BBC Wales Blog "Ketch A vibe, Diversifying a Career"

One of the people with whom I have had repeated discussions in the past year about music and the business of making money is Cardiff's Claire Simone. She's a jazz and soul singer with almost two decades' experience and a lot of fans including BBC 6 Music's Craig Charles.

Good friends, good reputation and a pair of powerfully smoky lungs isn't enough though, and she's vocal about the problems she has making a living out of her music. Read her blog entry 'The seemingly impossible dream to be able to earn a living through making music'.

But she's ever-positive, and she's doing something that musicians are being advised to look into these days: diversifying. Conventionally, this might be to 'open up revenue streams' - self-publish, go into promoting, that kind of thing - but it doesn't have to be.

Simone has turned a passion for music into an internet radio show that has given her an outlet for playing tracks she loves, and also - in a round-about fashion - increased her own profile.

Aja And Claire's Ketch A Vibe is the brainchild of Simone and Anthony Aja Allsop, "a self-confessed soul boy from London's East End". In the world of the internet, so much stuff gets lost, but Ketch A Vibe ("recorded on the top of a mountain in Caerphilly"), with its eclectic music policy and concentration on new, independent and unsigned artists, is punching above its weight.

It's been picked up and syndicated by radio stations across the world and the UK, including in Las Vegas, Birmingham, Montenegro, London and Lithuania. In addition, they've become regular guests on more radio stations also internationally.

"Getting involved with radio has definitely helped raise my profile," she says. "We do not focus on me, or indeed my music, in our shows; it is about exposing all new music, but I do get the opportunity to play my tracks and of course plug my website!

"The job of networking, building contacts and potential working relationships is one of the most difficult things when you're an independent artist. Aja and I receive new music every day from artists and producers from around the world. Having this direct link and contact with them has given me the opportunity to seek out people I could work with and discuss possibilities.

"It has broadened my horizons and subsequently am currently working on projects with a number of great producers here in the UK and the US."

Thinking tangentially about music and the way it can be disseminated is now part of an artist's armoury. It might not add revenue straight away, but it can't be bad to widen your contact base and pool ideas can it?

You can watch Aja and Claire invite submissions and interaction on YouTube (caution: contains adult themes).


Blog written by James McLaren at : http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/walesmusic/2010/10/ketch-a-vibe-claire-simone.shtml

Aja's thoughts on Jazz today.

I understand people all have their own taste in the Jazz Music that they choose to listen too, and that is cool. But when these same people arrogantly dismiss the musicians who explore the boundaries within Jazz, I despair.  I believe that Jazz is not one form of music that belongs to any individual style, but is more a conceptual form of expression which allow musicians to be inspired by the greats, but allows them the freedom to create.    This attitude to me is an endless cycle of outright denial, and an example of people existing in there own safe little boxes,  in almost all cases pigheadedly simply refusing  to move out of it. This is the main reason, especially in the States that the Jazz music is in a very sad state of affairs. In my opinion, one of the main instigators is what they call "Smooth Jazz", radio stations playing nothing but safe, uninspiring and quite frankly boring music, refusing to support or play anything out of the box. I realise however that it does have it's place and if it means people are listening to jazz it can be no bad thing. I just wish that the stations would take the responsibility they have to their listeners and promote and play at least some of the new Jazz music coming through, at least give the listeners the opportunity to hear what is out there. Another problem is a lot of musicians are just simply regurgitating the same old music ( i:e the great American songbook ),  that's the main reason why the age group at most of the Jazz festivals are, let's say middle aged upwards. Here in the UK,  the festivals are still very popular, I have attended many in the last few years, but unless they start to make the music more accessible and appealing to the younger generation, in 20-30 years time there will be little, if no Jazz scene apart from the academics crying in to there beers " what happened to Jazz " ? To me Jazz has always been about the art of improvisation looking for different beats and styles trying to explore. Jazz has to be spoon fed very very slowly people, and to the young people especially. There is so much wonderful New/Nu jazz around, most of it coming from Europe, it's fresh and exciting. It's wonderful young musicians/dj's who are still trying to break new Jazz and it's the young people that are appreciating and going out to the clubs and most importantly buying as well. I believe the problem is firmly within the Jazz industry, and I am laying the blame with the purist, their opinion is that it's not jazz if it incorporates Rap/samples/broken beats/Dance/Soul. Surely if you can get people to listen to Jazz, in in any form that has to be good for the music ? and just maybe they might start to investigate the legends Miles & Co ? Basically it's as simple as this we all need to try and open our minds to the music that is around now, I believe this can be the saviour of  "Jazz" please no more versions of Around Midnight or Nights in Tunisia !,  yes it has it's place,  but please please try writing something new  for a change instead of keep looking back and copying.

Aja & Claire Simone's Ketch A Vibe Show

The Last Two Years in a Nutshell !! Recording with JJ, Trip to Lyon, Working with Elizabeth Fields, Filming my music video's and much more.

The Last Two Years in a Nutshell !!

Recording with JJ, Trip to Lyon, Elizabeth Fields, Filming my music video's and much more :-)

Hello and welcome back to my blog. It has been a long long time since my last entry, this is mainly because I was using my website to update my news. Unfortunately, due to an onslaught of continuous virus attacks I had to take down my website. Thankfully due to the fact that most people these days are using social network sights instead of websites, I am finding I don't actually need a personal website anyway !

I plan to start blogging regularly, not just about my news, but also my experiences within the music industry, good and bad. Much has happened in two years, and as I have already written about the hardships and state of the industry in a previous blog, it seems things have got worse still. But that can wait until my next blogs !. This blog is an update on what I have been up to since June 2010.

Two years have quite literally flown by, I don't know where to start really. I have recorded lots of music, worked with some great producers worldwide I am proud to say, had my music played on T.V, continued to do well with radio play and even filmed music videos.

2010 was a busy year, Aja and I decided to go independent with our Ketch A Vibe shows which was a bit of a risk, but a risk that has really paid off. Fed up of the politics within certain radio stations and some asking for you to pay them to be on the station, we thought we would go it alone. We are now on show 79, and over the last 15 months have been asked to join radio stations all over the world including the U.S, Japan, Montenegro, Lithuania, Spain, Italy, UK & Austria. We are very proud of growth of our show now averaging at around 3000 listeners, and we aim to continue onwards and upwards. It is a pleasure, and most of all a passion for us to be able to showcase new, unheard and independent music, and our ultimate goal is to continue to raise the platform for new forward thinking Jazz, Soul and Blues music. Thanks to all our supporters and listeners, keep spreading the word. If you haven't discovered Ketch a Vibe yet, find us here : Aja & Claire Simone's Ketch A Vibe show and on i-tunes.

During 2010 I also had the privilege of working with Elizabeth Fields on her album. It was a pleasure to work in the Magic Garden studio with Gavin Monaghan and to meet so many talented musicians including Fred Wisdom, Clair Rogoff, Dulcie Pheonix and many more. Last July I joined Elizabeth and the guys on stage at a showcase in Wolverhampton which was great fun. Elizabeth is due to release her album sometime this year, I will let you know when.

In summer 2010 I did a couple of gig with Blues Band Blues Is Truth, including the Reading Arts Centre and the world famous Bulls Head in Barnes, London. Here I met a very gifted young man named Bennet Soundy, Bennet plays the saxophone like a musician with years and years of playing in him, watch out for this young man, he has a bright future ! You can watch a video of a performance here.

Moving on to 2011, I got together with my very good friend Joseph Junior and worked on a track produced and sent to me from Armand Tulumello from Miami. The track " Inside Of You " was well received and has featured on radio in various countries. I was honoured to have a number of remixes done by great producers including Maqman, Danny Massure and Richard E. You can find the track here : Juno Records

Huge thanks to all involved with this project, and special thanks to Mr Richard Molyneux who I worked with previously on my Organic EP, and his gorgeous wife Emma for letting me and Jo invade your studio and home for the day..p.s yummy chilli ;-)

Moving forward to July, Aja and I made a trip to Lyon to work with Jean-luc Briancon of Abigoba. We had the best time ! JL produced a track for me which I wrote for to record with him in his studio in Lyon. The moment we landed I was straight to work recording the track called " Keep The Dream Alive ", JL wanted me to take a rest first as I hadn't slept due to the flight time, but I was raring to go, call it adrenaline. Jean-luc's studio was amazing, an underground cave once used for gold 100's os years ago, very cool indeed ! We got the bulk of the vocal recorded in a few hours that first afternoon, I went off to sleep for a few hours. Jean-luc and I finished the recording the following day. Lyon was amazing, we went to a cool Jazz music venue and met some musicians who I hope to perform with this year when we go back to Lyon again. We received wonderful hospitality on our trip, huge thanks to Francois and Patricia for making us feel so welcome. Aja and I cannot wait for our next visit.

Not long after our return from France, I decided to put together an acoustic set to do some intimate gigs. I asked my friend James Chadwick and his beautiful Gibson to join me, after a rehearsal we went out and performed a number of gigs which were fab. As a result of working with James I was introduced to an extremely talented young man called Andrew Lawson. Co-incidental, as it so often turns out in the small world of music, we had a mutual friend. Andrew had studied under my close friend and producer Odilon at the RWCMD. Now expanding his empire, Andrew invited me and James to his studio to record and film 2 of my songs live. We had a brilliant time, and the results are amazing, you can watch the video's here. Huge thanks to Andrew, who I also want to thank for helping me out with another recording ;-).

I refer to a track I recorded for Russian based producer Vitaliy Stodolya . I had a blast recording the track, it is a dance stomper and is so far going down very well with the DJ's, remixes coming soon.

This is pretty cool too, late one night in September I got a call from Jackanory, the producer on my Organic EP. He informed me that my song “Take You There “ had been played on Channel 4's Hollyoaks ! My first television play..yeay :-) Not so sure about the Hollyoaks thing, but hey ho..I suppose I'm “ Down with the kids ” !!

Anywho, that is pretty much it. Hope you enjoyed reading my update, I will endeavour to update my blog regularly.

Please feel free to share the link :-)

Claire xxx