I like the annual July event known as Netlabel Day. Last week Netlabel Day 2016 brought a huge group of new releases, including a number of artists whose work I find interesting and fun.

The Cerebral Rift netlabel also released a compilation called "Into the Rift, Volume 1". I am pleased that my track "Deeper Vanity" is on that release:

Cerebral Rift, Volume 1

Thanks to Soundchaser for running this Netlabel Day compilation.

St. Louis ambient and electronica artist Mystified curated a new compilation called "New Mind Emergence'.  Consistent with its theme,  I created a song called "The Robot Smiles Upon Enlightenment". I am pleased to have this track released on Mystified's curated compilation:

Although I was born in Texas, I grew up in Arkansas. My artist name is a contraction of Gurdon, Arkansas, the town I lived in from age 5 to age 15. I sometimes think of myself as being "of" each of the three places at which I have lived for years---Texas, Arkansas and California. But by any measure, I nonetheless am an Arkansas artist.

So I found myself well-pleased to be asked to contribute to the compilation "Ambient Arkansas". My song "Poison Springs" refers to a battlefield about 20 miles from each of the three towns in which I grew up.  I dutifully resisted the urge to add cannons to the song, despite an inner 1812 Overture longing.  

Here's a link to the album, available on Bandcamp from the Aural Films label:

I'm pleased to advise that I just released my newest album, "Reflections on Self".



The song titles, and more indirectly the ten pieces, all deal with the puzzle of dealing with being oneself.

As is usual, it's available for download with payment optional, and available for re-use under a BY-SA Creative Commons license.

My song "Potato Dawn" takes a fun trip to Scandinavia in this charming short film by Jose Manuel Rios:


Trip to Scandinavia from Jose Manuel Rios Valiente on Vimeo.

I use different Creative Commons licenses to release my work. Some folks only use attribution non-commercial licenses that bar commercial uses without a license.  I do that sometimes, but I prefer to release my work Attribution only, to permit commercial uses. Sometimes, I require share-alike, which tends to make things a bit less commercial.

Here is the kind of things that happen when I license BY. Here young Gabrielle models thrift store fashion, with her mom's expert narration, with the modeling scenes set to my tune "Kindergarten":

I make Creative Commons music to be liberally shared. One thing I like is that folks use my songs in their videos. The count as of this writing is in excess of three thousand videos that make some use of one of my songs on Youtube, and a couple of hundred more on Vimeo.

I learned from a teenager I mentored that lots of folks use Youtube as their music streaming service. I see some of my songs posted with a single still image. This is fine with me, so long as the license is followed.

I thought, though, that I could create a video or three that cater to this "listener-oriented" use of the video.  I took a number of my photographs of local north Texas sights, and used MyPhotoFilmStrip and OpenShot Video to create this
video of "Constellation Blackbird" by Gurdonark: