Exposed Vocals: How did you hear about Exposed Vocals? What made you decide to sign up?
Standard Als: We heard of Exposed Vocals through twitter and found that it is a good platform for aspiring musicians who want to get their music and there message out there.
Exposed Vocals: So tell us your story. Where did you grow up? What made you decide to become an artist?
Standard Als: We both met at The Waid Academy in Anstruther, Fife ( a small touristy seaside town). We didn’t really talk much until we struck up conversation in a History class around 3rd year about bands we liked and we found we had similar music tastes. Originally we started as a dumb “comedy” band until we actually both found we enjoyed playing together and decided to cover songs by bands like The Arctic Monkeys and Nirvana. We fell in love with playing music onstage at a school gig covering Nirvana’s ‘Territorial Pissings’ in which drum sticks were dropped half way through and the mic was far too quite. That was probably when we decided we wanted to be a Punk/Grunge band.
Exposed Vocals: How did you come up with that name? What was your inspiration behind it?
Standard Als: The name came about through a run in with fate in a Maths classroom in which the words ‘Standard Algorithm’ were written on the board. The teacher went to rub it off the bored when for some reason they stopped at ‘Standard Al’. Its then we both new that we had been chosen to carry the name Standard als.
Exposed Vocals: What do you think about online music sharing? Do you ever give your music away for free? Why?
Standard Als: Online Music sharing has made the whole process of getting your music out there much more easy. However that means there is so much more music out there than one person could listen too in a 100 lifetimes, making it harder for your music to get picked up. Right now we’re not really selling our music, but rather putting up our music on Soundcloud as its just demos we have right now and we’re just looking for an audience of people who enjoy what we have to offer.
Exposed Vocals: Since everyone was a start-up once, can you give any smaller or local bands or artists looking to get gigs and airplay some tips?
Standard Als; Really right now we’re just a small local band who haven’t had much experience in the music industry just yet. However we have worked hard to buy our own equipment and teach ourselves how to play and record. We’d tell anyone looking to start getting into recording, writing or playing their own music live, that they should just go for it and be prepared to put in the effort.
Exposed Vocals: Do you ever make mistakes during performances? How do you handle that?
Standard Als: When we make mistakes playing we often try to incorporate them into our overall sound and don’t really fret over them too much. However there have been instances were mics haven’t been working fully or drum sticks go flying across the room, but we tend to just let the show go on and try our best with what we’ve got.
Exposed Vocals: Do you tour? Anything interesting happen on tour that you think our readers would enjoy hearing about?
Standard Als: We haven’t really had the opportunity too tour just yet as we have other obligations right now but touring is something we’d defiantly like to do in the future.
Exposed Vocals: Where do you usually gather songwriting inspiration? What is your usual songwriting process?
Standard Als: Listening to different genres and styles of music defiantly helps with inspiration as it gets you thinking more broadly and creatively when sitting down to write. Another thing is just sitting down for an hour everyday watching TV or whatever and just playing and seeing where your hands take you, this is probably where we tend to come up with most of our material.
Exposed Vocals: Do you have a band website? What online platforms do you use to share your music?
Standard Als: We don’t have a website just yet but we have a Soundcloud where we’re sharing our music on right now. We also have a Twitter (@StandardAls) and you can find us on our Standard Als Facebook.
Exposed Vocals: What are some really embarrassing songs that we might find on your mp3 player?
Standard Als: Probably Cliff Richards Summer Holiday would be the weirdest. We’re not really all that embarrassed about listening to certain songs though as we tend to follow the words of Alan Partridge “a good beats a good beat”.
Exposed Vocals: If you were given half a million dollars and a year off, what would you do? How would you spend it?
Standard Als: We’d probably end up spending it on sticks and pedals and strings and stuff. Other than that we’d most likely just do the cliched seeing more of the world, just generally try some new try new experiences and then give the rest away.
Exposed Vocals: Any planned studio upgrades? What are you working with now?
Standard Als: Right now we’re recording everything on a Shure sm57 as its probably the best most affordable mic because of its flexibility. We’re using a pretty basic editing software along with a lexicon interface which makes for overall neat little production. However we’d like to get our hands on a better editing software and wider range of pedals to get the exact sound we want.
Exposed Vocals: How do you find ways to promote your music? What works best for you?
Standard Als: We haven’t been in promoting our music for very long so right now we’re just using the standard Twitter, Facebook and Soundcloud. We’re planning to expand to more platforms like Bandcamp and Youtube in the near future though. We’re fine with just promoting our music on free online platforms at the moment as we’re just looking for our audience right now and online is basically the place where music is dealt in the modern age.
Exposed Vocals: If you could perform anywhere and with any artists (Dead or Alive) where and who would it be with? Why?
Standard Als: There’s so many we’d love to perform with, however Nirvana is probably the main one as they influence our music the most. It would also be at their famous reading festival gig in 92 as it was one of the most raw and energetic shows we’ve ever seen put on at a festival so big, the atmosphere must have been so amazing.
Exposed Vocals: So, what’s next? Any new upcoming projects that you want to talk about?
Standard Als: Well we’re planning on branching out and doing more gigs around Scotland. We’re also planning on releasing some electric demos in the near future and perhaps working on an album in the months to come as well.
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Exposed Vocals: If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing?
Standard Als: Not very much i can imagine as making music is one of our favorite things to do. Most likely just watching bad movies and kicking around town complaining how bored we are all the time.
Exposed Vocals: Do you remember buying your first album? Who was it? What was going through your head?
Standard Als: Both of us were heavily in to busted growing up as they were quite huge around the early 2000s. There self titled debut we both remember playing over and over again on car CD players on long car journeys. Despite not knowing each other we grew up listening to the same stuff.
Exposed Vocals: How do you juggle the rest of your responsibilities while trying to stay ahead in your music life?
Standard Als: Well we often practice at least once a weak for about 2-3 hours every Tuesday. Also we tend to meet up quite a lot during holidays which is when we usually write and record the bulk of our music.
Exposed Vocals: What should fans look forward to in 2015?
Standard Als: Well you can defiantly expect to see us on Bandcamp with a few well produced demos in the near future and probably a few gigs most likely in and around the Fife area come near the end of the year when we are at our most free.You can aslo expect a music video as well for one of our orginal tracks too.
