Brad Turcotte known by his stage name Brad Sucks is the name of the man behind the a lot of open source music and the creator of In4mador & Strip Creator. The guy who loves playing with sounds and the best is he loves his fans the most. The guy has been a part of Magnatune the open source record label and ccmixter, he allows free download of his music through his website.
Here he is interviewed by Axetue Founder Sandeep Shawn-Tripathy, another guy in the open source scenario where Brad speaks his mind about the current scenario and the future of open source music.
Q. You have been an integral part of the Open Source music movement. So what interests you so much that you tend to enter the open source industry than the regular music industry?
I’m not sure, it just made sense to me and continues to. It seemed like the easiest way to reach people and get my music out there and I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. I didn’t really think too much beyond that when I started.
Now that I’ve done it and had a few offers here and there from labels I’d say the main thing is I like the freedom & control and I don’t want to go into debt with a record label.
Q. You’re from the country that includes iconic Bryan Adams and Drake. So it’s quite obvious that Canadians know music well. What makes you write or make music? Is it like you tend to explain things from your daily life or is it just writing whatever you tend to?
I’ve been interested in writing music since I was a kid so I’m not sure what started all that. Music was just always really exciting to me.
As for writing, there’s part of me that likes to mess around with sound, come up with beats and melodies and put chords together. The other part is the lyrics which is usually me writing about stuff in my life but trying to make it general and broad so other people might relate to it. If it’s too specific to my life I find it annoying.
Q. As I read on your website I got to know that you have been using a lot of high quality professional stuff for your music such as the software which is Ableton Live and the rest. There are also others like Audacity or Sound Garden which is open source. As you are an integral part of open source universe [you use wordpress!] what makes you go ahead for the pay softwares than the open source ones?
The open source audio DAWs I’ve tried so far aren’t mature enough for me. As I’ve gotten older and am less poor I have zero patience for software and hardware that causes problems or hassles. If I get delayed while I’m trying to work, I’m basically the angriest person ever. While there are great examples of slick open source software, a lot of the time you have to fuss around under the hood to make things work intuitively and I don’t have the patience for that like I used to.
Q. You are the one who created stripcreator.com and in4mador. So are you into web development as well? If yes what other web dev projects are you into?
I started off writing and then became a web developer, trying to making creative stuff on the web. Stripcreator’s a site I did maybe ten years ago. Bradsucks.net is a heavily customized WordPress installation. I wrote my own digital download store and a bunch of other projects that I’ve open sourced. I still do some contract stuff on the side mostly for friends for extra cash.
Q. A very simple question. From where can an independent artist make money from?
Fans. Everything else is gravy.
Q. Although you have your songs distributed through your website which has an awesome interface still you are a signed up artist with Magnatune. So how is a record label helping you out? Or how can a record label help an open source musician?
Magnatune just lists my stuff on their website and sells and licenses it. It’s a non-exclusive deal so I’m free to sell my stuff wherever else I want (I just can’t sign other exclusive deals). There are no record advances or marketing budgets or anything like that. It’s about the same as being listed on Jamendo or something.
Q. Do you think that the music industry can go open source completely? As I don’t see anything wrong in this concept you are following and the mainstream industry right now is a type of “hectic” thing where the artists don’t have the rights to their songs.
I think it could go open source completely I guess, but I doubt it will. Artists are more independent now and will try different stuff to attract attention and earn money. I think it’s going to be a while before any single model dominates the way the last one did.
Q. Your favorite open source acts till now? [would be amazing if you include from the field of software and music].
I’m not really up on who’s doing open source music honestly. I just listen to whatever and I don’t know much about the ethics of the people behind it. Software though my favorites are Linux (for web servers, I don’t use it for my desktop), Apache, WordPress, jQuery.
Q. So do we see Brad soon with another album or still working on some innovative stuff?
I’m hoping the next record will be out later this year. Fall or Winter. But I tend to blow past my deadlines. I’m doing some shows this year with my live band and I’m slowly thinking about what sorta stuff I might like to work on after this record.
This was all he spoke about. Tune into one of his great songs at bradsucks.net
