WE LIKE BEER!: Flute Squad featured in new DuClaw Beer Promo

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Our outrageous thirst for beer and desire to be known as “Baltimore’s Beer Band” (you heard it here first) rages on! Today, DuClaw Brewing Company, one of Maryland’s finer brewpubs, releases their seasonal beer 13 Degrees; their rendition of a refreshing Hefeweizen.

So how is the Flute Squad involved? Well the story goes like this: Back in the winter of 2010, Mother Nature decided to snow her soggy balls off for 403 days straight. After several parties, cookouts, games of Scrabble, and experimentation with alcohol, everyone at my house seemed to get a little… hmm… how shall I say it: BORED OUT OF OUR F#*$ING SKULLS. So I happened to notice that DuClaw was holding a “Make Our Video” Contest for 13 Degrees. I looked out of my window and rested my eyes onto the cold white abyss and wondered loudly, “Hmm… 13 Degrees?… What natural metaphor could possibly represent a beer called 13 Degrees?!”

….150 long days and nights passed. I scrapped at least 7.5 different ideas. Until finally it hit me: “SNOW IS COLD!!!” In a fit of joy, I leapt off of my pizza and got to work.


The film stars Flute Squad poster-child Brian Holsey, and Matt Shacka. The Flute Squad of course provided instrumental tracks off our upcoming album Boneslinky!. But the kicker is, we actually wrote and recorded a new song exclusively for this video that will end up being on the new album. It’s called “Lonely Man” and it is featured at the end of the video.

You can get 13 Degrees at any DuClaw BrewPub through August. And there’s a special beer release party at their pubs tonight where they will be playing the video. Go out and drink it up. They make some pretty exceptional beers.

ELECTRONIC DRUMS IN THE STUDIO: Review – Steven Slate Drums 3.5

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Steven Slate is supposedly an actual guy who produces, mixes, and masters music for big label rock bands.  According to his website, his nickname is “Bang”, although I think that’s one of those nicknames that a person gives to themselves and then really hopes other people will start using.

The legend is that Steven Slate spent hours upon days upon weeks upon years meticulously crafting incredible drum samples with magical powers that would make any song a hit.  He put these samples on a CD and copies of that CD got passed around from top mixer to top mixer, each promising never to tell how their otherwise shitty songs got massive radio airplay.  But then some pimply-faced kid in Cleveland realized that the snare sound on the new Tool album was exactly the same as the snare on the new Linkin Park album, got pissed because he fucking hated Linkin Park, and blew the whistle before the Mixing Mafia could have him knocked off.

Defeated and almost at rock bottom, Steven Slate then had a brilliant idea: he decided to sell his sample CD so that everyone could use the infamous “snare 12a” and sound like Linkin Park and Tool!  “Why the fuck have I been giving these away for free?!” he yelled at the sky, “Stupid, stupid, stupid!!!”  And thus was born Steven Slate Drums!

For the first few releases, Steven Slate Drums cost a shit-ton of money. So The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad didn’t give them a second thought because we’re generally pretty cash-poor (but talent-rich!).  Recently SSD released the EX series, which basically broke up the Platinum series into smaller chunks so that you could buy just the kits and samples you really wanted and thus pay a lot less.  And even more recently there were a flurry of deals where you could pick up the whole shebang for about $150, and that’s where The Flute Squad met Steven Slate Drums 3.5, taking advantage of a hot deal like a frat boy does to a drunk chick at last call.

I’d been using Toontrack’s Superior Drummer exclusively for our drum tracks on Boneslinky! I was having trouble getting the drums in the hard rock songs to sit in the mix properly.  They sounded a bit thin for that style of music and the bass drums especially didn’t have a lot of low-end punch.  While Toontrack offers plenty of ways to tweak the samples with EQ and compression, SSD promised that I wouldn’t have to mess with all of that crap.  According to them, I’d just drop their preconfigured kits (many of which are supposed to sound like famous bands’ drums) into the mix, and all of the sudden our songs would sound awesome.  To be honest, this isn’t too far from the truth!

First things first: installation and activation.  They shipped me a few CDs and a keycode.  You really have to follow the directions on the installation carefully, since it’s not quite as automated as most software installations.  SSD 3.5 runs through Kontakt, which apparently a lot of people don’t like, although I’m not sure why.  Regardless, you have to install Kontakt separately from the samples, and you absolutely have to install everything into the proper directories, or else Kontakt won’t find the samples or kit presets.  So not the easiest installation, but in the end everything was fine.

To get it working, you drop the Kontakt VST into an audio track in your host software (we use Sonar 8.5), then you point your MIDI drum track to that audio track. I find it easiest to load up a preset kit from within Kontakt, and then start replacing the samples.  I tend to like the Modern Zep kit, for example, so I’ll load that up and then layer in another snare, or swap out the kick for another kick, add more room to the hi-hat, etc, as needed for the mix.

I don’t particularly like any of the preset kits that they’ve provided, but I do love the individual instruments that make up the kits and actually agree with the marketing hype that you really don’t have to do much tweaking to get them to sound good in a hard rock mix.  I’ve only been doing a few dBs of boost at around 65Hz on the kick to bring out the thump, reducing 200Hz on the entire kit to get rid of some mud, adding a few dBs of shelf at 10k to add some sparkle, and then putting on a little compression to glue it all together.  Granted, it takes me a while to put together a kit for each song, but so far I’ve always found at least one sample for each instrument that works in the mix with minimal EQ or compression.

That said, I absolutely do not like these samples for anything other than hard rock, metal, or pop.  The sounds are very pre-processed and have a hi-fi sound to them that doesn’t work at all in a jazz, folk, or acoustic rock song.  Basically they work great for any kind of song where the drums are fighting for space in the mix, but in a more open, bare song, they stand out like a sore thumb.  In those situations I’m still using Toontrack’s kits.

Here are some sound samples, both within a mix and of the drums by themselves:

Steven Slate Drums EX 3.5 is a great sounding drum VST and is perfect for anyone who doesn’t want to spend a ton of time futzing with drum sounds on hard rock, metal, or pop mixes.  You just drop the kits in and they pretty much mix themselves with full, punchy results.  But if you need samples for more low-key types of music, your best bet is to look elsewhere.

***

Electronic Drums in the Studio is written by Ryan Graham, producer for The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad. If you like this post check out:

Electronic Drums in the Studio: Good Enough For Phil Collins, So Suck Our Su-Su-Sudio!: A quick discussion on why we avoid the (figurative and literal) headache of messing with live drums in the studio.

Your Expensive Guitars Are Annoying Too!

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The Flute Squad isn’t exactly rolling in cash, so when we buy stuff we do a lot of research in order to get the best value for our money. We certainly never skimp when it comes to quality, be it spending a few extra bucks per t-shirt for a nicer cut and material, paying monthly to be hosted here at Squarespace (for ease of use and their excellent analytics), or buying a microbrew for the kegerator. Our track record for not buying crap is pretty good.

I hope most bands would agree with our philosophy of buying quality gear. But I’m completely flabbergasted when I see a local band playing their third gig ever, and the guitar player pulls out a $1500 Fender Strat Deluxe. Even worse was when a metal guitarist we played with at The Black Hole Rock Club rolled in with a huge case filled with 7 guitars, all of which were easily over $1000 each. For a 30 minute set at The Black Hole?! In Dundalk!?!

Look expensive guitar guys, I get it, you have a small penis. But the ladies can’t tell the difference between your $2k Les Paul and my $150 Hondo II LP clone. They’re both shiny and sound the same blasted at high volume. You’re better off buying the cheap guitar and using the leftover cash for hairplugs.

Seriously, the only people who might be impressed that you’ve blown mucho moola on a really expensive guitar are other guitarists. So aside from the name on the headstock, what is the point of spending the extra money on a high-end Strat or Les Paul? Well, let’s run down a list of features to see if we can sort this out. We’ll compare a mid-level Gibson Les Paul and a mid-level Agile from Rondo Music.

$2000 Gibson Les Paul Standard

 

-Maple Top

-Mahogony Body

-Set Mahogany Neck

-Rosewood Fretboard

-Grover Tuners

-Alcino Pickups

-Case with Gibson Logo on it

 $370 Agile-3000 LP Knock Off

 

-Maple Top

-Mahogany Body

-Set Mahogany Neck

-Ebony Fretboard

-Grover Tuners

-Alcino Pickups

-No Case ($60 extra)

So…. Yeah, not much difference in features. To be fair, the pickups are different, so let’s add in another $130 to match those (Burstbucker 3 is $60 on Ebay and a 57 Classic is $70). But let’s subtract $50 because the Agile’s ebony fretboard is actually more expensive than the rosewood on the LP. Do the math and the price you’re paying for the Gibson logo on the headstock and case is $1490. That’s just bullshit and a monstrously huge fucking rip-off to boot.

“But the Les Paul plays so much better!” I hear guitar snobs whine.

No. Wrong. Fail.

With a proper setup the Agile will play just as well as the Gibson, and to be honest the Agile folks probably spend more time setting up the guitar before it leaves the shop than Gibson does. So out of the box the Agile might actually play better! Plus, “better” is a relative term anyway. What feels good to you might feel like shit to me. What if I like my strings to be 1-inch off the fretboard? With either guitar you’re probably going to have to spend some time tinkering with the bridge, truss rod, and pickup height to get it to where it feels best for you.

“But the Les Paul sounds so much better!” those same snobs shout.

Really? You’re going to tell me that with the same wood and pickups you’re going to be able to tell a difference? Here’s a challenge: go to Guitar Center and ask someone to take an expensive guitar (Les Paul, Strat, Tele, or whatever) and a cheapo clone with similar specs off the wall. Turn your back on that person and have them play both guitars through the same amp, randomly switching back and forth between the guitars while playing a variety of riffs, leads, jazz chords, etc. After each switch-off, tell me which one sounded better.

I bet that:

a) you won’t be able to tell the difference

or

b) if you can tell the difference you’ll prefer the cheapo knock-off 50% of the time.

In fact, DMFS is willing to put our money where our mouth is. If anyone wants to take us up on this blind listening test, we will give you $100 in cash if you’re able to pick out the expensive guitar more than 80% of the time. Message us here on the board and we’ll work out a time to meet up at Guitar Center or Bill’s Music! (of course if you lose, you’ll have to be Horsepower’s personal butler for a week)

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how much the guitar costs. What matters is the person playing it. If you suck you’re going to suck just as bad on an expensive guitar, and if you’re awesome you’ll be able to make any guitar sound good.

Case in point:


 

EVENT: The Flute Squad Curates A Film Series

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That’s right, for the past few months The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad has been busy launching a monthly film series with some of our favorite Baltimore filmmakers. The film series, Mondo Baltimore, will show some of our favorite hilariously bad movies (plus some we’ve never seen before, that’s the beauty of this collaboration). Mondo Baltimore will happen from 6:30pm to 10pm on the first Thursday of every month at The Windup Space.

This Thursday (June 3rd) we will screen The Room, which is by far one of my favorite films of all time. It is not humanly possible to accurately give a description of the plot but the tagline says it all: “A film with the passion of Tennessee Williams!” If you don’t believe it, scroll down to catch a particularly memorable scene from the film.

In the coming months we will show everything from sex education films for the mentally-challenged to futuristic-robot-on-a-killing-spree flicks.  Best of all, The Flute Squad will be hosting “KISS night” on August 5th which will feature screenings of KISS interviews, Never Too Young To Die (starring Gene Simmons), and maybe even an acoustic performance from us (I’m pulling to do a cover of “Lick It Up“)

***
What: Mondo Baltimore screens The Room
When: This Thursday, June 3rd 2010. Weird Shorts at 6:30 pm, Feature at 8 pm
Where: The Windup Space, 10-12 W. North Ave, Baltimore

Electronic Drums in the Studio: Good Enough For Phil Collins, So Suck Our Su-Su-Sudio!

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For Die Humpin!, Super Galactic Space Banana, and Boneslinky! (coming soon) the Flute Squad exclusively used samples for every drum track. I know it’s hard to believe, but when we first started out we too were young, dumb, and actually owned a regular ole drum kit. We managed to get some decent recorded sounds out of it, but when we switched to an electronic drum kit for our live shows (to reduce stage volume and setup time), Captain Mediocrity famously used a flaming chainsaw to cut the acoustic drum kit in half during our set on Showtime at the Apollo (we were never asked back.)

The post-real-drums-era was born and now we only record the MIDI data for our drums tracks. A Roland TD-6v kit is used, and we lay down basic live tracks with drums, guitar, bass, and scratch vocals to create an energetic foundation for the song. The MIDI data from the drums can then be assigned to any sample set available; it could even be used to play a piano!

The advantages to recording with an electronic kit are two-fold:

    1. Each part of the kit (snare, bass, cymbals, etc) can be edited separately on a note-by-note basis for volume and timing. So if you flub a few hits here and there in an otherwise perfect take, fixing the mistakes is as simple and deleting or moving the faulty MIDI notes in your software.

 

  1. Each part of the kit can be switched out with a different drum in the mixing process. So if you decide after adding in 20 layers of guitars that the snare sound is no longer cutting through the mix, you can just choose a different snare from your sample set that sits better. This is way better than the traditional method of adding tons of EQ and compression.

When Die Humpin! was being recorded there weren’t a lot of affordable VSTi (virtual instrument) drum kits available. Now, three years later, there are a whole bunch of great ones in the $50-$200 range. So you can literally have hundreds of different drums to choose from when assembling your virtual drum kit, for less than half the cost of a moderately decent acoustic kit.

After so much praise and hate-mail that came from our Your Big Amp Is Annoying series (seriously, read the comments) we decided to write a little bit about how we use our gear in non-live situations. In upcoming posts of Electronic Drums in the Studio we’ll review various drum VSTi’s such as Steven Slate EX and Toontrack’s Superior Drummer, and will also give you some tips on how to get the best results from an e-drum setup.

Ask Horsepower: The Flute Squad Advice Column

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Every once in a great while we open our mail bag at The Flute Squad House and check out what you guys have been sending us.  After sifting through the death threats, pizza flyers, and hate mail there actually happens to be a good bit of mail leftover just asking for our advice.

So we’ll leave it to our centaur leader, Horsepower, to tell you what’s good for you! If you have any questions for Horsepower or just need a little guidance, please send to nikc@theflutesquad.com

Dear Horsepower, Why come God hates you? -Confused in Tulsa,OK

God and I have a “love-hate” relationship: God hates me, because I love pissing him off.  I don’t really want to go into too many details about how it all started (he’s a sensitive guy, and plus there’s a legal restraint on what I can say in public), but it has a little something to do with Grace Jones and maybe 17 bottles of Rumple Minze, one magical night back in 1972.  Not a pretty sight (well, not pretty except for Grace Jones).

Dear Horsepower, Did your mother survive the child birth?  -Concerned in Houston, PA

Dude, have you ever seen my mother’s vagina?  If not, then trust me: no problem with fitting the horse head through there.

In all seriousness, I was one of those “water babies.”  They played soothing piano music in the background, had low lights, and right when Mum pushed me out they plopped me in a bath of warm water.  I was a smiling baby almost the same instant I came into the world.

Dear Horsepower, My overweight teen won’t listen to reason! I keep encouraging her to eat less and exercise, but nothing seems to work. In fact I think she rebels against my concern and binge eats even more. What should I do? -Hates Fat People in Michigan, HI 

How do you expect someone as voluptuous and svelte as your ripe, young daughter to eat less AND exercise at the same time?  Don’t you know that it takes a lot of energy to exercise?  To move that large, round, supple body of hers around and about?  I can just envision her now, that vivacious tulip petal of a young woman, perspiration gleaming on her smooth skin, hovering over a plate of Horsepower’s special home made brownies.  She’d be willing to do anything–and I mean ANYTHING–if it meant I’d give her one more taste of Horsepower’s special flavour.  And oh yes, I would give it to her.  You betcha.

Think she needs encouragement?  Have her e-mail me at horsepower@theflutesquad.com so she and I can arrange for a special one on one training session at my place.  Don’t wait up for us.  Have a listen to You’re Too Skinny while you’re at it.

Dear Horsepower, You are clearly a douche-bag. Once your band is important enough to dictate policy, which will likely never happen, just keep playing your crappy “music” and leave the playing to those who can. Bite me.  -Bitter in Baltimore, MD

Sorry, we’re not accepting applications for a drummer at this time.  Like many intelligent women who know better, we’ve decided to go for the automatic version of rhythmic stimulation (in our case: Drumbot 200X).  Much more reliable, and doesn’t need much personal attention.  But we know how to reach you if we ever consider holding open auditions.  Thanks for your interest!

WE LIKE BEER!: Baltimore beer ‘The Raven Special Lager’ officially endorses The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad and Wild Bonerz

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Everyone who knows us also knows that we love beer. 4 out of 5 of us are homebrewers (Drumbot doesn’t count because he’s cardboard and thus useless in the kitchen).  Hell, we even have a song called “Show Us Your Boobs and Buy Me A Beer!” After seeing tons upon tons of hairy dude nipples, I am much more enthused about what our fans can provide in terms of beverages.

That’s why we are proud to announce that The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad and Wild Bonerz have formed an endorsement partnership with Baltimore-Washington Beer Works to promote and support The Raven Special Lager!

For those that don’t know, The Raven is a great Baltimore-based beer that we keep our band kegerator filled with throughout the year.  This isn’t crap like the Pabst endorsement most bands get, this is a high-quality, grade-A microbrew.

Endorsement FAQ

What does this mean?
Well, more beer for you and us. Over the coming months we will be hosting Raven Special Lager merch and beer giveaway contests onstage, and from our Facebook page.

Have You Guys Sold Out?
Absolutely, and we will continue to do so. More importantly, we will keep telling you guys how we do it, so you can too!

What Does Baltimore-Washington Beer Works Have To Say About All This?
They’re absolutely stoked. But you don’t have to take it from us, here’s what founder Stephen Demczuk has to say about it: “The appreciation of the literary genius Edgar Allan Poe was the reason for naming our beer The Raven Special Lager.   Baltimore-Washington Beer Works continues to support all disciplines of the arts and looks forward to sponsoring The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad.”

We can’t think of a beer that better epitomizes what we’re all about. The Baltimore connection is obvious, and like us, Poe seemed to enjoy writing about necrophilia.  Most importantly, The Raven is a high-quality product that we are proud to recommend to our fans.

Join us on Facebook to take part of the contests that we will soon be having to give away a ton of FREE Raven Beer schwag and BEER!

The Axl Rose-meets-Chicken Lady-meets-Diane Rehm Voice

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One of my favorite scenes in the documentary Dig! is when Dandy Warhol’s frontman Courtney Taylor is laying down vocal tracks for the Dandy’s soon-to-be hit “Bohemian Like You.” He wasn’t doing anything particularly annoying in that scene, just singing his vocal lines, but somehow came off as a total douche and it’s hilarious because he’s oblivious.

In many ways this scene encompasses the golden rule of recording: Everybody looks like a fucking tool when recording vocal tracks.

It’s a fact of life, and just knowing this sad truth can make you 100 times more effective in the studio. Unless you’re Pavarotti, singing the way you do live just isn’t enough in the studio. Recording several different overdubs and harmonies helps, but even THAT isn’t enough. Alot of times we’ll record for hours and hours testing different voices with different mics until we find a sound that we like. But here’s the tricky part: the vocals that sound good in the mix, usually sound like shit when they’re being recorded.

Case in point: I call it the Axl Rose-meets-Chicken Lady-meets-Diane Rehm (or Axl Rehm®) voice. In addition to about six other go-to voices, singing in the Axl Rehm® is part of my vocal duty for each song that I am featured on on the upcoming album. This means, going into the studio to record my vocal takes is not as simple as going in and singing the way I do live. That is definitely part of it. But an even bigger part is where Ryan (our producer) yells at me to “Sing it in your screamy voice!”, “Sing it your Axl voice!!” “Sing it in your Dire Straits voice!!!” I cry deeply, then follow suit.

The process is harsh on the ears:

But the results are worth it:

Notice how little of that shit is actually in there! It’s added in toward the end for dramatic effect. The track sounds more “barbershop quartet” than “Appetite for Destruction” but I guess we would have never figured that out if we all just clammed up in the studio. It really is worth it to experiment with different vocal sounds. Go balls deep and act like a total spazz when the mic is on and the spacebar has been pressed. SHAME IS FOR THE WEAK!

By the way, Ryan told me that I’m letting his mixing secrets out into the world by releasing just the vocal tracks. I guess that’s somewhat valuable to studio nerds. I’d be really impressed if someone took that track and made something with it.

STUPID ADVICE: Day-Trade Your Band’s Money

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Occasionally, Flute Squad guitarist Ryan Graham will hound me for band money in the pursuit of some hare-brained scheme. This is one of those instances, and this post was written by him.

***
We’ve already touched on how we manage our band account with ING Direct.  This is a very convenient way to keep track of our money, but the paltry 1% interest we earn on it (through no fault of ING – it’s actually a better rate than most savings accounts) doesn’t exactly make our money work for us.

Sure, most bands use their band account to buy merchandise and pay for CD pressings, which in turn makes them more money and in turn can be seen as an investment.  However, wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to do as much work to make your band some cash?  Like, if piles and piles of money just appeared out of nowhere with minimal time and effort on your part?  THAT’S THE STOCK MARKET, BABY!!!

“Wait, wait, wait!” you’re saying.  “Haven’t a bunch of people recently lost their entire savings in the stock market?”  To which we reply, “YEAH, STUPID PEOPLE!”

You’re telling me that you don’t have enough balls to gamble away your entire band account in the hope of MASSIVE PROFIT?!  Well then have fun living in your little shack with your mom, cry-baby!

THE FLUTE SQUAD IS WILLING TO RISK IT ALL, SUCKERS!!!*

Okay, so we actually received a notification from ING saying that if we opened up a stock trading account through them they’d give us 50 no-fee trades and $50 in cash after the first trade.  So we figured, shit, as long as we don’t lose more than $50, who cares what happens?  Let’s blow some cash on the stock market!

So without further adieu, here’s the diary of our wild 5 day experiment in day-trading:

Day 1 – 10.26.09

Start of Sharebuilder’s 50 no-fee trades.  Fees are usually $10 per trade, meaning it takes $20 to get in and out of a stock.  But with no fees, you can cut margins closer and sell at smaller rises/falls without worrying about making up that $20.  Day-trading is awesome!!!**

Bought 10 shares of NFLX (Netflix) @ 55.90

Bought 7 shares of AMZN (Amazon) @ 123.07

AMZN went up a bunch, more than $2.50 at one point.  NFLX went up at first but then started dropping.  Will have to sell tomorrow if it keeps tanking.

Whole market down today.  Expect both stocks to go up tomorrow if market does better.

Final tally:

NFLX 55.17 =  -.73/shr   = -$7.3

AMZN 124.65 = +1.58/shr = +$11.06

Total for today = +$3.76

***

Day 2 – 10.27.09

Everything is down today as of 12:45PM.  Consumer Confidence Index fell unexpectedly.  Not the best time to be invested in retail stocks.

Amazon has dropped over 3% and Netflix is down more almost 1%.  Overall we’re now down about $30.  There’s a good chance that both of these stocks have peaked and are now on a downturn.  I’ll be selling both if we go below a $50 loss, which probably won’t happen today.

***

Day 3 – 10.28.09

Amazon was down $5/share at one point yesterday, and I was pretty close to taking the loss and calling it quits, but decided to stick it out.  Luckily it went back up a bit, but we still ended up down about $24 when the markets closed.

Not much to do today except continue to stick with it and hope the stocks rise.

Update: Sold Amazon @ 124.98 for a $13.37 gain.  Still deciding whether to take a loss on Netflix.

End of Day Update: Good timing on the Amazon sell; it didn’t go much above that and then dropped.  Netflix continued to drop, and is down about $2.30/share right now from where I bought it.  So altogether we’re still down about $10.

All of the markets went down again today and have been since Day 1, and apparently this is the worst they’ve been since July.  So not really a good time to try to make any money off of stocks.  So even though we’re down, it could be much worse.  Hopefully Netflix will go up enough tomorrow to at least bring us back to even.

***

Day 4 – 10.29.09

Futures were up before the markets opened due to a lot of good financial data that came out this morning, so I decided to buy 25 shares of SSO @ 34.01/share.  SSO is an ETF that doubles the gains or losses of the S&P 500.  It’s a fairly risky stock, because if the entire market tanks you lose twice as much.  We’ll see what happens.

Update 12:28PM:  Sold SSO for $34.53, for a profit of $.52/share, so $13 total.  It gave me some message about “free riding” when I tried to sell, which is basically buying and selling shares when previous trades haven’t settled yet.  Hopefully the Feds don’t come after Nikc, since the account is in his name. 

In all seriousness, they might freeze us from buying any stocks for 90 days, but that’s fine because we have to be all out tomorrow, which is when the fee-free trading ends.  We’re working with such a small amount of money that spending $10 per trade would pretty much negate any quick profit-taking.  For example, our overall fees for these trades would have been $60.  Even over at tradeking.com, where trades are $5/each, that’s still $30, which would have wiped out the profits we made.  Of course, if you’re dealing in $10K transactions, $10 for a trade fee isn’t a big deal because you can make much more on each transaction.  But for small trades the fees can sink you quickly.

Netflix is back up around the $55 mark.  If it goes up to $55.90 today I’ll sell.  If not, I’ll wait until tomorrow and see what happens.  It’s definitely a gamble, but at this point we have over $26 in earnings, so I can afford to gamble a little.

Update 4:05PM:  Up about $20 total after today’s rise.  Netflix went to $55.31, so I’m waiting until tomorrow to sell.  Account hasn’t been frozen yet!

***

Day 5 – 10.30.09

Markets dropping steadily again today.  Netflix down about $1, but I’m waiting until around 12:30PM to sell, which is when it seems to peak again each day, judging by past charts.  We’re definitely going to be taking a loss on this one.

Sold Netflix for $54.49, which was a $1.41/per share ($14.10 total) loss.  As I said at the beginning of the week, I knew it was possible this had hit its short-term peak, and as a result it was a risk getting in.  However, as a long-term investment I think Netflix is probably a great bet, since they’re a cool company with some pretty progressive ideas.

***

SUMMARY

Altogether we made $12.27 for the week, basically a 1% gain.  To compare, the S&P 500 was down 4.7% for the week, so in this case we actually did beat the market by a very sizeable margin (almost 6%).

But here’s the kicker: The only reason we did this whole thing is because we knew we’d get a $50 bonus.  So we actually made $62.27!  HAHAHA, TAKE THAT STOCK MARKET!!!

In all seriousness, even though we came out ahead, it was very stressful and actually took a lot of time, sitting there watching stocks rise and fall all day.  So while the stock market might very well be a viable way to make some quick cash from your band account, we can’t in good conscience recommend it.***  Your time and money is probably better spent dreaming up and executing great marketing and merchandising ideas or (gasp!) MAKING SOME FUCKING MUSIC!!!

—

*We don’t recommend day-trading unless you have about $2500 to start and a huge nerd like Ryan Graham in your band to monitor and stress out about all the minor rises and falls of the market on an hourly basis

**We don’t recommend day-trading your band’s money at all, actually.

***So stick to your part-time job flipping burgers at Starbucks or whatever. SIKE! Be somebody and fucking day-trade already!

 

READ THIS: The way you do everything, sucks – A review of 37signals’ REWORK

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We like to think we know how to read. So on occasion we’ll order a book on tape, listen to it, and pretend to understand it. READ THIS is where we get to talk about the books we think are worth paying money for. Get this book now.

It’s fun to revel in success. When you get a chance to revel, all past flubs, moments of luck and bouts of infuriating persistence look like keen foresight.  This is how 37signals’ latest manifesto REWORK reads. REWORK is a slick, fast paced mission statement urging YOU to rethink the way you do your life’s work.

It’s a fun read because 37signals is a fantastic company. They’re cool. They’re not afraid to drop the F-bomb on their blog or their book. They run their shit the way they want to run it and they’re mad successful.

REWORK looks, feels, and reads like something by Seth Godin. It contains all the inspiration one can ever need to pick themself up by the ole bootstraps and get to work on something meaningful. The best part about REWORK is not what’s inside the book, but the fact that the reader experience doesn’t end when the book is finished. The fantastic Signal vs. Noise blog contains daily updates of REWORK ideas, tactics, and thoughts in practice.

What REWORK delivers in sound, focused advice, it lacks in solid examples [most likely they're trying to drive traffic to their blog, but come on, I paid for this thing, give me some juice!]. When you make a statement as bold as “Run Your Business Like A Drug Dealer” of “Hire College Dropouts” you better show me how or when you followed your own advice. Better yet, show me someone else that did it too.

This is the difference between a book by 37signals and a book by someone like Seth Godin. Where one points to their own success as the beacon of truth and the ultimate example, the other reaches outside to show concrete examples of people that are living the dream, in thousands of different ways.

When it’s all said and done, I really liked this book. I liked it so much I up and bought it for some random person on Twitter (we like to give stuff away.)

Some fun takeaways:

Clear writing equals clear thinking.
It also equals accountability.

You don’t learn from failure, you learn from success.
This takes the concept of learning from your mistakes and turns it on its head. It’s kind of a glass half-empty/glass half-full brain trick. If you keep telling yourself you learn from failures, then it proves that failure is heavy on your mind. Focus on success and the picture becomes alot clearer. Admittedly, this goes against everything this blog stands for. The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad wins by FAILING HARD. We steady failin’ so you don’t have to!

Long term plans are a waste of time
Once a huge opportunity comes along and turns your elaborate plan on its head, you can never recoup the time you wasted creating said plan. So stop worrying about it. Make realistic short term goals and play the rest as it comes.

Sell your byproducts
This piece of advice I find most applicable to musicians and bands. Instead of focusing on making a new product, album, or whatever to sell, try selling the scraps that came out of creating your main product. If you made an album, go sell the instrumentals to a filmmaker.

As always, I urge musicians to stop reading about The Beatles, MTV or any other kind of minutiae that offers sensationalized history and tall tales. Instead, start reading books about who(ever) is winning NOW.  Musicians will never tell you how they succeed for two reasons:

a.) They don’t want to admit it, but they have no idea how it happened. (Probably)

b.) If they do know how it happened, they’re keeping the secret to themselves.

Businesses on the other hand love to talk about their successes. And as long as this advice is given out in $12 slices, it’s probably a good idea to immerse yourself in as much as you can.