece starts with a fairly complex left hand part, which continues regularly to keep the tempo well after the right hand melody joins in. Having not played the track in quite some time, this once tricky left hand line came out again with relative ease. 

Muscle memory - a musician's best friend.