In an attempt to get some kind of human reponse from the corporate machine that the Cadburys Consumer Relations department appears to be I have written this reply:

Hi Cadburys,

No problem, the sponsorship was a bit of a longshot, I was just interested in your views on it really! We’ll get the eggs ourselves, about the other issues though:
If Sarah manages to eat 40-45 eggs in an hour, will there be any risk to her health? Who should we contact about this?
25g of sugar in one egg x 40 eggs = 960g of sugar, I’m assuming that’s probably ok? I’ve eaten whole cakes in a day before!

Thanks again for getting back to us.. this is pretty exciting!

Aaron

I await their reponse… in the mean time if you’d like to get involved.. please sponsor an egg for the challenge!

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First a little introduction:

My flatmate Sarah eats around 7-12 Creme Eggs DAILY. She’s obsessed. Now I thought this was abnormal and challenged her to an eating contest, she jumped at the chance. Apparently she’d managed about 20 in an hour before.. they ran out of creme eggs at the time so she thought she could go to at least 40.

That’s one every 90 seconds.

As I’ve recently been travelling around the world I’m pretty broke, so I wrote to Cadbury’s asking whether they’d sponsor the contest in return for some free publicity on Youtube and so on. This was their reply:

From: consumer.relations1@csplc.com [mailto:consumer.relations1@csplc.com]
Sent: 04 February 2010 16:29
To: aaron carey
Subject: Thank you for contacting us at Cadbury. Your reference number is #003013571A

Thank you for your recent letter requesting support for your event. I am sorry that we are not able to give a positive response on this occasion, but hope that a brief explanation of our approach may help explain our decision.

We seek to make a positive contribution to the communities in which we operate through direct involvement in and support for community projects. In order to make our support as effective as possible, we focus on a number of projects in areas where we have operations and where we can have most impact. Our UK community investment programme is focussed around three pillars which provide a holistic approach to our support for the community to tackle the three key indices of deprivation: employment, local environment and well-being (body and mind). We partner a number of charities in these areas including Young Enterprise, Business Action on Homelessness, WaterAid, National Trust, Groundwork and the Youth Sports Trust.

We know that this approach means we have to turn down appeals from very many worthwhile organisations, but we receive a large number of requests for support and it is not possible for us to help in every case. More information, including details of the projects we support, is contained in the society and environment section of our website: www.cadbury.com

I am sorry not be more helpful on this occasion (but hope you appreciate the limitations in responding to the number of projects that we are invited to support). We wish you well for your event.
Cadbury Consumer Relations Department

Ok no luck… we shall continue…

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I’m abroad at the minute… I’m video blogging every day though so you can catch up if you want

www.youtube.com/aaroncareymusic

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So.. I’ve been asked to write a little column on field recording it seems. I’ve also been asked to try and make it entertaining. Now forgive me for saying so, but generally anything to do with technology (even super-exciting sound gear) tends to be quite boring. So be warned…

I think before I enlighten you all about amazing little shiney boxes with knobs and flashing lights which you can waste you student loans on, I should probably go through some (perhaps useful) basic information.

First things first: microphones. If you want to record something you’ll need one of these and they generally come in 2 different types (for the tech geeks reading this, yes that’s not entirely true, but please don’t tell anyone, it’ll only confuse people.)

First off you have dynamic microphones, these generally include any built in microphones in laptops or portable recorders. They’re called dynamic not because they’re really good in awkward social situations (sorry, they asked for humour) but because of the volume they can handle. If you’re recording an exhaust pipe, a snare drum or a particularly loud djembe this is the kind of mic you’ll go for. They’re not so good for capturing subtle nuances but they’re usually very hardy and so you seen them a lot in live gigs and so on. A good example would be a Shure SM57 or SM58.

Next we have condenser microphones; these are generally the ones used in recording studios and on the whole give a must more detailed sound than dynamic mics. In order to ‘sound better’ condenser microphones require a power source which is provided in the form of ‘Phantom Power’. It’s nothing to do with ghosts or anything (although I think that’d be far more exciting. Maybe that’s how they record ghosts and things? Have you seen White Noise? Anyway.. where was I..) basically whatever you’ve plugged the microphone into (recorder/mixing desk etc) will send 48 volts back up the microphone cable to make it work. You might see a button somewhere labeled ‘+48V’, you can translate this roughly into an ‘on’ switch for condenser microphones. Some mics (usually those designed for field recording) will take batteries so they can power themselves (check out the Rode NT4). Some newer USB microphones will power themselves from your computer (Samson CO10 was one of the first to do this).

A note about volume: Because they are powered, condenser microphones tend to produce a louder signal than dynamic mics (sometimes people call a loud output ‘hot’. If you hear someone calling a microphone ‘hot’ they’re not perverted, honest. Well, probably not anyway). A common misconception is that you can plug in a nice microphone into a computer and record this easily. Whilst you can do this, it probably won’t sound great. First you’ll need a weird cable to go from your computer’s input to the microphone but even if you have this, if you’re using a dynamic microphone it’ll be really quiet and boosting the signal from the computer will usually just make everything crackly and sound rubbish. If you try using a condenser microphone it just plain won’t work as the computer won’t provide any power for it. If you want a simple computer recording solution you need to go for a USB microphone, they’re a relatively new invention but are rapidly gaining popularity as they’re so easy to use.

Right, now I seem to be running out of words here and I realise I’ve not actually recommended anything specifically and you’re certainly no closer to being able to actually record anything. So in a sentence: Go buy a USB microphone (from www.dv247.com), plug it into your laptop, load up Reaper (www.reaper.fm), point it in the general direction of something, cross your fingers and hit record…

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Hey,

As a struggling musician I was a bit annoyed by some of the things you said in your blog, I tried to respond in a comment but myspace wouldn’t let me. I’ve written a response in my own blog (www.aaroncarey.co.uk) feel free to have a look.

It seems that if piracy is hurting anyone, it’s mainly major artists like yourself, whereas it actually benefits underground acts.

In order to do something about it people need to act responsibly and pro-actively, looking for solutions to the problem, not just complaining about it. The music industry has changed massively in the last few years and the majors need to see that and adapt.

If you want to help stop piracy.. start plugging services like spotify and last.fm. Simply complaining only makes people angry and fuels their own self-justification that it’s ok to download things.

The problem is that you are a major artist and so condemming piracy hurts both you and the music industry.

Perhaps a positive approach would work better than a negative one.

Aaron

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Whilst merrily taping away at my computer I noticed a headline about Lily Allen and piracy come up on the news feed thingy.. so I clicked and ended up reading her blog about music piracy.

The blog post got me riled enough to actually want to comment on it, but I discovered I couldn’t as I wasn’t her friend on myspace. I tried to add her as a friend but it seems she won’t accept requests from bands (which includes me it seems as I have a music profile!).

Anyway, I will vent here instead…

Firslty, Lily states that piracy is basically killing music, film, tv.. etc When this really isn’t the case. Piracy has been around for years (remember copying tapes?). There are hundreds of articles on the internet about this (check out some of the Guardian Tech blog podcasts, there was a special on it not so long ago which was very interesting), and many studies have shown that piracy really isn’t harming sales. The problem is much wider and deeper, the major labels are having a hard time keeping up with changing technology and have to adapt their business models a lot quicker if they’re going to survive.

Anyway, I’m really not going to get into the specifics, I shall continue..

The thing that really annoyed me about the post is Lily saying things like ‘it’s hard enough trying to get a job at the moment’; as if she knows anything about trying to get a job or the hardship ‘normal’ people are facing. ‘I don’t care so much about the high-ups’ – Lets face it Lily, you ARE one of the high-ups! You’d be pretty gutted if they dropped you right? Much better to get rid of some interns than cut your royalties no?

She also makes a point that no new innovation in film or music is happening, while to a certain extent I agree with this I’d like to point out: firstly using Harry Potter 7 is a pretty bad example (the reason they made HP1-7 is because there are that many books… did you complain when JKR wrote the sequels?). Also, there is LOADS of innovation happening in both music and film, just search on MySpace (your favourite site Lily.. remember?) or YouTube. Undergroung filmmaking and musicmaking is going on everywhere and people are putting out their music and videos for free for people to watch online, and some of it gets very popular. What Lily is trying to say is that the mainstream market (where the money is.. where SHE is) is being saturated by mass-marketed crap.

I do not disagree.

But again, I think the problem there is the Major Labels and film companies themselves who put this out, not the lack of talent. I love the way she says ‘piracy is just playing into the hands of the corporations.’ Lily.. you ARE the corporations.. you’re on EMI!!

Ok Lily.. don’t get me wrong, if you’re reading this (and you’ve read this far.. wow.. thanks!) I do agree that piracy might not be the best thing. My band only just broke even on physical sales last year, we run our own label and have very close control over finances etc. I checked the number of times the album had been download on mininova.org and if every person that downloaded the album had bought one at a show (2030 downloads from that site.. who knows how many elsewhere) we’d have been able to give up our dayjobs.

But I really don’t hold it against people.. as an artist I want people to hear my music. I don’t have the money for a major ad campaign or to get airplay on Radio 1 so if piracy means lots of people can listen to what I do then so be it. It’s all very well saying down with piracy when you’re sitting on a fat major label payroll and being pushed by big-budget marketting, but when you’re an underground artist trying to get heard then you need all the help you can get.

I think the alternative that will please everyone are systems like spotify or last.fm especially now that you can get them on mobile devices.

If I like a band I’ll buy their CD, I’ll buy their Tshirt and I’ll come to their gigs. If I’m not that fussed I’ll stream them on spotify or download their album from somewhere (sorry Lily.. that includes yours). I wouldn’t have bothered buying it otherwise so really they’re not missing out.

Am I wrong? Probably… feel free to comment. Best one wins a prize.

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So readers… I’d like to talk about computers for a second.

Recently I got quite drunk. This was the same day that I received a shiney new credit card from my bank. Put these two together and you get: impulse online purchasing.

Oh dear. I bought myself a Netbook. At first I thought this may have been a bad idea but it turns out to have been pretty awesome! It’s an Acer Aspire One 531.. I looked everywhere online for a decent review (that actually told me stuff I wanted to know) but I couldn’t find one. So I’m going to answer the questions I wanted answers to here (skip ahead if you don’t care):

1. Is it any good?
YES. The screen is very bright compared to my old laptop. It runs pretty damn quickly (I’ve had it running Eclipse, Max/MSP and a bunch of other stuff!)

2. Does the battery REALLY last 7 hours?
Probably not, they say the battery only starts getting up to full strength after a couple of charge cycles. I’ve only charged it twice since getting it (over 5 days.. so thats pretty good). It probably last 5-6 hours on a charge

3. What can you DO with multi-touch?
Initially: three finger swipe goes back and fore in the browser or picture viewer, pinch zooms in browsers or picture software and theres a weird sprially motion that scrolls. What I really wanted was two finger scrolling…

And then I discovered this:

http://code.google.com/p/two-finger-scroll/

It’s AWESOME! takes up hardly any memory and works on… pretty much ANY laptop!! Yes thats right… I also installed this on my aging (Acer Aspire) laptop and IT WORKS!

It turns out laptops have been able to do multi-touch gestures for YEARS but have had it disabled for marketing reasons! Since the loss of my Macbook I’ve been yearning for two finger scrolling for ages and now I find out my laptop could have been doing it about 5 years ago! I didn’t even have to update the drivers!

While we’re talking about apple… I just installed Safari 4 and iTunes 9… I have to hand it to Apple, they’ve come a long way with their PC software.. Safari is lightyears faster than Firefox and iTunes also seems a lot quicker, and the home share feature looks very nice. Wooo!

Right.. I’m going to stop geeking out now, I’m heading off to play a world/folk festival near oxford tonight… should be fun

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Well.. it’s been kicking around for a little while but now I’ve actually worked it out properly…

Things seem to be going quite well with the promo of my single, some nice reviews, a couple of features on some online radio stations and even ‘Tuna of the Day’.

Anyway.. they say that the only real way of getting ahead in music is to be popular on MySpace. To that end I’ve been adding lots of lovely new friends with the promise of cake. (If you’re one of them and reading this.. do not fear.. it is not an idle threat!)

Once my myspace friend count gets to 1000 I’m going to bake a cake for all of my new friends (probably chocolate, I like chocolate). I’ll even make a little video of the cake baking on youtube…

Then I’ll send some to everyone that wants a piece, on the condition that they buy my single on iTunes and have some sort of proof (a photo of them playing it on their ipod, screengrab of itunes etc). That’s only 79p, not bad for a piece of cake right?

And if they’re stingy then I’ll just link them to the youtube video of the cake

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On Tuesday I recorded my first radio interview (which will be going out live on Saturday night on BBC Radio Yorkshire on Matt Seymour’s show…), last night I had my first meeting with a director about making a music video, and this morning I got my first review for my single ‘the scene’. As I’m not sure how long it’ll be online on UnPeeled here is the review:

AARON CAREY: “The Scene” (Periphony Records)
RELEASED? 21st September
SOUNDS LIKE? Jilted John with a
working brain cutting Jamie T no
slack what-so-fucking-ever in an anti-
scene hymn come rant. Stupid
people, people like me, will waste
your time banging on about the
sharpness of Nick Drake and the
inverted pseudo-realism of Nick
Cage, but Aaron Carey has tied an
industry, let alone a genre to post with
razor wire wit and done it in a casual,
throwaway style, salute.
IS IT ANY GOOD? This is brilliant,
this is a genuine anthem, stand up
now, you slack-brained, stripey-
socked, half-cocked scene slaves.
WHERE IS IT? www.aaroncarey.co.uk

I love you unpeeled.

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I’d be rich.

Or would I?

I was thinking the other day that what I could really do with… is a million pounds (dollars, whatever..).

But.. would it be that useful? You used to be able to live off the interest if you put it in a nice savings account or investment fund, but I’ve been reliably informed by the mass media that the economy has gone to shit and I won’t get much of a living from a mere million any more.

So I guess I’d just end up spending it.. But after a new car, house, boat, buying onto a Reel Big Fish tour (I was quoted $10k by their agent.. no lie)  a trip round the world and a lifesize statue of me made out of specially designed ultra-high-melting-point chocolate erected in Times Square there wouldn’t be much left to do anything useful with.

So.. how do you get rich these days?

Organised religion!

So… I think I’m going to start my own religion. If sci-fi writer L Ron Hubbard managed it (the key there is SCI-FI writer).. maybe I can too! I think there is a perfect tool for this readily available on the internet.. it positively encourages people to listen to your every whim and label themselves as your ‘followers’. Yes, twitter. I’ve started a ‘Cult of Carey’ twitter account and I shall now attempt to gain followers… after that I’m not quite sure what I’ll do, we’ll have to see!

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