Sinch is making a fan-funded album

  1. 1 Contribute

    Choose your level of involvement using the form on the right. For only $10 you'll get a free high-quality download of the album as soon as it's released.

    Read more below about how it all works

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    Latest update
    Aug 28, 2010 Jamie and Tony on Loud and Local Sunday (8/29) Night

  3. 3 Promote

What is all this?

We’re making a new album and we’re doing it without a record label. (Wait, who’s making a new album?) We’ve been down that road a couple different times and a couple different ways (major vs. indie) and we finally decided to get back to what’s important: making music that we’re excited about and getting it out to our fans.

Do The Math: No label = no label money = no label shenanigans

OK, so we all love to bash record labels, but there’s (at least) one thing they’re really good at: writing checks.

No label = no checks. But all is not lost.

More Math: The band + the fans = GETTING IT DONE!

We know there are a lot of people out there who are waiting to buy our new album. You might be one of them. We figured if we could get you to throw some of your hard earned money our way now, we can use it to make the album and then when it’s done, you get it for free. Genius, right?

And if you’re feeling generous and would like to give more than the price of a typical album, we put together a list of stuff you can get in return.

How does it work?

It’s pretty simple actually.

You pledge some money to support the project and, depending on how much you want to put in, you get some stuff in return.

Pledge $10.00 or more…
You’ll get an email when we’re done with a link to download the new album in pretty much any digital format you can think of. MP3, FLAC, ACC, Apple Lossless… we’ve got it all covered.
Pledge $25.00 or more…
You’ll also get the CD version delivered straight to your door. If you don’t have a door we’ll deliver it wherever you want.
Pledge $50.00 or more…
Your CD will be signed and numbered and we’ll throw in a brand new Sinch mini-poster (11×17)
Pledge $100.00 or more…
You’ll also get a brand new limited-edition Sinch T-shirt and another (yes, brand new) full size poster (18×24 – signed and numbered of course)
Pledge $500.00 or more…
On top of all the stuff we’ve already mentioned you’ll get a behind the scenes, making of the album video that we’re putting together specifically for this. We might even mention you in it! Oh and if you like we’ll call you personally (or send an email or a letter) to thank you for helping us make this happen.
Pledge $5000.00 or more…
You get everything mentioned plus you’ll be listed as an “Executive Producer” on the album, an autographed guitar that Tony used on the self titled album (don’t get too excited, it’s broken), an autographed cymbal personally cracked by Dan and probably some other awesome stuff that we haven’t even thought of yet. Basically if you pledge at this level, tell us what you’d like from us and we’ll see if we can make it happen.

Why are we doing this?

We’ve been playing music and putting out albums for over 15 years now. We’ve put stuff out on major labels, on indie labels and even on our own. There have been good and bad things in every case, but when we stop and ask ourselves what we really want to do the answer is pretty simple:

We want to keep making music, have fun doing it and get it out to everyone who wants to hear it.

At one time it would have been really hard to do that without signing with a label but that’s not the case anymore. The fact that you’re even reading this right now means that we no longer need them to connect with you. The thing we need and what labels can provide is money.

We need money to pay for studio time, equipment, manufacturing CDs and everything else that goes into this. And labels aren’t the only people with money. In fact, I bet you have money. Most people do. And if you and the rest of our fans all throw in a little bit of your money, we’ll have more than enough to make this work.

Who Are We?

If this is your first time checking us out you’re probably asking yourself all the typical questions: What kind of music do you play? Who do you sound like? How much can you bench? Have you seen that video where these three guys are trying to get this horse to — alright, alright, we know you have a lot of questions. Let’s take it one step at a time.

Asking someone in a band to describe what kind of music they play is like asking a pot dealer what kind of weed he’s selling. All the answers are bullshit and no one really cares anyway as long as it’s good. And the only way to know if it’s good is to get yourself a taste.

This is our last full length album, Clearing the Channel (2005):

<a href="http://music.sinch.net/album/clearing-the-channel">Silence Broken by Sinch</a>

This one is an EP and it’s a bunch of “reinterpretations” of songs from Clearing the Channel:

<a href="http://music.sinch.net/album/subdivisions-ep">Circles by Sinch</a>

This is a live album that features songs from both Clearing the Channel and our self titled album that was released by Roadrunner Records in 2002:

<a href="http://music.sinch.net/album/live-cuts-2005-the-album">To Die In Fall (Live) by Sinch</a>

  • Jamie and Tony on Loud and Local Sunday (8/29) Night

    Posted on August 28, 2010 by Dan

    94WYSP LogoThis Sunday night (8/29) Jamie and Tony will be joining Spike on Loud and Local on 94 WYSP to talk about the new album and play some songs. You might even hear some new stuff (oh em gee)! The show starts at 9pm EST and if you’re not in there area you can listen live on the station’s website

  • A Long-Awaited Update

    Posted on August 25, 2010 by Dan

    Things have been pretty quiet around here since we launched the new site so it’s about time for an update.

    If you tried visiting this site or our main site in the last few weeks your browser may have blocked you, saying that the site was “malicious”. I can guarantee you the site is in fact not “malicious” and we are working to get everything back up and running. What had happened was, a malicious, dirty, evil douchebag of a hacker took advantage of some sort of vulnerability in our set up and was able to inject some malicious, dirty, evil code into our WordPress installation. Google detected this and added us to their block list, which is used by some browsers to block sites that may be harmful.

    As a temporary solution I moved the new site over to one of our other domains (sincharmy.com), which is where you are now, and redirected all traffic from http://sinch.net to the new location. So, for the time being, most of sinch.net, except for the music store, is inaccessible. Things will hopefully be back to normal soon.

    Who gives a shit? What’s Going on with the album?

    Right. The new album.

    Things are moving along. We’re making progress. I know we’ve been working on this thing for a long time now and some of you are probably wondering what’s going on. Maybe you’re even regretting your donation because you didn’t think it would take this long. We can totally understand that. Honestly I didn’t think it would take this long either. We’ve also been frustrated at times with the pace of the recording, but we’re doing this outside the label system and with a much smaller budget than what you would get on a label. We have to just take things as they come and keep pushing forward.

    Some of you may think that being in this band is our full time job but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. We all have full time jobs outside of the band and have for quite a while now. Trying to complete a project like this that would normally take up to two months (or more) of 10-12 hour days in the studio with the amount of time we actually have has been challenging. I try not to focus on stuff like this most of the time, but I think it’s something we need to revisit every once in a while just so everyone knows where we’re at.

    Having said that we’ve made pretty good progress and we’re pushing things forward every week. Drums are done. Bass is done. Guitars are most of the way there, aside from some stuff we may want to add once we get into mixing. Vocals have been the main focus lately and Jamie has 7 or 8 of the songs most of the way there and will be moving on to the rest within the next week or so.

    Something we may not have mentioned before is that we’re recording 13 songs for this album. So it’s going to be bigger and longer than anything we’ve done before (that’s what she said). We’re anxious to get it done but we also want to get it right. This may seem like it’s taking forever. OK, it actually is taking forever. But just know that we’re doing everything we can to make sure that when it’s finally done and in your hands that it’s something that it’s as good as it can possibly be.

  • Welcome to the New Website!

    Posted on July 2, 2010 by Dan

    After almost a year and a half of running this project out of our online store we thought it was finally time to give the project the respect it deserves. And by that of course I mean we decided to give the project its very own website. What better way is there to measure our respect of something then whether or not that something has its own website? I know I can’t think of one.

    We hope the new site has everything you could ever ask for, or at least enough to satisfy all your donating-to-Sinch related needs. Let’s have a look at some of the new stuff we got going on here:

    New Widget

    If you look over on the right you’ll see the new donation “widget”, made possible by a new company in the Philly area called ENJYN. Their service is specifically made for artists to raise money from their fans so it’s much better suited to this project than the old Chip In widget. We were able to import all of our existing data so the new widget reflects all the donations going back to when we first started this project in 2008.

    Before we continue, a moment of silence for the ol’ Chip In widget…

    … OK, that’s done. Let’s move on.

    Promotional Tools

    If you want to help us promote this project (and we’re pretty sure sure you do), there’s a bunch of new stuff on the Project Info tab to get you started. You can “Like” this on Facebook (you can do that up in the header too), “retweet” this site or share the link on pretty much any other social network you can think of (and even some that you can’t). We’ve also provided the embed code for the donation widget in all its copy-and-paste-able glory if you’d like to add it to your own site.

    Progress Updates

    We’ve been keeping everyone (pretty much) updated on the main Sinch site, but now that we have a site specifically for this project it totally makes sense that the updates would be here as well, right? Well here they are. (You’re reading the first one right now!)

    Comments

    Our Chip In page has comments but I don’t think most people saw them because they don’t show up anywhere on our site. I honestly kept forgetting they even existed so they obviously needed a new home. Now you can comment right on this site and everyone will see it and you’ll be the most famous person in the goddamn universe (if only for a thousand millionth of a half of a nanosecond). Plus, we like to see the comments and join in the discussion so it’s much better having everything all in one place, isn’t it? Yes, it is. You’re welcome.

    If this is your first time on any of our sites then this is all new to you anyway and probably doesn’t make much difference. We hope you enjoy it all the same.

  • New Album Guitar Tracking Video

    Posted on May 29, 2010 by Dan

    SINCH – New Album Guitar Tracking on Viddler

    The following footage is of the studio sessions we spent tracking guitar for our new fan funded album. These sessions took place sporadically between the dates of October 2009 – February 2010.

  • Donations Are Still Going, Will Be Back Up Soon

    Posted on May 6, 2010 by Dan

    The donation widget we’ve been using (from ChipIn) says that the event has ended but that’s only because they have a time limit on events and we somehow let ours run out. The event has not ended. There’s still time to get involved. We’re just taking the opportunity to regroup, set up a new and improved donation widget and a whole new mini-site dedicated to this project (coming soon).

    We’re reorganizing things a bit for a final big push to try to hit our goal of $20,000. Although we’re only a little more than half way there I think we can make it happen. So far we’ve raised over $10,000 from the donations of just 233 people. I don’t think it’s ridiculous to think that there are another 200 Sinch fans out there that want to get involved and help make this happen.

    If you’re here to donate, all is not lost. Things will be up and running again very soon. Sign up for our mailing list, follow us on Twitter or Like us on Facebook to stay in the loop and be one of the first people to be notified when the new donation site is up.

  • Studio Dates Scheduled For February

    Posted on February 8, 2010 by Dan

    The past couple months were kinda slow in the getting shit done department. With the holidays and some other scheduling conflicts we only managed to get in a few weekends of actual recording. The good news is we’re closing in on finishing up guitars and have the rest of the days we need scheduled for this month. After that we move on to vocals.

    We would absolutely love to be getting this done faster but everyone involved in this project has other things going on where they actually make the money needed to survive. The donations we’ve received go a long way towards paying for the new album, but that’s all we’re using it for. When it comes to rent/bills/etc, everyone’s kinda on their own. So whether its fishing for Alaskan King Crab or doing pet dry cleaning for the rich and famous… we gotta do what we gotta do.

    I’m hoping that playing rock music will someday be a viable career option. Until then it’s more like playing the lottery and winning just enough to buy some more lottery tickets.

  • Upcoming Studio Sessions

    Posted on November 19, 2009 by Dan

    We nailed down some more recording days over the next month or so. The live stream will probably be up for most of them so remember to check in and see what we’re up to. Here’s the schedule:

    Sunday Nov. 22 @ 11am
    Monday Nov. 23 @ 7pm
    Monday Nov. 30th @ 7pm
    Wednesday Dec. 2nd @ 7pm
    Saturday Dec. 19th @ 11am
    Sunday Dec 20th @ 11am

    The best way to get notified when the stream goes live is to follow us on Twitter. If you’re not into Twitter, you can still find our latest update here on the site (in the right sidebar) or over on our Facebook page.

    You can also stay updated through email by signing up for our newsletter.

  • Photos From The Studio

    Posted on October 14, 2009 by Dan

    We’re keeping all of our photos from the studio in this Flickr set. We just added some from last weekend’s guitar sessions.

    Here it is as a sweet slideshow:

  • Back In Studio This Weekend To Record Guitars

    Posted on October 9, 2009 by Dan

    A little later tonight Tony will be back in the studio to start recording guitar tracks. We have some logistical issues to work out so the stream may be up starting tonight or it may have to wait until tomorrow. Recording will be going on all weekend so either way there will be something to watch at some point. Tonight there will likely be a lot of knob fiddling and what have you before actual recording starts so you might not end up missing too much.

    See if the stream is live here »

    Blurry Tony recording guitar scratch tracks

    Oh and we kinda just launched a new music store last night and released a (sort of) new album. Check it out.

    We’ll have more info on that soon. It was kind of a “soft launch” with minimal fanfare, mainly because we just don’t have to time to create much fanfare these days. But it’s live and open for “bizness.” We now have all of our releases (except the self titled album) available directly from us.

  • Drum Tracking Now Quasi-Complete

    Posted on August 24, 2009 by Dan

    You knew it wouldn’t be that easy.

    So, the plan is to record 15 songs. We’ve finished recording drums for 13 of them. The last two need a bit more “finishing up” than we thought, so we decided to move on to recording bass. In the meantime, we’ll work on the unrecorded songs on our own time instead of trying to figure things out in the studio. There’s plenty of work to do with the 13 song we have, so things will keep moving forward. Unfortunately for the studio journal that means we can’t quite call the drums completed yet.

    If you’ve been watching the live stream, we commend you on your patience and willingness to endure less than stellar audio and video quality. We’re working on a new streaming method that should improve things a bit. During the last drum session I thought I had it set up right, but I heard from a bunch of people after the fact that it wasn’t working. Apologies for the non-functioning stream that night. The good news is that we just uploaded a full take of one of the songs we recorded last week. It was “filmed” with a better-than-webcam-quality camera so you can actually see (and hear) what’s going on.

    Gods and Profits (Full Length Drum Take)

    And in his free time, Mike put together this video and set it free on the information superhighway. Surf on over and check it out. (Or just click play)

  • Drums Still Semi-Complete, Not For Long

    Posted on August 17, 2009 by Dan

    Things have been kinda quiet around here studio-journal-wise. A few of our vacations happened to be scheduled right around the same time so we haven’t back in the studio except for a day last week where Rob and I did some drum comping. That’s where we go through all the takes of each song and put together a final master take with the best parts from all the takes.

    The good news is we’ll be back in the studio starting tonight and every night thereafter until Wednesday night, at which point we will hopefully be done recording drum tracks. We’ll be streaming live again at Ustream.TV. If you donated $25 or more you should have received an email with instructions on how to view the live stream. If you didn’t get an email about this, please let us know.

    To put that in a format that’s a little easier to read, here’s the schedule for this week:

    • Monday, August 17 @ 7pm ’til ???
    • Tuesday, August 18 @ 7pm ’til ???
    • Wednesday, August 19 @ 7pm ’til ???

    Even if you didn’t donate at the $25 level, we still have some cool stuff that everyone can check out including a video that Mike put together of the drum sessions so far (DV quality, not from the stream footage) and the recorded versions of past streams.

    Here’s Mike’s video:

    And here’s the latest recording we have from the live stream. More can be found on our Ustream videos page.

  • Time Lapse Videos From The Studio

    Posted on July 12, 2009 by Dan

    While we were recording drums, Jay set up some cameras and did some really cool time lapse videos of us.

    More videos at Sinch TV »

  • Drums Are Semi-Complete

    Posted on July 11, 2009 by Dan

    On Saturday June 27 we officially started tracking for our new album.

    Recording drums

    Equipment was loaded in. A web cam was set up. Drums were tuned and miked. Guitar amps were put into isolation booths so as to not record guitars through the drum mics as that would be counterproductive and would have rendered the drum tracks somewhat useless. With guitar and bass sounds safely being piped through our headphones (so we can all hear what’s going on) we warmed up a bit and started recording.

    Recording drums, overhead shot

    I didn’t keep exact track of what order we recorded songs in or on what days, but I do know we started with a song that, as of right now, is called Gods and Profits. Or Gods and Prophets. Honestly I hadn’t really thought about it until I had to actually spell it. The first song is always a little weird because I’m still settling into the studio, getting used to the sound in the headphones and the click track (although we had been practicing with a click for a while before going in). But I got through it (obviously) and started banging shit out.

    Rob in the control room

    Over that weekend and a few follow up sessions on weekday evenings we got the drums for 11 songs recorded. These are all working titles, and some of them are obviously going to be changed.

    • Gods and Profits
    • Targets on the Range
    • Cause and Effect
    • Thizzle
    • Over-medication
    • One Part Deal
    • Easier Said Than Done
    • Instructions How to Die
    • Pancake Day
    • One More Time
    • Speaking in Code

    Another overhead shot of the live room

    Because of some scheduling issues we had to end this session without getting drums for all 15 new songs. Basically that means we had to take down the kit and move all our stuff out of the tracking room, so we’ll have to set it all up again later to get the rest of the songs done. In the meantime, we’re gonna start recording bass for the 10 we do have.

    We’ll be coming back in sometime in August for Drum Session #2. The songs we still need are Novelty, Pullest of Tubes, Greenlight, Shine and we may revisit Gods and Profits since it was the first song I did and my playing got better over the course of the session.

    Again, we can’t thank everyone enough for helping to make this possible. We’re so excited to be finally getting some stuff recorded and really happy with what we’ve got so far. This is only the beginning.

    A blur of drum recording

    Mike playing rough bass tracks

    Tony recording rough guitar tracks

    More photos from the studio »

  • Recording Sessions Will Begin June 27

    Posted on June 2, 2009 by Dan

    We can finally confirm the date we’ll start recording the new album: Saturday, June 27

    Sweet Creek Sign

    As usual, we’ll be recording the drums first. We’re hoping to get all the drums tracked in the first two days, which is about how long it it took on Clearing the Channel. A good chunk of the first day will be spent setting up, micing the kit and getting the sounds we want. It’s a riveting process that I’m sure you won’t want to miss.

    And if you’re one of the lucky fans who donated $25 or more, you’ll have access to a live stream from the studio all weekend long. You’ll be getting an email sometime before that weekend with details on how to access the live stream. And if you’re not one of the lucky ones who donated enough to get access, there’s still plenty of time to get on that list. Just head over to the donations page for more info on how to get involved.

  • In Which We Approach The (Virtual) Event Horizon

    Posted on April 30, 2009 by Dan

    Donate by Mindful One on Flickr

    First things first: We have pushed back the end date (it was May 5, 2009) from our donation project and added a target amount ($20,000).

    We’ve received emails from a lot of people suggesting that we add a target amount, even if it ends up being more than we actually need. Realistically we could spend any amount of money, but I think we’ve come up with a number that (if reached) would allow us to get a great quality recording and still have enough left over to do something really cool and unique with the CD packaging and other rewards that everyone’s getting for donating.

    I originally just picked a date that was months in the future, but May 5 had no particular significance. It was really just a random date. We do plan on starting the actual recording soon and can easily get started with the amount that people have pledged already.

    It’s been pushed back to Dec 31 only because they force you to choose a date. I guess you can’t let a ChipIn campaign go on indefinitely, not that we would want to anyway.

    We’re all really excited to start recording and are incredibly grateful to everyone who’s donated so far. It’s really going to allow us to focus on the music rather than having to worry about where we’re gonna get money from every time we want to use some studio time.

    Thanks so much from all of us.

    (If anyone has any questions about this please let us know. We already have a few questions we’re gonna answer here on the blog very soon, but feel free get in touch with more. I know it’s a little weird to change the parameters of this thing after people have already donated so we definitely want to know if anyone has concerns about that.)

  • Help Us Get The New Album Made

    Posted on January 24, 2009 by Dan

    We are getting ready to start recording a brand new full length album. Since we are no longer supported by a record label, we’ll be paying for everything ourselves.

    Be a part of Sinch history and help us get this album made!

    The more money we raise, the faster we can finish the album and get it released. Any amount is welcome, from $10 to $10,000 (or even more if you’re super rich and want to executive produce the album!)

    With your donation of $10 or more, you’ll be able to download the new album for free as soon as its released. You’ll also be immortalized on our website with your name listed among all the supporters that made the new album possible!

    We are also thinking about other ways of giving back for larger donations. Nothing has been decided yet, but some of the ideas are:

    • Signed and numbered CD version of the album shipped to you on the release date.
    • Signed and numbered T-shirt not available anywhere else shipped to you on the release date.
    • Signed and numbered poster not available anywhere else shipped to you on the release date.
    • A phone call from a member of the band thanking you for your contribution
    • Free all-access tickets to one of our shows
    • A day in the studio
    • An acoustic performance at your home
    • A full band performance at your home or nearby venue

    We’re open to other suggestions as well. The important thing is that we love what we do and want to give you a chance to be a part of the process. So feel free to contact us with any other ideas.

View Comments

1. 29thfloor Says… Aug 18 2010 | 7:24 pm

We’re back! Except all the comments are missing. Working on getting those back as well…

2. Liam Brocklehurst Says… Aug 26 2010 | 11:23 pm

Thanks for the update guys! Been following your Twitter and Facebook, but wasn’t completely sure where you were up to on the album. It’s definitely felt like a long time (and it has been) but we know, or at least I do, that you just want to give us the best possible album. Which is totally appreciated :D

3. Knpj4ever Says… Aug 30 2010 | 2:59 am

wow ur website is really good! well done!

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