TuneCore - Tyler Bryant

I've gotta show my face sometime, huh? :)

New York has been a fantastic experience - it's been a lot of fun hanging out with the Belmont crew (Tori, Ashley, Emily, Shannon & Amy - yes as one unit, Jessica, Patrick my roomy, Ian, & Matt.Dowd). Shannon & Amy live below Patrick and I...and they've had to suffer a lot of unnecessarily loud and obnoxious noises from us over the past few months. Let me publicly apologize for that :)

TuneCore

While I've been up here, I've been interning at a digital music distribution company called TuneCore. TuneCore distributed independent artists' music to all the major digital stores, including iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, Napster, Shockhound, eMusic, etc... They handle about 150,000 artists' music on iTunes (that's a rough estimate). I'm their only intern and I've been treated just like a new member of their team, helping put together content for their newsletter and exploring different marketing strategies. I was originally given the task of finding articles for the newsletter, but soon found it was easier to write them myself than to track down other people to write them... Sooo, you can read a few of my articles here if you want:

Talk the Talk with Your Sound Engineer by Jake Hartsfield
The Producer's Checklist by Jake Hartsfield
Stay Hot in Online Marketing by Jake Hartsfield
Inside EQ - Keys to a Great Mix: Part I by Jake Hartsfield
Keys to a Great Mix: Part II by Jake Hartsfield

Tyler Bryant

Another large part of my existence this semester has actually been spent in various cities around the US, touring with an artist out of Nashville named Tyler Bryant. I'm currently his tour manager and front of house engineer (and marketing guru, online techie, graphic designer, etc..) I'd fly in to California, meet the band, run front of house sound for a few shows, hang out, then fly back to New York... I did this every weekend since I got up to NY until about 3 weeks ago when we all got a little break. But guess how many classes I've missed this entire semester? Only 3! :) Two of my good friends at Belmont actually started playing for Tyler back in March before they got me involved - Caleb Crosby (drums, junior at Belmont) and Calvin Webster (bass/vocals, junior at belmont. I started running Front of House sound for Tyler earlier this summer, and we toured along the west coast, down south, and on the upper east coast, opening for B.B. King, Styx, REO Speedwagon, and Heart, among others. My role with the band grew into tour manager as the summer progressed, and we're all just one happy little family now :)

Obviously, I wouldn't have been able to do any of this if it weren't for the Belmont East program. I may have had a stranger, more hectic, experience than most, but it really is what you make of it, and New York is a fantastic city to be a part of.

Peace,

Jake Hartsfield
jakehartsfield@gmail.com
http://jakehartsfield.com