Andy and Sarah, along with Howard Rose have been working on a musical - and they are previewing a few of the songs at Geek 2012 (in Margate) this Saturday (18th Feb, 5pm) if you find yourself nearby.

“High Score Musical : An 8-Bit Rom Com” is a new musical looking at the halcyon days of arcade rivalry, playground piracy and first love.  We’re very proud of how it is shaping up, and are currently looking for help to make it actually happen.  One of the ways you could help is by pledging (technically pre-ordering the soundtrack album) at our wefund page here.

http://youtu.be/waS_Wyx8Ekk

We’ll keep you posted!

Anyway, ZZ Top have a Greatest Hits album … costing £6.47 on Amazon, and the same set of songs is available on DVD for the Greatest (video) Hits, costing £6.99. So, an extra 52p to have the videos as well. Is that the ‘value’ the videos add, retrospectively? (about 5p per song – which is seems fair enough given the videos are only glorified averts – like a DVD of a film that comes with a ‘trailer’ as the only ‘extra’).

Back at the other end of the alphabet, ABBA ‘Gold’ is sitting similarly priced at £6.79 on DVD or £4.99 for the CD version. The £1.80 difference meaning each video adds about 10p per song – but hang on… what’s this? The CD version at £4.99 is actually the CD+DVD version. Which includes the DVD too. So in this case the audio only version is actually devaluing the videos! That’s a damning testimonial of your artistic output … it devalues the work of the director who produced a 3 minute promotional advert for it!

Amazon also sell mp3 versions of these albums. Care to take a punt at the cost? …Ok, pens down, times up! ABBA Gold costs £6.49 and ZZTop Greatest hits will set you back £7.49. In both cases the mp3 versions are more expensive that the CD versions. It seems having a sleeve with your name and/or photo on it makes your CD worth about a pound less than just the music is on its own. Perhaps the pound should be seen as the cost of convenience in having it pre-ripped for your portable mp3 player.

Ebay shows the second hand resale value of these CDs (should you choose to sell them when you realise you can’t tolerate the sleeve at all) is about £2 for the ZZ Top, and about £4 for the Abba. I can’t find a second hand price listed for the mp3 versions. Just saying.

Both DVD titles are available to rent from Lovefilm. Perhaps that’s your better bet.

]]> http://www.butterflypolite.com/wp/2011/10/25/a-z-of-buying-music/feed/ http://www.butterflypolite.com/wp/2011/08/12/pining/ http://www.butterflypolite.com/wp/2011/08/12/pining/#comments Fri, 12 Aug 2011 15:52:55 +0000 Andy http://www.butterflypolite.com/wp/2011/08/12/pining/ ButterflyPolite may have been quiet, but Andy had been noisy.

As well as recording/writing some solo songs in secret*, he has recorded some of the songs for The Pinocchio Show, a play that he’s taking to The Edinburgh Festival. http://herricktheatre.bandcamp.com/ have got the demos for anyone who is interested.  The eagle-eared will notice that Sarah lends her vocal pipes to these recordings too, along with Kate (violinist with ButterflyPolite) and Howard Rose.  On a technical note, the basic instrument recording (of glockenspiel and guitars) was done live using a mid-side technique.  If that sentence meant nothing to you, do not feel you are missing out.

*it’s not particularly secret, but he will let you hear them when he’s good and ready, okay?

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The 'sleeve'.

Andy’s RPM Challenge album (written, recorded etc during February 2011) can be enjoyed/endured here for free:

http://alonetone.com/uglifruit

(along with his Feb ‘09, and Feb ‘10 efforts).

Three albums surely warrants a Greatest Hits tour.

… or perhaps I have mis-judged, and audio cassette is the future.  I am not the person to ask.  In my continued efforts to shun all things modern I have invested in this…

Music Box

It’s a punch card programmable music box, and is shown loaded with my first composition for it (’Penelope’s Theme’).

The benefits of the format far outweigh the downsides as far as I can see.

• 1. Very cheap media.  And cheap postage.  People will just be buying bits of card.
• 2. Digital downloads: A .pdf to cut out and punch yourself.
• 3. Easy gigs: turn up with strips of paper, and not worry about forgetting the cards.

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Real life (TM) is a particular culprit in getting in the way, always limiting the amount of time available to devote to the Wonderful World Of ButterflyPolite.  It is particularly frustrating to feel limited to squeezing art into the timetabled breaks of normality.

It is with this in mind, that we are open to offers of becoming patronised artists.  We absolutely see no conflict of artistic integrity should anyone wish to finance us whilst we create music.  The Sistine Chapel was painted as a commission for the Pope.  We’d be happy to be on payroll doing something of a similar scale from … well, pretty much anybody.  We will not let morals get in our way.

Despite the frustration and slight absurdity of this, it was well worth the money.

- Andy.

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