21st Century Man - Live @ Catmel Studios (Video)

Semi-autobiographical 

“I remember painting my mother's toenails with red nail varnish while she was talking about the end of the world."

Development of '21st Century Man' through various incarnations; the original demo, acoustic, duo rehearsal in my Barcelona flat and a live radio performance on Radio Reverb - Brighton. 

Now I bring it to you in a minimalist style, not unlike that of the great Jeff Buckley's version of Hallelujah. 

I really loved the original lead guitar intro to this song but unfortunately, it took the song to over 5 minutes. I think I would still play it live. I have an acoustic recording with two guitars playing together that I made of a rehearsal in Barcelona with Albert Greenlight. I really like that recording because it’s so raw… recorded with an iPhone.

Ramon whistling my intro solo after leaving the studio to get the train home.

We had just finished recording 21st Century Man at Ramon's studio. On the way out we were walking to our cars and I heard Ramon whistling. It took a few seconds to settle in... He was whistling the guitar intro! It was a surreal moment for me, magic, real magic. Something that didn't exist until a few hours ago had found its 1st entity to possess... It was spooky and cosmic at the same time. It was my proudest breakthrough moment. 

Week 207: RedEyeZack: October-November Updates

Hi Guys!

I've been back in Barcelona teaching Business English Intensive (Yes, that's my dayjob) and I extended my stay!

PERSONAL STUFF:

At the end of the summer, I moved back to the UK due to lack of regular work in Barcelona. I've finally decided that I think Camden is the best place for me to live in London. I came back out to Barcelona for a teaching assignment for 1 week. Due to fabulous weather, I have extended my stay. I've been recording and mixing and learning about mastering while catching up with friends, musicians, relaxing in the summer climate which is pretty freaky for this time of year. It's always 'next year', a learning curve, where you need to make mistakes and errors before getting on the right train. One that will allow you the summer you deserve, doing what you want to do, being where you want to be or having time to do what you love. I like the analogy of the train, the journey that you experience living on the way... not necesarily the destination.


FREE STUFF:



Just hit 'Buy Now' and enter price '0' and checkout to download.


ORIGINAL SONGS:

I've been churning out a song a week of works in progress.

   




LIVE COVERS: (View in browser if necessary)

To get accustomed to playing live, I've also recorded some live acoustic covers to keep it real and prepare for performing. I meet friends at open mics around the city and play covers like, wish you were here, Imagine, Wonderwall...









My music focus starts on Fridays and through the weekend. Now I'm focusing more on teaching through skype lessons, this helps to pay the rent and keep me flexible to move around more, I really love traveling and look forward to touring in London & Europe next spring. This winter I'm planning to spend 10 days in Dublin with family and check out the local music scene.



INDIA SPIRITUAL FESTIVAL IN GOA :

My friends Dev Om & Meni Prem Shunyam (Yoga/meditation & Life coaching workshops) visited London and invited me to come out to India to play at a festival in GOA this winter. So, I had my first try at composing a tune for Yoga/Meditation. (View in Browser if necessary)





A BIT OF FUN:

This was discovered in a monastery very close to the infamous cubes on the seafront at Barceloneta, Barcelona, Spain. Historians are trying to discover whether it is indeed an original from one of the great masters ' Davinci'. A map was discovered inside the cubes and pointed to a rock venue called Sala Monasterio.

The painting had been hanging in a corner of the stairwell for a number of years until a tourist pointed out that it could indeed be the 'Gothi' masterpiece that had been stolen by vampires on a halloween night in 1742.

This version is so cool!


PLJ

Zack aka RedEyeZack x

Week 125: Finding Local Musicians

Hi Guys!

I recently met up with Alexis (who I've been trying to meet up with since Xmas). He's outside Barcelona. He's been playing lead guitar in various bands for five years. I'm going to check them out soon. He was kind enough to come into Barcelona to meet me. Later Tatiana joined us. 

Last July Tatiana and her colleagues from Lampli organized a music festival called Petit Burg Festival ( a small format, I was there for the weekend and it was great, located in a lovely place up in the Pyrenees mountains, in Burg Village, they combined music with theatre, workshops etc..it had great local success) . I had seen a few videos of artists called ANÍMIC filmed performing on a bridge in the countryside. She also writes a blog about music, so it will be interesting to exchange ideas.

My blog has just had its most successful post 'technology as an accelerator'. With over 750 views, it's also pulling up another blog about looking for small venues. Traffic has increased 10x since I started in Sept 2012. I'd like to embed the blog on my own website- www.Redeyezack.com to get music lovers to explore the songs on the site and get involved in the Barcelona community scene. It's a bit tricky and I'll have to look into RSS feeds.

POOL - EP Release Party!

It's important to support musicians you know that have a similar passion for music as you do. And it's interesting to know local bands who are active and releasing material. So, then at 10pm I headed off to continental and met Gille's band POOL on a street corner giving out last minute flyers! Well done guys... 5 euros to enter on a Saturday night, a drink or beer around 3.50e and 6e for a spirit drink. Lighting of the bar was cool, just great for low light colour photos. I loved the luminous paintings of cool celebs.

POOL played 2 songs before starting my favourite 3rd track with the funky electric guitar part played by Gilles on Piano-synth. It was a bit  chilli peppers- give it away/pearl jam-alive/lenny kravitz  with
guitar riff played on keys... Awesome and got the crowd going!

Checkout Claudia's sultry vocals on Pool's song 'Crazy' in this video slideshow.
POOL are:
Claudia Steccato - voice
Gilles Estoppey - piano / rhodes
Pau Sala - electric bass

Source

Week 118: Setting up a covers band

Hi Music Lovers!!

This picture was taken in a cocktail bar called 7Sins!!

It's a great place for my first creative video, very glamourous and stylish (coming in the spring). I'm going to perform my own original songs acoustically in small places in Gracia and play with streaming services, so you can watch the gigs live in the comfort of your own armchair. 

Well it's back to work this month (Feb!) Jan was very slow here in Barcelona. The covers band could be good fun but more than this, it's an incentive to practice on set songs. I've been to 2 rehearsal Jams at BAMM. The 1st was a general Jam & the 2nd was a Beatles Hommage. On Feb 15th we have the Pink Floyd night.

I've put my own list of covers together (see below) and I'm planning to name a date in about 2-3 weeks for the session. Let me know which songs you would most like to hear. Finally we have to select 15 from them.

Let me know if you would like to be involved in any way: zackqureshi@gmail.com 

PLJ 

Zack a.k.a. RedEyeZack

Source

Week 115: Seeking Small Venues to Perform In

Hi Music Lovers! On Tuesday Jan 8th, I went to check out a bar in Gracia called 'Alfa‎ Bar'.

C/ Gran De Gràcia, 36. 08012 Barcelona. Tel: 934 15 18 24

The Band Out of Water formed by guitarist Gustavo Aguado (from the BAMM meetup group last week) had a gig and I decided to go and support him while checking out the venue. It was a curious mix of influences with a strong vocal performance coming from their female Jazz style vocalist (reminded me a bit of Alanis Morisett). Los pianistas Ariana Carreras y Toni del Amo y la cantante Itziar Sánchez.

The band members had their own influences with Piano and keyboard players. The venue was a good size to play for 50-80 people. The stage is lifted, so there is a distance between the audience and the performers onstage. I loved the lighting and decor, looks like a really cool place to take pics!

 As you can see, the entrance there is a bar for those who want to chat and the stage is further into the bar. There was a medium to large size mixing desk and engineer on hand.

 It was quite a dazzling looking set, maybe an idea to take live video promotion in future for one of my tracks.Love the old records on the ceiling!

Its been a busy week and I've been to 4 venues. I'm checking out the local music scene and looking for places to play. I'm in the process of also meeting the local music talent and getting to know some great bands.

Gracia seems to be the place that has a lot of small places I could play an intimate set. Informal and laid back. On Friday I decided to get fit again but avoid the gym, so I went dancing! Salsa. In fact there was a Cuban live band "Habana con Kola" Meetup event. It was nice to be able to have a social evening, let off steam and get into the latin rhythm, great fitness solution:))

On Saturday evening I ventured into a bar called L'Astrolabi in Gracia (Carrer Martinez de la Rosa 14, Bcn, Spain). It was a curious place, with a small room at the back for Unplugged performances.

Lidia Uve played unplugged in Gracia. When I say unplugged, I mean really unplugged, no speakers, no microphone, a tiny room with people sitting on the floor at the feet of the artists in the corner of the room. Standing room near the entrance from the bar and seating against the wall. I hadn't seen this since the last home party with my flatmate Moez in Brighton.

Have a great week!

PLJ

Zack a.k.a. RedEyeZack 

TOP 5 PREVIEWS:

Choose your Top 5 from my list of song demos: Previews on Artist website

Week 112: Watch RedEyeZack's new live video of 'I CAN'T SLEEP TONIGHT'

Cafe del Sol in Gracia, Bcn

Hi Guys!

It's a blistering sunny day 20 degrees C here in Barcelona. I'd like to wish you all a happy Xmas and a wonderful new year!! I'm flying to the UK tomorrow for 2 weeks to catch up with family & friends.

I will be back in Barcelona building my artistic base and moving into a local community full of artists. Thanks for following my music mission project. I will have exciting news for next year as I'm looking to put a band together to play at festivals in the summer.

Here's a video my friend Ajit Dutta took last summer in the backstreets of Brighton. An intimate version of 'I CAN'T SLEEP TONIGHT'.

Enjoy & I look forward to getting on the road and playing for you in 2013.

PLJ (Peace, love & Joy)

Zack aka 'RedEyeZack'

Week 72: My Music Mission - 100 Weeks to develop a music career

Well, the first place I started was by opening a Myspace page about 3 years ago. 'People in the industry' had told us it was the place where they looked to find artists and bands. There were great limitations and the irritation of being bombarded with banners and advertising of artists that were of no interest to me at all. There was nothing much more I could do with Myspace except upload my songs with the hope that someone would 'discover' them.

I was living in Istanbul and planning to create my fusion of Pop-Rock music with Oriental & Indian elements. It was also my first interview regarding the music project.

Around the same time I read some articles that proposed that every band would need an extra member who would be a tech person, fulfilling the role of social media and database manager. Duties would include; posting the bands blog, tweeting, keeping up the mailing list, organising newsletters & generally managing the bands web presence.

I found an interesting site: http://www.artistshousemusic.org for musicians and entrepreneurs. An inspiring professor at Berklee College of Music - George Howard, gave some compelling insights as a musician, label and artist manager. In this site, I started looking for different tools and came across www.reverbnation.com during my research. I set about building my own Reverbnation profile for RedEyeZack and at the same time I opened a LinkedIn account, a Twitter  account and created a Facebook group. I allocated about 50 dollar a month for subscriptions and went about building my mailing list. I started with 500 and slowly but surely (Organically) grew the list to 2500 and invested in a new set of tool. Now I'm looking at a new set of tools to manage 2500-5000 fans.

I released ‘The Purpose Of Existence’, my first single on iTunes and made it available at Amazon and Lastfm , Spotify and many more. It was an experiment to try to understand how digital distribution works. I didn't have resources to promote the single, but that wasn't the objective anyway. Next was to have my own  application for iPhone and Android. Only 99 dollars a year allowed me to glimpse into the future of mobile devices as a medium to experience and purchase music.

So now I'm looking at Japan and Asia in general. I'm making myself mobile too! QR codes (Quick response codes) could become standard with links to music, campaigns and links to where song are available for purchase.

Since I'm technically a solo artist (I write all music and lyrics and started performing them solo), I'm focused on  developing the songwriting. I was compelled to learn about social media by playing with the 'tools' myself. A bit of  Html, experimenting with a Wordpress blog and making simple websites without knowledge of programming.

I learned about CSV files, importing and exporting lists and started to intuitively build a web presence at  www.redeyezack.com

The platform allows you to really get creative by embedding html from other sites like YouTube & Twitter. Widgets are incredible tools that can be tracked and placed all over the web. I teach English during the summers In Brighton, UK, so I decided to put a show together. I built a Facebook group for the event. We invited all the students to the event. We created a backing group made up of the students themselves. Before the GIG at the Latest Music Bar, I arranged an interview with a local radio station - Radio Reverb and surprised the host by turning up with the whole entourage of 10 performers We took video, performed live and used the footage to create content. Last month I started a new Facebook Page for RedeyeZack

Now we are starting to put competitions and rating widgets in place to get feedback on what songs the general public prefer. On the artist website, there is an option to rate 90 second clips of 10 demo songs.

I'd love you to go and 'Rate These Songs': http://www.redeyezack.com/21st

These stats are pretty surprising and helped me to decide which songs to focus on to record in the studio. 

I ran the rating campaign as a 10 day countdown to Christmas, sending a song out in a newsletter to those who had opted in to rate the songs. I decided to set myself a target of 100 weeks to see how far I could develop my music. I marked the progress with a periodical Blog. The last entry was week 59: http://www.redeyezack.com/blog

Now I'm in week 72 and starting to get some momentum as well as motivation. The 100 weeks will be up by the end of the summer. I'm looking at festivals to get my music exposed to a wider audience and putting a band together just for this purpose. At that time I should be in a position to know whether the songs have touched people and if I have a sustainable career as an independent artist and music creator.

Join us on this journey into the Void!

PLJ (Peace, Love & Joy)

Zack Qureshi AKA RedEyeZack