Indie Music Works News

Indie Music Works would like to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving.

We hope this holiday finds you and your family together and in good health! It's hard to believe that another year has almost past isn't it?

We're looking forward to spending another year with everyone here at Indie Music Works. As always we appreciate all the listeners and the artists on the site. How lucky could we possibly be to have some of the best music and people here at IMW.

Hi there, Floridamusic here (Walt). I wanted to start this article off like this since it represents only my personal views and not the views of Indie Music Works.

You know it's been around 7 or 8 years since I ventured out onto the net to look for music sites. I was fortunate to not only find a great site to start out but I am also a founding member of IMW. I've spent countless hours of my life coding this site when it was first deployed. Of course now I have the help from some great folks so the site is co-owned.

During the time when I first started on music sites I made some great friends and acquaintances. Many of who are still around but many who are not.

I mainly want to speak about the folks who seemed to have vanished from the sites. I often think that maybe many people were disillusioned about the internet and thought maybe it would bring them fame and fortune in regards to their music and after several years realized that was probably not going to happen?

Are the only folks left the ones that actually do or did care about Indie Music? I hear a lot of times "I've been too busy" but as we all know we make time for the things we want to make time for.

We are living during a great period of time in technology and the impact it's had on music and musicians. Have we all grown complacent with the fact that we can now collaborate globally with other musicians? Did our love for music become diluted?

I hope that no one takes this article personally. I am mainly putting it out here and posing a question. What happened to all the folks, listeners and artists alike? Have we all just backed into our own little world and said screw it all? Has everyone just moved over to the social sites and become addicted to them?

I hope that people will actually read this article and maybe it will stir a few of you up. I can only hope so!

Okay, so where did you go?

~ Walt ~

Well, we've made it through the crash. As most if not all of you know a couple of weeks ago the hosting provider for Indie Music Works had a huge server crash and then was unable to produce a backup for the site even though they claim to store backups offsite in a secure location.

As a site administrator the last thing you want to hear from your Host is "I don't know how to tell you this but it's unrecoverable" followed by "Just have them all come back and re-upload their files again". Obviously our former hosting provider lacks something very simple, integrity.

So on one hand we had a provider who really seemed to not care about the site and it's users and on the other hand we had Brian from Jamroom go 150% out of his way on a weekend taking time from his family to get Indie Music Works safely moved to it's own server.

Indie Music Works can not thank Brian with Jamroom enough for his involvement and customer support. We're certain if the world had more Brian's it would be a much brighter place.

A reminder that if you had any links (www1.indiemusicworks.com) that they will no longer work. You will need to change them to indiemuisicworks.com. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Artists please make sure all of your music is there, you can't tell by just looking at the player on the your site make sure to click play to make sure the actual file is there. Also, artists have 2 images associated with their pages, the profile image and the user image so make sure to check both. If you have any question make sure to contact one of the IMW team members.

Then there is always perspective, we were on a shared server which also hosted another music site. I'm told that they lost 7800 users and the artist pages of that site are now closed because they were not fortunate enough to have a backup and the host didn't have theirs either. Our hearts go out to ezfolk.com, the owner of this site spent a long time building his site up.

Indie Music Works was lucky and we now keep several backups. On a positive note, the sites performance is better than ever! You should notice a huge improvement as far as site response.

Stay tuned for some new IMW features in the next week!

Back in the stone age when I first wanted to play drums, there was that love of music that couldn’t be denied. From upside down metal trash cans to low grade warped no name drums to the real thing; nothing could stop me from playing. I simply loved music.

As years went by, in addition to my love of music, I developed a love for my drums. They represented a true friend that was always there for me. They never let me down. Nothing could get in between my drums and me.

Fast-forwarding a couple of decades, I began losing my love of music. The business of music became the controlling force and the music became irrelevant and my drumming became irrelevant as well. My drums were still there for me as always but now I couldn’t offer anything of significance to them. It was time to hang it up.

So, what’s the point? Who cares? Probably no one but that’s all right because it’s about the love of music. It’s about having the opportunity to love music once again. That’s what brings me to Indie Music Works.

Indie Music Works is my musical home. I love it here. It is here that I can be myself, to create and play for my love of music. It is here that I have had the pleasure to meet so many wonderful people that share that same love of music. From the administrators and moderators, to the artists, listeners and DJ’s, this is such an amazing musical community.
It is here that I reside for the love of music.

~ Rob ~

When I was a young rock drummer, I could do two things…..play really loud and play in 4/4. Truthfully, with the exception of an occasional song in 3/4, I never gave any thought to other time signatures. I’m not sure if I even knew they existed.

Once at a rehearsal studio in Manhattan, I met a keyboard player. He was a young guy about the same age as me. The biggest difference between us was our skill level. This guy was on another level and was light years ahead of where I was musically. He asked me to play drums. He was working on a Dave Brubeck song titled Blue Rondo a la Turk. If you’re familiar with the song, you’ll understand why I felt like I was jettisoned to another planet where they spoke a different language. I was so out of my league. Luckily, my new piano playing friend was incredibly patient and walked me through it and helped me understand. While it was a brutal exercise that totally consumed me, it was also a great awakening. I realized how much I didn’t know and this young man opened a door to me leading to another dimension and I wanted to go there.

A few weeks later, I purchased Dave Brubeck’s Time Out album. On the back cover, there were explanations of the time signatures used in each of the songs. It was an incredible wealth of knowledge right there on the back cover of an album and I used this information to advance my musical journey.

Now I don’t have the schooled or technical knowledge to explain the how and why things are the way they are but I know this. Other than the fact that they are classified as odd numbers, i.e., 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, etc, there’s really nothing odd about using them. We can all count to five. Learning the multiplication table for five is an easy one…..5-10-15-20…..

Why does it matter? Maybe for you it doesn’t matter. For me, it does. For me, it’s freedom. It’s not about odd time simply for the sake of odd time. It’s not that at all. It’s about removing constraints and restrictions. It’s about working with a blank slate and not being limited to a small box where only four beats can fit and where every phrase must fit within that same box. It’s about the ability to expand the musical conversation by incorporating short sentences, long sentences and everything in between with no restrictions or timely limitations.

For me, it’s about freedom and I love freedom!

~ Rob ~

A big welcome to:
steffano_jazzman
DeLaCruz
Spiritfromhell
Chavie
Fender Bender
ColosusRay
RonKauffman
headroommastering
rickoakley
jtruant
Bluesbreaker

Just in case you missed it, there has been a wealth of new music uploaded in October in a wide variety of styles from:

Adrian Rowe
Ammon
before-the-flash
Bilbozo
Chavie
Dangerfield
David
del Vals Advocate
DeLaCruz
Dream Warrior Carlo
Eljah Cane
Full Crib
Gary Mack-White
GKG Blues Cats
JaneyNeal
JeffDbury
Jelly
Jim Easton
Jodiefierce
josephrodz
Kephas
Kephas
Lactose Factory
LARYCRAFT
Lucindra
Mad River Bend
Mailbox
Margot
mariotomic
mistimayhem
Nick T
OBB
oneslowtyper
Paul Grimwood
PVD & Friends
rickybobby
Rise of the Tiny Giants
Rob Masters
Rob Robertosn
ROBBO1
Ron Kauffman
sillybilly
Spiritfromhell
stefano_jazzman
Tailgunner
TLT50
vvsmusic

... and more to come

Quite a line up of talented musicians. Take some time to have a listen and you're sure to find something that you will like!

Indie Music Works is a free site but that doesn't mean that it costs nothing to operate.

We've kept the site ad free in order to enhance your experience on the site. We felt pop ups and ads are just annoying in general.

Many folks have stepped up and donated since our move to the new server. Donations are a great help and do offset out of pocket costs for Indie Music Works.

It's donations to the site that keeps it going and keeps it free for everyone. Each little bit helps the site out. 100% of all donations go directly to support our host server space.

You can click on any one of the "Donate" buttons on the site or you can mail a check or money order to:

indiemusicworks
P.O. Box 320573
Tampa, Florida 33679-2573