No worries guys, there is no requirement to promote your music. If you make music and its just for your own enjoyment, more power to ya!

word, i hear that

My biggest problem is that all I want to do is make music.

I think it is up to the musician what exactly it is they want to promote. Do I want to promote my finished music to try and get as many people as possible to listen to it? And why do I even want to do that?

Or do I want to promote the abilities within myself to create music by being involved in a community of people who share a common passion or goal? I like to think I can take an approach that is me thinking about what I can do for music, not what music can do for me.

I'm not a marketeer and I'm not out to make money so I feel I have no right to judge whether or not my music deserves to be heard, it only deserves a chance to be heard.

Join a hardcore band with flakey members and whenever said band has to drop off of a show, fill in instead.

lol! what i tend to do is tell the engineers NOT to eq my and just give me signal, then ill do all the eqing myself, better that way incase you need little changes in other songs!

In Los Angeles, especially the Hollywood area, sound engineers tend to suck. The reason being is 90% are rock/music industry burnouts. They eq your set as if you were a guitar, drum, and bass band. If you are not a rock band, you get even lower quality mixing and communication than the standard substandard treatment other bands get.

If you can bring your own PA do it, but its not required. Trash80(Taco Majorous) has been known to bring a MEGA PA on occasion and it makes all the difference in the world. Once we had a gig where the house basically turned off their pa trying to turn us down, but Tim had his PA too. lol

Agreed, a good sound engineer is often overlooked by venues. A decent engineer can do wonders with a mediocre PA but a mediocre engineer can fuck up a good sound system in no time at all.

One more thing I forgot: Be professional. There's also a business side to making music, and the people who own a venue, technicians, promoters, those are your business partners. Be polite, don't be careless with paperwork, don't put on airs- a lasting good impression is valuable. My experience with this side of music is admittedly slim (a few chance encounters, I don't want my music to become more than a hobby), but that lesson stuck; don't get a bad rep with the people in the biz.

YES sorry, ADHD....

Hmmm as for PA, this is the last piece of the puzzle if you are doing a lot of local/regional shows in smaller venues (some have lousy PA's, some have no sound man, some have no PA). It also gives you the freedom to play anywhere you want, whenever you want.

But I agree, this would be a huge investment and the last thing anyone would need to do. It is also for people that are OCD and want to control every nuance of their sound

I wouldn't say so.
But I always stress in my rider what sort of PA and Video equipment I precise fro the show. It is a requirement (except  on certain cases, I'm pretty lenient and consider the party and venue's limitations) to have good equipment and properly set up. This is not to be under looked, sometimes promoters hire the best equipment, but without an equally apt tech, they will be set up like shit.

You mean, ADD/ADHD.
And that's me being showing a little OCD.

Nice posts though.
Is owning a full PA system really all that viable an option?

I think this goes beyond the scope of a lot of people here who are too enthralled by the fact of HOW they make the music . I completely agree with you and my show has turned more away from the computer and gear and more onto the "pyrotechnics" of it. That's why it is audiovisual, to begin with and from a start. but I learned a lot from my Euro Tour in 2008. I don't give a fuck about people being able to see what I make music with or what I play live, I give a huge fuck about people getting entertained.

(As for contributing to *BC, well, I don't blame you. I swiftly erased everything I ever contributed there because the place turned to shit. My contributions are better aimed somewhere else (like here))

I think the most important thing is to be recognizable, that is, distinguishable. Whether you use RushCoil's 'white' list or my 'black', presentation of oneself and ones work is what counts. Having a grasp on visual arts can help a lot to round up the profile with a theme (8GB, minusbaby), and small things like 8BW's recognizable star icon can help too.

My list was a little bitchy, but I'll maintain that having consistency in one's musical style also helps.

There have been countless holiday albums, starting with the 8bp album (the 1st?). Only fanboys of certain artists seem to have an issue with anyone else releasing a holiday album. Dont worry about it, your album wasnt even close to lousy. A new rule you should follow is dont shit on yourself in public. lol