I had a chat with Colm Slattery sound engineer, graphic designer and founder of FlutterTone. Colm founded FlutterTone in 2018 after completing a masters at Trinity College in Music and Media Technology. He has been involved in the Dublin music scene since his early teens, playing in bands, and being involved with numerous festivals, events, and conferences around the country as an organizer and sound engineer. Running something like FlutterTone is a time consuming task yet Colm organises and hosts events from the weekly singer/songwriter night Monday Club to the new VIRTUAL platform on zoom, it is very ambitious but immensely valuable to artists. When I spoke to Colm I had just seen Rebekah Fitch’s amazing performance on Virtual and I wondered how he finds these amazing artists.
“Yeah, just through connections over the past few years, it’s putting on gigs and networking with musicians in Dublin and John from dootdoot Records in Belfast. He has a lot of connections with them as well so just between me and John we just have a large network of musicians, they’re all great. There’s so much good music, now at the moment I’m sure you’re aware like you feature a lot of it.”
FlutterTone was founded in 2018 when Colm was in college. It’s an events and promotions company that works with artists to give them a platform to grow and develop their skills.He works with his team to provide a great quality service and work with emerging artists to put on successful events and create press packs for the artist.
“2018 /2017 I was in college in Dundalk doing audio music and production. So I did a level 8 degree up there. And then I think, one of my lecturers had this company called Smalltone I think it was. Then I came up with this idea, flutter of echoes is a sound term like you know flutter of echoes in a room and then, FlutterTone and I did that in college and it just stuck.”
“ The team has always usually just been me. I have different people coming in and out that stay for a while and then go off and do certain things. There has been this one girl, Elina Filice she’s really good. She’s been helping me out lately with the PR stuff. We met in BIMM in Dublin and then there’s another girl Rhianna Cannon, she does a lot of photography for us at our events and that’s it. But mostly, a team of one, I would say, solidly. So yeah I’m going all the time, but I just enjoy it so much it’s actually like a life passion, you know, I’m just locked in this little cave here on my computer twenty-four seven.”
“ It’s usually the whole package. They like the fact that we can actually write a press release they don’t understand what a press release is or what it’s for. They don’t understand why they have to have it professionally written in a nice document to tell people about the release, so we just have to inform them what it’s for, why the press like to see these certain press releases. You know they need to know about their bio, their background. If you’re a radio presenter and you’re busy you don’t have time to go research these unknown artists because it takes forever. So, to have a nice bio, information and a nice background about yourself and your music helps get press because it’s just easier.”
FlutterTone host a weekly singer/songwriter night, Monday Club as well as the new VIRTUAL platform on zoom and they are venturing out again for another live project with Dublin Concerts. Keen as ever, Colm had to learn to use zoom and other social media platforms to work and create content. I wondered if it was a learn as you go process.
“Yeah. Did you see the Instagram. So we have Saibh Skelly. She’s only 15 or 16, she’s very very young, but she’s been busking on Grafton Street Dublin, and she’s after building up an audience on Instagram of over 30,000 followers. Yeah, for a 16 year old it’s crazy, but me, and Ross from Dublin Concerts have gotten together, and we’ve created another live event on zoom platform, but it’s not virtual. It’s just slightly different. But that will be next Friday.
“Just learn as we go, zoom isn’t built for music, so we had to adapt to that, but we’re very happy with the zoom platform. We’ve got like stereo audio, we figured how to create two outputs from zoom for headphones so if you’re listening on headphones you get like, I don’t know if you know much about audio but it’s like a delay in your left and right stereo field. Usually we have two to three sound checks with the musicians before the show. Depending how well the musician knows about the audio setup, it can take time, so it’s slightly different each week. Sometimes it can take longer. Sometimes it’s quite quick if the artist knows what to do.”
The skills with audio and navigating livestreams of a high quality is invaluable at the moment and Colm is willing to help any artist having trouble or looking to connect with an audience through this platform
“I would, I’d be open to that if any artists wanted to have me on board and help them do a live stream”.
Colm also organises The Monday Club for singer songwriters and now this has also become a live stream on facebook, however this does have its challenges
“So the Monday club was going on in The Wiley Fox for about three years maybe two years. And then when COVID hit, we moved online. But when we did it online on Facebook, we did the Facebook Lives. We put up a PayPal donation link, nobody seemed to donate any money. So it was really tough for the artist and I felt so bad because we’re putting so much effort into this live stream on Facebook, they’re not getting any recognition or there’s no financial income. So that’s where Virtual kind of came from I think. The whole idea of turning it into an actual live gig, like a real gig, do posters, do promo around it and sell tickets. It’s crazy. It’s like a tip jar thing but they don’t seem to do it. So I think it adds more value if you just create tickets and then as you might have noticed in Virtual people stick around. So, if you buy a ticket for seven quid, you’re invested and you’re more likely to stick around for a show but if you’re on Facebook, something pops up, you’re on Facebook so you’re pretty distracted as is, you know.”
I wondered if an artist wanted to avail of FlutterTone’s service, what would they have to do, what do they need to have already prepared
“They need to have a good song and it needs to be well recorded. Kind of radio quality, and then some sort of background towards the song so that we can work with. We usually don’t just take any song, we’re kind of fussy because we just know that the song has to be of good standard and quality to get press and recognition so that’s it, send us the song, we’ll listen we’ll give good feedback on it. We’d turn around and say, maybe the song is too long..actually…there was a song that was sent in to us, it was five minutes long. We were like, well, if you can cut that down a little bit or take this bit out, you know and he actually did. He came back with a radio edit like two weeks later, which was great. We try to give constructive criticism but it is hard not to offend people as well, like, you know, you’re an artist, you’ve created this product, you’ve like painted this picture that’s taken hours and someone’s telling you, you know, change it.”
Colm has done some promo videos for the Virtual shows and for promotion and this is something he is passionate about and loves to create.
“Yeah, I did a master’s in Trinity College about two years ago. But in that, I learned after effects, so it’s like Adobe program. And I really enjoy it. It’s cool, it’s creative. So, I enjoy making the videos.”
Colm also has some advice to help give artists an edge in the music industry.
“For advice, know that you’re going to have to push it yourself. Don’t just fully rely on the PR company, kind of have your audience there and build your audience. So I believe an artist needs to actually have a grasp of their fan base themselves and have a little bit of research there. I think that stands well for them, especially if they’re getting reviews that they write back to the reviews that they’re getting and say thank you and give feedback to people as well.”
Sometimes once an artist uses PR, and learns what to do they decide to continue to do it themselves after. I wondered if that was something Colm has dealt with or is it really an issue at all.
“Yeah that is the thing. I suppose if they are knowledgeable enough and they’ve made the contacts they can go off themselves. Usually, we have a blind CRM, and then we have a CRM with emails in it because as you know your contacts are kind of all you really have in PR and that kind of relationship you build up. So, yeah, we usually ask the artists if they want, you know, to see emails or not.”
There were a lot of shows booked for early August that have now been cancelled and Colm has seen some shows he planned be rescheduled. However there are some events still planned to go ahead ( for the moment anyway ) as well as the weekly Virtual shows. Also when all this Covid madness is over Colm has plans for the Virtual platform to continue
“We had a gig booked into the Wild Duck for the 20th of August and now we’ve been pushed back again to I think 24th of September. I’m not entirely sure if it will go ahead, we’re just kind of hanging in there. And then, Bow Lane was on to me. So Jeff from Bow Lane was on to me recently, and he’s trying to book me in to do a gig. Pretty soon, actually I think it’s like the 21st of August. He’s gonna have food. It’s limited to the amount of people and that and I’m kind of a little bit anxious about that and how it goes but he seems keen on keeping it going. But yeah I’d like to keep Virtual going maybe as a more intimate Q&A thing or something.”
Colm and his team have been working tirelessly supporting Irish music offering PR services for new releases, continuing their Monday Club and Virtual shows through a weekly live stream as well as a series of playlists to support Irish music. They are a friendly and fun bunch to work with and strive to create professional and high quality work for their artists as well as helping us all discover some of the wonderfully talented Musicians we have in Ireland today. When I asked Colm if there was anything he wanted to add at the end of the interview he asked to mention and thank
“Thank Rhianna Cannon for helping organize events and taking pictures. Also, Elina Filice for being an important part of the FlutterTone team PR for writing professional press releases and giving great release strategies to the artists”
Check out Fluttertone and all they have to offer on their website here https://www.fluttertone.com/
Or on Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/fluttertone/
Author : Danu
