Signal vs. Noise reader and JobChoy founder Mark Meeus writes:
I’m not sure if you know Rodrigo and Gabriela and their story, if you do you can stop reading right now ;-)
I want to tell you briefly their story because it is a good example of Getting Real applied to something else than webapps.
Rodrigo and Gabriela started out as heavy-metal guitarists in a band in Mexico City. Their goal in life was to do nothing but music, but it didn’t went well. They both failed to enter the conservatory in Mexico City and their band wasn’t going where they wanted it to go.
So they decided to sell all of their stuff and just keep their acoustic guitars. They moved to Dublin where they started to play in bars and busking on the streets and in metro stations.
In the beginning they played Metallica covers, but soon enough they got bored and started to write their own songs.
They needed the money so they had to ‘optimize’ their music. They would write a song, tested it live to see how much money they got, rewrote it a bit, see how much they got, rewrote it a bit, …. (A/B testing on music.)
After a while they managed to save some money and started to move to other cities, along the way they gained a bigger audience and became ‘known’ in those cities.
In 2006 they released an album (Rodrigo y Gabriela) which took the Irish hit charts by storm, the first instrumental band ever to do that.
Now what’s so ‘real’ about this story?
They didn’t listen to all those people telling them ‘just 2 guitars’ will never work
- A team of 2!
- No outside money (with todays technology that’s not so uncommon, but they did it before 2000).
- Just 2 guitars, underdoing the competition
- Passion
- Constraints: no money, no other instruments
- They hired the right audience and focused solely on them
- Their music is opinionated
- Race to live music/testing in the wild, composing a song and immediately playing it at the street.
Apart from all this, their music is really great, but that’s a matter of taste isn’t it?
Jamie, Baymard Institute
on 16 Nov 09“A/B testing on music” is an interesting idea.
Thanks for sharing.
Mike
on 16 Nov 09I absolutely love Rodrigo y Gabriela and saw them live in Los Angeles in September. They are amazing performers and put on an amazing show. A couple other good links are:
Craig Ferguson show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC9kQvJ3Wqo
Tavis Smiley Show: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=tavi08s3206q75b and http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=tavi08s31c5qbcc
Matthew Ling
on 16 Nov 09I saw R&G so many times in Sugar Club during the early days in Dublin. They used to play as a live band early in the night before the club night kicked off.
I’ll never get over the first time I heard them bust out with some passages from One from Metallica in the middle of one of their songs.
The first thing that stood out was their simplicity but they were still soooo technically accomplished, they could do with a spanish guitar things we couln’t do with layers and layers of effects covering up an electric guitar …
See what I’m getting at here?
cssbit
on 16 Nov 09Hello I’m a web developer, i had a lot of passion but now i miss this passion, the clients is one of causes
Annalea
on 16 Nov 09Ay yi yi! Now that’s music. :o)
merle
on 16 Nov 09Just curious cssbit, what did the clients do to you? And what is your non-client alternative.
Todd
on 16 Nov 09Wow. I might just have to buy my second CD in about five years.
(No, I don’t steal music…I just haven’t heard much worth buying.)
Kyle Faber
on 16 Nov 09it’s amazing how you can apply usability [in this sense, hearability] to different mediums.
awesome vid, awesome music, hello credit card, hello expanded itunes library.
Bill
on 16 Nov 09I think the article has a good message but misses the key point that I’m surprise they didn’t point out.
It all starts with “They moved to Dublin…” There are a variety of successes in the music industry that have equally interesting stories, but the important element of this story is that when opportunities weren’t happening for them in Mexico they changed their environment and then catered to the audience that could appreciate their uniqueness.
Think of it this way, in Mexico, Mexican food is ‘food’. It may be much harder to differentiate yourself in the crowd if there is a lot of similar competition. Here in my city however there is an abundance of restaurants with a number of Mexican restaurants that have an authentic lineage and are quite popular standing out with the other choices.
By changing locations they were able to get to a place where people could see a contrast, make a distinction and get noticed and appreciated. And getting noticed is probably one of the biggest challenges in the music industry which seems to be the moral of their story. They have excellent music and their strategy aided their opportunities.
Antonio
on 16 Nov 09Well if anyone’s interested they have just released their second album 11:11. It is as great as the first one, maybe even better.
They have really come a long way, all the way from Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo which is where they started. There on a small beach along the pacific coast of mexico, not even on a major city. They guts it took to follow their dream outside of Mexico on a whole different continent coming from such a small home town is always amazing.
zephyr
on 16 Nov 09Extremely talented artists these two. I’ve seen them live three times now. Look for an amazing live cover of Metallica’s One…
Anonymous Coward
on 17 Nov 09I have been digging them so much that I gathered as many of their concert videos, inteviews and guest appearances as I could find and created a website, the Rodrigo y Gabriela Fan Club. Cheers.
Rick
on 17 Nov 09I have been digging them so much that I gathered as many of their concert videos, inteviews and guest appearances as I could find and created a website, the Rodrigo y Gabriela Fan Club. Cheers.
Mike
on 17 Nov 09@Bill, great point. I love RodGab but you wonder if they would have gotten noticed if they stayed in Mexico or even went to Spain or maybe Brazil. They would definitely stick out in Ireland, so it gave them enough of an opening to get their foot in the door (the rest came with amazing talent and hard work).
Matthew Rathbone
on 17 Nov 09Some crazy grammar errors in this Matt:
They would write a song, tested it live to see how much money they got, rewrote it a bit, see how much they got, rewrote it a bit, …. (A/B testing on music.)
Which tense is this sentence meant to be in? Current or past? It doesn’t really make sense!
rick
on 17 Nov 09They have sort of a cult following amongst programmers/Devs.
Robert J. McCarter
on 17 Nov 09I am not a big fan of heavy metal, but love their renditions of them. It is interesting how taking the music out of its context makes it work for a different ear, a different taste.
While the “only 2 instruments” things is a great hook (because it is an amazing use of just two instruments), it is not what keeps you listening—the music is what keeps you listening (i.e. its simplicity is striking, but it is the quality that really counts.)
Robert J. McCarter
on 17 Nov 09I am not a big fan of heavy metal, but love their renditions of them. It is interesting how taking the music out of its context makes it work for a different ear, a different taste.
While the “only 2 instruments” things is a great hook (because it is an amazing use of just two instruments), it is not what keeps you listening—the music is what keeps you listening (i.e. its simplicity is striking, but it is the quality that really counts.)
Mark Meeus
on 17 Nov 09@bill, you are right about the fact that changing location is a key point in their success story, but what I wanted to emphasize was the fact that they did it in way which resembles 37signals getting real approach. If they hadn’t stopped chasing the dream by replacing it with reality… I have a musical background and I know a lot of talented musicians who could achieve at least some success if they would ‘become real’ For instance, musicians have the tendency to rehearse for days and days to get all the details of a song perfectly right. Instead rod and gab focused on having a song they could play.
@matthew, thanks for pointing me to those grammar errors. English is not my native language, as you may have noticed ;)
Matthew Rose
on 19 Nov 09Normally I enjoy your posts, but this is just ignoring the last 30 years of music history. DIY, minimalist, “real” music has been a hallmark of many forms since the Sex Pistols came around. Not to mention fine-tuning your songs based on listener feedback. Every real musician does this. Musicians don’t rehearse “to get every detail right”. Many rehearse so that when the time comes that they’re in front of people, they’re comfortable enough in the flow of the song to really stretch it out. Listening to the live performance of any rock song vs what’s on the disc is example enough of that.
If you want to see what can be done with just one guitar, check out Don Ross
Vintage Guitar Guy
on 20 Nov 09Great stuff. It’s nice to see somebody playing real instruments these days (instead of game controllers masquerading as guitars) and honing their craft to such a high level.
This discussion is closed.