: : Visit My Store : :
Get T-Shirts, CDs, Accompaniment Tracks and Disciples Crosses!

: : View My Blogger Profile : :

As most of you may have figured out, we are (and have been) taking a break. Awe, why? Well, the music biz is easier "said" than done. So until it's possible to really put all of our energy into it, we're takin' a break! Our store will also be closed during this transition. (I also want to completely re-design our web page anyway, so this gives us some time!)

Labels: Info

0 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Thursday, July 05, 2007

One way our family stays close is through the use of what we call "Fun Family Friday" (Fun Friday for short). Here's the gist of what we do on Fridays... and the point is to do them TOGETHER ;-)

1 - Watch a movie.
2 - Make either ice-cream, pizza, popcorn or all of the above.
3 - Play a board game.

Now, there are six of us, so things can get a little crazy in our house. We're not exactly The Cleavers. Well... maybe we are... but with warped senses of humor and an ever increasing number of house pets. Anyway, another point is to have fun. Our kids are home-schooled, so we are around each other a lot. It can be frustrating, but you would be surprized to find out how much you can stand of each other. People say to me that they wouldn't want to be in our shoes, but I love my family. I wouldn't want to be away from them like I used to. We just try to mix it up a little bit. Make Fridays different than the rest of the week. Hey, Fun Friday kind of influenced us to get a stove-top popcorn maker, a pizza maker, a Mickey Mouse ice-cream maker, a drink fountain and a s'mores maker! Again, the point is to have fun and spend time with each other. I've been told that they grow up fast, so we're learning to enjoy the early years before they're gone. Do the same ;-)

Labels: Family, Tips

0 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Thursday, December 28, 2006

Ok, you are graphics illiterate and you have a huge image that you need to reduce or trimmed down to a more manageable size for use on your web page. You guys are lucky, 'cause good ol' Charlie has been a Graphic Artist for years and knows lots about this stuff! So here's what you'll need... The digital image you want to reduce or trim, in one of the following formats: BMP, JPG, GIF, TIF or PNG. Microsoft Paint (Which you should already have because it comes with Windows). A basic knowledge of Windows.

---

To Reduce:
1) Open up MSPaint by clicking on START, ALL PROGRAMS, ACCESSORIES then PAINT.
2) While in MSPaint, click FILE then OPEN. A dialog box will appear allowing you to look through your computer and find the image file you want to modify. Once you find it, select it and click OPEN. It may not fit the screen and therefore look something like this:


3) Now click on IMAGE then STRETCH/SKEW. We are going to type in the number 10 for HORIZONTAL and VERTICAL and click OK. Your image will now be reduced to 10%. You may have to try different values before you get your image to the size you want it, but the good thing is that you can click on EDIT then UNDO if you mess up!


4) Save your image. Click on FILE then SAVE AS. SAVE AS will give you the choice of renaming your image so that you don't overwrite the original. I will usually name it something slightly different... for example, I might rename MY PHOTO.JPG to become MY PHOTO 2.JPG.

---

To Trim (AKA. Crop)
(Follow previous steps 1 through 2)
3) Click the SELECTION TOOL. It looks like this:
With the SELECTION TOOL click and drag a box around the part of the image that you want to keep:

4) Click on EDIT then COPY.
5) Click on FILE then NEW. (You will be prompted to save your image now... DO NOT save at this point.)
6) After the new, blank page appears, click EDIT then PASTE. Now only the part of the image that was in the box that you drew, will be "Pasted" into the new file!
7) Save your image. Click on FILE then SAVE AS. Name your file with a different name and you're done!

---

Tip:
If your image is a JPG, you don't want to OPEN then SAVE more than one or two times. JPGs tend to lose quality the more you modify them.

There are many other ways of doing this, but for someone who doesn't have the extra money to spend on Photoshop or any of the other expensive programs, this way is a snap and it's perfect for web page quality.

Labels: Tips

0 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Saturday, December 16, 2006

So, how do you get people to come to your web site? There are a few things to do to get your web site ranked a little higher, which basically means getting more people to visit your site.

Link / Banner Exchange - Exchange link text or banners with other web sites. RELEVANT ONES! No one is going to click on your Christian Music Banner on a completely unrelated web site; but, they might click on your Christian Music Banner on another Christian or Music related site. Use your favorite search engine to find pages that do this. You give them a banner to display on their site... they give you a banner to display on your site. It's pretty simple once you get the hang of it. A couple that I use are ultimatetopsites.com and fishthe.net/top1000. You can also email someone with a related web site and ask to exchange links. People email me requests all the time.

Message Boards / Blogs - Join message boards... Start a blog... Comment on blogs... once again... RELEVANT ONES! And be sincere. I don't know too many people that like SPAM. For example, don't sign up to every message board possible and post things like, "Buy Our New CD... On Tour Now!... Come to Our Web Site... etc." Instead, actually read through older posts. Find out what people are talking about and, if you have real things to add, post something. Here's the great thing about this... most message boards allow you to put a signature to all your posts. That's where you put the URL to your site and maybe your mission statement. Before you know it, you have dozens of real links back to your page. Here is what I usually attach to my signatures:


People will click on that! And they'll respect you for not SPAM-ing. And the same goes for blogs. Read through blogs that you are interested in and that relate to your site in some way. Although, usually when you comment on someone's blog, you don't leave a signature, but you can simply put your URL. It's not saying, "Hey Come to My Site!... etc." but it lets people know where (on the web) you are.

Linking to Other Sites - How does linking to other people's site get people to come to my site? One way is like this: Tracking. I use a couple of different tracking tools on my web site. One is extremetracking.com. What happens is, when you use a tracking tool, you want to know how people are getting to your site. The tracking tool will show the site that linked someone to your site. For example, I login at extremetracking.com and look up the referrers that link to my web site today. I'll get a list (sort of) like this:


These are sites that link to my site and where my visitors came from today. If I don't recognize one, I'll click it! I have found a few web sites who have simply linked to me without me even knowing. That's (kind of) how it works. They can also be used to tell you what search term someone used to get to your site, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly averages of how many people usually visit your site, what state and town they live in and much more. So if I've confused you on this one, just remember this... Link to relevant sites and don't worry about the details!

MySpace.com - Yes, MySpace. It's not just for teeny-boppers, but tons of bands, solo artists and comedians use it. It is a great way to build a fan base. We've just started using it in the beginning of 2006 and we've made a couple of potential contacts for getting gigs and a couple of hundred "fans". And, I know that not everyone who is your MySpace friend is going to buy your albums or go to all of your concerts, but some will. And one more time... make friends with relevant MySpacers. We try not to connect with cecular bands or people who have a lot of @#&*%$@ on their MySpace page (if you know what I mean).

WHAT DOES NOT WORK:

Traffic Exchange Sites - In my experience with these kind of sites, there are very few "real" sites on the traffic exchange. It basically works like this: You "surf" as many sites as you can and accumulate credits for each site you visit. Your credits are then cashed in to get people to visit your site. It's mostly people looking to increase their hit counters and people who don't care about what sites they are surfing. Yes, I got tons of new "hits" to our site, but this method has never had any real impact on our web presence.

** Traffic exchanges for blogs tend to work quite a bit better though. People who are surfing blogs are actually looking for good things to read about since blogs are generally updated frequently. Most blog traffic exchange web sites will not accept SPAM sites and will only accept your site if it is a blog. We happen to have a blog within our site so it works for us!

SPAM!! - This is how I deal with SPAM, and if I deal with it this way, you can bet that many, many more people do the same thing: If I get any kind of SPAM in my inbox or as a comment, I DELETE IT! That's pretty much it :-)

You can check your web site's ranking by visiting widexl.com or marketleap.com. I've seen our site's ranking go from a range of about 0-10 to a range of about 800-1400 in a few months after applying these few things... and yes, it will take time, but it's worth it. Remember to keep the term "Targeted Marketing" in mind when getting the word out. It's much more effective. And good content, keywords and updating your web site regularly won't hurt either! Yes, there are other methods, and one method alone won't really work that well, but the combination of all of these will work great. And it all depends on how hard you try at all of these methods which will determine it's effectivness.

Charlie

Labels: Tips

2 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Thursday, September 14, 2006

Well, we've been back home for about a month now and I'm sooooo happy to be here. Traveling around is definitely fun but, that trip was too much family for one month! It's still fun to visit places around here though. This month we put on concerts at a couple of local Tennessee churches. One was so local that we couldn't get the rooster to stop crowing the whole night! That was at Jones Chapel in Greeneville. It was fun and the people there were great.

We only moved to Knoxville, TN about a year and a half ago, so even when we travel an hour or two away, it's like a different world to us. Things are getting easier too... such as speaking in front of an audience. Sometimes you don't realize how bad you are at something until you start improving at it; and performing so much, is great practice for things like that. Even something as simple as eye contact from stage, gets easier, the more you do it.

Well anyway, if anybody out there feels led to keep us in your prayers, please do. It's pretty hard to get gigs. And sometimes when we do, they do not pay very well. Although money isn't the main reason why we want to continue singing, the truth is, we can't sing if we can't pay the bills. To leave this post on a positive note, here is a picture of my son Phillip being silly! Shreck mask + wig + cheap sunglasses = funny!!

Charlie

Labels: Music, Travel

0 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Thursday, August 31, 2006

Well, we're sure learning what it's like on the road. We have the benefit of staying with family in NY and PA which is a great help. Thanks guys!! Although, sometimes it gets a little stressful. It's the first time I've been out of TN since we moved there in April of 2005. It's fun. I'm getting used to driving so much and it's really cool meeting so many new people. So far our expectations were a little bit different than what we expected in terms of CD sales and love offerings, but it just gives us something more to shoot for in the future.

So far we played at Samantha's Lil Bit of Heaven in NY, then we made our way to PA to sing at the Trail Church in New Freedom and the next morning we sang at two services at Strasburg AOG. The kids are really learning how to behave through all this! And we're learning all kinds of little things that have to do with touring like, how to survive on four hours of sleep, remember to get your brakes checked BEFORE you leave your home town and, after a concert is usually a great time to network.

Well, right now it's about 10:40 pm and I'm at my in-laws house in PA. In a couple of days we're headed back to NY to sing at Redeeming Grace and then we're going home to TN. I'm really starting to love this lifestyle. I'm tired... I miss being home... but the experience is well worth it! I don't want to get caught up in the compliments and success that we might encounter on the road, because when it comes down to it, we're doing this to glorify God, not ourselves.

Charlie

Labels: Music, Travel

1 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Monday, July 24, 2006

Well, we're going to shove-off in a few day or so. Goin' back to the big NY. We haven't performed in about a year and it's a little scary beacuse we completely re-vamped or music set and haven't really tested it in front of an audience yet. The main reason we re-vamped everything is because of a man named Tom Jackson. He is a performance coach. I attended one of his meetings back in the beginning of 2006 at the GMA Academy in Nashville. He's great, and I highly recommend his 6 DVD and CD set to anyone who performs music. Even though we haven't performed our new set in front of an audience yet, I have a lot more confidence in it now. I learned, in his seminar, that there has to be a reason why every song is in your set, rather than just picking songs that you "like".

Anyway, our first concert this year is at Samantha's Lil Bit of Heaven in East Northport, NY. It's ironic because that is the first place that we sang at EVER! And then we're off to a few concerts in the area as well as some in PA. So, just keep us in prayer that God's message will be delivered through our music and that we do a good job delivering it!

Also, we always need new places to sing at, so if you have or know of a place that will have us, please let us know. And if you would like to pass out or hang up flyers in your area before we come and sing there, sign up for our street team. Ever little bit helps! Thanks!!

Charlie

Labels: Music

0 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Friday, June 30, 2006

We are in need of people to either pass out flyers or hang them up in highly visible areas (with permission of course), such as church foyers, christian book stores or wherever else you can think of (when we're going to be in your area).

To see a list of the areas we will be performing at visit our 'Tour' page. Even if you hang up just one, any little bit helps :-) You can download a blank concert flyer here, or email us with your address and we'll send a bunch of flyers to you.

If you would like to be a permenant part of our street team to help us out when we're in your area, click here. Thanks in advance and have an awesome day!!

Charlie

Labels: Music

0 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Friday, June 16, 2006

Has anyone ever been to a concert that had a "FUN" part to it? The part of the concert that's a little different than the rest. For example, maybe the band calls people up on stage to do something fun or silly with them. Or the band asks the audience to sing along at a certain part or do the wave or something. Or just anything that's different than simply playing music. The reason I ask is that, we are looking for our "FUN" thing to do when we have our concerts. We're a little stumped on something to do at this point so if you have an idea, please share!

Labels: Music

0 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Thursday, June 01, 2006

(Note, I am nowhere near being an expert on this subject, but I though it would be a good idea to share my own knowledge on it)

I've noticed that this is a subject that many new Christian Artists want to find out about, so I figured that I'll share my own experiences with this subject. I am still learning, and know that there is a lot more that I still have to learn about this, but there are also some things that I have learned so far that may be valuable information to someone! I'll probably break this discussion up into a few entries.

How?
The number one thing that I have always wondered is how. How do you get signed? Well, from what I have learned, this might not even be the road that you want to pursue as a Christian Artist. But don't let that discourage you. I have heard from very credible sources that there are artists that are signed to record labels that don't make as much money as some independent artists. I won't even try to get into the details of that right now. But what I do want to get into is how to start a music ministry / business.

Pick up the phone book!
This is the number one answer I keep getting. The number two answer is Get referrals. The bottom line is that you have to do a lot of work for yourself. Luckily, I have Heather to do the "cold calls". She's pretty good at it. And, to tell you the truth, we've just started getting a good amount of bookings this year because of cold calls. For years we've expected people to come knocking on our door asking us to come and sing and pay us lots of money to sing for them. It just doesn't happen that way. We've learned that the hard way.

As for referrals... ask people, friends, pastors, etc. A church is more willing to have you come and share your music with them by way of a referral from someone that they know rather than having no connection to you at all. For example, the first referrals that we got were from our pastor. We asked him for the names and phone numbers of churches that he knew or had previously preached at before. He gave us a list of about thirty churches. This was a great start for us! If we booked half of them, we're ahead of where we were just last year. Then you build your referral list. For every new place that you sing at, ask for at least one referral. Eventually you'll have many times more contacts than you ever have had. It will take time though. And like I said, we're just starting out ourselve. We haven't even reached that point yet.

Don't waste time.
What I'm going to leave off with today is, don't waste years waiting for people to come knocking at your door. Go out and knock on their doors. We have been waiting around for about fifteen years, doing aproximitely three or four gigs a year. That's no where near where we want to be with our music. I know it sounds hard, but like I said, you probably will have to build the ministry yourself at first. But eventually you'll get heard, and as someone once told me, build it and they will come! I'm just starting to believe that now.

Charlie

Labels: Music, Tips

1 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Sunday, May 07, 2006

We're excited to announce that we have started work on our praise and worship album. It's not going to be our full length album, but something to help support that upcoming project. If you would like to hear some work in progress, click on our Music Page here. And, in an effort to try and raise some funds for the album, we've decided to start selling on eBay. Thanks for reading, everyone. Have an awesome day!

Labels: Music

2 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Thursday, May 04, 2006

Happy Easter everyone! When I was little, we use to have sunrise service like 6am on Easter morning in NY! It was always FREEZING!! I am not a friend of the cold . Anyway, we have started booking for the rest of the year. If you know of a place in need of music for an event, please feel free to let us know!

Happy sunrise service!
Charlie

Labels: Cheer

0 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Saturday, April 15, 2006

www.thecdseller.com
Just though that would be interesting to musicians who sell your CDs at concerts.

Labels: Music

0 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Sunday, March 26, 2006

I wanted to thank everyone for your input on helping describe our music. You've been a great help. If anyone is interested in "friending" us at MySpace, you can do it by clicking here or by going to http://myspace.com/charlieandheather and clicking the "Add to Friends" button under our picture. Also, check out my other blog, BlankDay if you want a little chuckle, and Heather's blog by clicking here. One more thing, thanks to Blog in Space for today's traffic... you delivered!

Thanks again for all your help,
Charlie

Labels: Music

0 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Thursday, March 23, 2006

Please listen to some of our music clips, then come back here and leave a comment that describes our style of music in as little or as much detail as you like! I'm not looking for citicism, just a description such as what other artists or what style of music we sound like. Thanks in advance! We appreciate your help !

Labels: Music

7 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Here are a few great place to go to if you're a Christian Indie and want to talk with some other musicians:

• The Christian Songwriter's Network
• Pizza-N-Soda
• Christian Indie Forums
• Jesus Freak Hideout
• CCM Magazine Forums
• MySpace

MySpace is not necessarily Christian, but a lot of Christians hang out there too, and it's a great place to search for other artists (and fans) in your area. You can visit our page at MySpace by clicking here. Once you're there, add us to your friends list!

If anyone has any good (preferably free) Christian Indie hang outs, please post a comment to let everyone know!

Labels: Music

0 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Monday, March 13, 2006

Well, it's snowing in NY, where we are originally from, and it was 75 degrees here in Tenneessee today! That just makes me so happy ! I've grown to not like the snow very much.

Street Team Help
I've been trying to find ways to grow our street teams, and in the process, we're looking for a cool name for them. We have about a handfull of people here and on Long Island to help and those are just friends and family. But we are having trouble finding other people to help us spread the word of our music beyond our friends and family. We are planning a tour of NY this spring (or summer), starting with Long Island and we need people to help hand out and put up flyers and invite friends. If anyone has any creative, clever or simple ideas to help our street teams grow, please comment and let us know.

Thanks,
Charlie

Labels: Music

0 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Thursday, March 02, 2006

Well, it's about time I talked about my weekend at the GMA Academy on February 10 & 11. It was great. Eric of Creative Soul Records recommended the GMA Academy to us and I'm so glad that I went (Click here for Eric's blog). It was also a little smaller than I thought it would be. There were maybe about 200 artists, managers, etc... but the quality of the classes was awesome. I definitely recommend it for any artist that wants to further their career and knowledge of the Christian music business. I am going to describe my experience that weekend for those of you who are wondering if this is the kind of conference you might attend in the future.

CLASSES ATTENDED

Building Your Indie Career - Part I & II
The Essential Steps to Marketing Your Career
Speaker: Tara Leigh Cobble
These were two of my favorite classes. Tara has been an independent Christian artist for about 6 years. She brought a lot of her experience to the table. One thing she talked about was booking and how it is something you will have to do a lot of on your own as a beginner; who to talk to, what to say when you call for a booking, how to organize your contacts and what kind of fees or honorariums you can charge. Most importantly she discussed how it's not easy for some of us to do. She talked about the importance of having a well organized, easy to navigate web site with plenty of information about your music as well as downloadable flyers, a professional media kit and full music clips. There were many more things that Tara talked about that would fill an entire page. But for that class alone, it was well worth it.

Artist / Audience Relationships
Performance Skills & Techniques
Speaker: Tom Jackson
This was probably my favorite class of the conference. Tom is hillarious! But, he has so much information about stage performance and what to say on stage and how to connect to your audience. There wasn't enough time, in the one hour that he spoke, to cover all aspects of performance, but I highly recommend his 6 DVD set that you can purchase from his web site (and taking scrupulous notes on them!). In my own experience, I have a lot of trouble moving and talking on stage, but with a few simple tips, he gives you more confidence in doing those things.

The first three calsses I attended were the most effective to me. With the following classes, I won't go as much into detail, but they are still very valuable and are worth it.

Legalese - Protecting Yourself in the Business
Speaker: Lynn Morrow
She basically covered all the legal aspects about the music business like what a manager does, what a publisher does and when to hire them for your career. She discussed things like royalties, lawyer, manager and booking fees and much more. It was definitely great insider information that you probably can't get anywhere else.

Your Money, Your Marketing - Marketing Promotions, Budgets and Creativity... All with Stategic Purpose
Speaker: Benita Bellamy-Richardson
In this class we discussed all about marketing such as free marketing oppurtunities that are out there for us. Also she showed us how different types of mailers that we can mail out and who to mail them to and how to get on the air waves.

There were a few more classes that I attended that I won't go into detail about. The following is a list of class I could not attend (for I am only one man!)
Writing Melodies That Sing
Living a Life to Enhance Creativity
Building a Great Lyric
Building Your Career and Making Great Music
Writing Songs for Praise and Worship
Writing on Computer (I recommend Master Writer for this)
Ask the A&R Guys
Creativity - Thinking Outside the Box
So You're Called to the Ministry, Now What?

In addition to the classes, there were song critiques for songwriters, a talent competition, Michael Card was the keynote speaker on both Friday and Saturday and there was also a surprize teaching concert given by Shaun Groves... not to mention Chic-Fil-A! Basically, if you are contemplating wether or not to attend this next year or any conference like it, my answer is yes. It's well worth the money and really fun.

Charlie

Related link:
GMA Academy Regional Talent Competition...

Labels: Music

0 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Monday, February 27, 2006

I finally dug up the $85 bucks to become a member of GMA. It just makes sense for us. We want to do so much with our music and they offer a lot of resources to make that happen. I didn't make it in time for the competition though. To tell you the truth, I'm not a competition kind of guy. To tell you a little more, I'm scared of competitions = ( . I have to be honest. I'm 32 and don't have all my baby teeth if you know what I mean. And I know the life of a musician is not easy. There's a lot of work to be done and I'm prepared to do it. I don't need it all to be handed to me by getting signed (which I believe is about a one-in-a-million chance anyway). Anyblah, more on that as it unfolds. (ooh)!

Labels: Music

1 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Friday, January 27, 2006

Hey, listen to this! It's a song I'd really like to have on our next album. It's not finished yet. As are a lot of my songs. But we're getting back into the swing of things. I am probably King Procrastinator. Don't ever give me something to do and say, " whenever you can get to it"! I've taken so long to get to things that people have asked me to do, that it's not funny >:(

But Heather and I have to pretty much force ourselves to do stuff, at least when it comes to music. We have SO many songs that CAN be great, but if we don't finish them, how can they be? So off we go to the GMA Academy. A guy named Eric recommended it to us. Many Christian artists have started out going to events like that and have gone on to be successful in Christian music. We know that it's going to be a lot of hard work though. It's something we've started realizing the past couple of years. And when I look back at what we THOUGHT might happen (someone in an audience somewhere saying "here sign this... you're gonna be stars!"), I now see how silly that was.

So anywhoo, check out this clip. I think it's so funny. It's the kind of thing that happens all the time in a home with 4 kids. here's a brief description of it: I was getting some "Inspiration", some magical moment thinking of a new song and little Chucky came in, in all his innocence and pushed a couple of my very sensitive buttons. Then shortly after the violent "CLICK" at the end, I threw a short temper tantrum!

Labels: Music

0 Comments
View Comments | Leave a comment


Posted by Charlie on Saturday, January 14, 2006