It's been a long time since I've been songwriting, or performing my own music. My life is like most people's very complex in the recession, and has taken some odd twists and turns recently. I am now working on getting myself back out there playing, every day I am writing new material. I was inspired by a book on creative writing which encourages the writer to take their work seriously and to write every day and commit to finishing work.
I am getting older, need to get new photos done I think although I don't look as good now, but hey, it's the music that counts not the face that sings it.
I have not been writing my own stuff for a while and so at first my songwriting efforts were "clunky". I worked on a couple of half-written songs and just from playing them over and over, it's amazing how I just add bits, improve bits, shape it all without really consciously deciding to. After working on some "clunky" songs which seemed a bit stilted, I decided to just use a couple of  "classic chords" D and C and write a verse around them. I played these over and over with a few guitar clichés added, but then something in me just took over, and I wrote a second section. I have only written the acoustic guitar parts, but I am so happy with it, I hear it singing in my head all the time and that's a good sign. Even if I am the only person who will ever hear it or like it, it won't matter a bit because it brings me so much joy to just play it, and it makes me so happy to know that I can still write modest bits of music and sing.
I am making these new songs, unapologetically melodic. It hasn't been cool in any way for a very long time for musicians to be melodic or to use many chords, or have lyrics that are soppy, but I am doing all three.
I rediscovered the music of Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam recently and am so happy to see he is touring again and on form. Some of my listeners tend to like my electronic experimental music. But when life is insecure in so many ways and money problems are pouring down, the world seems in chaos, I find reassuring melodies and reassuring "solid" chord sequences on an acoustic guitar with reassuring lyrics, make me happy. They take me back "home" to the new folk songwriters of the early 1970s.
I am also influenced by the novel Jane Eyre and the songs I have been writing are all based on this character and story, but the songs end up being about something else that is still going on today. The themes in Jane Eyre are the themes of girls growing up in society and finding their place, within and without religious and educational institutions, within/without the family, as well as within a range of love relationships. I get older but life is still a struggle to find my place in all these areas, I've never managed to fit in to anything I haven't created or adapted.
I went twice to an open mic in the past week or so to perform the songs, the first time, the place was closed although I met some wonderfully interesting and intense people there, the second time they put me on so late I had to go home and give up my spot. I didn't mind, no amount of rehearsing is ever enough when it comes to open mic spots. I like to perform in poetry venues as the audience tend to appreciate the music more and also it encourages me to write better lyrics.
So that was my ramble. I wish this summer could last forever so I can continue working on my music every day.
Love and Peace to all you good people.x

Hello good people who come and read my occasional blogging

I am very pleased to tell you that I made the front cover of the Rocktologist (www.therocktologist.com) this month. Brian R. Banks reviewed my last album and the magazine enjoyed the article so much that they made "The Psychacoustic Tapes" their featured CD of the month.
I am very flattered.
At gigs I usually get quite a powerful response. My performances are like Marmite, people either love them or hate them, at least I don't leave an insipid impression. My music must taste of something.
I don't really know if anyone knows who I am online or away from gigs. Perhaps that is my fault as I feel nauseous at the thought of trying to sell myself, or trying to persuade other people my music might be "good".
What is "good" music anyway? It's entirely subjective, unless advertising has bombarded people's consciousness to the point that they feel that something must be good because everyone else says it is. I must not knock publicity as I think it is dead cool to be on the front of the Rocktologist. At heart I am a rocker! I love blues and psychedelic rock music and when I listen to it I feel like I am back home. Getting back to my point...I cannot gauge accurately how many people know who I am online, partly because I have not yet sold even ONE physical CD online. So last night I looked at my CD Baby account, CD Baby distribute my music online.  I found a mysterious amount in my account $1.17.
What could this be???
Total Digital Distribution: $1.17.
Well that doesn't sound like much. But when I look into the details I find companies such as Spotify , Muve Music, Rhapsody, iTunes!, Deezer, Xbox ( Xbox??? I thought that was for playing games) and Myspace have all been selling or streaming my music online and deriving income from it.
The most I got from a song was from Apple iTunes!, I got $0.637, but that's an isolated case for most of the sales or streaming I get something in the region of $0.001.That's a tenth of a US cent.  In contrast to the Apple iTunes!, the three items listed under iTunes Match - Americas earned me
a massive $0.01 or 1 cent for three songs that were streamed. I say they paid me this amount, but in fact I have not been payed. My $1.17 stays with CD Baby until the amount gets up to $10, then I will be paid. If I get paid on average $0.001 per download I'd have to be pretty famous to earn my $10.
(*Correction on 8/11/13: I got in a slight muddle when looking at loads of numbers late last night. For example Spotify  have sometimes given me $0.0014 per stream and at other times as much as $0.00840 which is better, but I cannot see a logical pattern.)
I thought as an independent musician I could not get ripped off. I did so much work to write songs, perform them, record them, re-arrange them, master them, then paid to have them re-mastered, to get the artwork done, to obtain special codes for each track and get everything registered with different organisations, to have the tracks made into physical CDs and occasionally deal with problems and obstacles, basically playing all the roles of a record company and artist.
Who is making money out of my music? Not me!
The artist loses again, I thought that only happened when you were signed to a big record company with ridiculously unfair contracts.
But I have to say this...that behind my slight bitterness and astonishment at getting paid so little, or not at all at present - I am so pleased to find out that so many people have been actually listening to my music and like it enough to download it to a plethora of personal electronic devices.
Thanks folks, and thanks again to the Rocktologist and to Brian R. Banks for giving me a boost.

Love and Peace

Veronique
Making Sonic Marmite

Hello all you good people out there
( especially to anyone who relishes references to obscure creative music with psychedelic undertones)

I just wanted to let you know of a review written by Brian. R. Banks of my last album in
"The Rocktologist" rock magazine which can be accessed by clicking this link:
http://www.therocktologist.com/veronique-acoustique---the-psychacoustic-tapes.html
I have always loved rock music but never thought anything I wrote or recorded would ever be reviewed in a rock magazine. I am pleased at this...I managed to leap across the rock gender divide quite by accident, and doing music that was at times far too soppy and acoustic to be considered rock.
Brian R. Banks who wrote the review of my album was once upon a time Hawkwind's tour manager and was a participant in the 1980s subversive rock band, Mourneblade 
(see http://youtu.be/yxdzyLisVrU for a live performance of theirs).
Brian contacted me via the contact page on this site to ask me about my modest contribution to a Kevin Coyne tribute album called "Whispers in the Offing" (2007). The review was written for  the "Stick it in Your Ear" ezine , a music magazine for grown-ups.
http://www.siiye.co.uk/E15/PAGE_169.html
Brian Banks has also told me that another review of "The Psychacoustic Tapes" will also appear in the "Stick it in your Ear" ezine soon. This is very flattering particularly when this ezine is filled about articles of legendary artists and their albums see: www.siiye.co.uk
( I am definitely not worthy!).
Lastly I decided to knock £2 off my CD version of "The Psychacoustic Tapes" on this site. It's nearly winter and people need to pay their gas bills and it would be nice for me to be able to pay mine too.
I am presently doing a lot of learning, more learning than I have ever done in my life. Currently struggling to rapidly learn two languages, plus a very complex type of singing from Asia involving the most difficult throat acrobatics I have ever attempted, and learning to play a kacapi zither. Everyone loves the sound of the kacapi even though I am just a beginner, plus I am reading lots of books on music. I am trying to find time at the end of the day to still do my own music and when I have the energy to lurch into some kind of creative foray.
I'm going now, I always talk or write too much!

Love and Peace to you all
Veronique

Due to circumstances beyond my control the set I doing tomorrow has changed venue to 92 Stoke Newington High Street.

http://goo.gl/maps/8I1Lw

If you are in any doubt, just go to the Question Mark Bar and someone will be there to re direct you.

I will be one stage to do a set sometime between 8- 11pm.

Just to remind you that this event is free and there will be a stream of varied performers 8pm- 3 am.

Thank you and sorry to change venue!

Hello Good people!
I just came back from my Survivor's Poetry gig hosted by the most wonderful Razz the performance poet at Tottenham Chances and had such a great time. I love playing in Tottenham and I love the Tottenham Chances venue, I got there with such bad stage nerves but after spending a little while there, the atmosphere and the people just made me feel totally at ease like you could go on stage and do anything, as long as it wasn't boring and you were being yourself.
In the other room there were three punk bands and we could hear them fairly loudly in the background, they looked stupendous, hard core punks, one band was from Germany and I think possibly Wasted Youth were playing. Anyway in the main bar we were having our poetry and eclectic music, including a couple of South American bands and a great band called Iron Meat who reminded me of the early jazz stuff from Gong ( although Iron Meat are not psychedelic at all) and Stonehenge festival bands of the 80s.
Anyway my stage nerves disappeared from the general mayhem ( we also had a dog bouncing about the place including on the stage) and the wonderful crazy people in the audience.
But we could hear loud punk screaming in the background a lot of the time. I had prepared one of my quiet and sensitive music sets, but the atmosphere was different with the  imminent full moon and this general feeling that anything was possible, and perhaps the spirit of the recently departed Xochitl Tuck was in me, she always encouraged everyone at Survivor's to just go for it, so I decided when I went on stage to not do my quiet sensitive stuff but to do my loud songs with definite rock and punk influences, I just rocked it on the guitar and in my singing and just obliterated the punk screaming in the background by being louder.
Oh My God ( sorry that is a trite thing to say but anyway....) OMG!!! I had such a great time and it was so easy I just let the adrenaline in my system pour out through my hands and throat and rocked it.
Afterwards Madeleine another Survivor's singer-songwriter , who always says lovely things to me , commented "Don't take this the wrong way but... you play the guitar like a man, but you sing like a woman". No I didn't mind I was trying to play the guitar like Jimmy Page after all, I wasn't trying to sing like anyone else although I guess Maggie Bell from Stone The Crows has been a big influence on me.
Anyway I am now really looking forwards to my next two gigs  ( June 3rd and June 6th See concerts or my previous post)where I will do a mix of acoustic guitar songs and semi-improvised electronic material  where the other acts will all be fantabulous  and innovative both in Stoke Newington. Let me know if you want to be on my emailing list, your emails will not be passed onto other people or companies.
wishing you all love and peace and music in a crazy world
Let's help eachother out during this recession and club together not against one another.
Véronique x