I’ve been working on this for a while and I’m super-excited to share it with you all! Last year I started making a wee game on Scratch which would double as a music video for my song ‘Rapture’. Then a month or so ago, my good friend Gus stepped in to port the game to Unity. And now we have a finished game!
it’s a-me!
Go check it out at https://shamblesmiller.itch.io/rapture and let me know what you think. If you like it and feel like helping out an idiot musician who just quit his day job to go study software development, why not buy some of my music? You can do so at http://shamblesmiller.bandcamp.com for any price you like. And if you can’t afford to pay for it, just download it for free ^__^
I think the effort to payoff ratio for this might be badly skewed.
Hello folks! You’re looking young and fresh and clean and NEW today. A bit like my blog, now that you mention it. As you can see, I’ve given the old girl a bit of a makeover. I’ve updated the links above, such as my music page, the page with free stuff, and the bit about me. So if you want to hear my music, buy my music, get free stuff or get in touch, it’s now that little bit easier. And if like me, you’re too lazy to remember web addresses with more than 18 characters, never fear. You can now reach this website simply by heading to shamblesmiller.com! (don’t click it now though, you’ll just end up right back here, that’d be silly. Unless you really want to. Och go on then, I can’t say no to you)
Some of you might also have noticed I’ve recently got one of those tumblrs. I’m still figuring it out, but I think you can contact me there too, or ask me things, or send me pictures of dyslexic cats and whatnot. So far there’s only one picture and a video of Phillip Schofield talking like Satan. I think my television might be possessed. Oh and there’s a song you might have heard but which you should download if you haven’t already.
Hello folks! You look lovely today, as always. My updates are still a little sporadic due to the process of changing where it is that I live from one place to a different place. However, I’ve managed to steal some internet from a local kebab shop by perching on the roof at nighttime, which has given me time to discover the video I’m about to post. Some of you might know that I recently played an event called Dust It Off at the Old Hairdressers, alongside Laura and Thom and Julia and the Doogans. Our performances were captured by the guys at LIVEFLY (you can watch Julia and the Doogans’ performance at this link here) and have recently been uploaded to their site. I was recovering from throat-and-chest-and-sinus badness at the time but I think I got away with it (apart from pointing it out) so I thought I’d share the video with you lovely lot.
Hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to comment/rate and whatnot.
Oh and yes, I did notice that it says “Shambless Miller” at the start. It’s true, I have no shambs to speak of. (This has been rectified, but I’m leaving this bit in because I like that shite joke. You understand.)
Hello folks! Hope you’ve all had a lovely Christmas with some lovely presents from Santa and lots of food and drink in yer bellies! I’ve had a great Christmas, but have slightly neglected my blog in favour of almost relentlessly playing Skyrim. I do apologise if you’ve had to hear me ramble about it or if you’ve doubted my sanity on twitter as a result of my #toomuchskyrim tweeting. Y’know, I used to update my blog regularly but then I took an arrow to the knee.
Despite my Skyrim-induced sloth however, other stuff has been happening. And stuff happened BEFORE Skyrim, I just forgot to mention it as I was all caught up in the drinking joy of the festive period. Firstly, this Christmas I played a gig in George Square! I even got a nice festive jumper for the occasion. It was a really fun gig and it still feels pretty amazing as a Glaswegian to be able to say I’ve played in George Square. An actual gig, not just busking round the peripherims across from Greggs! The other acts were great and I particularly enjoyed Tragic O’Hara’s set. As someone who enjoys attempting acoustic covers of hip-hop songs, his version of Shimmy Shimmy Ya was especially braw. As for me, my trusty pal Neil caught a wee video of me singing Rapture, here it’s here.
So what’s been happening round about me while I’ve been busy slaying dragons? Well, I was really excited to find out that I’ve been included in Tom Robinson’s Christmas mixtape on BBC 6 Music! It’s a selection of Tom’s favourite songs of the year and I’m really honoured to have been picked for it. The song Tom picked was “Things That Make Me Angry” which of course is still available as a free download through Strummerville.
Last but not least, since my last post about it, I’ve sold another couple of copies of my EP, “Shambles Sails the Clockwork Sea” and now there are only 4 copies left! I know it’s a long shot but I’d love to sell them out by the end of the year so if you’ve been thinking of getting one, now’s the time! You can purchase from this link here.
A big massive thanks to everyone who has helped me out this year, supported me, bought/downloaded my stuff or come to gigs. It’s been a great year and I hope to make 2012 even better! At the very least, I’ll buy an outlandish hat and strut around wearing it like I’m a PURE SOMEBODY. Or something.
You can tell from this picture of me and my daft haircut singing a song.
Hello folks! Has your hair always been that colour? It fair suits you. This week I’ve been thinking about twitter and facebook and all this social network malarkey, in relation to my music. You see, recently I met someone who followed me on twitter but didn’t realise I was musician, until a mutual friend brought him to one of my gigs. I was a little incredulous, after all, my twitter isn’t short of tweets about gigs and I do use it to promote my music and whatnot. My twitter avatar is even holding a guitar!
Look, just listen to the song. Don't make me hit you.
I had a similar experience one day in work, when I served someone I used to go to school with. We have each other as friends on facebook, but don’t tend to interact with each other via the site. We chatted briefly about what we’d been up to since school, and she seemed quite surprised to learn that I was a gigging musician, never mind that I had self-released a couple of EPs and was planning a single release.
It got me wondering however, about how many people that follow me on twitter, or who are friends with me on facebook, have actually heard my music. To be honest, I get the feeling that most of my active followers probably do know I’m a musician, but I suspect many of them haven’t got round to listening to my music yet. After all, I’ve often seen a band crop up on twitter and think “oh, I’ll need to listen to them sometime” but I often forget to until someone actually links me to their music. With this in mind, I thought I’d give an updated list of some of the places you can find my music online.
This is an invaluable tool for unsigned/independent musicians nowadays. Allows anyone to listen to your music, buy it if they want, and offers a very fair deal for the bands/artists who use it. It also allows you to embed the player into other sites, which is why you can not only listen to my music on bandcamp, but also on this very blog, AND of course, on everyone’s favourite evil digital empire…
Facebook, sneaky as it is, regularly finds ways to integrate with other useful sites. After all, you post a link to a youtube video and you can watch it right in your facebook feed. Well, you can also listen to music, via the likes of the aforementioned bandcamp, but also using something called Bandpage. Basically, if you go to an artist’s page on facebook, this application will allow you to listen to, share, download and buy music. Both bandcamp and bandpage options are available on my music page, so feel free to check it out.
A digital radio station for unsigned artists? If you’re looking for new music and haven’t heard of either Amazing Tunes or Amazing Radio, I recommend you have a listen. You can listen to songs whenever you like using their inbuilt player, or tune into one of their shows for some great music. My page is here, if that floats your musical boat.
I know that nowadays a lot of people just chuck a song title into youtube when they feel like listening to a particular song/band. Well, it’s no different for me. If you feel like checking out some live videos and/or me talking pish, there’s always my youtube channel.
So, lots of ways to stream my music online. You can also buy one of my CDs from bandcamp, or download a digital copy (which is a bit cheaper, if you’re not too bothered about owning the disc). But what if you’re not quite sure if you want to pay for stuff just yet? Well, for folks who like free stuff, you could check out my…
Well, funnily enough, all of the previous sites (apart from youtube) offer some ways to download some of my music for free. I also occasionally contribute the odd track to compilation CDs and monthly EPs, so you could keep an eye out for those. In the meantime, here are three of my free tracks currently doing the rounds:
Rapture
This is a little song I recorded recently about the end of the world and chatting up girls.
Things That Make Me Angry
This is the free track I offer through being a member of Strummerville DIY.
This is a live track, from Glasgow’s very own Words per Minute.
That about covers it for now I think! If you’ve never heard my music before, I’m genuinely greatful that you’ve taken the time to read through this, and I hope you’ll take the time to listen to at least one song. Might have even managed to surprise one or two of you who simply thought of me as a daft little cartoon man on twitter.
Shambles Miller's really really good website 