3 Years of Updates in 1 Blog Post

Hey there,

Welcome to my blog, where you'll never really know what I'm gonna talk about next.

This blog post is an overview of what has happened with my career and my art in the past 3 years. I'm having to do this because I got so busy that I literally didn't write a single blog for 3 years. So here we go.

When I began writing blog posts back in 2017, I was just beginning my solo music adventure. The idea of releasing an album hadn't even crossed my mind yet, now look at this beautiful Album Art.

Back then, I was also really involved with the Facebook Art community, Badass Art Group aka BAAG. ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/badassart/ )

BAAG was a huge inspiration in my life.  Being surrounded by respectful, talented and professional artists was a truly positive experience.  It motivated me so much that it showed and I was made an admin for the group.

I was so inspired that I decided to launch our very own Live Art Gathering inside of the group.  This was an attempted to gather artists from around the world to art together. Let me point out, this was before Live Stream was popular.

I called it The Night Owl aka TNOL, since I am one.

My hopes was that people would join me on a video call and we would make art together; And it kind worked with a few people joining me a few times but it wasn't enough.  We needed more engagement so we decided to produce our very own Live Stream.

We kept the name and started going live.  We had no idea of the Live Stream world, live stream production or the use of Broadcasting software.

We learned on the go and the experience brought me and Nathan, the founder of BAAG, to a close friendship.

Here's some short clips of the show after we got it together.

Nathan and I are multi-talented individuals capable of running an entire production studio on our own and we are very business oriented so, the idea grew. 

Soon we would be talking about renting a physical location to be the home of Badass productions.

That's when things went crazy.

While meeting a potential client who was looking for a video producer, I was offered a space to run the studio.  In return, all we needed to do, is run all productions needed for the client's business. It was too good to be true.

I told the client I would need to speak to Nathan before making any decisions and next thing you know, the space was available to us.  

That was the birth of Badass Art Studio aka BAAS.

I immediately began working on the space as it needed to be repainted and setup, but it was too much for me to do alone, so Nathan came from Wisconsin to help out.

You can watch the video of that experience below.

Building the studio was an experience that will last a lifetime.  It was one of the best times of my life. I was working 16 hours a day but loved every minute of it.  

The studio went on to having several artists come in for Photography, Video Production and Live Recording.  Here's a little video from when we had a bunch of models come in for a Photoshoot.

Here are some picture that came out of that studio.

We even got to host The Night Owl a couple of times from the studio.

Unfortunately that dream would soon be crushed by the news that our landlord had been evicted due to late bills.

The news came in on a Sunday morning and within hours we had removed all our equipment and left the studio.

That afternoon, Nathan, who was already back in Wisconsin at this point, had to go live for The Night Owl on his own since I didn't have anything ready back at home.

It was a very sad moment for the two of us.

We were crushed. Here's the video he made that day. You can feel the pain. I gotta say I love this man for putting his soul into it as much as I did.

That event felt like a huge bolder had rolled into the road we were traveling and there was no way around it.  We had to back.  And back we did.

We went back to focusing on the TNOL and BAAG. Shortly after that commotion, I shot my first Wedding Video Production.

It was an amazing experience. I cried often while editing the video. It was beautiful. I made them a DVD so they could make copies and watch on their big tv. They loved it.

I was still making music but coincidentally, the father of the bride above, contacted me to collab on a song, now known as "Let's go out Tonight". This was my first collaboration and my first exposure to an outside opinion. Luckily to my surprise, Kevan, the bride's father, loved what I did with the song. So at this point there were an explosion of Live Stream Productions on Facebook.  They were and still are called Live Music Reviews. Perhaps I shouldn't call them all "Productions" as some of them are just someone sitting on their bed while smoking weed.

But this would become the first platform I would ever share my music with.  

The first Live Music Review I ever watched was Iron Throne Radio, with Nasseem El. 

I sent her the track "Let's go out Tonight" and she loved it. (btw the video below plays a really really old version of the song)

It was such a great feeling to share my music and get a positive reaction. I continued to share my tracks with other Live Review Shows and receive even better response from some of my songs, specially "The Table".

Now, if you are not an artist or musician you may not know this, but it is very difficult to get support as an artist or musician.  Specially from the people closest to you.

It is a harsh reality but one that you need to get used to.  Your biggest support will not come from those close to you.  Your biggest supporters will be complete strangers.  People you haven't even met in person.

Going back to that time though, I remember having a facebook rule.  I would not accept your friend request unless we had actually met in person.

That meant I only had a few of hundred friends on my friends list. This was also around the time I began expanding my production services to the world. 

So far I had only been working locally with clients in my surrounding area.

The more I produced, the more friend requests I got.  The more I shared my music, the more requests I got.  Specially because I began creating, designing and producing the Live Music Review Shows themselves.  

To create a portfolio in Live Stream Production, I gave Nick Visco's HipHop Shop ( https://www.facebook.com/nvthhs/ ) and LP's The Eargasm ( https://www.facebook.com/TheEargasmWLP/ ), a free Live Stream Upgrade. 

This helped them secure their spots as some of the best Live Music Review shows out there and that brought in a bunch of clients and even more friend requests. I ended up creating an ad for Live Stream Production Upgrades.

The upgrades got people interested and soon I would be producing the upgrade for Maze Radio, who is still to this day my most consistent client; but it wasn't enough. I knew that I needed to grow my network so I decided to just add every single Friend Request I had pending.

There were about 800 requests pending at this point. So I added them all.

This would be something I would regret later. I'll explain.

Most of these Live Music Review Shows were in the genre of Rap and HipHop, so most of my friend requests came from people in those genres.  Even though I have been in 2 HipHop/Rap bands as a drummer, I don't make Rap/HipHop.

I make/play pop, dance, rock, even folk/bluegrass, and many other genres but not Rap/HipHop.

This meant my news feed was very hard to relate to.

Most posts had nothing to do with what I was doing and when I tried sharing my music with review shows that were predominantly Rap, it was almost always not received well.

Not that the critiques bothered me. I just wanted to hear critiques from people who actually listen the type of music I'm making. So I have decided to do a purge.

Still haven't done it, but it has been decided that I will do it.

Talking about Rap; One new thing I did was collaborate in a Rap track for a contest in LP's The Eargasm. Genres and Topics were randomly selected, and I got, Gangster Rap. I had never done it but I feel like I did really well.

I got to be in the final 5 finalists but didn't win, of course. Check it out. It's funny as hell but it has a good message. I felt like so many Rap songs have terrible messages that do not help society at all, so I went the other direction.

But I continued to do Media Productions. Specially Graphic Design and after years of learning and producing media, I now have several portfolios for several different services I offer. Services include but are not limited to Logo Design, Live Stream Production, Web Design, Video Animations, Motion Graphics, Voice Over, Photography, Moving Pictures and bunch more. Here's my latest Demo Reel.

I have learned so many new skills during this time and I am very happy with who I have become.

My music is now in the process called, Mastering. It is the last step before distribution. The album is set to be distributed on all major platforms on March 1st, 2020.

So save up $10 - $15 bucks to buy a digital or physical copy. The website is officially www.mistermartinho.com and is now broken in 2 parts. The Producer Site and the Artist Site.

On the site you can view other productions, listen to my music, pre-order the album and even buy merchandise from my Society6 account. Some examples of merchandise below.

So now what?

While the CD is getting done, I am continuing to grow. 

Currently I am working on my biggest gig yet; Building an entire Online presence. That includes Website, Social Media and Merchandise; and this is just the beginning.

Once the album is released, I will begin the next phase in my music career, which is music videos.

I have been working with a writer on a side project for a couple of years now and I have hired him to merge that project with my music, which was kinda always the goal, except the project grew a lot. He will create all scripts for each song and I will produce them.  This will be a concept project.

While that is going on, I'm also going to invest a lot of time on education to learn everything about marketing. Then, I will invest a bunch of money on marketing.

There is also a new music project that I'll be working on with my good friend Que Pasza Figueroa.  I won't reveal the name yet but this will be nothing but uptempo party music with a multilingual Latin flavor to it.

Guys, I think this catches up. Phew.

If you are reading my blog for the first time, don't forget to check out the other blog post or just visit the website to see what's there.

www.mistermartinho.com

Also, if you want to get notified of my next blog post, make sure to sign up at the bottom of the main blog page. I gotta go now, but I'll see you later. Mr. Martinho