Choosing an artists name for yourself?

Just curious how you chose a name to represents you as an artist?

I know it should mostly be about the music but often a good artists name can capture the imagination at first point of contact. The same goes for good album art, I often brows music with my eyes first when trying to navigate the endless music jungle, I mean you can’t press play on everything without some kind of filter.

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That is an interesting post !
I think the most important is keeping a part of yourself in your work/album cover.
When i choose a name for my pieces, i always try not to think too much (no more than 10 minutes), and give a name that is close to what i was thinking about when working.

Also, i think my artist name follows that philosophy, Olival is both a place in Portugal that i like, but Val is also the way most friends call me (my true name being Valentin ) :slight_smile: I didn’t think too much about it, and it represents me

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I remember reading an article, not about a musician, but an entrepreneur. He said he named his small business with his own name. This was a deliberate attempt to ensure that he was always producing high quality outputs, literally good enough to have his name associated with.
Just another view…
My old friend and I picked an artist and label name by opening a dictionary at a random page and finding two interesting words.

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i combined the style of music i make: slowly evolving ambient soundscapes where modulation is an important feature; with my love for languages

ablaut means that vowels change with grammar, e.g. sing, sang, sung, and its noun song.

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Not Olival near Ourém? :slight_smile:

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Of course a name should be as unique as possible. Availability of the name on music platforms and/or social networks can be an important requirement, if you want your music and news about it to be found.

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Yes it is ! My family was from around there before coming to France. We are from just between Fatima and Ourém.
It’s crazy ! The world is small :grin:

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I go by ‘Chaircrusher’ because over 20 years ago I was visiting a friend to make tracks, and I sat down with a plate of food and the chair broke. This was at the time when Squarepusher was becoming popular, so Chaircrusher is kind of a play on that name.

It’s an exceedingly stupid name, and the reason I know that is I can ALWAYS use it as username, globally anywhere on the internet. Because NOBODY else wants it.

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I chose “TestBan” because many years ago my job was to monitor the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

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This brings to mind a quote from Dave Grohl… something to the effect of “If I knew the band was going to be so successful I would not have called it the Foo Fighters.”

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I am Uncle Chrome because the night I decided to come up with something, I was wondering if my nieces would laugh if they heard my industrial/dream/techno tracks.

  • Paul Artola
    Ellicott City, Maryland USA
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Well I have two ideas as what to call my little escapade but can’t decide between “Hare Down” or “Barograph”

Hare Down (Down being a collective noun for hares) and that I live on the edge of a down that is full of the little hopping bundles of fur.

‘Barograph’ being my other choice as I’m interested in meteorology and all things steampunk. It records barometric pressure and plots a graph much like a random LFO. Sound waves are also pressure.

My music is mostly ambient glitch, very minimal. The heart says Hare Down, my head says Barograph.

I think a coin toss is may be needed to solve the conundrum, best of three…no five…no nine…doh!

I really like them both !
Even tho i love animals, i might have a slight preference for Barograph, it goes quite well with the technological aspect of modular :wink:
The coin toss is still a good idea if you can’t decide ^^

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That’s cool

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I have different artist names for different genres :

Sy Borg is my electronic music moniker.
Sinan Goth Gorudz Izdr Nrzstzd is my black metal moniker.
Jizz in the Fryer is my hardcore punk moniker.

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I like making up characters for my projects, with bits and pieces of my personality and the kind of music they make.

Like, If I want to release a jazz album I would go with something like “Michael Pettirossi”.
An independent garage rock album be made by the “Thrashtalking” and the list goes on forever

:joy::joy::joy:

Unfortunately I never actually released any of this projects.

I was wondering if such a strategy could be an inconvenience for the advancement of one’s career.
What do you think about it?
Shall I open a new topic?

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When I was making records in the 90s-00s we used my original name for the name of the umbrella and then the band and ever since I have used manipulations of my own name, which is pretty weird anyway, and I changed it slightly for every record. Djamuud, Jamu, Muud Guru, Jamuud etc. - there is often no logic why this happens. Interesting topic idea.

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I went with 3 Degrees of Freedom because I wanted something suitably nerdy, but also catchy. It also lends itself quite well to a topic, which is something I tend to base album titles/names around: a common theme (the album title) and then different areas within that (track titles). The name fulfills this requirement, what with there being 6 degrees of freedom for a rigid body in 3D space - 3 degrees of translation, 3 degrees of rotation.
Just my 2 cents, but a really interesting thread

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why don’t you merge them, and bring head and heart together? and make it Hare’o’graph ? jm2c

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Our name came from an email between ourselves, it was a phrase that stood out to us when we were discussing our set up, and it just seemed to make sense.

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