Measuring success is a weird thing. Basically because measuring success really comes down to what you as a person think is the definition of success. Thus far through my music career, the majority of time I measured success by thinking it came down to one moment something big happening that propels you into this universe where it’s everything you always wanted. What I realized, and am still realizing is that there are so many ways to measure success. And they don’t always have everything to do with your professional career, but through these other “life” successes, brings you closer in a roundabout way to being what you see as successful as a whole, which I think is most important.
I have a good friend who is a professional life coach of sorts. He and his wife are very successful people. So much so that if I gave you their names to google, it’d make your head spin. That said, my friend called the other day just to talk. We talked about life, music, success and what it meant to be a good human being. Yup, it was one of those conversations. My friend is about twenty years older than I am and has been around. He’s come from having nothing to having pretty much everything he’s ever wanted and he pays it forward. They have a wonderful family, a couple of houses to speak of, and some famous and powerful friends. And you’d never know it. My friend said to me ” what the hell is the use of having these things and knowing the things I know if I don’t pay it forward”. Right there I realized how you measure success.
Towards the end of the conversation he said to me “Son, (he calls me son. Very endearing) when things are tough and not going your way, don’t curse the dark, just light a candle. When youre heart is right Mike, you cannot lose.” Was one of those moments that hit me that I was talking to someone who cared about life and others in such a selfless way, and I was lucky enough that he wanted to share that with me.
What does this have to do with Fission Music? Everything. I titled one of our new songs “Heart Is Right”.
Be good to each other.
Thanks for reading
MP

It’s 10:45pm new years eve 2011. Don’t think I’ve seen 12am for years now. Don’t think I will tonight either.
Let me tell you. I’ve got an incredible wife and two amazing little girls. I thank God for everything we have as well as the blessings to come in 2012.
There is NO DOUBT that Fission Music will go big in 2012. Yup. Pretty ballsy of me to say but I believe it. The steps we’ve taken in 2011 and the people we have met and started relationships with is hard proof that we are moving quite quickly.
That said. Steve and I are blessed with our lives, families and each other. We are thankful to be able to make music together and it will only get better next year, which at this point is in about sixty eight minutes.
I’m goin to bed.
Be safe.
Happy New Year gang.
MP

Got a call from our friend Michael at NBC last week asking us to throw our hat in the ring to write an opening theme for a new show on the Style Network called “The Amanda’s”. Steve and I started coming up with ideas to send over per the specifics of what they were looking for. After about a solid week of phone calls, emails and changes, we got the call yesterday that Fission Music got the gig. NBC titled the theme “The Amanda’s (Theme) and now we are off and running. No vocals to the theme, just music. The show airs Christmas night, this Sunday at 8pm on the Style Network. Not a bad way to end 2011 :) Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all! Mike and Steve

Anyone who knows me knows I’m kind of a sappy person. Heart on the sleeve, blah blah blah. Anyway, being that it’s December 1st I was reflecting on the past year as the majority of us do.
Although it seems we always want more and more out of life, which of course is a good thing, it’s really important to realize what you have NOW. Living in the moment I admit I’m not too good at but I am trying to get better. My point is my life is pretty great. What does this have to do with Fission Music? Well, my company and my songwriting partner are one of the big reasons I can say this with confidence.
Fission Music, and the collaboration between Steve and I is something I’ve never been a part of until now. Everything in its own time they say. The creative magic (yes I said magic) is not something that happens too often or sometimes at all for creative people. It’s hard to collaborate with someone. It either works or it doesn’t. And I am lucky enough that it did with Steve and I. We’re always writing. We have a bunch of great songs that are just waiting to go to the right artists. And we are always trying to be innovative. I look at songwriter/producers like Dr Luke, and Benny Blanco for example and get so psyched at the fact that Steve and I are close to being in that position. When it works it works and it’s moving pretty fast for us. You can just feel it and it’s exciting.
So let’s back pedal for a moment. Steve represented us at the awards show in LA I mentioned in my last post. Well, we didn’t win the award we were nominated for. No biggie. Too be honest, the meeting that Steve had with a person that I cannot name at the moment ( what a jerk I am) was worth the trip to LA and that happened a few hours after Steve got there. Not to mention that the other meetings Steve had on our behalf went just as well. LA has been good to us so far. We will be back there around springtime. In the meantime, “supernova”, “gravity” and “stay” are some of the most recent songs we are working on. Can’t wait to post these babies on the site.
Well, I wish everyone that reads this a safe and happy holiday season. 2012 is gonna be bangin!
MP

A friend of mine has a friend that works for Narragansett beer company. I was thrilled when he brought over about two or three cases (I can’t remember…it was a great party) of the stuff. I could hardly fit it all in my “beer” fridge in my basement. It was a sight.

So I’m here in my studio right now, drinking one of the last remaining and realize that I freakin love what I do. The music business is probably the worst business in so far as actually being lucky enough to make a career out of it, but it’s incredible. The business of music sucks. Any musician will tell you that. But being creative, writing songs, performing…all the things that come along with it is a blessing. I know that for me, every other day I think what a terrible songwriter I am, what a mediocre musician I am, etc. It’s pretty silly. And that’s the beauty. All creative people go through the same thing at one time or another, or every two weeks or so :) BUT! There is nothing better than your heart and your soul expressing your life in song. I can’t explain it fully but it’s a great feeling. Love what you do. We only go around once so make it count. Fight do be who you are with everything you have. It’s worth it.

So on to Fission biz. Steve is flying out to LA on Thursday to attend the HMMA’s. Hoping we win for Best Pop Song but it’s great just to be nominated. Yeah, right! We want the win. It’ll look good on our website :) We’ve set up a couple of meetings for Steve while he’s out there. Looking forward to hearing all about. I can’t make it this time around which is a bummer. Steve will kill it though. Our LA rep and marketing guru Christine will be hanging as well. Christine by the way is one of the most amazing marketing people you’ll ever meet. If you want someone on your side fighting for you, telling everyone how great you are, it’s Christine.

So, there you have it. Thanking God for my amazing wife and kids. Enjoying my Narragansett. Loving my life. It’s a great night.

MP

So I usually write about songs that Steve and I are working on or cool things that are happening with Fission Music, but tonight I’m just going to write about my week. That said, my week is constantly thinking about Fission and how my dream is to make Fission Music my living. I’ve always had to work a day job as I haven’t been able to break in to this business yet. The plus side is that writing with Steve and connecting with the people we have makes me feel it’s coming very soon, however, each day feels like a waiting game. I’m so used to it at this point it’s very normal, but every once in a while I get a little neurotic and desperate about that fact that I’m not there yet. For those of you who know this business, if you’re good at what you do, there are a lot of close calls and “almost there” moments. Maybe that movie “Almost Famous”? Well there you go. Over the past few weeks, there has been something going on with Fission that could be a real solid beginning for us if it works out. I of course don’t want to mention anything because nothing has really happened yet but there is a “possibility”. Sorry for the lack of details. Could turn out to be nothing but the remote possibility that it could work out has made me kind of neurotic and obsessed this week. I don’t like feeling like I’m counting on anything, but the thought of it gets me psyched. Funny cause I was telling Steve I feel like an obsessed boyfriend about this possible business opportunity. Constantly checking my email, wondering what is going to happen. Has kept me up at night this week. I hate it. The plus side is that Fission Music’s catalogue is steadily growing and our brand is getting out there all the time. Our songs are defining us as a songwriting/production team and we definitely have a sound and style to out writing. Even though we are positioned as a songwriting team, having a sound is important because even if you’re writing for different artists, etc, it helps the business execs separate you from the other songwriters out there. So I get home from work on Friday and there is a gift from our rep in LA, Christine. It’s a gift to my new born daughter. It’s a poem about my daughter that incorporates all the songs in the Fission Music catalogue right now. Pretty spectacular. Steve knew Christine was sending it over and he said something to the effect of, you know that the gift is going to mark a special time in Fission’s history. Made me realize that regardless of how I was feeling about this one possibility, that there are two people, my team, that know that we are destined for something big. With persistence and drive, we’ll be there. And of course a lot of hit songs. Am I still being neurotic about this possible business deal?……… Of course. MP

Steve and I have been working a lot to finish up a few songs that we have been working on over the last month or so. I know I have said this before, but we are SO lucky to have ideas keep flowing out of us. All it takes is a small spark to light the way. Meaning all it takes is a killer idea from either one of us, then we seem to be off and running. They’ve come in abundance lately it seems.

We just recently posted a new song called “Cowboy Down”. I came up with this idea soon after our first LA trip. We had been discussing our songs with Sony Pictures, and the show “Breaking Bad” came up in conversation, as it’s one of the Sony Pictures TV shows. Steve absolutely loves that show and I have just started watching it myself. If you have not seen “Breaking Bad”, definitely check it out because it’s probably one of the best shows on television. That said, I was thinking about that show a lot once we were back from LA, and this idea hit me so I tracked a rough of the just the acoustic and a scratch vocal. Melody but no lyrics. I recently brought it up to Steve again as we had been working on other material for the past few months, and we both agreed we needed to get this song going. My working title was “Cowboy Down” for whatever reason and it just stuck. We both felt this song needed to stay short, but very raw. “Breaking Bad” was certainly the inspiration once I started writing lyrics and we recorded it. I’ll usually record scratch vocals for Steve just so he can hear the lyrics I have written for something. Once we agree on the lyrics, I track the vocals for real. But every now and again the scratch vocals have this magic to them that we just feel fits the song so well that we end up keeping them for the final mix. It happened with “Cowboy Down”. Steve sent me a re-recorded version of the music I sent over. Mine just had an acoustic guitar but he re-recorded the guitar so it sounds like an old blues guitar, and put some other really cool effects on the track. It stepped it up 100%. I was so excited about what he did to it, that I had to at least write the lyrics and record a scratch vocal for him to hear. I was so exhausted the night I recorded them that my voice had this really raw quality to it. Certainly was not a perfect vocal, but that was the beauty of it. We ended up keeping it for the final mix. Short, sweet and raw. We actually mixed and mastered it ourselves. We don’t usually do that as we have people that will mix the vocals, then another engineer that will master the track. This time around it was purely us. I have to say, it’s a really cool tune and something different for us to add to our catalogue. Check it out when you can. It’s on the site right now.

We are also currently working on an idea that was based off of something that sounded like a Cars song. I sent over to Steve and we did the usual back and forth as we needed a solid pre chorus and chorus. It’s cool to hear an idea come from one of us, then see what the other does with that idea as you’re not ever creatively coming from the same place. It’s kind of like a cool game of creative ping pong. I’m working on the lyrics right now as we have agreed on the music.

Oh yea, and I think last post or the one before that I had mentioned we were working on a tune with the working title of “Funkza”. Yup, got that one done. It’s now called “Detonator”. These newer songs will be on the site as soon as we get a couple of licenses and make some money to finish them and post them. That should be happening soon.

If you happen to be a music supervisor for “Breaking Bad” and have read this blog, check out “Cowboy Down”. We think you’ll like it :)

Lastly, Steve will be going out west next month for the HMMA Awards, in which we are nominated in the Pop category for Best Pop Song. Our rep Christine and Steve will be walking the red carpet and hitting the Kodak Theatre for the awards show. Would be cool if we won. I told Steve that because I can’t go with him, he should Face Time me if we win and bring me up on the stage with him. Hold his iPhone up on the podium with my face pointing towards the audience. But he would have to be as serious as anything. That’s key. Would freak a lot of people out but I bet they wouldn’t forget who Fission Music was :)

Until you read again….

MP