Open Source Music? A Look at Severed Fifth
Posted 06/21/2010 06:09AM by jared as Article
For the past few years, the music industry has been under an unprecedented transformation. To make a living doing music, artists used to have to sign on the dotted line of a recording contract making them forever beholden to a record label. These days you can write, record, and produce with the laptop you got second hand from a pawn shop. Even established artists such as Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead are ditching their record label ties in order to become completely independent.
All it takes is one man, a little gear, and some time. That's what Jono Bacon was thinking when he began Severed Fifth. Besides being into heavy music, Mr. Bacon is quite involved in the Ubuntu Linux project and the communities around open source software. He wondered if he could bring the same sort of openness to creating a band and writing an album. As an experiment, he began writing an album that would be completely free. In fact, he swears that he'll never charge a penny for any Severed Fifth album. After several months the album was complete and after being given a proper title, Denied By Reign, and downloadable artwork of course, the album was released to the world.
While the album was a success in its own right, it didn't bring endless amounts of fame and fortune. In his Shot of Jaq podcast highlighting the band, Jono explains how he might have had more success had he chose a more mainstream sound as opposed to the heavier direction he took things. He concluded that it was also a busy time in his life and that he wasn't able to give the band proper attention. Ultimately, it wasn't about finding fame and fortune, it was more about the concept of openness and trying something new.
On his second record, Jono has decided to take an even more open approach and reveal more of the writing and recording process to his audience. Fans can tune into live writing sessions on Ustream. By using a website like that to document his writing, Jono is not only providing an unedited look at what he's working on, he's providing a blueprint for others to follow. Any kid who ever wondered how a record gets put together can follow or go back and look at the archives. Often times you hear bands bragging about new songs they're recording and part of that enthusiasm is seeing an idea mature into a real song. Jono hopes that by putting all of this footage out there fans will become more connected with the music.
In the past six months, Jono has been working on the next step for Severed Fifth and the project is building up more momentum. The website has been relaunched, the writing and recording process are in full swing, and there is even a guitar-playing game in the works. Rumblings of some touring members and live shows have also crept out via Twitter. If you're interested in hearing more of the back story behind Severed Fifth, then you'll want to listen to the Severed Fifth episode of Jono's podcast Shot of Jaq linked to above. Archived writing and recording sessions can be found on the band's Ustream page. If you feel like tipping Jono or supporting the project, he is accepting donations via the band's website.
Comments
Infinitely Inwards
This might be a side note, but Chimp Spanner's plugin "Ambient Metal Constructs" is open source material for free download. My friend uses it with pro tools and its really fun to fuck around with. Bands like Seven and Tesseract use parts of his program too. Thought I'd add that to the conversation.
Ever Forthright - Ever Forthright
Fallujah - The Harvest Wombs
The New Law - The Fifty Year Storm
ERRA - Impulse
Aborted - Global Flatline
Steven Wilson - Grace for Drowning
Crippled Black Phoenix - (Mankind)The Crafty Ape
Minneapolis, MN
I googled Ambient Metal Contructs and found that it's actually Ambient Metal Constructions. From what I can tell it's basically a bunch of metal guitars and drum loops so you can make metal songs out of them. I wonder if Jono plans to release the individual instrument tracks so you can remix them? I bet he would if there was a demand for them.
Anyway, I'm curious to know what people think of what Jono is doing with Severed Fifth. I think it's really cool he's opened up the writing and recording process to everyone. It flies in the face of everything the music business about; money, record sales, merchandise. Here's a guy who says, "I just want to make music and have people enjoy it." and he just puts everything out there.
And I didn't mention in the article because it didn't seem relevant that this second record is head over heels better than the first. Denied by Reign isn't bad and it's actually pretty impressive when you find out it was one guy doing everything. However, if you go and watch some of the recordings of the new material on Ustream, you can hear how much Jono has progressed as a musician. He's writing much more interesting music these days.
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Infinitely Inwards
hmmm....I didn't know that I had it spelled incorrectly, my bad. Anyway, yeah its basically what the program itself is named. Its a collection of random assortments of ambient texturing and 7 and 8 string guitar sections and patterns. I've never played with the drum part of it, so i don't know anything about it. Otherwise, I likes it.
Ever Forthright - Ever Forthright
Fallujah - The Harvest Wombs
The New Law - The Fifty Year Storm
ERRA - Impulse
Aborted - Global Flatline
Steven Wilson - Grace for Drowning
Crippled Black Phoenix - (Mankind)The Crafty Ape
Minnesota
I'm not really a fan of Severed Fifth, but I dig how Jono is approaching making music. There have been lots of interesting musical experiments outside of the traditional writing/recording process that have caught my attention.
One of my favorite bands, Celldweller, which is one guy (Klayton), has remixing contests for his songs and even releases the best of them through his own label. It's cool to see someone encouraging others to re-interpret and screw around with what he's created.
I also remember back in the day that Pitchshifter used to include a track or two at the end of their CDs that was simply samples that they used on the album. They then encouraged people to use them however they wanted.
Stuff like this isn't as common in non-electronic based music, but I think with the proliferation of technology in all forms of music, we'll see more of this in the future.
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Minneapolis, MN
Rick, check out this new album once it's done. Jono said he's going to be mostly singing on it and from what I've heard the songs are much more melodic death metal than straight up death metal (as on Denied By Reign).
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