Tomorrow is the big day, sort of. If everything goes right, I should have the albums in my hands, depending on how long it takes to get mailed from New Jersey to New York. Then I can begin the promotional campaign, by sending out the copies of the recording to the various radio stations, blogs, podcasts, press, and other important people that help make the music industry run so semi-smoothly. I really hope I can handle putting together booking a month long tour and doing a lot of the leg work for a mass mailing campaign this month on my own, which is why I can use all the help I can get.

Do you know of a cool blog that reviews music like mine? Do you know a newspaperman or newspaperwoman who reports on pop-rock singer-songwriter music? Do you know someone who knows someone who works at a radio station? If so, let me know! Shoot me an email or leave a comment so we can work on this together.

Do you know nobody? Would you still want to help? Are you in the NYC area and have some free time on your hands, on weekday nights or on weekends? Do you want to know how to do a DIY marketing campaign? Shoot me an email or comment!

Do you want to help book a show for the tour and know of the perfect venue in your town? Let me know!

Thus concludes the infomercial portion of this blog post. Still, as one of the tracks is called Infomercial Blues, I might as well get into the spirit of the album, as should you!

So I have been spending this beautiful snowy Sunday morning in New York City in my pajamas going through a list of music blogs to submit my album to and it can be a little overwhelming. From one little blog roll I’ve found a whole lot of music blogs, and putting them all together in a workable database is challenging and fun. It’s not hard work, but it does take up a lot of time. It makers me a little sad that I haven’t been using this space for talking about music as much as I’d like to. Still there are only so many hours in a day, and you have to choose your battles wisely.

Speaking of album preparation, right now I’m in the limbo stage where my album is at the duplicator waiting to be pressed. First there was minor artwork issues (the blues and yellows bled to make green, who knew?) and then there was master recording issues (who knew the burnt CD with some schmootz on the bottom was going to be corrupted?) but now all that has been (hopefully) straightened out.

So I’m hoping to have the albums in hand by the new year, and ready to send them out to local radio, press, podcasts and blogs. If you are a radio station, newspaper or zine, podcast or blog, or write/play music for one, definitely let me know if you’d want to get a review copy. What this means for you the general public/fans is that the countdown for the album release has started. As of now, we’re shooting for a 3/2/10 release date. Thus, the countdown has begun!

As part of the upcoming release for Bored Games, I’ve decided to play some Bored Games with you, the fans. Each person can submit ten words that they want to become a song, and I’ll work it in to put together a rough demo this weekend of yours and someone else’s list.

For example, I received “blue, snow, flipper, aorta, cinderella, earlobe, run, jump, hide, thrive” from Emily S. and “feather, skipper, marzipan, couch, shimmer, brush, lament, assumption, bristle, aligned” from Michael R. From that I wrote this song:

Blue skies give way to the clouds of snow
There’s flake drifting down past her earlobe
Cinderella’s late, so she starts to run
Her aorta starts to ache, the ball has just begun

Out of the carraige, up the steps
Cannot hide form the consequence

Flipper waitsto swim in another pool
The skipper wants him to jump through another hoop
While you sit on your couch, their instincts are aligned
As the dolphin makes his jump, the heroes thrive

Out the water, into the air
Flippers turn to feathers while you stand there

Late at night you lament the past
You made a wrong assumption, you know it won’t last
Picking up a brush, you comb your hair
The bristles make it shimmer and you stop to care

Out of the dream, into real life
Out of movie marzipan, into human strife

Then I received these words from Sara N.: “octopus, purr, salt, velvet, thwart, violet, scissors, chihuahua, gargoyle, lily” and these from Kim S.: “love, lace, heart, dolphin, snuggle, bunny, turkey, merry, jolly, happy”

From those words came the second song about a dolphin of the day:

I’ve never heard of a love quite like this
Between Merry the Dolphin and Lily the Octopus
Lily’s skin was violet, Merry’s heart was a size three
Together they found love in the salt water sea

Oh the secret lives of beasts
When humans are out of reach

I’ve haven’t found a rivalry so funny
Between a stone cold gargoyle and a snuggle bunny
The bunny’s velvet skin was twarted once again
And the gargoyle was smirking at him sitting by the fountain

Oh the secret lives of beasts
While humans are out of reach

You should have seen this chihuahua’s face
When a turkey cut him a heart of lace
Strapping scissors to it’s feet
To make the dog purr so jolly

Oh the secret lives of beasts
When humans are out of reach

*This idea comes from this blog by Carrie Brownstein (of NPR and Sleater-Kinney fame), modified for this weekend.

As you all may know by now, Bored Games is the latest album set to be released in early 2010. However, you may not have known that as of now, you can be a part of the Game. See below, or check out http://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/win-matt-jaspers-bored-games for more information

As of the beginning of the month, I’ve completed the album, speeding through a month and a week of recording of 13 songs, 11 or 12 of which we’ll use. Right now, we’re working on the artwork, and it’s turning out pretty kick ass. Then we press the copies, and pick a publicist, perhaps an A&R company to shop it around, maybe get a few placements, maybe a record deal, and go for broke on the tour. It’s exciting to think that the album will be on it’s way in a few short months, and I’ll be back in the saddle so to speak.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. This morning is my birthday, and I can’t think of a better way to spend it than going to work, having a surprise party thrown sometime in the day, then going out for a night on the town. After that, I heard a rumor that there’s ice cream cake waiting in the fridge. Feel free to wish me the best on my birthday!

I should be in the studio at this very moment, beginning to lay down some bass parts to go with the very excellent drums that were played last week by Eric Lense. However, we had a minor setback, which is technically a positive thing. We had inadvertently been recording the drums in the dreaded high resolution format (96 kHz, 24 bit), which is pretty awesome sounding, but takes up the most amount of space on a hard drive, since it essentially captures every little nuance of the recording. The thing about 96kHz, is that while some programs are totally cool with it, other programs or computers totally can’t handle the process. Today, I was going to go to Jake’s apartment to get some bass and hopefully some guitars done, but last night Jake realized that since the tracks were saved in the high format, his computer couldn’t handle the high quality awesomeness that the drum tracks were. So, instead of recording my album, I’m sitting at home, figuring out what to do with the afternoon.

Never fear, dear follower of my recording process! I have studio time this upcoming Tuesday and Wednesday, where the bass and guitars will be recorded.

This past Wednesday and Thursday I started recording my next album, along with Eric Lense, the drummer for the album, and Jake Skolnick, the producer. It went really well. We started out by tracking the drums along with a scratch rhythm guitar. We had a lot to get accomplished in a short amount of time, since we had about three hours on Wednesday and up to five hours on Thursday for drums, before Eric would be booked for a longer amount of time (he’s currently in three different projects, is about to record a full length with his main project, The Instant Classic, and is also planning a tour for them). Still, we had 13 songs on the roster, and three of them would be percussion only. The other ten we needed to get good drums on, and quick. The only problem was that Eric hadn’t heard and of the songs until two nights before, when I sent him 4 songs. The majority of the tracks he hadn’t heard at all before stepping foot into the studio. Still wee performed admirable and got the ten drum songs completed in seven hours over two days. Plus they sound really kickass. So even though I had July 4th long weekend in between then and now, I’m still feeling the after effects of a couple of great studio sessions. The next session is either this Tuesday or Saturday, and I can’t wait to get back to lay down some drums and guitars.