Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well. This post is just to let you know I’ve released an EP containing 6 new songs. I call it: Head Space.
Your continued support means the world to me 🙂 Please consider buying the MP3 version from Bandcamp (at 10USD or more):
Or you can stream it on your favorite platform:
You can scroll to the bottom of this page to listen to my latest song, or read on through to get a sense of how I was inspired to make it.
I love Samba music. Years ago I was at a Venezuelan resort and heard an all percussion band play this style of music. (Although, from what I heard, Samba is typically from Brazil)
Here’s what a typical Samba beat sounds like:
Flash Forward to 2019, while watching Guillermo Del Toro’s movie ‘The Shape of Water’ I hear this little gem:
Carmen Miranda was a Brazilian (Portuguese Born) Singer and actress. She recorder this song in 1941 for her film ‘That Night in Rio’. The rhythm in this song is just so body-move inducing! I also love how she mimics the sounds of the bass drum and shakers using the words ‘Boom’ and ‘Chica’. To my ears, that’s an early form of beat boxing.
Now, about the track I made, well it had been sitting on my Hard drive for more than 2 years. Forgotten. I clicked on it by accident recently and thought it was nice.
I don’t remember much about it, but It’s definitely inspired by Brazilian samba rhythms and some of the words are surely inspired by Carmen’s song. I also remember I was in a creative head space when I made it, because I had just bought a new electronic instrument, the AKAI MPK mini controller and was making music while trying to figure out how to work the software that came with it.
I remember that I didn’t think this track was anything special. I probably thought it was too weird, like what style even is this? (I’d love to know you opinion on this if you have one, thks)
As far as lyrics go and what the song is about well, your guess is as good as mine on that one! 🙂 But it does seem to be about something light, festive even.
Thank you so much for your continued support 🙂
/RF
Have a listen to ‘Chika Pow Pow’ the latest single from Roxton Fone on Youtube:
The song is downloadable for a dollar on Bandcamp.
Also available for streaming on Spotify
Why is this an important milestone for me? Because 1000 is the minimum number of plays one needs, before Spotify starts displaying the counter along side each track.
At this point you might be curious to hear what it sounds like, well you can listen right here:
It wasn’t easy and it took a long time to get there. As far as marketing goes, I was promoting this song using a service called Submithub. It’s a website that connects artists and taste makers (Mostly bloggers and Spotify playlisters). I got lucky, and was given a spot on a popular Spotify playlist which grew my audience considerably.
I’m not at a point where I can make a living off of my royalties yet (Far from it, I should say) but for an amateur musician like me, who only a few years ago saw professional music making as just an unrealistic pipe dream, there is a glimmer of hope.
The next image shows my all time stream statistics, on Spotify. The x-axis shows time strating from 2015 when I started, and goes all the way to today. The y-axis shows the number of daily number of plays from 0 to 100.
It took a whole year before I started seeing activity on this graph. Since 2016, my daily stream count has been growing steadily. It’s still only about a few streams each day (with some exceptions). I’m hoping for a break out song, something to drive my stats upwards, or maybe I’ll be improving my marketing skills and find new and better ways to get exposure.
Thank you for reading. If you’d like to support my work or simply hear more music, I have a Bandcamp page setup where it’s easy to stream, download and leave tips. → Bandcamp
Hello! I’m Roxton Fone. Before I started making music full time, I worked in tech. I remember how helpful it was to have a good instrumental playlist (Or a stack of CDs) on hand to listen to while coding or doing work that requires a lot of concentration. And so I used that experience to make this Science themed music album, I called: “Background Radiation”. Its clearly Electronic music, but NOT dance music. It’s rooted in Rock, Blues and Progressive-Rock music.
Track list:
0:00 Cosmic Rays
4:21 String Theory
10:15 Red Shift
14:46 Background Radiation
19:50 James Clerk Maxwell
23:51 Sun Spots
You can find it on Spotify too:
All the songs in this playlist follow one simple rule: The song must start with drums, and drums only. I went a bit further in my selection though, rejecting songs that start with drum rolls, or snare intros and choosing the ones with at least one or two bars of the main beat.
I’m always looking for suggestions and ideas for this playlist, If you’d like new songs added, just leave a comment and I’ll have a listen.
Roxton Fone 