The one thing you probably aren’t thinking while watching the Grammys is “wow, look at this amazing showcase for independent music.” (Last night, I expect you were thinking something more along the lines of, “I was supposed to get 3D glasses for this? Augh! I’m dizzy! Switch it off!”)

But keep score, and independent artists and labels are a huge part of the Grammy Award-winning roster. And with indies invading even the most mainstream of music events, that’s a strong indication of how big a part of the industry independent music is becoming. (Side note: yes, I’m aware that the definition of “indie” is murky at best. But looking at the broad trend, there’s still something here. There’s a difference between an artist self-releasing and being on RCA; examples below. In short, this may not be what most of us would call “indie,” but it’s a big shift away from the traditional role of the “major.”)

Want an example? How about “Album of the Year” Taylor Swift’s Fearless? And it’s not incidental that Taylor Swift thanked said label for allowing her to write all her own songs. (My own personal fandom of Taylor Swift ranks up there somewhere with Kanye West’s, but I think that’s worth noting.)

One of the groups keeping score at the Grammy Awards is A2IM, a not-for-profit that represents the independent music community. This year, says A2IM, some 43 awards can be considered “indie,” including the categories Pop, Rock, Alternative, Country, New Age, Jazz, Gospel, Tropical Latin, Tejano, Norteno, Bando, Americana, Bluegrass, Blues, Folk, Hawaiian, Native American, Zydeco/Cajun, World, Spoken Word, Comedy, Surround Sound, & Classical genres, and also scored for Best Recording Package.

Artists (aside from Taylor Swift) include PHOENIX, Steve Earle, and one of my long-time personal favorites, Buckwheat Zydeco. Looking over the list, I see quite a few indie selections. Rounder Records alone won Best Pop Instrumental Performance (Béla Fleck), Best Bluegrass Album (winner Steve Martin — yes, that Steve Martin — and nominee Rhonda Vincent), and two nominations for a Woody Guthrie re-issue. Rounder last year won best album of 2009 for “Raising Sand.”

Electronic music gets just one category, and that was won by Lady Gaga. (Interscope, her label, is part of Universal so, erm, definitely not indie.) But nominee The Crystal Method went their own way with Divided by Night, releasing on their own Tiny E Records. When I talked to the duo in the spring, they talked about how important it was to focus on their own creative muse rather than the demands of a major label.

Being an independent artist isn’t necessarily the right decision for every artist. Imogen Heap is signed to RCA. But being an artist who’s independently-minded, too, can be important.

I think it’s a really powerful statement that Imogen Heap won a Grammy for “Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical” for her record Ellipse. It’s rare for artists engineering their own albums to win, period, and this is a profoundly dude-dominated category, to boot. Whoever you’re signed to, you know it’s the artists who are motivated who can achieve the most. Imogen Heap’s savvy use of Twitter, her connection with her fans, and her ability to manage her own career must make the folks at RCA and Megaphonic Records very, very happy. And incidentally, even this demonstrates the way the majors themselves have changed: a lot of the majors have gone to small imprints that operate with the agility of the indie labels.

Discussion of Imogen Heap’s win on her fan forums

It’s a new world out there – even if we still have those dorky 3D glasses from the 50s.

The full list:
http://www.grammy.com/nominees

*Disclaimer: I can’t actually stand the Grammys, generally speaking. But that’s why I looked for something interesting to pull out of it, which this, to me, was. It means even at the awards ceremony that’s the greatest expression of major label power, major label power is waning. I’m sure I won’t be misunderstood, of course, that each commenter will read with great care all the nuances of what I’m saying.

Food for thought: if we didn’t still make “albums,” we’d never know when the album was done. Sure, the delivery mechanism that spawned the album may be disappearing – “LP’s” in particular are long gone. But perhaps, like so many ubiquitous technologies, the album was a fortuitous coincidence of physical practicality and human scale, happenstance generating some unit of creativity that just makes sense to artist and listener alike.

For Imogen Heap, the beloved artist who’s just finished her latest, it’s cause to literally dance and sing, accompanied by a generative Buddha Box. (We can dance around when we get the album in August.)

http://www.imogenheap.com/

It’s not the only approach. Geek troubador Jonathan Coulton rose to Interweb fame partly through the creation of his Creative Commons-licensed Thing-a-Week podcast, which fired up his productivity as he released 52 (get it?) tracks in the space of a year. The episodic form helped him build a following and created a new unit of musical output.

From other parts of the online world, we get a little insight from each of these favorite artists. Imogen Heap videoblogs her latest album and talks promise at top, as found via the lads of SonicState.

Jonathan Coulton talks to one of my favorite non-music blogs, Lifehacker, about staying musically productive – and keeping other productivity away from his musical process. He talks about using Google apps and MobileMe as an intelligent cloud he can share with his assistant and PR person.

He also speaks to musical process:

It’s a combination of things. I generally write when I have guitar in my hand, but, capturing ideas is like … I do use the voice recorder app on my iPhone like crazy. I’ve learned that whenever you get one of those little song fragments, out of the ether, it’s like a dream—no matter how much you’re going to remember it, you’re going to forget it, in like five minutes. And I’ve lost too many of those, so wherever I am, I take my phone out, I pretend that I’m making a phone call, so that people don’t think I’m crazy, and I sing into the voice recorder, and then I have it available later on.

If I want to do a more involved quick capture of something, my MacBook has a piece of software on it called Ableton Live. It’s meant for loop-based composition, but it does recording as well. It’s very easy to capture an idea and sort of rough something out, even if you don’t have a bunch of gear handy. You can use the built-in microphone, use your keyboard as a MIDI keyboard. It’s a nice way to put together a quick demo, and capture some ideas about arrangements.

And, comfortingly, he doesn’t have enough time for music, either, and winding up wasting time on latency problems. (Jonathan, we feel your pain. And if you came to this site and didn’t find your answer, well… sorry. I need to put together a better reference for that stuff; open to suggestions!) He dives into finance, career goals, the game Rock Band and “accidental” discovery of music – all fantastic stuff. Thanks to Kevin Purdy for a great interview – who says you need music publications for great music magazines?

Jonathan Coulton on Making Songs and Geeking Out [Lifehacker]

Speaking as a sometimes-music-journalist, I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that we were all part of a vast conspiracy. Our job can become wrapping big-name artists into a polished, glamorous narrative. There are small nods to humanizing them, of course, but the message can quickly become: this person is special and different from you, this is the person you should want to be or want to consume, and as a result you’ll buy our magazine. I’ve never believed that myself, and I do believe a lot of great music writing is something very different, but there’s always that danger looming somewhere in the background.

Of course, now it’s 2009. We’re nowadays broadcasting minute details of our lives in real time, blurring the line between celebrity and nobody. We have all become a kind of text-only cinema verité. It can be downright scary to expose yourself that way, even as a non-celebrity. But then, in the occasional high-quality corner of a service like Twitter, something extraordinary happens: the little, insignificant moments of your life can actually prove to be what you want them to be. “Live each day like it’s your last” becomes “live each day like you’ll be pleased to read about it, even 140 characters at a time.”

Combine a really gifted creative imagination with a special kind of personal insight, and Twitter tells the side of a story a music journalist can’t: the day-to-day life of making music. Imogen Heap has been unusually generous with her Tweets. Following her Twitter feed, I think you’ll find new appreciation for her as a person and an artist, and also some of the ways all of us can work through day-to-day creative challenges and juggling to actually make music. It demonstrates that a world in which artists live-broadcast what they’re doing (but in the right quantities, and with the right attitudes) could be more utopia than dystopia.

Oh yeah, and thank God there’s a musician who drinks coffee sometimes and not just tea, and who gets a little wired.

Just looking at the month of January, we get bits of familiar insights into the day-to-day creative struggle. (Tip: go for a jog.)

Busy warbling away on A Cappella song… Darted out for a jog today in the sunshine. It’s a good day here at the hideaway….back to it

happy with verse/chorus lyrics/vocals but this one line’s been bugging me! Wouldn’t sit right. Here, by the kettle, it’s come to me x

I’m really starting to panic now at how almost impossible this a cappella one will be to do live. One thing at a time Heap! Bed I must go.

Imogen proves to be every bit as much of a gear lover as some of us, proof this ground isn’t the exclusive domain of dudes generally / Trent Reznor dude:

@mark_marshall Main bits: P-Tools, logic for VST/Midi etc, avalon 737, TLM 103, Waves, PlugsoundPro, Nord R3, Ivory, Liquid channel, M+K’s

Lots of NI stuff, TC electronic Voiceworks, Ircam solo instruments, Korg Electribe MX, occasionally dust off Ensoniq TS12

@REVERE I do indeed! So many great toys to play with! I have the Buddhamachine II. Really love it. X I’d love to make one if my own. X

And it’s not all techie gear — don’t forget the musical saw.

There are bits of music to hear:

12seconds – here’s some vocals i’ve been working oooooooonnnn!!! xxx http://tiny12.tv/HQ0JD

… and the moments of frustration that usually get left out of glossy-mag interviews:

@rguidry … my targets keep flying out the window. I’m closer every day. As long as I keep doing it.. I’ll get there. That’s all I know! x

jeeeeez… went jogging…meanwhile my inbox exploded with things to deal with and I’ve got nothing albummy done today. Juggling act. x

And in it, you watch music being formed. There actually is a certain narrative to Twitter, spread out into little pieces – something that gives some hope to our fragmented modern lives.

Had a really great day! Got 3 1st mixes done today. Will go back to them in Jan for a day but for now… Done x 6.30am! Time 4 bed x

Worked on rhythm for Swoon/ found some nice harmonies for 2nd ch. Nipped into town with my sis to see Lost and found Orchestra. I like saws.

Just having a bow of the old saw before bed whilst waiting for disk to back-up. Sounds quite nice but a little more practice I think! x

I am so sick of the sound of my voice!! Arghhh! Noises only tomorrow. Gonna start something new. A bit fed up with all these ones… x

Can’t sleep…just thought of lyrical spark for the new song. Throwing down strands of connections with laptop in bed. A start at least…x

ok.. that took a while but I now have a killer first verse and chorus lyrics. Waaaay better! Now for 2nd verse… first another coffee bzzz

Eeyore…I think Ive found my second verse so am going to hit the Heap hay, get another early bird session tmw and sing it into pooter x

I’m not going to try to reach any deeper conclusions about the usefulness of microblogging or Twitter, because I don’t have to. The point is that, with a Web-connected community of musicians, we get to share creative process with each other, and with the musicians we love. They arrive in real-time at times that may be random to us, and there’s no differentiation between our mate, our mum, an obscure artist or a famous one.

Sure, we’re all in information overload, surrounded by distractions. And sure, 99% of the volume of Twitter is crap. But then, there’s that occasional 1% that could remind you you’re not alone. So for that, thanks, Imogen!

http://twitter.com/imogenheap

For another great Twitter feed from a regular tourmate of Imogen’s, see:
Zoe Keating @ Twitter (zoecello)