I am first going to talk about Twitter. Tweets (the messages you send on Twitter) are short (max. 160 characters) statements that you make. At first you make them to cyberspace. It's rather like talking to yourself. No one is "following" you, unless you've been invited by a friend to join Twitter who already uses it. In that case, you;d start out with one "Follower". Then, you search for people and YOU check a box to follow THEM. I began by searching out rock musicians. In the beginning, I searched -- naturally -- for musicians that I knew about. In other words, famous ones. That's how I started following Slash and Steven Tyler and Joe Perry and Black Eyed Peas and Paul McCartney and a host of others. I began by Following about 100 rock musicians and rappers. When you choose to Follow someone, you see all of the tweets that they send. They, however, do NOT see yours unless they choose to Follow you back. You can try to contact them by typing an @ before their Twitter user name. Supposedly, that will show up on their "stream" of messages. They may or may not respond. Most famous people do NOT respond. Well, not to me anyway. Maybe they respond randomly to some messages. I've had NO luck whatsoever contacting ANY famous person that way. So a word to the wise: if you want to contact a celebrity who is on Twitter, you may wait a very long time for a response, if you EVER get one.
But my messages eventually drew responses from strangers, all of whom are rock musicians --not famous ones -- or rock music fans like me or rappers and MC's. And so I began, one at a time, to build a Twitter community. I now have nearly 600 twitter Followers and I Follow about 550. My community now includes rock musicians at varying levels or stages in their careers. Some have music available via iTunes and other internet Mp3 sites like Amazon. Some have not reached that point. Some are doing very well in their careers and are starting to tour as well as put out new albums and so on. I've got about 10 rappers in my Community who are doing very well indeed. Touring in the US and in Europe, putting out albums and so on. I continue to build my Community mostly because my name is now on a number of Twitter "Lists" and I've built my own Twitter List and registered it -- that means my name is now circulating quite widely on Twitter.
It has been simply the most amazing experience. I've met some genuinely wonderful friends on Twitter. Most of them are young men. Charming, friendly, very excited about their music, very encouraging to me of my text and my attitudes generally. I've also got a number for friends who read my Tweets because they enjoy my musical analyses of the music I'm learning about. These are not rock musicians but they love the music, as I do now, and they are excited to read about the inner workings of it. I also tweet back and forth with some music educators whom I've met on Twitter, one of whom has assembled an impressive Twitter community of K-12 music teachers. We share a lot of information back and forth.
In some ways, Twitter is the sounding board for my text. Since this will be the first text of its kind, it's important for me to understand how my perceptions of the music and the artists compare with those from musicians actually in the field. Twitter has helped me to formulate my ideas and test them out with experts in the various genres. A lot of people on Twitter send out links to their newest album or they send YouTube links showing them performing and even rehearsing. These are such valuable resources for my research that I can hardly begin to understand HOW valuable. They are living, breathing, cutting edge, real, and tremendously insightful and informative. Wow! I'm just starting to comprehend the vastness of knowledge we will all have at our fingertips in this increasingly streamlined digital age. I mean, one picture is worth a 1000 words? One 10-minute video of a band rehearsing a new rock composition is worth 10,000 words. At minimum.
I'm on Facebook too. I check in once a day or maybe twice. I find Facebook to be more about keeping up on news of friends and family. Some of my rock music contacts are on Facebook but I tend to just write comments now and then or just read what they write. It doesn't seem like the place to get into serious discussion for some reason. I've met a heavy metal fan, a woman, from Seattle and we've actually become friends. We e-mail each other once a week and just talk about life and Metallica (she's a lifelong, very devoted Metallica/metal music fan). But she loves all kinds of music and has seen and heard a lot of very good music indeed so we talk about that and her job as a surgical nurse --high stress, fast-paced -- and her hope to find a husband one day. She's in her mid-40's, never married. Beautiful person -- and very attractive -- one wonders why she cannot find a simply marvelous partner!
MySpace is something of a trip. I need to write a separate blog about that someday. I mostly lurk on MySpace because ALL of my friends on there are rock bands -- and most of them -- although increasingly, that is not the case -- are very famous. Green Day. Led Zeppelin. Motley Crue. Guns and Roses. The Grateful Dead. And so on. I mostly just read their postings about new albums, world tours, that kind of thing. It gives me a glimpse into their professional lives. However, I've also met a number (that is increasing) of young, not famous, musicians and bands on MySpace. Many of these have asked me to listen to their music and comment on it. I've been flattered by that but also reluctant to say a lot to some of them because I'm still a novice at these musical genres and in some cases, I really can't listen to their music. Screaming metal. I just cannot stand it. It actually HURTS my throat to listen to it. Their vocal cords will be in SHREDS -- and these are YOUNG men -- with a lot of years (hopefully) ahead of them in which they will need to have voices: voices to talk to people about their music, voices to whisper love messages, to chastise children, to shout for joy, to sing Happy Birthday to a beloved parent -- our voices are among our most important and cherished personal possessions. We're JUDGED by our voices! And they are RUINING theirs at such young ages. Ugh. I am opposed to it. But ... my perspective is unique as a singer myself of opera, and a person trained in bel canto singing techniques, and as a former voice teacher myself. So I just can't do it. Can't listen. I listened to one screaming metal band and sent a message suggesting the frontman should "be sure and take voice lessons from someone who can help protect his voice". They never responded. Probably think I'm a fusty dusty old curmudgeon. So be it. I'd be seriously remiss if I didn't send a warning.
life is real... so real :)
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