Episode Notes
This month, it was our pleasure to speak with Jessica Tomlinson!
Jessica is an eclectic composer, synthesist, keyboard player, and recording engineer based in the Tampa Bay area who happens to be legally blind. When she isn’t playing pop rock with the band Rainbow Portal, she’s crafting boundary-pushing experimental compositions in her home studio. She serves on the Audio Engineering Society’s Accessibility committee and the MIDI Association Special Interest Group focusing on accessibility. Jessica is also an active member of SoundGirls and the Earth Modular Society. She gives back to the community through Girls Rock Camp St. Pete and teaches blind senior citizens to use assistive technology. She also creates visual art with a powerful magnifier.
I hope you enjoy the show as much as we did creating it! For more information about Friends in Art, please visit their website: <https://www.friendsinart.org/>.
AI-Generated Transcript
Opinions expressed on ACB media are those of the respective program contributors and cannot be assumed to serve as endorsements of products or views by friends in art, the American Council of the Blind, their elected officials, or staff.
Friends in Art welcomes you to the Art Parlor, where visually impaired artists of all types will discuss their work.
Pull up a chair, bring along your beverage of choice, and listen to thoughtful, stimulating conversations with visually impaired artists in all media and from all parts of the world.
And now…
Hi everyone, this is Annie Chiappetta, President of Friends in Art, and this is the Art Parlor.
And tonight we have a very special guest, Jessica Tomlinson.
And we’re going to talk about pretty much all different kinds of stuff relating to creativity and music and being an artist, that kind of stuff.
Jessica, welcome.
How are you today?
I am very good, excited to talk creativity with you as I enjoy learning about lots of different media. as you will hear, I do enjoy dabbling in many different things and I enjoy hearing about other people’s creative practice as well.
Excellent.
Excellent.
So how did you first decide you wanted to be a part of the performing arts?
Was it something that you like to do as a kid?
Was it, you know, when you were in high school?
How did that develop for you?
So I have always been very fascinated by and very attuned to sound because with people’s five senses the brain tends to pick one or two to prioritize.
Technical geeks will think of this as being like a computer’s IRQs, meaning is the keyboard or the mouse, the primary input device.
So most people, their primary input sense is sight, but I was born with underdeveloped optic nerves or optic nerve hypoplasia.
So sound has always been my primary sense that I focus on.
And then the sense of touch is kind of secondary and then maybe seeing is a kind of third because I do have some low vision.
So I would make up words for sounds like if someone were to scrape a chair across the floor, I would say that’s like calling it huge or radio static sounded a lot like frizz, frizz, frizz.
So I saw musicians kind of from afar, but I didn’t have any role models when I was very young, so I didn’t really think of it as something I could do.
However, when I became a teenager and started going to local concerts, I saw the front of House mixing console, which is the large board at the position where the engineer is able to balance the levels from all the different instruments.
And when I saw and heard and was told that that was an actual job that some people do, I was completely hooked.
I was single-minded throughout my teenage years that I was going to have a career in that field.
And I went to a trade school.
I went to full sale university back then it was called full sale real world education in Orlando.
And I did I graduated from the recording arts program.
And I found it very fascinating.
I learned a lot of incredible things.
I picked up a lot of general standard knowledge about recording equipment and how it’s connected in something we call signal flow for how signal goes from the microphone to the preamp through the mixing console to the outboard gear.
And finally, at that time, we were mostly using tape machines.
Now we have programs on the computers called digital audio workstations that double as the tape recorder, the multi-track, the mixing console, and even the outboard effects gear too.
So all that is in the computer.
How many of those digital audio workstations are you trained in or that you know of?
that you have knowledge of.
I’ve used different ones over the years.
I cannot say that I am expert in a lot of the ones that I used earlier.
My very first one was called Cool Edit Pro from Adobe, now Adobe Audition.
I used digital performer for a little while there.
At Full Sail I was taught about Pro Tools and Logic.
Then I used a Cubase for a while there.
And now my DAW of choice is Reaper.
And I feel much more comfortable with Reaper today.
I can do, I consider more with it than I have been able to with any DAW in the past.
And why is that?
Because number one, it has such a flexible workflow, which I do understand can contribute to a steep learning curve if someone is just getting started. you are able to set it up and customize it the way you want it to work.
And the OSARA, OS-A-R-A extension, I don’t exactly know what the acronym stands for, but it provides for very deep functionality using a screen reader.
So I am able to close my eyes and use my QWERTY keyboard, and I also now use a a control surface, which is a little mini mixing board with faders on it, except no audio goes through it.
It’s just a giant mouse.
It’s a tactile surface to control the reaper environment with and do a lot of things, not only editing spoken content, but also mixing music and recording music, which is my passion.
And I can record MIDI into it as well and use a lot of virtual instruments, playing a piano like keyboard.
Right.
Are you on the MIDI?
Are you on the MIDI list?
I am not.
I am on the Reapers Without Peepers list when I get time to pop over there.
I know that there is a MIDI list.
I’m not sure if it’s still, you know, it’s, but I don’t know how to subscribe to it, but I will find out for you and send it to you.
I’ll do some searching.
There is a mega stash of accessible resources that the Reaper community publishes.
So I will check in there to see if I can find it as well.
Also just a note, I don’t know too much what it’s gonna be like yet, but I have been able to attend a few meetings of the MIDI Association Special Interest Group on accessibility and they are currently developing MIDI 2.0.
Interesting.
They are trying to incorporate text-based screen reader prompts through that and some other cool nifty stuff yet to be seen down the road.
So we have something to look forward to.
That is really cool because I know a couple of people that love MIDI and are very dedicated to it.
I’m not sure if it’s still on the Friends and Art website, but we may have a link to the MIDI list on the website, but I haven’t…
I’m not sure.
I still have to check because I don’t use MIDI.
So what would you say to somebody who maybe wants to start out as an audio engineer, do something for their personal enjoyment?
How would they start?
What kind of, where would they go?
I mean, not, yeah.
Yeah.
That really depends on what they would like to do because there are many subfields.
There are many little niches within the field of audio or maybe it’s niches.
I don’t know.
There is live sound.
Yeah, there’s live sound.
So there is ways to support musicians that are on stage.
There is home studio recording and mixing, which is what a lot of people do because we can set up our environments and not have people moving our stuff all the time and really get familiar with one set of gear and push it to its potential.
There’s also post-production where you support film and TV shows.
There’s sound design for sound effects for those shows.
There’s dialogue editing.
There’s actually audio description editing as well.
If you look into the audio description projects.
So there are lots and lots of ways to get involved with sound.
I would say the first thing would be if you know anybody who also has an interest in the field to ask them to find out, first of all, what part of the industry are they involved in, what has worked for them, what tools they use, and then just because the tools work for somebody else doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re gonna work for you.
So one of the reasons why we have so many different types of gear and DAWs and things is because everybody works and processes differently.
So the path that many people are probably gonna wanna take is like a home studio situation so that they can record and mix either their own music or have some collaborations with friends.
So you need a couple of things and you don’t need to acquire these all at once.
You need either a computer or a tablet.
There are some that work on iOS, but I’m not as familiar with them.
I know GarageBand is a really good one that some people start with on iOS and Mac, but either a computer or a tablet, a good set of headphones or speakers so that you can hear clearly what you’re doing, preferably in a good listening environment that doesn’t have a bunch of echo.
But that’s a whole other discussion.
So my room here, you can hear that echo.
So that echo is going to affect and color what you’re hearing.
So you’re hearing way too much of one frequency.
You’ll cut it in the mix and then somebody else will be listening in another environment and they will be like, hey, wait a minute, that sounds like there’s a hole in that.
So I think the key is good monitoring, which means listening on either headphones or speakers.
But even if you, whatever you have, whatever you start with, when you make a mix, when you make a musical track or a spoken content, take that track and go listen to it on as many different sound systems as you can.
So play it in your friend’s car.
Notice I didn’t say it in your car.
Unless you have one and you have some on the drives.
Play it on your phone.
Play it on if you still have a Walkman.
Play it on that.
Play it on your home stereo system. play it on your tinny clock radio to just get a really good sense for how it’s going to sound in all those different environments.
So that’s important for what reason?
That is important so that you can maybe not necessarily optimize it extremely for one environment over the others, but you can get a good overall balance to make your mix sound good on a lot of those different systems.
Gotcha.
Okay.
And another cool thing is you have to, a lot of people, most people mix in stereo.
It’s important to check your mix in mono.
Yeah, I already know.
Yes, I know that.
I found that by accident.
No one told me that.
I’m like, why is this happening?
Because I have a very simple, I have a two-channel device and, you know, I’ve got a nice headset with a mic and I’m like, oh, I have to go do that now?
Right.
So in Reaper, the key command for switching your master track to mono is shift plus F9.
Just so that you can hear if there’s any wonkiness.
But back to the list of things that one could start out with.
And again, not all at the same time.
Don’t feel like you have to do this all overnight.
Computer, which is the brain, DAW, which is the software, monitoring, which is headphones or speakers, you’re probably going to need some kind of audio interface, which is a box that manages the input and output of sound to and from your computer.
I have a Mo2M2, which has two XLRs on the front and then a couple different outputs on the back.
And that also does my MIDI in and out as well, although a lot of MIDI controllers have USB these days so you can plug the MIDI through USB directly into your computer.
But for audio, for microphones, an audio interface is definitely the way to go.
And there’s a lot of different ones on the market.
And then just explore different microphones.
Because microphone- What do you use?
I use a couple of different Chippodipo dynamic microphones.
OK.
And I also have a blue, a baby blue, um, road NT one condenser mic that I use when I really want to record something quiet and soft and subtle.
Oh, okay.
When you first start out, like, like you said, you know, don’t get these things all at one time.
I assume that, you know, the price ranges and the availability of things.
My Ruby cost me a pretty penny, but, um, yes, I have one of those two.
All right.
So what’s your advice about starting slow and inexpensively?
So check out trial versions of software to determine what you like and what works best with the way you process information and the way you work.
So I have heard that the accessibility in Ableton has come a really long way in recent years.
Also Reaper is amazing, but I’m very biased.
Logic, I’ve heard people that use Logic and that’s pretty good.
GarageBand is also a great way to get started and just learn some concepts because all of these DAW programs do similar things, but they have slightly different ways of getting it to do the same thing.
Like they all have multiple tracks.
They all have ways to either put audio or MIDI on a track.
They all have various ways to mix your various tracks and put effects on them.
So it’s just about trying different environments to see maybe what’s gonna work best for the way you work.
And also think about what kind of content or what kind of music do you wanna create?
If you wanna be somebody who makes beats, who makes hip hop, then definitely maybe virtual instruments like a lot of drum samples are gonna be what you’re gonna wanna focus on more than say various different microphones.
I mean, I still recommend everybody have one good microphone at some point, but you might not need to start with that.
If you have a software program, a DAW, that you find that works for you, maybe a good set of headphones, and look for some free virtual instrument plugins that you can play either with a MIDI keyboard, a MIDI drum pad, if that’s more your style.
Even your QWERTY keyboard can serve as a MIDI keyboard in a pinch.
It’s not velocity sensitive, meaning you don’t get loud and soft based on your touch, but you can get notes to sound so that you can hear kind of what you’re doing.
Right, the basic rhythms and those kinds of things.
Right.
Yeah. – Okay.
So, SurgeXT, if you like synthesizers, which I absolutely do, I have absolutely fallen down the rabbit hole of being in love with synthesis and learning about all those things.
SurgeXT is fantastic as a synth, but there are lots of other free plugins that you can explore, not only free, but we also have to keep in mind what’s gonna be accessible too, which is kind of a bummer because I think that more of the industry needs to focus on making their products usable by all their consumers.
And we’re just trying to spread awareness about accessibility a lot.
Yes, it’s getting better.
It’s slow though.
It’s slow.
But I think as the general software, I guess programming and I guess the basics become easier, then I think the accessibility is becoming easier as well.
I remember when I would ask for something, some kind of coding or something to make something accessible in the workplace and I’d get moans and groans and oh, it’s too much and takes so long and blah, blah, blah.
And now it’s like, okay, well, we’ll work on it.
We’ll get it to you in a little while.
So I think the attitudes are changing, but it’s slow.
Yes, that’s very good.
It needs to be quicker.
And I also wanna put a plug in, there isn’t an open registration yet, but the Audio Engineering Society is going to be holding a small virtual conference on accessibility, July 9th and 10th, and they’re going to have lots of different presenters in many of those different areas of the sound industry that I was talking about.
They’re going to have some people from live.
They’re going to have some artists.
They’re going to have some people that create software and just lots of people presenting, telling the general industry why accessibility is important and to listen and how to implement it.
That’s excellent.
See, that’s what’s changing.
Yes, absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah, excellent.
I think we’ll, I could talk about this all night, but we need to change the subject a little.
So how did you get involved with ACB?
So I was involved with ACB because I received a scholarship five or six years ago at the state level when I was going back to school to be a VRT, which is a Vision Rehab Therapist.
So audio and music and accessibility has always been a passion of mine, but 20 years ago when I graduated from full sale, we were still in a industry model that revolved around large record labels, large studios, large consoles and large egos.
And I kind of had to pivot because I couldn’t find a doorway into the industry at that time.
So my day job is now teaching blind senior citizens how to use their computers and smartphones.
And I still use a lot of my geeky techy problem solving skills with them to help them develop the best solutions for them.
But in recent years, the past five or six years, I’ve definitely started diving back into the audio side of things with organizations like Sound Girls and the AES Accessibility Committee.
And like I said before, I’m big into synthesis, so I’ve done some online streams for Earth Modular Society.
And I do have to say, I’m very, very happy and excited to say that I was recently accepted as a pro member to ramped recording artists and music professionals with disabilities.
And if any of you out there are making and releasing music or are a professional that works with the music industry in some way, that avenue is also very much open to you as well.
If you’re familiar with the artist Lachi, I’m so proud of her.
I have a single out called Fidget and it’s all about celebrating neurodiversity and I’m so happy.
That’s excellent.
And what about Sound Girls?
So Sound Girls was a organization that I found while surfing the internet and they were very open and welcoming.
They, again, combine women and gender expansive folks and there’s some men involved too.
You don’t have to be a woman to be involved.
And they’re from every sector of the sound industry, live, post-production, recorded music, corporate audio, which means doing sound to support corporate conventions or political figures or public speakers or that sort of thing.
So that’s another avenue as well in the sound industry.
So they had a virtual conference last December and I went and the networking happened so organically and everybody was just thrilled to be there and speak to the other participants and share what they’re up to.
There were a number of structured panels and presentations that we could go in and then there were just some drop in casual like unstructured mentoring sessions where people could ask questions.
So I found it very rewarding, very delightful.
That’s wonderful.
Did that happen in Tampa?
Or did you travel for that?
It was virtual.
It was on Zoom.
It was all virtual.
Oh my goodness.
So that way people from all over the country and even some people from other countries could attend.
That sounds awesome.
That’s wonderful.
It was great.
And I made some friends that way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Networking will never die.
That’s what I can tell people. matter, even if it becomes a whole virtual experience, we need each other.
We must connect because we can’t do everything just on our own.
The expansiveness of the world and wanting to network and reach out is ever-present, and I will push for that.
That is so true.
All the time.
We are an…
You know?
Yes, we are an interdependent species.
Yes, we are.
Yes, we are.
So you mentioned your visual status.
So do you see color?
I do.
Thanks, Doc.
I see some colors.
So color contrast is big in our community.
That means the more that two colors are very distinct and different from each other.
So for instance, blue and orange or say purple and yellow are opposites on the color wheel.
So those colors are very, very distinct and stand out very well.
And the brighter and bolder they are, the more likely I am to tell them apart from other colors.
However, blue and purple I often mix up, especially if they’re kind of light and pastel or yellow and orange and very light lime green I might mix up.
So because of that, I, well, first of all, I like to do visual art with a CCTV, which some people also know as a desktop video magnifier.
Right.
And I work with colored pencils a lot, but I have my pencil box arranged so that the blues are never right next to the purples.
And the yellows are never right next to the oranges because that would cause me to mix them up.
Like I can read the labels on the pencils, but I put them, I put the yellows next to the blues.
I put the purples next to the greens.
And then I put the- So the complementary colors.
Yes.
Yes, okay.
That’s a really good idea.
And that, you know, they just go well together in the first place.
So do you actually, do you actually do sketches are drawing drawings or how do you start a project?
So sometimes I’ve always liked to doodle.
I would always finish my work in school early and I would be bored.
So I would take out my flare pen.
I’ve used flare pens, which are felt tip pens.
They’re not as wide as Sharpies, but yet they’re not as fine as ball points.
They’re in between and I like them because I can write pretty well in small spaces, but they’re also great for drawing.
So I would doodle and doodle and doodle.
I would draw, I’m not great at drawing people realistic, but I would like to think I’m sort of okay at drawing cartoon characters, like Disney characters or Muffin characters or things like that or fun things, birthday cakes and balloons and party hats and just stuff like that.
Oh, wonderful.
But the downside is I can’t erase if I use a felt tip pen and I’ve just drawn and I haven’t been able to erase.
So when I would draw outlines with my felt tip pen, I would start on scrap paper first and I would do it a couple of times on scrap paper and that would be like my practice rounds.
And then when I get to the real thing on good paper, I’m like, okay, this is really for real, let’s do it.
But now I’ve discovered that I don’t have to necessarily draw all the time with my felt tip pen.
I can also draw with the colored pencil.
So let’s say if I’m drawing Cookie Monster, he’s blue, I would draw with the blue colored pencil.
So that way if I make a mistake, I would err on the side of smaller so that if he needs to be bigger, I’ll just put more blue on the outside and nobody will ever know.
Oh, wow.
If that makes sense.
Yeah, it does make sense because I, you know, that’s kind of how I come about my own work, you know, just in general.
I do a lot of paper, mixed media, art, and it’s always easier to work on smaller pieces than it is to work on a big piece.
Because if you make a mistake on a large piece, it’s a big mistake, right?
Just in terms of physical space.
But if you make a mistake on a small piece, you’re like, “Oh, it’s a little mistake.
I can cover it over or I could do something different.”
So I get what you’re saying for sure.
Yes.
Yeah, that’s right.
So I do a lot of volunteering for a girls rock camp here in St.
Pete where I live and sometimes I’ll draw whimsical posters and stuff for them.
Oh, cool.
So the recent one that I drew is a witch riding on a microphone stand instead of a broom and And she’s holding the microphone and there’s a speech bubble and she’s saying, “Hex, hex, one, two, three.”
That’s very, very cool.
Yeah.
Instead of “check one, two, three.”
Yeah, “check one, two, three, hex, hex, one, two, three.”
Oh, nice.
So have you always lived in Florida?
I have.
So I’m one of these rare people where I’ve lived in the Tampa Bay area all my life.
I have traveled other places.
I’ve been to a few ACB conventions.
I’ve been to a few relatives, home cities.
I’ve been to a few other functions in other places, but I always seem to come back here.
I don’t like cold.
I don’t like snow.
I like the beach and the sun and the water.
And yes, it gets miserable and brutal in the summer.
And we’re starting to come to our miserable, brutal heat season just now.
Okay.
But it’s worth it for like mid October through April, through the end of April.
It’s really nice.
It was actually just really nice a few weeks ago.
Yeah, I used to visit Tampa.
My in-laws had a condo and I really enjoyed my time there.
So did they.
They would escape all of the New York weather.
Yes.
And then we would use that as home base for our vacations with the kids, you know, and then we would drive to Disney and then come back.
Yeah, so it was a lot of fun.
I like Florida.
Yeah, my relatives there and stuff.
So yeah.
Yeah, that’s great.
One other thing if I could, one other thing I want to say about drawing, I I’m not the best at it, but I recently learned I can use Procreate on the iPad.
I was going to ask you that, like, do you, oh, so.
So with that, you can pretty much pick any style of line of any weight that you want.
So I can pick a line that’s heavy, like my flare pen.
And I can erase.
If I do something I don’t like it, I can tap with two fingers and that’s like an undo and you can erase the last stroke he made.
So it’s really cool.
And I can zoom it in as large as I want to.
So it’s like using paper on my CCTV.
Oh, that’s really.
Do you know if there are any instruction classes about doing that at any level, like, you know, like adult ed or because that would be really.
I think that a lot of people with low vision would, it would have really helped them get their, uh, confidence, you know.
Yeah.
I don’t know if they’re necessarily classes.
I do know that voiceover has come a long way with speaking, what’s on the toolbars recently.
Um, and even in some of the color palettes, they’re starting to name the colors because that’s one thing I wrote to them and asked them to do.
Um, a while ago, like a year or more ago, I said, Hey, I have low vision and I use voiceover for most things, but I want to be able to Draw and use this app and you know, do art as well.
And I’m having a hard time telling your color palettes apart because, you know, they’re not arranged like my pencil boxes.
So would you consider putting labels on these and eventually one day they did and now at least some of them have names.
So when you tap them, they say the name.
I’m going to have to check this out because I have an iPad and I’ve always been hesitant to try anything because I’ve been disappointed so many times.
You download an app and then you find out it’s not accessible.
Right.
And then…
It is a bit of a dance though because I have to turn voiceover off in order to draw and interact with the canvas because it doesn’t have direct touch the way GarageBand has.
But then I need to turn voiceover on in order to interact with the toolbars to be sure what I’m touching up there.
I got you.
So it’s a little bit of a balancing act, a little bit of a dance.
But if you have your triple press of your side button shortcut set up for voiceover, it could potentially work.
Okay.
All right.
Well, I’ll see if I could try it out and let you know.
But my daughter is sighted.
Maybe we can tutel around together and see what we can do.
Yeah.
That would be great. that kind of thing.
I like that stuff.
It’s just like, oh, it’s no big deal.
We’ll just try it out and we’ll see what we get.
That’s always a fun thing to do.
Yeah.
So I forgot to ask you, you’re a Windows user, right?
That’s correct.
So the old joke goes that Mac users can say, I don’t do Windows.
You know, like I don’t do beds.
I don’t do Windows.
Yeah, I don’t do Windows.
I know.
Yeah, but I do.
I’ve done Windows all my life.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Me too.
But yet we have we have, you know, we do touch on Apple accessibility with our iPads and our phones.
Definitely.
I always do really good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I hope they continue to be for sure.
Yes.
Yeah.
Thinking back to like any kind of challenges you think you’ve had over the years with any of your goals or professional goals or personal goals.
Is there anything you’d like to share that maybe you think would help other people listening tonight or whenever this comes out?
Well, certainly with releasing my own music, there’s a lot of moving parts when you want to release something.
Now, when I say release, I just mean make it available so that people can stream it, maybe people can buy it.
Release means something different now than it used to mean.
So when you do a music release, there’s the writing or the composing of the music that happens first.
Right.
Then there’s the recording of the music, then there’s the mixing, then there’s the mastering.
Mastering is making the final mix sound its best on whatever medium it’s going to play on.
So for instance, if you’re gonna put out a vinyl record and you master for vinyl, you are optimizing your final mix for a record and a record player.
But mastering you can think of like how when somebody paints with pastel, like pastel crayons or something, they spray this clear coat on it when it’s finished called Fixative.
My mom was a visual artist and she used to do pastels and then when she was done, she would take her painting outside and spray it with this clear stick to itness substance that would keep the pastel from like flaking off and getting all over everywhere.
So that’s what mastering does for audio, I think.
And then the next step is the putting it onto the distributor who’s going to put it into the music streaming stores like Spotify, Apple, Amazon, so that everybody and all your friends can hear you.
And some people choose to also put it other places like I am on band camp for example, which is a place where your fans can go and directly buy your music.
Some people also put it on like other, you know, bits of social media.
So another part of the process is the marketing of the release.
The, oh, and I forgot the cover art.
The cover art is a, you know, another step of the release.
So marketing involves telling all your friends and everybody you know and everybody you’ve ever networked with basically that, “Hey people, I did something new.
Come look, come listen.
I’ve got music that I have out.
Come play my music.
Come listen to it.
Come buy it on Bandcamp.”
But that only goes so far in your own personal network.
Then you have to research and actively look for music blogs, music podcasts, online or terrestrial radio shows that are within your genre or your music style that focus on the style that you are making who might write about or talk about or play your music.
Because that’s how you expose yourself to a wider audience.
And then there is also if you’re a musician who plays live, there’s also the going out and playing shows to let people see you and hear you in person.
So all of those steps, I guess, are a wide, extremely roundabout way to say that some challenges have involved creating cover art and photographs and visual content to go on social media.
That’s been a common refrain that I’ve heard from a lot of blind and visually impaired artists. is also the challenge of navigating all these blasted websites that may have varying degrees of accessibility.
So, not really sure which ones are the best for screen reader users because I do use a screen magnification as well as a screen reader.
I use NVDA plus the Windows magnifier, but just the visual concentration with the magnifier to like 4x or something of okay, what corner of the website did they put the login button?
What page do I have to go to to see my release stats or get the shareable link I can post?
Or there’s some other things you can do too.
I mean this can get really involved.
You can register if you original compositions, you can register with a performance rights organization such as BMI or ASCAP.
And then not only that, you have to register with the mechanical licensing company and then you need publishing.
What is a mechanical license company?
So that is the organization that collects your royalties.
Mind you, when we’re talking about royalties, unfortunately we’re talking about… tiny fractions of a penny for every play.
Sounds like that with writers.
So like every time somebody listens to my book over download for a library, I get 34 cents.
Yes, well this is like maybe a half a cent or a tenth of a cent for every stream on like a Spotify or something.
But it’s mostly about just learning the process so that as you gain momentum, it won’t be brand new.
And mainly, as you gain momentum, you won’t have some shyster coming to you, claiming to do it for you, when really he’s keeping it all for himself.
It’s important to know about how the process works.
But anyway, the mechanical licensing company is what collects on behalf of songwriters and composers when the song or composition is played on streaming or radio or radio.
Oh, okay, gotcha.
All right.
So I’m just as complicated as the book writing business.
Absolutely, so I would also recommend reading up on music business, music rights, just so that you’re aware of, you know, what the different kinds of rights are so that you know what you have, you know what you are possibly entitled to claim as your own when you write and create music.
Yeah.
What about, do you ever, you ever refer to anybody for like, have you ever had to like, go through contracts, read contracts, find print, those kinds of things.
I know when we’re writers, we have to do that all the time.
So I really haven’t.
I’m not quite that advanced as an artist yet.
Now, I know that it will happen if I do collaborations with people.
If I do hire people or am hired by people.
So I do know that that’s a thing that’s in my future.
The contracts that I have read are for when I’ve done accessibility testing for companies in their software, they’ll often have non-disclosure agreements.
Yeah.
Or if I’m in a research study, there is a consent to participate contract.
And so those are important to know about as well.
So if I’ve been testing someone’s product, am I allowed to say that I’ve been doing that?
Am I allowed to name it?
Or, you know, when would I be allowed to talk about it, if ever?
Yes.
All that stuff is excellent practice for where you’re going.
And I know it was for me when I first started out.
And now it just gets…
In a way, it’s easier to know what to expect, but also, you know, now we have a whole new type of, like, people who want to scam you and stuff that we didn’t have before, who’d be very, very careful about who you say yes to. and it’s unfair.
Yeah, that’s right.
So cautious.
People will offer you, yeah, people will offer you the world on a silver platter and it’s important to just ask questions.
Yes, yes.
You know, be critical because it’s your work that you’re being critical and protective over and don’t ever think that you’re being too protective or too critical because the one time you don’t ask the question or you just say no thank you, could be a big mistake.
Right.
In our writers community, we’re having, a lot of us are independently published and I get, I don’t know, three or four emails a week saying somebody, “I love your writing and we want to represent you.”
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
I’m like, “Oh, go away.”
It’s just not true.
I mean, I know, you know, it’s just not true.
So, right, all kinds of scamming going on.
I guess we’re getting up to, you know, closing out and, you know, is there anything else you’d like to say regarding where you’d like to go in the future, where you see yourself maybe the next five years or so.
And we’re going to also probably have some clips of your EP on.
So you want to talk about that?
Yes.
Give it a little push.
So it is called Rise to the Occasion, Fall into Bliss.
And I got that name because synthesizers have a component called an envelope that has a rise and fall parameter.
And that’s what determines the time that it takes for a sound to come out of silence and return back into silence.
So it’s sort of a pun on synthesizer envelopes.
It’s an electronic ambient meditative.
It’s a good thing to put on when you are frazzled and you want to relax or if you want to meditate or you want to fall asleep.
It is available on Bandcamp that is really the best for artists.
You can listen for free, I think a couple times, but even if you don’t want to purchase it from Bandcamp, if you go in and click follow, then that will make the algorithm kind of think I’m popular or something.
And that way you’ll get on my mailing list so that when I have something new coming out, you will be the first to know about it.
But I do realize, I have heard from some people that Bandcamp can be hard to use with a screen reader alone.
So just to make it easier for people and also so that more people can find me, the EP along with my other work is also available on the major streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple, Amazon, whatever music service you have, you can tell your favorite digital voice assistant of choice to play Jessica Tomlinson or to play Rise to the Occasion, Fall into Bliss.
All right.
Well, thank you.
You’re welcome.
Thank you for that.
Before we move on, this is Jason and I’m here to provide you with some demo tracks that Jessica provided and we’re going to start off with Thawing Dreams.
And this next one is called Mama Creeps.
Thank you Jessica for your talent and music.
Now let’s finish up with Art Parler.
Yeah so anything else you’d like to say before we wrap up?
Yes, I look forward to maybe being able to collaborate with other musicians.
I definitely want to be doing more live performances in the next coming few years.
I have some smallish instruments that hopefully I can travel with and do similar kind of ambient meditative music with a yoga teacher or a sound bath to be able to provide a nice soft backdrop.
I also like to sing and play the piano.
I do cover songs and I do enjoy mixing for other people as well.
All right.
So would you, if somebody wanted you to mix for them, what would be the typical way to start a conversation on that?
You can find me on Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Jessica Tomlinson, I think on Instagram, I’m v_vi_artist or my email address is JT soundtech S-O-U-N-D-T-E-C-H at Verizon.net.
Okay, excellent.
All right, well, thank you so much for coming tonight and sharing your life and all of your talents.
And I really appreciate that bit on the iPad.
I’m going to check it out.
Yeah, thank you.
Oh, and I would also like to be able to add synth lines to other people’s tracks.
That would be a very cool thing as well.
Oh, interesting.
All right.
So there we go.
Have a good evening and thank you so much for joining us.
And I’ll let you know when it drops onto ACB Media.
Okay, thank you so much for having me.
I really appreciate the thoughtful interview.
Sure.
Be well.
Take care.
Bye.
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