City Composer

Disaster not averted...

2012-02-10T15:01:00.000-05:00

I never like to relate a story until the dust has completley settled and this one is no different. I was going to write a blog titled "god bless the sound check" the other night before this concert had actually happened but that would have been jumping the gun. Even though I had a chance to sound check the night before the concert, all did not go to plan. I hesitate to say it was a total disaster for me but it certainly didn't go very well. Even despite said sound check.

The night begins with me running late. I was set to make it still before the concert started but Tania was also running late because of Murphy's law, so I waited at 125th and Lenox at the Starbucks so she wouldn't have to walk over to the theater from the subway by herself. More and more worried as the clock got closer to 8pm, my anxiety was relieved slightly when I saw the sound guy, himself, whom I had met the night before, walking past me out of the subway. When we finally arrived they were still sound checking the house band so I felt I had time still to get set up. I had to chase the sound guy down a few times to make sure I had everything I needed. At 8pm, I was still missing two 1/4" to XLR adapters to connect my audio interface to the snake and I didn't have a power source for my keyboard controller and laptop. Assure I would have them, I sat down in the audience once my equipment was set up behind the piano.

When we got up on stage after the first number, Tania introduced us while I scrambled to get things plugged in but somehow it didn't occur to me to check and make sure that my audio interface had been plugged into the snake. It hadn't. Now, you don't have to be technically inclined to realize what this would mean. Something not plugged in = no sound going through, ergo, I'm up on stage twiddling knobs to no avail. Of course I noticed this not being unplugged thing in the middle of the song so I ducked down and plugged myself in but still no audio was coming out. However, being under pressure since I was on stage and currently performing a piece, I panicked a little and when one is panicked, calm troubleshooting becomes much harder. I tried to signal the sound guy and let him know what the problem was but ultimately ended up signaling to Tania to end the piece early. I grabbed the wireless mic and explained that there were technical difficulties and we wouldn't be hearing the electronics and then announced the next piece by Alberto Ginastera. I sat off stage for a bit until she was finished and then just began taking my equipment down with a mind to storm out of there as soon as I was done.

Luckily I calmed down and Tania talked to me after her set and after I was done collecting my gear. You can't start throwing blame around and getting angry in a situation like that. There was a lot of stuff stacked against us and with that amount of technical equipment and that amount of performers with such a diverse array of technical needs and one guy to juggle it all, who walked in only slightly less on time than Tania and I did, you're bound to have something go wrong. At any rate, by the end of the concert I started to see it all in a different light. They still heard an excerpt of my piece (even if I was standing on stage looking dumb and flailing my arms around trying to signal the audio guy during most of the piece), and I got to meet a bunch of great musicians and network with them. Plus, the ones who were around at the sound check and got to hear the sounds I'd be making seemed genuinely interested in hearing what it the whole piece actually sounded like so I directed them to this. I mean, it's gotta be one hell of a teaser getting something so elaborate as that set up and not being able to perform it at all.

I did sit through the rest of the performances and they were all pretty amazing. The guys before us were called "The Mighty Third Rail," and consisted of a vocalist with a loop pedal, a violinist and an upright bass. Their music was pretty slick and catchy. The vocalist beat boxed, looped and rapped, had some great lyrics and the string players were both really awesome. They were my favorite.

The rest of the acts were RnB type stuff, all fantastic vocalists and the house band never missed a beat. There was a ridiculously tight drummer, a bassist, percussionist, pianist, occasional back up singers. I'm glad I stuck around. This Fertile Ground concert is something that happens every 2nd Thursday of the month and we've been invited back. So who knows, maybe this time I'll bring my own cables so I won't need adapters.

Fertile Ground and my electronic music mission statement...

2012-02-06T02:38:00.000-05:00

This Thursday evening, Februrary 9th, Tania and I are performing an excerpt of my piece, "Moon, Tides, Cycles"at the National Black Theater in Harlem as part of a concert put on by a group called Fertile Ground. The 2nd Thursday of every month they put on an artist's showcase. Here's a link to this Thursday night's concert. Kinda psyched to be a part of it.

Meanwhile, I have to show up for the dress rehearsal without Tania so that should be interesting. Bringing the usual setup of Macbook, Audio Kontrol 1 interface, microphone, M Audio Axiom controller and all the cables I need to pull this off. Should be in and out of there hopefully rather quick. Since we won't be able to perform the piece in full without Tania there, the aim will just be to get sound out of the speakers and make sure there are no issues.

The amount of times I've performed this piece now, you'd think it'd go more smoothly each time. But, it seems each time, I run across a new problem and have to troubleshoot on the fly. Still, it's a far cry from a year ago when I first started imagining how I would pull off performing the piece when I hadn't even transcribed it. It seemed a monumental task back then but now that I've streamlined the process, and done it a few times, it doesn't seem so gargantuan. I've even thought of things like making sure the night before that the audio preferences in Mainstage are set up so that the audio interface is the main output instead of the speakers on the Macbook. This burned me last time and ate some of our time on stage, because I couldn't get audio out of the speakers and started to freak out a little until I realized what I had done.

It's good also that I've gotten so much use out of this one piece. When I think of the amount of work that went into realizing it, I can't imagine if I had only performed it once. Now the piece has had many different lives, starting out as accompaniment to a dance piece that was never performed again with the music as far as I know, it became my first attempt at live electronic music with a classical performer, and my first use of my laptop to perform music. In many ways, it's going to be a stepping stone to some of the ideas I have for electronic music.

I was doing a little research these past few days and stumbled on something on Ableton's website, with a guy who had looped piano and I started to get a little pissed because that's literally my next move, looping, sampling and tweaking. But then I watched the video and realized that there was nothing terribly special about this guy's music (no offense to him). It was nothing like what I'm intending to do. He was just playing choppy Latin sounding rhythms on the piano and looping and layering them while a DJ spun some beats behind him.

My plan? Oh so much more. I'm going to have the pianist play an odd rhythmic chordal ostinato, which I will then loop and run through some effects while she performs a second piano part over top of it. Meanwhile, I will be taking samples of her performance of the first part of the piece and mangling them, slicing them and creating ethereal soundscapes with them.

In all honesty, my work with piano and electronics is in a far different genre. In fact, any time I think of electronic music, I have no inclination to mimic the bass thumping, beat driven stuff that's out there. My main motive is to take all the software is out there and do something unique that pushes the envelope of what can be done live. The question is, "why do something that I can do without software if I just had more performers playing with me?" The software is not just there to allow me to realize a song without a band, but also so that I can do things that no one can do without software.

How's that for a mission statement? On that note, I'd better go because I have a long night ahead of me (reaching the last stretch though) and another music project to work on for a friend's narrative cinematography reel. And this week is proving to be a busy one as per usual. Luckily, I'm taking the day of the concert off from NY1. Wish me luck. And come see the show!

Ray Charles dream...

2012-01-29T19:12:00.003-05:00

I have to type this immediately because I'm afraid the memory will fade. I just had the awesomest dream come to me during the awesomest afternoon nap. In the dream, somewhere, supposedly in Philly, I think, I was in a room that seemed like it was inside an old dingy strip mall, swinging all glass door, old carpet on the walls, (come to think of it, it might easily have been this place)...

with what I think was the late Ray Charles, who was showing me this incredible musical performance setup he had going on.

The first thing I saw is almost unimaginable. There was what looked like a lap steel inside a see-through box that had a 48 key keyboard on the business side. The lap steel seemed to play itself as he hammered the piano keys. To his right was a grand piano with a moveable sliding gap in the cover over the keys (not sure what this was about). Sitting on top of that piano was an loop station/drum machine that he was using to record what he was playing and loop. The microphone was even hooked up to said loop station and, I shit you not, he beat boxed at one point along with a drum beat he had just tapped out.

Underneath the grand piano, the bottom was missing and he showed me how each string was individually miked. Strangely, there was also a collection of coffee mugs dangling from the inside by their handles.

The whole room was setup like it was some kind of museum, and people could just come in and watch him tinker with his setup.

This is by far the strangest dream I have ever had. But I think it's a sign that I need to start performing my own music this year. I've had three people tell me that in as short as a few days. I have been wanting to get something set up where I could take my keyboards, guitar and laptop out live and do some fantastic looping and mixing live. In fact, I have everything I need to do so now, except for a few carrying cases. All I have to do is write all the music that isn't written and figure out how to perform the stuff that is. So, now I think it's time to take a new look at an old project that's been brewing since 2009. Okay, go!

Low Crescent Moon...

2012-01-27T21:31:00.000-05:00

It was a beautiful sight looking at the clear sky in the west, with a low crescent moon sinking slowly. Between the planes on approach to LaGuardia and the street lights along 5th Avenue in Park Slope, you wouldn't think you'd catch very many star gazing opportunities here. But, on many a night I've seen a great deal of stars and can almost always spot Jupiter as it's very bright these days. In fact, I saw Venus just before sunset on Wednesday during my lengthy jaunt around the East Village...and this was standing on Houston St. in the first few minutes after sunset! Here's an article I just caught about how the two can be seen close to the crescent moon at sunset these next few weeks. In March, the article says, Mars will be very bright, the brightest it's been for two years.

Wish I had a decent pic for you guys but it wouldn't come out. Go outside and look for yourselves though.

Moving on from astronomy to something a little less predictable, my commute this evening could have put me in a bad mood but for some reason I was a little more relaxed at the fact that debris on the track was causing delays on the A, and the dispatch couldn't seem to decide how to reroute the train. I remained on the A because I thought they said it would be going over the F line (which would have still taken me to the stop I where I wanted to change trains). However, when I noticed the train wasn't moving a few stops later, I looked up and realized we were at Canal street (an A train stop) so we hadn't switched to the F line. Yanking out one earbud, I tried to make sense of the chatter on the intercom but when I heard something that sounded like them suggesting we take an uptown train back to West 4th Street, I opted to get off the train and walk. The great thing about downtown Manhattan where it starts to come to a point is that the train lines all get closer and closer together. I knew that the R train (the train I would eventually be switching to in Park Slope) stopped at Canal street a few blocks east of where I was stuck on the A. And I never get the chance to walk around in Tribeca. So I opted to take my time getting home. Because after all, you have to slow down every once in a while and relax.

I'm finding that my schedules on Thursdays and Fridays are so tight with work and errands before work and yoga on Thursday bright and early, that I can never expect to get too much done on my other projects. Sure I can spend my entire break on them or sneak a look at my to do list, write emails or do other work when there's down time at work but it's probably best not to because the quality of my work suffers and I risk getting into trouble at actual work. So, I'm taking a different approach to Thursdays and Fridays. I'm not going to try too hard to push forward on those days on any of my projects as long as I spend adequate time on them during my days off and the days of the week that I have significant time off during the day where I'm not rushing around. Manage my time, so to speak, so that I won't feel so bad about letting a few days go by without making headway on whatever I'm currently working on. Deadlines or not.

This way, when Saturday through Wednesday comes around, I can dive back in fresh and start to work and plan my week ahead. Ironically, the first two days of my work week will now become like a weekend from my music projects.

And occasionally, I do plan on taking a weekend from both. Soon enough. Meanwhile, I'll try and do as much leisurely walking through random neighborhoods and spotting astronomical phenomena on my walk home.

Flatiron to East Village...

2012-01-25T23:39:00.002-05:00

Try finding a decent coffee shop with a wifi connection and an outlet or two so I can get some juice for my electronics, (oh and by the way, it actually has to have somewhere I can sit), in the East Village. Seriously, I just spent my afternoon snaking my way through from Flatiron through Chelsea to Union Square and down to the Village in search of just such a place to kill time but everything was full or didn't have what I needed). I came in to Manhattan around 130pm to meet Mohammad for lunch (gluten free pizza at Mozzarelli's: always a favorite) and decided to stay in the city all afternoon, since I'm meeting Tania in about an hour from now (it's currently 545pm as I type this).

I have all my stuff with me after all. I was able to sit down at MUD Coffee on E. 9th street and do some work on the mix for "One Day," the song I'm writing for Mohammad's reel. But beyond that, no internet and no place to charge my phone. Well until now. I hit my last option at Houston Street with the gargantuan Whole Foods on the corner of Houston and Chrystie Streets, a place where I don't necessarily have to buy anything to sit down and take advantage of the space. It's so gargantuan after all that no one will notice I didn't buy anything.

This is one of the many places that I've staked out throughout the city with free access to public bathrooms for just such a day of hiking around the city and not wanting to spend too much money. After all, I just spent about $40 on a new yoga mat. It's been needed for a while and I figured today, since I'm meeting Tania at a yoga class, that I should just get it. My other yoga mat is currently sitting at the studio where I usually take classes and it's about to develop a full-on hole clear through the mat where my feet have been wearing it out in downward dog.

Right now, my feet are killing me but I did enjoy my brisk jaunt around the Village despite not being able to find everything I was looking for. It's not all the time I can allow myself these kinds of days. I just finished two projects though and I thought, "why not give myself a real leisurely day off?" Not many people I know would consider huffing it between three different Manhattan neighborhoods a leisurely day off but I'm merely referring to the fact that it was relatively unhurried and unscheduled. Impromptu even.

The best part? I still got some work done tweaking a few things in the mix that Mohammad and I talked about at lunch and adding a Wurlitzer part doubling the guitar riff I recorded on Monday. I still need to sit down at home and try my mix on a few different sets of speakers before I sign off on it and upload it to the Dropbox though.

And it never ends. Tomorrow I'm meeting with Steve Pitre, the cinematographer from Sides of the Track, to talk about music for one of his upcoming projects. Exciting!

Right now though, I'm going to try to relax a little, maybe get a snack before yoga. This'll be the first time in a while that I've taken a class not at Abhaya yoga. Should be cool. Will blog more later…and when I upload this, I'll probably add pics from the Transit Museum visit on Sunday. Will link from both this entry and the entry on the actual visit.

Transit Museum….

2012-01-24T03:09:00.000-05:00

I've wanted to go see the Transit Museum for a long time now. Sunday, I finally found the time to go with a friend. Man, is it cool! The museum is housed in a decommissioned subway station in downtown Brooklyn and contains several exhibits, some of them interactive, as well as a slew of vintage subway cars that you can board, plastered with all the ads from the era when the cars were in service.

The first thing we saw was an exhibit about the process of building the subway tunnels, focusing on the people involved in the various tasks that went into engineering the massive public works project that is the New York City subway. The history is fascinating, replete with stories of workers working on the underground tunnels getting sucked out of compressed air tunnels and shot out like a geyser into the East River, or getting buried by boulders dislodged by explosions. More interesting even were the different methods for building the tunnels depending on the very wide range of geological situations across the city. I was fascinated by how they actually excavated under the rivers. Here's a link to a chapter from a book on the subway construction that specifically deals with construction methods.

After that exhibit, there were a few interactive bits that we checked out, mostly on the subject of electrical power in the subway. Unable to contain myself, I suggested we go downstairs at this point and look at the old train cars, one of the main attractions as far as I'm concerned. Other than there being a mass of screaming kids on a tour that we kept trying to avoid, it was really cool. There are some twenty cars down there on the platform level from as far back as the early 1900s. Some of the oldest ones had wicker seats and ceiling fans. All of the old cars had ads on them from the period the car was in service. Here are two that I snapped with my phone:

Going to the museum was a last minute snap decision, so I didn't have my good camera, or I would have taken more pics. My friend took some that I will post as soon as she emails them to me. I was really fascinated by the ads and informational posters.

Another cool thing that I wish I had photographed was plopped down in the center of the platform: the truck assembly from an older subway car. It was really neat to see it all up close and cut away like that so you could see the different components.

Back upstairs, the last thing few things we perused were the array of vintage maps, the cutaways of old city buses and trolleys and a row of old turnstiles with descriptions of the history of why they switched form mechanical to electrical ones and how the current ones work (transactions take less than a tenth of a second with magnetic swipe cards!).

I was like a kid in a candy store the whole time. More pictures are here:

NYC Transit Museum

Compartmentalization…

2012-01-23T01:57:00.000-05:00

Compartments:

Voice Over
Regrouping, started up coaching again last Wednesday. Old coach has split from Edge Studio and does her own coaching at a few different studios. Went in to Real Recording on 23rd Street and had an hour long session during which we worked on commercial reads, an area where my training was lacking. I need to have a commercial demo produced this year so that's what I'm working towards. Meanwhile, I'm revamping the web page and making a totally separate page to direct voice over clients to. First establishing my expertise as a voice over narrator before trying to market both music and voice over.

Contemporary Music
Tania and I have a few more concerts slated for the upcoming months, at which we will either perform Moon, Tides, Cycles again or a new piece I have in the works. We are also talking about collaborating on an album of my contemporary works to be released next year. Possibly a live album. Not just piano and electronics, the album will feature all electronic pieces, pieces for small ensembles and electronics and possibly one large chamber music piece. A lot of it has not been written yet.

Rock Music
Lacy and I are back performing at open mics, we just played Freddy's and will probably do so again next month. Her album, on which I have played several guitar tracks, is still in the works and when it's released, sometime around May, I will be performing with her at the CD release party in Philly and New York. Really looking forward to both, even though they won't be for months. Meanwhile, I'll be learning parts to all new songs! Some of which I haven't even heard yet.

Film Music
I just finished up the theme music for George Perez' series "The Life," a short 1:30 rock piece featuring a slide guitar and some electric piano, soon to be posted. So far I've seen the temporary visuals that were edited together to give the shooter an idea of what kind of footage they needed. "The Life" is a crime drama series focusing on the growing child prostitution problem in the U.S.

In addition, I'm finishing a song for Mohammad Maaty's production reel, titled "One Day" and featuring the fantastic accordion stylings of the great Crystal Bright. This one is taking up the bulk of my time at the moment because I'm in the final mixing stage and I really want to finish out the project by the end of next week. Especially since there are other projects on the horizon.

And that is how my brain works these days. I find the compartmentalizing is the best way to organize my to do lists and keep ahead of myself. Although, the thought that keeps occurring to me, in some form or another, is that, after all this time, plugging away at all of my various pursuits, it's difficult to make significant headway on any one venture while my attention is so scattered. Even setting clear goals and organizing my thoughts like this can only get me so far. Because on top of it all, I still owe most of my time to a full time job that pays the bills and keeps me sheltered, fed and in good clothes. Such is life.

I've considered, from time to time, diverting my focus to one venture at a time, possibly spending a few weeks on just voice over, just contemporary or rock music, or focusing wholly on my film music. In fact, sometimes, that's what ends up happening by default. When I get a film job that pays, for example, I pretty much have to sideline everything else, because it only makes sense to focus on what is going to more immediately generate income. Voice Over tends to get thrown on the back burner more often than everything else.

All of this is not to say that I'm not making strides. When I look up at where I was even just a year ago, it's obvious that I am making headway. I just have to decide when to push forward with what. And accept that I'm not going to meet all my career goals right away. It's a long haul after all.

One Day...

2012-01-17T04:02:00.001-05:00

I'm writing a song right now (or I should say recording a song) for Mohammad's production reel, titled "One Day." This has been a pretty fun project as I'm getting to blend some unique elements, accordion among them, and I'm getting to be as creative as I can while emulating a style of music that I quite enjoy. French accordion music.

So, the piece is very very reminiscent of a certain track on the Amelie Soundtrack by Yann Tiersen but, I'm putting my own spin on it adding some edgy rock elements to it. My good friend Crystal Bright was good enough to record the accordion part and send it to me via Dropbox. Now I'm working on the mix which is gaining in complexity. Piano, guitar, bass, orchestral percussion and tympani are included in that mix. The fun part is figuring out how to layer them in order to build the song up and create dynamic shifts. I'm finding that my initial decisions are being subverted, and each time I sit down with the mix my mind changes.

For example, I realized that one of the ways I can build the tension and excitement in the piece is to not bring in the orchestral percussion track right away, simple though it was in the first few bars of the piece. Also, I doubled the accordion part and panned it hard left and right and am slowly raising the levels as the piece draws to a climax. In addition, I doubled the first guitar part, which was clean, and decided to run it through a tremolo effect (one of the great things about amp modeling is that you can take the same take after you've recorded it and process it in as many ways as you can think of!). This tremolo effected guitar also slowly increases in volume throughout the piece.

I even just brought the piano part up higher in the mix, because I'm finding that on what I originally wrote, it's actually pretty crucial to the song. Right now, though, it's just a dummy track that I pulled straight from my notation program, Sibelius. I plan on actually recording myself playing it later this week when I get a spare moment.

In addition, I may add some more guitar tracks and possibly some synth. At the moment though, what's on my mind is kick drum.

This is one of my favorite points in the process of writing a song, the implementation and realization. Several eureka moments typically ensue, especially when I walk away from it for a while and I come back and hear something that wasn't there before or I get an idea of something that isn't there but should be. Incidentally, this is why it's so hard to stop writing sometimes (in the absence of a deadline of course). You always find something else you can add to a song or change. Occasionally, you do reach a point where you feel it's perfection but it's sort of rare, I've found.

That having been said, hopefully, I'll be finished soon so I can post it. I almost forgot to mention that I'm done with George's music! We sat down at NY1 in the break room after my shift last Thursday and before his to sort of iron out the last few tweaks to the mix on my laptop. I've heard the music against the visuals for the main title sequence now and it looks pretty awesome! More to come on that as they work to finish the final film. For now, I'm thinking I'm going to eat my lunch. Yes, at 4 in the morning.

Freddy's bar open mic...

2012-01-16T02:04:00.002-05:00

The thermometer on the billboard across the street from the Chelsea Market is reading 14 degrees F right now. It's that week in mid winter when it drops into the teens and it's just miserable. The winters are hard here, yeah yeah yeah. I've found that just knowing that this part of the winter, inevitable though it may be, is finite and usually only lasts a week or so. In fact, tomorrow, I think it's going to be in the 40s, which will feel balmy by comparison.

But tonight, I sit through another overnight with the prospect of having to walk to the train with my head bent over and my shoulders hunched, collar up and scarf wrapped tight, as quickly as possible with a mind only to getting on the train as quick as possible and then getting to my front door as quickly as possible. Before my ass freezes and falls off.

I'm even wearing a thermal shirt right now (something I rarely do) but I wasn't earlier when Lacy and I played over at Freddy's bar on 5th Avenue (man was I cold out there). This is an open mic we've wanted to play for a long time since I heard about it. It's literally a block away from my apartment and I pass it every day wanting to stop in and check it out. Just haven't had time. A while back though I saw a flier for the open mic night but it's only every third Sunday of the month.

When we arrived at the mic, there was no one in the back room where the mic takes place so we sat in the bar and chatted with the owner. A friend of mine surprised me and showed up so the three of us sat and had a few drinks, checking out the decor in the bar and listening to the bartender's playlist…he was showing us an artist named Richard Cheese who does covers of rap and popular songs in a lounge style reminiscent of Frank Sinatra and other crooners. It was pretty awesome. In addition to that bag of awesomeness, there sits a bonified working player piano that had a strip of lights strung up inside so you could see through the glass plating on the outside and see the inner workings. It was enthralled.

Eventually, the host of the mic showed up and we moved into the back room. There was only one other artist besides us and we all ended up getting a decent amount of time. Lacy and I only rehearsed two songs but found that we were able to pull three more out to play. One of the was a cover of a Jump Little Children song called "Mexico," which I sang. Haven't don that in a while!

Overall, a fun time and we'll hopefully be doing it again soon. There's word that the event is hanging on by a string because not enough people come but hopefully, it will be revived when the weather get's nicer. Surely temperatures in the teens did enough to deter some people from coming.

The rest of this week, I'll be focusing on music for Mohammad's reel which is coming together nicely. Probably will be adding some more guitar tracks and a piano part and some effects. Will post when it's done, as always.

On top of that, I'm looking forward to my very VO Wednesday. Will be meeting a new friend who does VO to pick her brain and then having a voice coaching session right after with one of my old voice coaches from Edge. Should be fun and will have lots to talk about then. So, until Wednesday!

Gluten Free for almost two years...

2012-01-10T04:31:00.000-05:00

2:38am. Tired. Will soon be rubbing sleep out of eyes.

Spent a nice weekend in NC and didn't even think to blog about any of it until now. Trips to see the family and friends back in NC are becoming scarcer and more significant. We managed to coordinate (for the second time in a row) getting everyone out there (I mean all 15 of us, from my parents and siblings to significant others and kids) and despite the cacophony of having that many people in one place, the whole weekend was pretty relaxing. And I ate. A lot. And laughed a lot and played with the kids a lot. I even had to pack a whole extra bag full of presents and leftover food which prompted me to take a cab ride from the airport…something I rarely do. But it was much needed what with the weight of everything I was carrying. Thankfully, I'm at a point where taking a cab in the city is second nature and I know how to avoid getting screwed over. The cab ride was well worth it, too, because it got me home with time to spare before work. Yes, straight into overnight after my vacation…that's just how I roll.

Today (meaning yesterday at the point when this is posting), instead of diving back into work on all the projects I have going on, I sat around the apartment for most of the day getting situated and organizing my thoughts. Also fixing random things. The cylinder in the front door lock in my apartment had come loose and I had to take it apart to tighten it up. Plus a piece of one of my presents (a rather nice mandolin slicer from my brother-in-law Jim) fell off and broke in my bag during the flight so I super-glued that back together as well.

All in time to make it to another Celiac meetup in the Village. A maker of gluten free rolls was having a launch party for her new line of bread rolls called Free Bread. So there was free bread there (plus rolls for purchase). And they were having buy one get one on all gluten free beer…which was pretty much Redbridge but that was cool. I brought a friend with who was not Celiac but she didn't mind. The venue was 116 Macdougal, a cool basement level bar with stone walls and a sense of history about it that I have yet to look into. There was also a jazz band entertaining us called The Pendulum Swings. 5 horns, bass, drums and keys and one rather eccentric lead singer.

After the meetup, my friend and I tried to go to Pala Pizza on Allen Street for some more gluten free goodies but found that it was closed this week only for renovations. So, we hopped a cab over to Risotteria to satiate that gluten free need of mine. Risotteria is always a winner as far as I'm concerned. I'm pretty sure tonight was the first time I got to try their pizza, though, as every other time I've gone there I've been compelled to eat the risotto as it's something you can't get anywhere else. The pizza was damn good though. Expensive but good.

It's one of those things though that you just kind of come to expect. Everything is going to be expensive when it's not in high demand. All specialty flours and gourmet ingredients. It costs more to make sure it's gluten free and not cross contaminated. I'm going on two years since I was diagnosed and despite all this, the expensive food, the difficult social situations and the constant worry that I'm going to end up eating the wrong thing or that I'm unknowingly ingesting something I shouldn't be, I'm feeling pretty confident about it all. It's not hard to go for days without the worry of getting gluten-ed. I have my routines, I have my go to foods when I'm in a pinch and I have nothing with me. And I can handle social situations, especially where drinking is involved, rather easily now.

The trick to a lot of this is that the information is out there, the advice as well. It's just a matter of having the right attitude to not despair and say, "I'm going to figure out how to adjust to this." It took months of not feeling better, going back on gluten and then getting rediagnosed this past March for me to come to that but there it is. I basically went through all the stages of denial back in 2010 (granted, I did so a little out of order with acceptance coming first with the relief of knowing what was wrong, followed by grief at the loss of all my favorite foods and beverages, but then denial and anger setting in when I started to feel worse and ultimately bargaining starting when I decided that maybe it wouldn't be a big deal if I just ate sprouted grain bread instead of crumbly gluten free bread). So, this past March when I heard the bad news from my new doctor, I felt bad for half a day but then I talked myself out of the despair. I thought, "I'm going to approach this totally different this time." It was my instinct that going through all those stages again was not going to help me at all. I had a choice of how I was going to look at the diagnosis. A curse? Or just my lot. There are a whole host of other auto immune disorders that are far worse and a dietary change is not the hardest thing in the world to cope with. I wasn't going to go listing all the things I'd have to go without when I could think of what I can eat and how to be proactive in finding the best ways to acquire those things as inexpensively as possible. And just get on with living my life.

And that's that. Another thing that helps? Actually going to these Celiac meetups and meeting people who have the same thing I do. It's about solidarity. Hopefully, I'll be going to a lot more of them soon.

Bolt again...

2012-01-04T08:05:00.001-05:00

The city looked amazing this morning as I watched the sunrise over the skyline from the opposite side of the Lincoln Tunnel in NJ. There's nothing that quite compares to the event of a sunrise coupled with the skyline of one of the greatest cities in the world. I figured a picture wouldn't even encapsulate. Okay, biased. But you get the point. Majesty was the watchword this morning and I felt compelled to just sit and watch with my cup of green tea that I had just enough time to purchase before hopping on the bus. Also felt compelled to fasten my seatbelt due to the memory of my last Bolt Bus trip to Philadelphia.

Anyway, I'm going to be in three major cities today as I hop-scotch down the east coast today. NYC to Philly to DC. When I get to DC I'm going to have to hop on their metro system for a little which should be fun. I like finding my way around a (relatively) new city. I haven't been in DC on the metro since 2003, I think. Or perhaps 2001. Really looking forward to it though. And looking forward to seeing my sister and her family.

But first, recording! I'm playing on two songs today for Lacy's album, the names of which I will not discuss. The album is probably coming out in April or May depending. So, I'm also really looking forward to that…that and getting off this bus. Try typing as the bus glides (not so smoothly) across the bumpy turnpike while sitting in your thermal shirt that you put on this morning due to the subfreezing chill you knew to expect, next to the heat streaming out of the vent that you didn't think to expect.

I think at this point, I'll leave it until I'm on the Amtrak or until I make it to Stafford. Maybe I'll try to do some mixing on George's music…although, I can't see my patience with this earthquake of a bus ride holding out while I struggle with the track pad on this laptop. More later...

A very voice over afternoon...

2012-01-03T22:34:00.000-05:00

While Sunday was filled with music projects, today was a big voice over day for me. It all started with a phone call which, by the end of it, had me diverting all my energy from working on George's picture toward tweaking my website, editing my demo and doing general research and organization.

The call was from another voice over talent and coach who was administering the free evaluation I had solicited a few weeks ago via this site. They say they'll evaluate your career if you send them a demo and let them look at your marketing materials (e.g. website whatever else). Always a skeptic, I wasn't sure what to expect but I figure it couldn't hurt. Worst they'd do is try to sucker me into paying for something I don't want to pay for, which wouldn't be a big deal since I don't have a whole lot of money to throw at things like that anyway. There was a red flag because they offer some kind of package deals to promote you to talent agents, etc. I've always heard you should never give anyone money up front for representation so I was all set to turn down whatever they were going to offer me.

But, in fact, they were brutally honest and actually quite helpful. Which, let's be honest, is exactly what I need at this stage. Realism. I've known for sometime that either Edge didn't give me much of a head start or I didn't take advantage of them enough. I came away with the feeling that I wasn't quite ready to market myself, not simply because I was still working on getting my materials together but because I didn't get a whole lot of mic time during the three months I worked with them. The notion that they sort of churn out voice talent at an alarming rate is certainly out there and hearing it from this woman today was not a surprise to me (One of the coaches I worked with at Edge even said so!).

Other than bashing the place I did my "training" she did have some fantastically valuable information on marketing, specifically pointing out some of the things I was doing wrong and evaluating my choices, putting them in a different light. For example, I though it was a good idea to advertise that I do both music and voice over on the same website, and I even put this question to someone at Edge and got the opposite answer from what this woman gave me. Apparently, as a result of putting voice over and music stuff on one site, it's confusing and casting agents don't have a lot of time to be confused. A lot of people I spoke to about it were agreeing with the notion that casting agents looking for voice and music for projects (like most of them) would be attracted to someone who could do both. It appears to make logical sense. So I went with it. But, as this woman pointed out, it also makes me look like I'm not outstanding at one or the other, I just happen to do both. And I thought about it some more. A casting agent is casting voice talent. They're not necessarily trying to source music for a project as well. That's someone else's job within the production company. So maybe I could market myself to someone like this but ultimately, I need to be considering the fact that the vast majority of jobs I'd be looking at doing, I really only need to be impressing a casting agent and not necessarily trying to reel in the whole production team. Maybe eventually once I've established that I'm a pretty decent voice talent, I can start advertising both together. But even then, the above situation still applies. Casting agents don't have time to care that I do music, too.

So anyway, the other major thing that she pointed out is that I should really have a commercial demo. Something that's been on my mind for a while now...well, since I've been doing all this research and found a few production companies that, when soliciting new voice talent, asked that I upload a commercial demo. The vast majority of jobs, she tells me, in the voice over world are commercials. Narration gigs and the like are specialty jobs and are fewer and farther in between. This is something that never came up at Edge where they tell you what they think you'd be suitable for after evaluating your voice at one 4 hour seminar.

Well, you live and you learn and I've gotta think about this as part of my education. It's not as though I've wasted time or money. I didn't get absolutely nothing from Edge. They certainly are a great resource even if their methods are not the best. And I'm not going to cower in the corner because some professional voice talent says I'm not ready for an agent. In fact, she wasn't even suggesting I do that. What I thought was great was that she pretty much told me what I had to do before I'd be ready for an agent and gave me a lot of options, none of which was to spend money on something I wasn't ready for. So, that was cool.

Anyway, this whole thing launched me into a revamping of my marketing materials today. I emailed my graphic designer and my web designer to start working on it all. The plan is to have a separate single page website for voice over that will be linked from my main page but will be a different URL, voice.timdaoust.com. Hence new business cards strictly for voice. I'm even considering taking the logo down to just say my name instead of Tim Daoust Audio. We'll see though.

I'm scheduled for a coaching session with one of my coaches from Edge who is now no longer with Edge and whom I always see at Learning Ally. I made the decision a while back that I would go get some more coaching and now I'm thinking of making it a regular monthly (at least) thing. I'm going in with a very direct plan with clear goals, one of them to work up to recording a commercial demo.

That having been said, I need to get to sleep here soon. I'm getting up at 6am to travel to Philly for that recording session and I have a big day of traveling after that too. Headed by train to DC where I'll be hopping on the DC metro system to meet my brother-in-law at the end of the yellow line. I'm going to be very tired but very jazzed, because I'm getting to visit with my nephews and niece for a bit before we head to NC. I'll blog more from the bus tomorrow if I can.

2012...

2012-01-01T19:48:00.000-05:00

2012. I had a good first day of the year overall. Slept in like a rock star, took a bike ride around Prospect Park, grazed on leftover food from the party all afternoon and had Lacy over to rehearse for the recording session on Wednesday. The party last night didn't go as planned but we all had fun anyway. We were looking for low key and we got it. A few people bailed after RSVP'ing so we had far fewer than expected. Between Katrina's baking efforts and all the cheeses and meat I bought, we had way too much food. But honestly, we're going to be eating it all this week so there's no real loss there.

After sitting around and surfing the channels for a movie to watch and never really settling on one until it was half an hour before midnight, we ended up watching the ball drop on NY1 and then watching the fireworks over NY Harbor from my window (how cool is it that I could see that from my window?!). Tania was here and brought a traditional Bulgarian cake called Banitsa, with charms baked inside that we all had to dig for. The charms were pieces of paper with wishes written on them wrapped in foil. So that was fun. She even skyped with her mother in Bulgaria via her iPhone so mom could pick which slice of the cake she wanted.

Everyone stayed until about 2am or so and then I finished cleaning and went to bed around 3am. Now, I sit thinking about my plan not just for tonight and this week but for the year as a whole. Two or three of the charms from my slice of the Bulgarian cake had career related stuff written on them (voice over being one of them that I'm pretty sure Tania wrote and put in there hoping I'd get it). So, I'm starting to get a good feeling about this year. Not simply because of a charm in a cake (although, there was some chance I might not have picked the slice of cake that had those particular charms in it), but also because I do feel poised to make some real changes. I spoke about this a little in one of my last blog entries so I won't say much more. In addition to this good feeling, I may not have mentioned a few blogs ago when I was talking about career stuff but, I'm positively inundated with potentially paying music gigs and I don't think it's much of a stretch to think I could find similar work in VO if I just apply myself like I'm planning to in the coming weeks.

There's the music for "The Life," music for Mohammad's film reel, the recording session with Lacy and the potential to write music for another friend's cinematography reel, but also, I'm being asked to do some transcribing work for a friend with whom I've worked before and also could have another film scoring gig coming up soon too.

All this is leaving me feeling pretty confident and energized. And who knows, maybe I'll get off the @#$% overnight shift soon too. One of the charms I pulled out of my slice said "promotion" on it.

Another said "traveling." Which I will also be doing later in the week. Wednesday I take the god-forsaken Bolt Bus to Philadelphia early in the morning, record all day long, then take a train to D.C. where my sister will meet me and drive me to her home in VA. A day with the kids and then we'll drive down to Raleigh to see everyone else and then I fly back to the city on Sunday of next weekend. Hopefully, I'll get to do even more traveling than that later in the year but I suppose that's contingent upon me making, and putting away, a lot more money than I am right now.

Anyway, when I touch back down in the city, I think that's when I'll begin phase 1 of this beautiful plan of mine. Stay tuned.

Cornelia Street Cafe...

2011-12-27T00:25:00.000-05:00

The concert tonight at Cornelia Street Cafe went really really well. It's funny how after three performances of Moon, Tides, Cycles, there are still technical difficulties that come up but fortunately, I've been getting better and better at troubleshooting under pressure. Plus, we've been getting better at performing the piece together.

The night begins with me arriving early and having to wait upstairs since the previous show was still going on and the venue was packed. So, I'm thinking already, it's going to be pretty small downstairs. Old West Village building, tiny staircase leading to basement performance space. I sat drinking my wine at the bar upstairs trying to imagine how little space we'd have to set up. When Tania arrived, the downstairs was emptying so we wiggled our way downstairs, me with all of my equipment taking up the whole width of the stairs practically, making it near impossible for people to get out. So that took a bit.

When I came to the bottom of the stairs and through the doorway into the space, I saw that it was, in fact, fairly long with many tables lining the walls with a full service bar just to the right as you walk in the door. The stage, though small, fit a baby grand piano with just enough space for me to tuck myself into the corner with one of the tables from the dining area to set up all of my equipment on top of, and still have room to stand comfortably without knocking anything over. No rickety music stand for my laptop this time either.

Once I finished setting up my equipment, we tested the sound. Our sound guy, a Bulgarian as well, hit it off with Tania right away. In fact, they were conversing in rapid-fire Bulgarian from the moment they were acquainted leaving yours truly half confused as to what they were discussing. He was very helpful though when it came to setting up my equipment and understood all of my requests without questioning me or seeming confused.

So, I was pretty confident from the beginning that, barring any problems with my equipment, we'd at least get good sound. However, upon powering up the M Audio Axiom 25 that Lacy gave me, I realized it wasn't talking to my audio interface. Instead of freaking out, (okay, I freaked out a little), I used the track pad on the laptop to twist some knobs so we could at least test the audio, while the place was empty. After that I tried talking to my equipment a little until it occurred to me to use their wifi to download the manual for the keyboard and figure out how to do a hard reset. I remembered that the other night, while we were rehearsing, I may have hit some buttons and changed some settings inadvertently. I was trying to get the USB cable to function (which it won't because I stupid broke it…long story) because I didn't have my MIDI cable with me that night and in the process I was aware that some of the things I was doing to test it might need to be undone. Luckily, I had the presence of mind to remember that little episode so, I knew exactly what to look up in the manual: how to do a hard reset. After clicking on a few articles, I learned all one must do is hold the + and - buttons while powering up the keyboard. Easy.

After that, I twiddled the knobs to check it was working, solicited a high five from the sound guy and slipped out to use the restroom. On the way out, I overheard someone in the ticket line coming in saying they had heard about this event in the paper. Wow! I thought. Then I looked at the crowd and realized that they were mostly comprised of people who looked as though they either were regulars there or just walked in off the street for dinner and a show. A co worker of mine also showed up along with a lot of Tania's friends whom I've met before. So overall a great turnout. I think it was even one of the best turnouts we've had, other than the Metropolitan Room. I, unfortunately, had to come right in here to work on the overnight so I didn't get to socialize a whole lot with the audience and Tania's friends but I did get to chat a bit before leaving. But I did get to hear some compliments and talk with one of Tania's friends about the software that I use.

There's been some talk about us doing this again in Boston but now I'm looking forward to the next piece that we will perform together, a new longer version of a piano sketch that I'm turning into a piano and electronics piece. This should be pretty awesome…I will say more about it in another blog soon hopefully. For now, I must get back to work. Good night! Pictures from the concert are coming soon!

Get ready...

2011-12-24T22:41:00.000-05:00

The tag on my Yogi Tea bag says, "Work, but don't forget to live." Which is exactly what I need to hear right now. It's Christmas Eve and I pretty much have been working all day long. I had my laptop out at work during my down time so I could do some research and think up a plan of action for the start of the new year. What am I researching, you ask? Production companies, ad agencies and talent agencies. Yes, I'm trying really hard to hit the ground running with a much more effective strategy come next week. Proactive is the watchword, something I haven't really been. It's quite frankly been a few cautious half starts for the past year and a half with this VO thing and, while I have been building slowly and making progress with my voice, I feel like I haven't really done the brunt work of truly marketing myself. It's like I've essentially been just dropping business cards in midtown hoping that some ad agency employee will pick it up off the ground and call me.

Anyway, I've spent the better part of the day on this plan, opening up my laptop again upon finishing dinner and continuing the hunt, while admittedly sitting in front of the television. Now it's about 10pm and I've cut myself off. But I did want to type up a blog since it's been a bit, minus the blurb about the concert from the other day.

It's also getting excruciatingly close to the end of the year and you know how I get. Reflective. Reflecting? Reflect-y? I think I was right the first time. Anyway, I always start to look back and see how far I've come and size up where I am, when the new year rolls around. I like putting things in perspective. Life just sort of starts to run together unless you mark time and parse out events and check your progress. It helps to assign meaning to what's going on and remember why I'm doing what I do.

I've also kind of been thinking about something some snooty guy said to me during the first few months I was here in 2009. "It takes about three years to really get it together here. That's the general rule." Whatever that is. Define "getting it together." Who's rule is that? Anyway, despite not fully being there and to some extent still working on what "there" is, I do feel pretty accomplished. In fact, this newfound vigor with which I've been approaching the VO career is actually inspired by a sense of momentum with my overall career, in both music and film, and not by any sense of urgency to make something happen by that three year mark that could be defined as "getting it together" or "having gotten it together." At the beginning of last year, I had this sort of existential "I'm turning 30" thing driving my reevaluation of my career. It was a sort of franticness that didn't wholly lend itself to results, just a lot of flailing around…controlled flailing around, mind you, yet flailing nonetheless. I job hunted, I reconsidered my approach to voice over, I considered a dozen different scenarios to make more money than I'm making now. But it was all too rushed.

Now, I'm suddenly struck by a focused and rigid tenacity that's driving me to finally do something I haven't really truly been doing (at least not to any high degree). And that is truly betting on myself. A month ago I finished my new narration demo, taking some cuts from the old one, and also finished a documentary demo both of which I'm satisfied with, perhaps even proud of. And now, I'm ready to get out there and really promote myself.

On top of that, I have music and film jobs lining up, (two on the docket and maybe two more lined up), Tania and I have several collaborations planned and I'm starting off the new year with a recording session in Philadelphia for Lacy's new album. I'm feeling pretty excited. A new year and I feel poised to really take some steps forward. So step back and watch out because 2012 is going to pretty awesome. Merry Christmas all!

Concert on Monday...

2011-12-20T00:58:00.000-05:00

I'm typing tonight to promote a concert I'll be performing in on Monday, December 26th at Cornelia Street Cafe. Here's a link to the Facebook invite. Tania and I have performed the piece Moon, Tides, Cycles that I wrote last year twice now, this being the third performance. The other pieces being performed range from Satie to Ginastera to Mason Bates to all sorts of Bulgarian composers. Guaranteed to be a crowd pleaser as Ms. Stavreva is an extremely talented pianist.

There is a $10 cover and a $10 food/drink minimum. Here's a video of the performance from December 3rd at Waltz-Astoria Cafe in Astoria, Queens.

Cousins...

2011-12-11T23:59:00.001-05:00

I don't have any pictures yet but the visit with Cousin Kelley and her husband Brice was pretty fun. Of course, yours truly had to work through most of it but I did get to spend a little time playing tour guide, mostly this afternoon.

Yesterday, we managed to get up to the Highline Park together during my break, after they spent most of the morning and afternoon in Central Park and then midtown checking out window displays. When I left work later that night, we all met at 5 Napkin Burger, one of the best burger joints in NYC in my humble opinion. I discovered that they have gluten free buns there too so I was psyched to safely devour a nice greasy burger, smothered in aioli mayonnaise, caramelized onions and gruyere cheese. Unfortunately, later in the evening I accidentally broke my gluten free streak by inadvertently sipping Katrina's beer at Heartland Brewery while she was in the bathroom. Oops! I laughed it off. Shit happens!

Today, after they went to the MET we all converged on Carnegie to see the American Symphony Orchestra. Katrina was working the concert so she got us all free tickets. Orchestra seats with a clear view of the pianist's hands! We didn't stay to hear Liszt's Faust Symphony but we did enjoy a piano concerto by Busoni. Both pieces were around an hour long so we opted not to stay past intermission so they could pack in some more sight seeing.

I knew that Brice was keen on getting some decent pizza in and seeing the World Trade Center. So, I figured I would take them to the Village and see about either Risotteria if we had time or Joe's if we didn't. At 6:30 they needed to be at the Minskoff Theater for The Lion King. Which got me thinking…dinner first? Or should we head straight on to Chambers Street? Despite not having eaten since breakfast they chose WTC first.

It was the perfect time of day to be down there, too, with the sunlight fading and illuminating the glass of the buildings a pinkish-orange hue. After circling the site, passing Zucotti park which was mostly empty save for some police officers and barriers and one guy shouting about Tylenol, we wound down to Greenwich street trying to get a closer look at the Memorial Site. Right next to this mural, was a man engaging all the passersby with anecdotes and historical facts about the site and the attacks, showing them his photo album from the WTC site. He was a wealth of info so we listened in for a bit until he mentioned the Sphere, a sculpture that used to sit in the plaza of the old World Trade Center that was salvaged after the attacks. The sculpture now sits in Battery Park, a short walk away from where we were. I suggested we go see it and we managed to arrive in Battery Park city, a few blocks south, just as the sun was setting over the harbor. So that was nice timing. After viewing the sculpture and then snapping a few pictures at the water's edge, we headed back to the Village, hoping to have time to sit down and eat some pizza at Risotteria before they had to head up to midtown for their show.

Luckily, Risotteria was able to seat us right away and we had plenty of time to enjoy our meal. We even had time to snag Brice a cannoli at Rocco's Pastry shop on Bleeker Street. On top of that, while standing outside scanning for a cab they got to experience a little slice of New York when a police car turned a corner in front of us, trying to break through the traffic on Bleeker. Getting on the loudspeaker, the officer instructed the car in front of him to pull to the right so he could slide through in the bike lane. When the driver of the car instead opted to try and pull up on the curb on the left side of the street, the officer said, "Okay, pal, maybe in your country!"

So we got a good laugh about that. Then, I took them over to Carmine Street to give a little lesson in hailing a cab and sent them on their way to the musical. And of course, I went home and tried to sleep it all off before the overnight…where I now sit typing this blog entry.

Tonight, I'm going to be working on a theme for George's pilot episode of "The Life." More on that as it unfolds. There's no real deadline for this but I'm working on a driving rock song to accompany the mood of that series he's hoping to develop. On top of that, I'm working on an accordion driven piece for Mohammad's film reel, talking with my new friend Steve, the cinematographer from Sides of the Track about scoring his film reel and potentially collaborating with Chad, a co worker of mine who is the D.P. for "The Life" on some small side projects. So, there's a lot of opportunity coming up in the next few weeks to months. Tania and I will be performing again on the 26th of this month at the Cornelia Street Cafe in the Village and I'll be sure to let you all know about that. So long for now! Gotta get to work!

The night...

2011-12-06T15:55:00.001-05:00

I wasn't sure if this would still work or not but I told myself at 745 this morning as I lay down in bed after the overnight shift, "You will sleep until your alarm goes off." I took me until now, walking back from the laundromat, to realize that I actually did manage to sleep solid up until my alarm went off at 2pm. Not too shabby.

Now, I'm about to get to work on a few voice auditions. After Saturday's mixer, I'm wanting to attack this thing with a whole new vigor and intensity. You may remember that I had the New York Voiceover Mixer to go to along with my concert last Saturday night. The mixer unfortunately didn't manage to meet my expectations of at least meeting a few casting agents and production people. No, I mostly met other voice actors at varying stages of their careers but this alone was valuable and made the night worth it, even though I couldn't stay the whole time.

When I arrived there was a relatively short line snaking down the sidewalk and I only had to wait a few minutes to get inside, long enough to wonder if I'd see my coaches there whose names were on the guest list, to wonder if I'd be alone most of the night or if it would be easy to meet total strangers and to witness to younger people in front of me get booted from the line because they were underage. Yes, there was a cash bar. And at $12 for a glass of wine, I was partially glad I wasn't staying all night.

Once inside we waited on a long line to get name tags and to submit our business cards for the raffle, which took almost 15 minutes. The crowd was packed pretty tightly too but it wasn't long before I had a drink in my hand and was inching my way through the crowd, scanning for familiar faces. I was only really sure I'd see two. I managed to make my way across the room to the other bar where I took up a spot leaning against it. Thankfully, I didn't have too much time to think of how to approach anyone in the room because people began introducing themselves almost immediately. I met a handful of people from New York, one from Philly, one from DC and exchanged business cards with everyone. The conversation took a similar route with each person, always starting with "do you do voiceover? what kind of stuff? how long have you been in it?" and progressing to various questions about how they've come to find success with various avenues and whether they have agents, etc.

Around the time raffle drawings started I started nervously check the time. Luckily, it wasn't too long before they did the drawing for the one item I was most interested in: The Harlan Hogan Signature microphone. I did not win. So, I said farewell to the last of my new friends and skipped back to work to grab my equipment and rush back to Astoria for the concert.

The Waltz-Astoria is a little cafe in the unlikeliest of places on a quiet stretch of Ditmars Blvd around 23rd Street. They serve sandwiches wine and beer and program all kinds of music from singer songwriter stuff to classical like our concert and even host an open mic that Lacy and I have performed at recently. Pedro Gonzalez, the Emcee and part owner of the venue also curates a lot of the talent and is hosting a singer songwriter competition pretty soon. I got to meet and chat with his wife, Song, who is a piano player as well during Natti Vogel's set after Tania's. Overall it's a great venue...much better than the Metropolitan Room this summer. But I hardly need to say that as I may have already expressed our dissatisfaction with their hospitality and their sound system. Pedro has a very nice Bose tower to plug up to that sounded amazing with the electronics. Well, hear and see for yourself:

Yes, we also had a much more reliable videographer this time around. My friend Chad Heird from work at NY1 offered, since he lives so close by and was free that evening, to come by and shoot our performance.

The performance, I feel, went very well and I was mostly satisfied with it. There was a spot of technical difficulty which yields a great anecdote about non-technical people and technical people. While I was prematurely freaking out about why their was no sound coming out of my audio interface (I had barely gotten through checking all the typical things you check when troubleshooting something like this...maybe it was the pressure of time constraints since Tania showed up a little late and there was a limited amount of time for us to perform), Tania, who would be the first to say she's not technically inclined at all, comes over
and says, "Tim, calm down, think. How did it work at my place the other night?" Of course, even though she probably had no idea how to fix the problem, she knew exactly what to say. The issue? When I rehearse, I set the output of the program to be the laptop speakers and always have to remember that when I go to perform it I need to actually go into Preferences in Mainstage and tell it to use my audio interface as the output. That's why it was working at rehearsal and wouldn't work at the venue. Duh! Problem solved and we tested it and got underway with the concert, the rest of which should be posted on youtube very soon.

For now, I have to pickup my laundry and start recording my voice!

Victory!

2011-11-26T10:45:00.001-05:00

New York City landlords, 0. Tim and Katrina, 1.

I didn't think that the post office operated the day after Thanksgiving but there was a stack of letters in the mailbox last night when I got home from rehearsing with Tania. Through the window of one envelope, I saw both mine and Katrina's names, then the apartment number of my old apartment next to the words MEMO. Knowing what it was right away, I started to do a little dance in the hallway and exclaim my disbelief out loud, trying to be as quiet as possible, being it 1 in the morning at this point.

Dropping all of my stuff unceremoniously once inside the door to my apartment, I ripped open the envelope to see a check for the entire amount of our security deposit! Upon closer inspection I realized that the check was dated the 17th of November, before I sent the letter the second time. Even closer inspection revealed that the street number of my landlord's address was actually one number off from what I recall putting on both copies of the letter that I sent. This explains why the first one bounced back. I remember now that I actually called him shortly after I figured that first letter should have arrived (even though I hadn't seen the receipt saying he'd signed for it). I ended up leaving a message but whatever I said in that message must have prompted them to finally send it along. I didn't even need to send the letter the second time and it doesn't matter now anyway, because it's most certainly going to bounce back again.

In a way, I'm slightly disappointed that he didn't get to read the masterpiece I crafted with the help of my loyal editors (thanks mom and Josee!). But I'm in no way disappointed that the money is now in our possession. In fact, some combination of floored, ecstatic, incredulous and relieved might come closer to encapsulating the feeling I had upon receiving it.

That having been said, go us. Now, I can really say that we landed on our feet. Moving right along, I rehearsed Moon, Tides, Cycles with Tania last night in Queens. It went pretty well, considering I didn't have my score with me. Everything in the Mainstage template worked as before, with me barely having to do anything with regards to setup. I'm thinking about adding some more things to it, like a control for some delay effects on the ring modulation and perhaps a filter sweep for the Absynth sounds.

I already added a channel to record the whole performance which I'm surprised I didn't think to do before when we performed it at the Metropolitan Room. It's going to be so much better to actually have control over the recording and not have to worry about whether it's going to be in stereo or whether or whether or not some guy is even going to record it and hand it over in a timely fashion.

It occurs to me now that I do have that recording of the Metropolitan Room performance but I haven't posted it yet. Wha? But speaking of posting, I posted new voice over demos in advance of attending the New York Voiceover Mixer next Saturday (the same night of the concert!) So, check those out if you're interested. I composed all the music beds for the newest demo, the documentary demo and one of the new cuts on the old narration demo which has only been re-edited a little with the addition of one new script at the end.

Anyway, I'm going to return to being giddy about the security deposit and see if I can't get some work done on the Mainstage template for next weekend's concert. Huzzah!

Composing at Roots...

2011-11-18T15:36:00.001-05:00

Trying out the Roots Cafe on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn right now. There was a fussy child in here earlier with an excessively baby-talking mother and then another sort of spastic child who was taken to running in circles for no apparent reason. The fussy child and squeaky sounding mother left and the spastic child has since calmed down. And she is actually kind of cute. The music playing over the stereo system has even been turned down so most of the distraction has abated. So, perhaps I will be able to work here after all. Besides, I really like the atmosphere at this place. Leaning on the wall next to my table is the sound board from a grand piano. And there are all kinds of neat pieces of art and old musical instruments laying around.

That said, I'm editing the score for the piano piece at the moment. I was tweaking a few of the chords here and there and trying out some things but now I've resigned myself to adjusting the layout and cleaning up the look of it ahead of time on the pages I know I'm done with. Tania and I should be rehearsing Moon, Tides, Cycles next week sometime for the concert on the 3rd at Waltz Astoria. Hopefully by then I'll be able to show her the score to this new one. She's seen the piano sketch version from 3 years ago but this one is much longer now and there are some logistical nightmares in our future.

First, I can't freakin' decide what the nature of the electronic part should be. First I wanted to sample the piano live, then I wanted to record her at rehearsal and cut and process samples from the recording to create some textural stuff for the middle section. Now, I'm thinking about looping her and having her layer new parts on top of it while I process the sounds that I'm recording. Or, some mix of all of the above. So the logistical nightmare is really on my side. But I want to do something really innovative with this piece…while at the same time trying not to let the material suffer. Like I don't want to just write any old crap to do this with.

I will say that I'm liking the way the middle section of the piece is coming along. It's funny. When I left this sketch alone about 2 years ago, I felt it was done and I couldn't write any more. It was probably a mix of being tired of working on it and really feeling like the statement the end of the piece made was enough. Like there was nothing more to be said. Then I just played what sounded like the next chord and this new part was birthed.

Anyhow, I'm having fun fleshing out these ideas but I have to know when to stop. But I'm not sure that particular eureka moment is going to come to me while sitting in this coffee shop. So, I'd probably better go. I'm also going to a concert tonight at Brooklyn Bowl. Mike Doughty, the lead singer to the band Soul Coughing is playing. So psyched. So at some point I need to go and get ready for that.

Schedule full...

2011-11-15T01:18:00.001-05:00

When it rains it pours doesn't even begin to describe it. Well, it guess it does begin to describe it but it doesn't finish describing it. I'm speaking about jobs. Work. Lots of it. And most of it I'm excited about.

First, I'm working overnights and overtime and my full time job, and I'm getting more calls from Technicolor. Second, I've been helping shoot a film with my friend George. He's shooting a few scenes from his pilot to drum up interest in making the series and he's asked me to help with audio. So for two nights out of my weekend I was operating boom mic on a sidewalk in Hell's Kitchen for a scene between two pimps and a prostitute. Edgy subject matter. But more on that later. I'm also going to be writing some music, a theme, for this particular piece. And on top of that, Mohammad has me working on a tune for his production reel, utilizing the accordion. Bringing in my friend Crystal on this one potentially.

So, on top of writing the piano piece Tania and I will be performing together in Feburary, I'm suddenly writing two other pieces and working like a mad man. I LOVE IT!

I'm crazy, I know.

Anyway, on the VO front, I just caught wind of an event in midtown in a few weeks that I desperately want to be at and for which I would hope to have at least one of my new demos done. The 2011 New York Voiceover Mixer. I've been waiting for something like this for a long time. And now it comes at a time when it's going to push me to finally get my new demos done. But I'm not sure it's going to be enough time. So, a little nervous about that. I guess I could go with my old demo but I would much prefer to get the new ones done.

Guess there's no rest for the weary!

On another note altogether, I still love my apartment and the new neighborhood…in fact, more and more everyday. Under the blanket of my apartment is included my landlord, whom I also love. Leaky radiator? Fixed in a day. Breaker blown? Fixed in minutes. The other day, I took a bike ride and was at Prospect Park in minutes, where I took these pics:

Fall Colors Prospect Park 2011

Breaking in the new apartment...

2011-11-10T23:44:00.001-05:00

I finally posted a clip from the finished DVD of Sides of the Track on the new website. Had a little time this afternoon around the apartment since I was preparing to host my friend Lauren for dinner. The first guest we've had in the apartment since moving in. Also, put some more touches on the piano and electronics piece that I've been working on. I've got a neat workflow going on with the laptop and the piano. With the piano being in my room I can put the laptop behind me on the bed with my notation software open and all I have to do is just swing around on the bench and enter notes in Sibelius as I riff on the piano. It's great.

While I was at it, I couldn't resist, since the apartment was looking so nice after I tidied up for my guest, taking a few pictures of what the place looks like, specifically my den/lair/studio/bedroom. Here they are:

New Apartment all set up best

Some of those were taken on another night when we were bored playing with the cat.

I can't describe how amazing it is to have a space that I enjoy working in…and cooking in. I made a nice roasted root vegetable soup for my friend to break in the kitchen…unfortunately though, I had to come in to work tonight, for my fifth overnight in a row. Tomorrow's technically a day off but I'll be working until 7am Friday so it won't really feel like one. I go back in to work at 10am Saturday and straight afterwards, I go to the location for the film shoot. Another shoot, same time on Sunday and then I come back in for another overnight at NY1. Five more in a row and then I'm back on my regular schedule. If I survive this, I can do anything.

Composing on the go...

2011-11-08T16:26:00.000-05:00

It's warm(er) out and I'm sitting in DUMBO with some unexpected free time, contemplating composing at the piano vs. composing on the laptop. This is something I keep going back to in my mind, now more than ever because I actually have the laptop and can compose anywhere…like, I could be composing right now but instead I'm typing this blog.

There are many reasons why one would prefer to compose at the piano, ranging from the practical to the more aesthetic. One practical reason is that when composing at the piano, it's a lot easier to tell if the stuff you are writing is playable and that there are no voice crossings or hand crossings or ridiculously large chords (piano music) that might require inhuman Rachmaninov-type hand stretches. You can get pretty carried away with a computer program that will play back anything you input, using professionally recorded samples of every instrument imaginable.

Aesthetically speaking, the stuff you play vs. the stuff your computer software plays back from what notes you input is a lot more inspiring. There's something about playing an actual instrument. You can get lost in playing it and just record yourself and transcribe later. You can play the lines with a lot more artistry and feeling than a computer can and are therefore more likely to come up with something more musical than mechanic. Plus, since improvisation on ideas is a huge part of my own compositional process, actual playing the lines is essential. In this way, it certainly helps to have at least a MIDI keyboard plugged up to my computer when I'm composing with the computer (something I can't carry around with me as easily right now). Otherwise, you're basically just inputting values with the computer keyboard and tweaking them this way or that without regard necessarily to all those practical things like voice crossing, hand crossing and whether or not any real person can play the notes.

Having a laptop to jot down ideas, though, is invaluable these days. Ultimately, I've saved time if I can put something into Sibelius while at work and then have something to play around with when I get home to the piano. But that having been said, I do get to a point where I've done as much as I can, or care to, with the laptop and I just want to bang things out on the piano.

The piano which now sits at the foot of my bed. I really need to get into a routine of just jumping up and playing piano first thing in the morning after turning off my alarm. Only, of course, on mornings when I wake up after my cousin has left for the day.

So starting tomorrow afternoon, then. Barring any unexpected work. I got called in to Technicolor a few times this week so that blew out a lot of my plans for what I have to get done. One of the other things I can only really do at home ultimately, voice over, being one of them. I was able to do some test records in my room and wrestle with the noise floor and the acoustics. Synopsis: I really need to put some stuff on the walls to tone down some of the reflections that are making their way into the portable audio booth I built. I have all of my scripts together though for the Narration Demo and only really need to get a couple better takes for the Documentary Demo and I'll be ready to do some more coaching with my old voice coach, the one who also volunteers at Learning Ally.

So, at this point, I think I'm going to compose the piano and electronics piece I'm working on out here for a bit and maybe work on logistics of performing said piece. I've decided that it's pure insanity, not to mention severely limiting and somewhat impractical, to do all the sampling live. I'd be better off taking a recording of her playing and chopping it up and doing all the processing (reversing samples, etc.) at home and then having it ready to perform alongside her.

So wish me luck.

A room with a view...

2011-11-04T00:15:00.003-04:00

I would just like to point out that I live in an apartment with a view of Manhattan. Partial view, but still. I dub that cool. I probably spoke at one point about things happening so slowly that you don't realize that your life is getting better or that you are getting closer to achieving your goals. Sometimes, though, one little thing changes in a big way and you start to look around at other things to see what might happen next.

I just keep working at all this stuff I do hoping that one day things will come to fruition, but not always being able to tell whether or not the things I'm doing are having an effect. I spoke about the voice over thing a while back and how I had one or two people tell me I was doing all that I should be doing. Same with music, when I met with that composer who's a friend of a friend. Just keep plugging away was the advice I got in both instances. Of course, they were a little more specific than that but that was the gist.

Now, seeing myself finally land an apartment that I love, here in New York, makes me realize that good things can and do happen. Granted sometimes there's a hefty dose of luck involved. But in all honesty, when I look at this situation, yes there was luck, but there was also action on mine and Katrina's part. We saw, we agreed, we moved, we seized and then we moved in. And I don't think we could have pulled it off had we not had all the previous experiences we've had with apartments and apartment hunting in this city. No one gets it right the first time.

In the same way, the strides I'm making in music and voice over are stacking up and it's because I'm doing all these small things and gaining experience that I'm opening myself up to other opportunities. Building a foundation, as it were. I find excitement sometimes in that I don't know where it's going to lead but I have a strong feeling that it's somewhere good or at least somewhere interesting.

Sometimes, I think back on my life before New York (and by before I mean, before I even hatched the idea of moving up here to pursue a career in music and film). Back then I was practically at a standstill paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of what I wanted to achieve and how little I knew. I had to learn a lot. But without that despairing feeling of knowing what I wanted but not knowing how to get it, I wouldn't have even been able to begin.

It's probably pretty normal, at the beginning of an endeavor like this one, or at the beginning of any difficult career course, to feel it's pretty massive. But I think the more you work at it, the less overwhelmed you feel. Because you're not trying to do it all at once. You begin to understand that it has to be bit by bit. That's the only way anyone can handle anything this size. And the more you build on it the more you start to feel you're on the right track after all, even when you can't see the end. And because no one can see the end, you come to terms with the fact that you have to go at it with faith that you can accomplish it against the odds. You obviously can't go at it thinking, "this may or may not work."

So anyway, I'm feeling a little more strongly about the fact that I might be on the right track here with a lot of things. But right now, I'm so incredibly tired I think I might just sleep. Now.

Swarthmore and Philly...

2011-10-31T02:34:00.000-04:00

Just back from Philly today, having ridden on a Bolt Bus for the first time since the accident. That was fun. But so was Philadelphia and the concert last night at Swarthmore College. Every spring and fall they do an alumni and student composers' concert at Swarthmore and Lacy, being an alumnus, was invited back to perform again. We did her song Moon of Fire which we've been practicing and have performed a handful of times at various open mics lately. I think she's going to post a youtube video of our performance, too.

The other performances at the concert were all great and there was such a diversity of styles and genres represented, from folk songs, to pop songs, to contemporary concert music to vocal music to duets to small ensemble pieces with percussion, even some electronic music. I even got to meet some of the alumni composers, one of whom is a professor at NYU, another of whom organized the event and was a phenomenal pianist. Some of the composers were not present at the concert, the more well-known of them, like James Matheson, a pretty big orchestral composer who has had works performed by the NY Philharmonic, and Peter Shickele better known as the fictional composer, P.D.Q. Bach. Yes, I had no idea that the P.D.Q. Bach attended Swarthmore College until Lacy clued me in. And I had forgotten that until Saturday night at the concert when they introduced some of his more serious work that he composed under his real name, Peter Shickele.

So, overall I had a good time. Murat, my friend the oud player, who helped out on the score to Mohammad's film, showed up with his girlfriend, too. They live in Philly and drove out for the event, despite the snow (I mean, I guess the snow wasn't all that bad…it only provided me with a slushy, hurried walk to the subway after work and wet socks on the way into the concert hall and was not enough to deter me…although it cause some cancellations on Amtrak). Anyway, we all went out after the concert, deciding to meet in Center City. Turns out they both live down there as does Lacy so it was convenient. After we each found parking, we met back up in the lobby of Lacy's building and began wandering in the cold to find a watering hole and, after trying a few places, wound up at Fergie's Pub. Chatting about everything from music to dance to Occupy Philly, we stayed out until almost 2am.

Hence my tiredness right now. Sunday morning I got up around 930 and Lacy and I took off eventually for a walk around Center City checking out the architecture and a few random fun things, like the Sound of Philadelphia Souvenir Shop at the Gamble and Huff Studios on the Avenue of the Arts and the Magic Gardens on South Street.

Philly

The Magic Gardens were pretty damn cool, I thought. Mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar created these mosaics covering every outer wall of this and other buildings in the South Street area. Composed of his own tiles, mirrors, glass bottles, bike wheels, tiny statuettes and I even saw an old toilet bowl, the work was part of his and his wife's attempts to revitalize the area.

We didn't tour the inside due to time constraints since I had to catch the bus at 3pm and we still wanted to catch brunch. We might have gone down to the City Hall area to check out the Occupy Philly demonstrations but only really had time to do a drive by on the way to the train station.

The Bolt Bus came pretty quickly and, though it was rickety and devoid of wifi, it got me to my destination just fine, with just one weird moment when the A/C started whining pretty loudly just outside of the Lincoln Tunnel. Freaked us all out but thankfully nothing more eventful than that happened and I caught the first C train at 34th and 8th and was home in no time.

Went straight through to the overnight shift without a nap because I'm crazy like that and tomorrow I hope to start working on the piano and electronics piece again. An update on my progress there soon and hopefully I'll even get some VO work done tomorrow afternoon!

Blurb #27

2011-10-29T10:24:00.001-04:00

I must be insane…that or I'm determined to never have a quiet trip to Philadelphia. I have to leave work early and catch a train at Penn Station and hope that this weather will do no more than wet my guitar case a little. They are calling for snow though. Wish me luck at Lacy's concert tonight!

I've never...

2011-10-28T13:17:00.003-04:00

I've never found a place this fast that I like this much, yes. But I've also never gotten settled in said place quite so fast as I have. Maybe time is just moving faster and I've perceived it as such. It did take a full almost a full week to get where I am now: boxes all unpacked, window treatments hung, important decisions about furniture placement made. Hell, we even already have cable by some random fluke (I hooked up the wires when I was setting up the TV and stereo and Katrina happened to notice that our old wireless account as popping up on her laptop). But that week seemed to breeze by. I didn't have a long period of feeling uncomfortable and unsettled and I didn't even mind that I had no blinds on my windows for most of the week. Maybe it's because, unlike when I lived in Sunset Park and having no blinds was a huge problem with me being on the first floor of the building and on the street side, my room was actually quite pleasant without blinds with the sun pouring in. Never mind the fact that I barely could sleep those first few mornings due to the brightness. Maybe it's also because I like the place that much. It could be that simple. I was already thousands of times more comfortable even with a maze of boxes and no internet and barely any food in the house.

Anyway, the only thing remaining to do, at this point, is to decide where to hang pictures and take boxes out to the garbage. But now my mind is turning toward things like how awesome it's going to be to have a comfortable living space. Especially for my creativity. I remember now that one of the best things about my favorite apartment and living situation (500 Mendenhall Street…the big apartment in the 110 year old Victorian house) was that I had so much more creative energy in that place. I wrote prolifically and my concentration was unparalleled. It's so important to have a good healthy space in which to create. Hopefully, now that I have that again, I can harness that energy. I mean, I can't imagine it being that hard with a piano just inches from the foot of my bed. It's going to be especially important because Tania and will be needing to get together soon to work on the new piece. I'm not even finished fleshing it out and I have to sit down with her and practice using my software to sample the piano parts live and mangle the samples while the piece is being performed. I also will need to use this time to figure out how to creatively use the sampled piano to advance the piece. But that's why we're starting this in November for a concert in February. I may need all that time, but I may only need a single recording of her performance of the first part of the piece.

How exciting to be composing again already!

Inevitably, there are a few things about the apartment (more about the building than anything really) is that we do live with a smoker downstairs…smoker of what I can't seem to figure out. In the morning it smells like cigarettes, in the evenings something else all together. There is also a dog but I have yet to do more than just smell the animal in the halls. Oh, and also to contend with the minefield of poop in the backyard where I lock my bike. But these are things that register barely if at all with me in light of recent indoor fungal growth and difficult landlords. My own new landlord, when faced with a leak in the apartments below us, called a plumber immediately and scheduled him for the next week. We were only in the apartment without a shower until around Wednesday. A tiny inconvenience when you factor in what we had been experiencing.

With all that having been said, I can't get enough of this new place and how amazing it is. And I don't think my opinion is too terribly influenced by the previous situation by comparison.

No sleep 'til...

2011-10-25T02:46:00.002-04:00

People are always saying they don't know how I do it. It being overnight shifts alternating with day shifts. And while they don't always directly ask how I do it, I am sometimes compelled to ponder how I would answer such a question. If I had to say one thing that is key to staying up all night, it's mindset. I've tried every combination of trying to sleep in the morning before an overnight shift, napping in the afternoon, over caffeinating myself etc. But none of these things has served its function of keeping me awake through the whole stretch like adjusting my mindset has. It's too easy to go into an overnight shift after being up since 8 am thinking, "Dear God, how am I going to pull this off!?" This kind of thinking actually makes you more tired though. I've found that if I just forget that I've been up for that long and that I have to be up much longer, it goes a lot more smoothly. It's exhausting thinking negative thoughts. And if I can manage to distract myself from those kinds of thoughts than I can usually go a pretty long time without getting terribly lethargic. I sometimes even go into work pretending that I haven't already been up for almost 16 hours.

I'm not going to lie and say that there aren't nights when I've passed out at work (see last night), nor would I say that there aren't moments throughout the day and during the overnight shift that I get tired, but basically if I've had 8 hours of sleep the night before, then even if I don't pull of a brief nap, I can usually make it through relatively well if I try not to think about how much it sucks. I even have spurts of energy at select times throughout the evening. Right when I arrive at night, sometime before I take my lunch at 4am and the walk to the train from work at 7am are the big ones usually. The slump comes anywhere between 2 and 5am.

So, I've found a way to pull it off because I have to…for now. That's not to say that I'm not so sick of it that I want nothing more than to be my own boss for a change. But, all in time.

In a few weeks, I've got some freelance work with George Perez of "Peeper: A Sort of Love Story" fame. I'll be operating the boom mic on a couple of weekend shoots in November for his series titled "Life." This'll be the first scene of the pilot episode. Should be tons of fun. They're shooting on location in the West 40s on 10th Avenue. Gritty Hell's Kitchen location that they scared up. I've yet to check it out but it should set the stage quite nicely for the scene we'll be shooting.

More on that later. I'm still trying to get things square away with the old apartment and get settled in the new so I can start composing again. I had a little bit of an issue with my speakers when I set up the computer today. Not something I can't fix but it always seems like every few months something comes up like this. Some technical issue that puts a damper on my progress. I'm just glad it's something that I can work around for now. And not something necessarily earth shattering.

Either way, I can't wait to get my space comfortable again. I think the worst part about moving is the period of feeling unhinged. I had to unpack a bunch of things in the kitchen before I could even cook breakfast this morning and that took a chunk out of my morning. Because you start looking for what you need and you find ten other things that you think you want to put away. It's hard to stay focused. Especially when the exhaustion starts to kick in. Speaking of which...

The move...

2011-10-23T22:53:00.001-04:00

Moving a piano is an art form and one that I enjoy observing as such. I've witnessed the act enough times that, even when performed by four Polish guys, I can understand the untranslated dialogue because the whole time it's dawning on me that I've had these arguments before in English many times about which way to turn the piano and how to ease it down and heave it up the stairs. I did have to look up the word "suka" though. I was sure it was something profane.

Anyway, my slightly uncouth movers were quick about the job and managed to accomplish everything in under four hours, for which I salute them. And even despite my own unintentional unpreparedness (I think I may have blogged before about how one can't prepare for anything even if you do think you've prepared for everything). I did the ol' set your alarm for PM instead of AM number and sprang out of bed not at the sound of my alarm at 7am but the sound of the movers buzzing the front door at 845am! Not my best move all day. I was intending to get the cat out of harm's way early, take a few small things over including the bike (yeah, I know it's not small) and pack up what was left laying around that we couldn't find boxes for, well before the movers got there. Unfortunately, none of that happened.

I let the movers up and started trying to frantically do some of that stuff but ultimately decided to take the cat over with her litter box first and get her set up. She was fairly well behaved on the walk over (all 6 blocks of it), and even did her standard slinking around low to the ground maneuvering that she does whenever introduced to a new space. Then, once she had settled on a spot to hideout until she was comfortable, she started to hack and heave as though she was about to leave me a hairball. Her idea of christening the apartment I guess. But after a second or two of watching her she seemed to be having a bit more trouble than just a hairball and I wondered if it was more serious. She gave me quite a scare but ultimately calmed down and when I returned later on with the next batch of small stuff she seemed fine.

In my absence, though, the movers had begun to box things using all the extra materials that they brought and that we found out they'd be charging us for (see, no matter how much you prepare, there's always something that you didn't prepare for…they charged us for tape, too, so they could double wrap all the boxes we had packed…plus they wanted me to take all of my clothes out of the dresser so they could just wrap it in and carry it in one piece and that took extra time). The good thing was they were making awesome time even doing all this. Before I knew it we were finishing up at the old place and I was trying to beat the truck over to the new place on foot.

The piano went up the stairs a whole lot easier than I thought it would. At the old apartment they took off the legs, wrapped it in moving blankets and plastic and slid it onto a cushioned board with rope handles, ran two straps through holes in the bottom of it and dragged it down the stairs with relative ease.

At the new place, they quailed at the sight of the first flight of stairs and we joked a little about the task ahead. One asked if I was sure I wanted it upstairs. It wasn't long, though, before they were sliding it in the front door and into my bedroom where we each played a few triumphant chords on the thing upon unwrapping it. It felt good.

Drop Box

After everything else was in and we paid the guys, Katrina and I took off down the street to a small restaurant on 5th Avenue called Korzo. They had an amazing looking brunch menu that even offered all you can drink Mimosas and Bloody Marys. I dug into a German omelette with a side of grilled sausage and Katrina had their potato latke with a poached egg on top. All the food was amazing and our server actually was gluten free savvy and realized without my having to tell him that the sweet potato fries would be no good for me because they were fried in the same fryer with all the breaded foods. That was a little hard because I wanted to devour everything on my plate since it was the first food besides dried figs and peanuts I'd had all morning.

Upon sobering up from my two mimosa buzz, we set to work on getting the last few items at the old apartment over to the new place and I eventually began unpacking what little I needed to to be comfortable enough in my new room to take a nap. A nap which never materialized because my mind is completely full right now. So here I sit having just devoured my dinner in the breakroom at work and contemplating how I'm going to stay up for almost 24 hours straight yet again.

Hopefully, once we are completely done with the old apartment, place cleaned and keys turned in, I'll get a little rest and can get to work on this piano and electronics piece. I need to make it a longer piece and organize the structure of it, then Tania and I need to get together at some point so I can work out the electronics part and everything…but right now, I'm too unsettled to do anything creative. Even though I did take a little break from supervising the move to improvise on the piano for a good five minutes while the movers kept on moving. It's good to have a new place with a piano in it.

Again...

2011-10-22T09:41:00.000-04:00

It never ends. By that I mean, the constant introduction of obstacles by the universe. Some of them great, some of them minuscule and manageable. I called my new landlady last night to let her know I'd be by to bring over a few small things and let her know our move in date while I was on the phone with her.

Now, a few days ago, Katrina and I were cleaning the new place when our landlady came huffing up the stairs frantically (as frantically as a woman in probably her 70s can) asking if we had been using any water. The tenant downstairs had water coming from his ceiling and she wanted to know where it was coming from. At first, I'm thinking, "great, this again." It was even raining out at the time so I'm thinking it could be a leak from outside and here we go again. But then I realized the good side of all this: My landlady was there in seconds to respond to the problem.

However, this means that she has a plumber coming on Tuesday and until then there's no water in our bathroom…until he fixes the problem which might entail taking out a wall downstairs. This is what she tells me when I called last night. Now I feel like a real jerk for moving in early. And I have yet to tell my cousin about it.

Good news is the apartment is pretty much packed up and we await the movers at 9 am tomorrow. The actual brunt work of moving is actually the easy part (especially when you hire people and all you have to do is direct them). It's all the logistical bullshit from finding a broker who's not going to bait and switch you, to finding a place, to passing the credit check, to seizing it before anyone else does, to signing the lease, to finding respectable movers at a decent price (don't even get me started on having to find ones that'll move a piano properly and not charge an arm and a leg), to hiring said movers, to gathering together boxes because you threw all of the ones you had out because New York City apartments are tiny and then finally to packing every damned thing in your apartment into whatever boxes you can manage to scrounge up (and carry awkwardly on the train hopefully not during the evening rush hours).

It's a mess and every time I move into an apartment where I have some reservation, even the tiniest, about whether or not I'm going to like it still in a few months, I quail at the thought of having to do this all over again. Especially with a piano. I just found out that I have an 80 year old neighbor directly below me. I'm going to have to make friends with him or having the piano at all is going to be moot. And that will actually be a problem. My process for fleshing out piano sketch no. 4 into a full on piano and electronics piece to be performed in February is going to involve sitting at said piano and playing…a lot.

We'll see how it goes. So wish me luck. I gotta finish my tea and head to work. I'm sitting in 'Snice right now on 8th Avenue in the West Village soaking up their wi-fi and listening to one of my favorite Fleet Foxes songs that just came on their stereo. So I'll probably hang out and listen to the rest of it. Laters.

Creator's Project

2011-10-17T00:42:00.001-04:00

Blogging about my experience at the Creator's Project's New York City event in DUMBO this evening. I was strolling through DUMBO on my way to yoga when I spotted a flyer for the event and there, in big letters, was Four Tet, one of my favorite electronic musicians, on the list of musical acts. I immediately started trying to RSVP on the website with my phone, as I continued walking down the street, before I even knew much about the Creator's Project. Apparently, it's a collective that supports artists who are using technology to create in innovative ways. The event in DUMBO this weekend was to display a lot of the most recent installations and projects. Some incredibly cool stuff.

Because I had to work until 6pm today and because Four Tet was playing right at 6pm, I rushed over to High Street right after work and managed to catch the end of Four Tet's set first (after checking in and getting a wrist band, of course). As I walked up, I heard a familiar song off the album that came out last year and began to get excited. DUMBO was throbbing with activity.

After Four Tet's set was over (the 15 minutes I managed to catch), I scanned for a map and made a plan of what I wanted to see. Having read about most of the installations before hand, I knew what I wanted to see first. "Origins" by United Visual Artists with music by Scanner. First, I stopped in to Powerhouse Books to see what was going on and caught a glimpse of this. "Urbanus Female" by U-Ram Choe. It was a giant metallic looking flower hanging from the ceiling with a glimmering light in the middle that would react to your movements. I didn't get close enough to try though. Just watched a few people stare at it for a while.

After that it was on to the Tobacco Warehouse for "Origins." This was a giant 30 foot metal cube erected inside the Tobacco Warehouse on Water Street, with LED lights lining the frame that would flash on and off in elaborate and intricate patterns aligning with the score being pumped out of speakers in the four corners of the cube. At the entrance of the warehouse, they were doing the old one in one out routine and again at the actual structure...because you could walk inside it and observe it from within. Keep in mind that it's already dark out and the only light is coming from the structure itself.

I stood around and watched it for a bit, then slid into another portion of the roofless warehouse to see the musician that was performing on stage there. Looking at the program I picked up later, now I see that it was the end of Atlas Sound's set.

I watched one song and then hurried along to see more of the installations. Still without program at this point, I opted to jump on the next line I saw, having no idea exactly what it was. I even was asked by passerby and had to admit my ignorance. After about 40 minutes of waiting in line (15 of that actually inside the building before entering the installation, hearing an almost unintelligible wash of sound oozing out of the speakers), I finally found myself in a small room with four openings in the ceiling, light pouring out of them, the music much louder. I was inside Jonathan Glazer and J. Spaceman's "A Physical Manifestation of Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space." There was an ambient electronic piece, much more clearly parsed now floating out of the speakers in the floor but depending on where you stood (or laid down):

you would hear different parts of the mix louder than others. The four openings in the ceiling were pouring shafts of light onto the ground and we were told to try lying down in each shaft of light to get a different experience with the music.

After I had my fill of that, I wandered back out onto the street and turned a corner headed toward 81 Front Street, a gallery that, only a few weeks ago had been displaying some of my favorite exhibits at the DUMBO Arts Festival. Inside this time was another of the installations that I had read about earlier in the week. Meditation by Minha Yang. It was comprised of three speakers emitting meditative sounds in the middle of a screen with an animated projection that would interact with your movements. This might have been the most fun I had the whole time.

People were dancing around in front of the projection screen and watching the lights play. Standing and watching was almost as fun as actually playing with the light yourself. You could get really creative with your movements and almost always get satisfying results. One other attendee asked me to repeat something I had done so he could take a better shot of it with his camera. A handful of other really cool installations were in this same space and among them this. "Strata #4" by Quayola. Scroll down and watch the video.

I left this space with a mind to grab a snack at the grocery store on Washington Street and then go check out "Life on Mars Revisited." The music video for the song "Life on Mars" by David Bowie apparently had all this extra footage that got lost and then rediscovered (check out the video here on the reimagining of the footage if you're interested). Film director Barney Clay took the footage and edited it into a stunning video piece and it was on display on the 9th floor of the building where my yoga studio is. The building at 10 Jay Street is sort of off the beaten path from all the other exhibits, and to get to "Life on Mars Revisited" we had to wind our way to the back of the building on the second floor to find the freight elevator, so it felt a bit secretive, like we were sneaking off to see something exclusive...which we kind of were. I almost might not have gone all the way down there if I didn't know much about it, wasn't that interested or didn't know the area. But I'm glad I did.

When the freight elevator left us off at the 9th floor, we were led into a small room with floor to ceiling projection screens on all the walls. Just like "A Physical Manifestation of Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space," we were told the best way to experience it was laying down, so we all kind of piled onto the floor and waited for the footage to start. I fully did not know what to expect. The video was projected on all four walls but each wall was different. The video footage itself was very spare, mostly a single shot of David Bowie, all made up with blue mascara, singing the song. Part of the way through the video though, you start to see Clay's divergence from the original, the video seemingly cracked like glass and flashing while the audio becomes granulated and distorted. There was a warning on the door to the screening room for epileptics that simply said if you have epilepsy, do not enter.

At the end of the video, I left and began to head back to the center of it all to catch one last gallery full of installations. I was trying to get back to 55 Washington Street but it happened to be cordoned off from earlier because it was the main avenue that led to the music stage set up under the Manhattan Bridge archway. I displayed my wrist band to the bouncers but they turned me away, rather rudely, probably because they were tired. I tried to explain that I was not headed to the stage but to the one last venue I had not checked out but I realized that they were probably underpaid and didn't really give a shit and that it was probably better to just go around the block the other way to get in. So I did. First I ran across "Soil" at 30 Washington Street, a series of aluminum plates that move as you walk across them.

After taking this in for a while, I wound my way back behind 55 Washington Street and slipped into the place. In this gallery was, first a DJ and a group of dancing hipsters but then four other works that I had only read about that night. The coolest was "Diskinect," a puppet connected to a Kinect controller that sensed your movement and caused the puppet to somewhat mimic what you were doing. I played with it for a while then moved on to "Super Pong," which, as far as I could tell was a cross between Pong and foosball which you could actually play. This I opted not to play but just to watch. The last thing I experienced was "Six-Forty by Four-Eighty." This was yet another interactive piece that was comprised of several magnetic blocks with colored lights on a screen. You could rearrange the blocks any way you wanted on the screen and also tap them to change their color.

At this point, I was pretty tired because I brought my laptop home with me from work and had been carrying it all night, even during the Four Tet concert. So, I wound my way back to High Street and headed home. Greatest part about the evening? It was all free!

New digs...

2011-10-14T19:44:00.002-04:00

It happens that fast! Yeah, this was the third apartment we looked at between the two of us and it happened to be it. The way I found it: a friend.

My friend (remember the person I shared a cab with back in December that I ended up becoming friends with?) told me she had an apartment in her building that was opening up so she gave me the number of the realtor. I called him and they told me that it was already rented but that they had another one a short distance away. Thankfully, a short distance away in the right direction: North. It's on 19th street, so it's closer to the Prospect Avenue subway stop.

Anyway, I set up a time to see the apartment with this guy on Wednesday afternoon. He initially told me it was on 16th street so I was checking the street view on Google maps and really liking the block. On the Wednesday, he told me it was actually on 19th Street. I'm thinking, "okay, not a deal breaker…let's just hope it's still a good block." It was. And it was a cool looking building. He had told me before that the landlord lived in the building, another bonus for us because it means, first of all, that she'll take care of the building…unlike our current landlord. I did get a chance to meet her and she seems like a nice lady.

The apartment itself was on the third floor (a slight worry for the prospect of moving the piano in…the first quote I got today from a mover to move the piano up 3 flights of stairs was $700!) but it was at the back of the building. Inside the halls, family pictures adorned the walls and the stairs creaked pleasantly asI ascended the stairs. Upon entering the apartment though, I had one of those rare, "This is our apartment." moments. You just know when you see a place. It was spacious, airy and bright. The kitchen is big with lots of light and a view of downtown Manhattan out the side window. The buildings around it are smaller so we have a clear view in two directions. The larger bedroom was about as big as my bedroom in Sunset Park two years ago, and there are double doors opening into it. The living room is about as big as our current living room, perhaps slightly bigger. There were three closets, two in the common area and one in the smaller bedroom. This alone made me feel like this would be a perfect match for Katrina and I. She needs a closet and I need space. Plus all the closets are big.

I could rant and rave but I didn't need to to convince Katrina that we needed to move on this place. I sent her these pics:

Apartment on 19th Street

…and a similar description to the above, only organized into cons first, pros second. She said she liked it but wanted to do a walk through later that night. I called and scheduled it with the broker and we came back, cashier's check in hand, ready to seize the place.

I can't encapsulate how excited I am about this. Suffice it to say that I'm floored that I like this place this much and that it was so easy to find. We really did luck out. There are more and more things every day that I realize are going to be great. It's on the back of the building and on a quiet block, so no more getting pissed off because people are honking their horns outside while I'm trying to record. I can fit the piano into my room (that is, if I end up moving it). Think of the inspiration and being closer to the computer when I come up with ideas that I want to save…no more running between rooms! Their is an alley to access the backyard where I can lock up my bike more safely.

And while the laundromat may be further down the block and the subway slightly farther, I think we've pretty much moved up. More to come on the trials of moving. Thank god we're going to be able to move in once we get the key on Monday after I sign the lease. Stay tuned!

Confusing wisdom...

2011-10-12T00:06:00.002-04:00

Finding wisdom in the inside of a label on a bottle of tea is pretty standard stuff these days. And I drink a lot of tea. But today, I had one of those interesting days where I seemed to be getting signs from not just tea bottles but just about everything around me and some of the signs were conflicting with others.

In truth, it all started with an impromptu discussion with a co-worker and friend of mine about working in the corporate world and how it's always going to be the same no matter where you go, as far as workplace politics go and you're really only ever going to avail yourself by being your own boss. Which, in a way, has simultaneously discouraged me from even trying to job hunt for a better career in this climate and encouraged me to work that much harder at being freelance eventually. The end of that conversation actually found me feeling grateful that I have a job and a lot more level headed about my general situation than I have been for months when at times, I tended to get rather frustrated that things weren't better with the money situation or the hours.

It's file checking week at Learning Ally where we go through all the audio book files that have been recorded and spot check them for errors. Today, one of the audio books that I was checking today at Learning Ally was some kind of business text book that had a ton of chapters about building resumes and interviewing for jobs, etc. So, while I waited for my assigned booth to open up (the last volunteer was still finishing up her session), I perused a bit of it and got thinking about what I was doing wrong with my last few attempts to find a job. Here I am now swinging back the other way in my thinking about what I need to focus on right now. Should I take another shot at job hunting but be more focused this time? Should I be so cynical about the job market?

On the inside of my tea bottle was this quote though: "Lack of money is no obstacle, lack of an idea is an obstacle." - Ken Hakuta

Maybe I just need a good idea.

Here's one, I'm doing some freelance audio stuff for George's next film and if it needs music, I'll likely be doing that too. The audio stuff will be operating the boom mic for the first few scenes of a pilot for a series he's going to be putting together. The scenes will act as a teaser/short for the pilot which will eventually be shot and pitched a few places to get support to do the series. It's exciting because it could be some steady work and it seems very interesting. I won't say too much else about it so as not to jinx it.

But anyway, all those confusing signs and I'm tired. Need sleep. Tomorrow I see apartments. The first one is in Park Slope and I might just fall in love with it, so long as it's cat friendly. Good night.

Columbus Day...

2011-10-10T22:44:00.001-04:00

I must admit, it's making less and less sense to work on the laptop in my "office" at work…especially since now, it's doubling as a storage room while they renovate some offices upstairs here. I do have a nice arm chair to sit in but I'm surrounded by stacks of boxes, extra chairs and furniture and, the latest addition, a huge divider that's half blocking the door. It's still secluded though and I'm able to work relatively distraction free.

So, here I sit blogging. I went to see my first apartment today. Katrina has already been to see one but this is the first we were able to see together. And only because of the fact that I can never sleep much farther past 12 noon after the overnight shift these days. I figured I had just enough time before going to yoga to check out the apartment with her. She was off today for Columbus day so it was ideal. Every other day this week we are unable to go searching together. And I've already had one broker that I spoke with tonight tell me they'd rather have us both there…i.e. they want us to be able to make a decision that day, so we don't waste their time. But I've found that you almost never take any of the first apartments you see. It's like you have to build up a few impressions, see what all is out there, and knock down your unrealistic expectations a bit before you can settle on something.

So, the apartment today was in Prospect/Crown Heights (it's always these muddled neighborhood borders with brokers…they could just call it Crown Heights but they want the allure of Prospect Heights which is a better neighborhood).

When we arrived on the block it was busy and there were a lot of people out and about while we waited for the broker. What made me nervous was the general behavior of just hanging around and looking tough. I didn't want to judge based solely on that though. This was after all an apartment that was right on the corner of an avenue with a lot of store fronts. Now, I actually thought this was a great place for the price and it even had an elevator (something that might make it a little cheaper to move the piano in). It had huge rooms and lots of light as it was on the corner of the building but in the back. The bathroom smelled strongly of pot (interesting, he thought) and there were electric baseboard heaters which I don't tend to like too much as they inevitably take up wall space and can be a bit dangerous.

I was starting to warm to the place though but something happened while we were there that made me change my mind a little (and this is a classic New York City story here). While we were upstairs and the broker was raving about the apartment and the neighborhood, sort of tap dancing around a little (making a real effort to convince us that the neighborhood was up and coming etc. etc. blah blah blah), I started to hear screaming coming from the street downstairs. Now from my vantage point out the kitchen window, all I can see is a little sliver of the street through the alley but what it looked like was a tussle of some sort going down in the street with no less than two women screaming and several men appearing to be kicking someone who was down. I seemed to be the only one among the three of us who noticed, and knowing how hard the broker was working, I opted not to bring it up so as to keep from making her have to tap dance harder about the merits of our current location. Luckily, by the time we reentered the street everything was cleared up. God only knows what happened. "I don't want to alarm you, Katrina," I said, "but there was sort of a fight going on out in the street while we were up there talking to her."

We still did opt to walk a bit in the neighborhood to see how it looked. Granted, it's two in the afternoon at this point, but still the scene on the street was a little tense.

Only in New York…and hopefully only on that particular street corner in Crown Heights. I've got a handful of apartments to look at that are close to that place (we're talking mile radius here) but across Atlantic Avenue in Bedford Stuyvesant, a notoriously bad neighborhood that has been rumored, as well, to be on its way towards gentrification. We'll just have to see about that and get out on the ground out there.

Tonight, before leaving for work, I called a handful of these ads and, to my mild frustration, I find that at least one of them was a Rapid Realty broker, a company I don't want to work with if I don't have to. The unprofessionalism among their office staff was a source of stress last time we moved. In addition, they seem to be very strategized and focused more on getting you into an apartment quick than helping you find the right place. I almost never get the feeling that they want to help me find a place any worse than they want to make sure they don't waste time taking me to a bunch of places that I could potentially not like. They were the ones who had a problem with it being just me who would come out with them, saying they like to have both roommates present. I understand this but it's still annoying. Basically, they don't want you to lose the apartment because you have to go home and confer with someone else. That's how good apartments get snatched up. Anyway, at this point, we're kind of just doing research and that should be allowed. These brokers guard their listings so jealously, it's impossible to see a place without a broker pressuring you because most of the ads you see, even on craigslist and padmapper.com end up being broker listings.

I've rambled and ranted enough for one evening. Tomorrow, I voice audio books and then continue on the hunt. Wish us luck as we're trying to get into a place as soon as possible and not necessarily wait until the end of the month.

Statue of Liberty...

2011-10-05T23:05:00.000-04:00

Checklist: Statue of Liberty = Done! So, around, 10:30 today I moseyed up to Battery Park to meet my friend Allison for lunch at a little burger joint outside the Winter Garden in the World Financial Center before heading to the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. We've been planning this trip since May, neither one of us having been, and she being a lifelong New Yorker. Back then we talked about doing this over sushi in Chinatown one night, thinking we'd be able to do it a few weeks later. Apparently, though, the crown was booked solid until September. So we were going to have to make reservations and wait. By the time we settled on a day to do it, it ended up having to be today, all the way into October...and what a day to do it! The weather was fantastic, mid 60s, sunny with a light breeze...okay, a big enough wind that the boat was rocking something violent when we first boarded. But I got my sea legs pretty quick. Having bought our tickets in advance we got to bypass the line for the ferry and were on the island well before our reservation time of 2 pm.

It was a bit odd, at first, because, at the entrance to the pedestal, they sent us back to the information center by the ferry dock to get crown access wrist bands (we had no idea that we had to go there first), but once we had the wrist bands, we felt like VIPs. The rangers were giving us very detailed instructions on how to bypass the lines and which way to go up the stairs so we'd go straight up to the crown first and work our way down to the pedestal. They were extremely helpful and offered to answer any questions we had...it felt like we had our own personal guide at each level, as we chatted with each ranger before going up further (They apparently have a nick name for people with crown reservations: "Crownies"). There was no line to go up for crown access and it felt in some ways like we had the whole statue reserved to ourselves for a little bit. There were only two other people and a ranger up in the crown when we finally got up there, the ranger perched rather precariously on the support beams above the staircase. I'm not even sure that many more people could have fit up there, the actual space being slightly bigger than a broom closet with not a whole lot of overhead clearance. I bumped my head on the beams on the roof several times (not too hard though) and right after the ranger told me to watch my head.

The climb to the crown itself was not all that bad. The spiral staircase inside the statue did get pretty narrow but it was all very exciting and we were up at the top before we knew it. Statue's kind of shorter than I had realized. Something like 354 steps total though, including the climb from the pedestal. There was a plaque at the bottom with facts about the different measurements, like how long is the nose, the arm, how wide is the face, how much does the pedestal weigh (54 million tons actually), that I should have photographed but didn't. I shot a ton of pics up there and as I was kneeling down to take a few shots out of the windows, I could feel the Statue swaying in the wind. Allison noticed this first, like, the second we got to the top step. But I didn't feel it until my knee was against the side of the crown as I knelt to take my photos. Our friends that were sharing the crown space with us offered to photograph us and we did the same before heading back down.

The pics in the crown did not come out all that well but here is the album of everything I took today, encompassing a few pics at the World Financial Center, the ferry ride, Liberty Island and a few of Ellis Island.

Best of Statue of Liberty

We made sure, after our descent, to check out the Pedestal Museum. The goofy picture of me picking the face's nose was Allison's idea. A bit of a history nut, I enjoyed this part (the museum, that is, not pretending to pick a statue's nose). This and the Ellis Island Museum, which we managed to breeze through in under an hour, checking out some of the special exhibits, us both having been there once before. Ellis is always inspirational to me, even when you read the crazy stories of what the conditions were like for immigrants over the years. Inside the Pedestal Museum though, I learned about the origin of the poem "The New Colossus." Ya know, the whole "Give me your huddled masses yearning to be free" that is engraved at the base of the statue inside the monument. Apparently, Emma Lazarus wrote it for an auction to raise money for the statue but it was years before the poem was actually associated more permanently with the statue and the plaque installed. People often credit the poem now with realigning the statue's purpose. Instead of being a sign of liberty and republicanism, it became a symbol of hope and welcome for incoming immigrants.

Just a tiny bit of history before I call it a night. The trip was a good time all around and I think I would definitely go back, in the future, for the climb to the crown, when it reopens in 2012. They are apparently closing down again to further improve safety inside the statue. They are not shutting it down, though, until after it's 125th anniversary, this month, according to this article. They want to reopen it before the 126th anniversary next October. Either way, it'd be fun to do again. And for only $16 it's cheaper than the Empire State Building and in many ways a more unique experience. Sort of an adventure, too.

Anyway, good night! Enjoy the pictures!

Moving out and a test screening...

2011-10-05T00:27:00.001-04:00

I'm definitely moving out. We are definitely moving out, that is. There was some doubt in my mind because I was starting to get a little paranoid that I wouldn't be able to afford to move the piano and would most certainly have to donate it, something that has crossed my mind many a time over the last few years during which I've possessed said beast of a musical instrument. That among other things. I did one of those classic listing the pros and cons exercises and it did wonders to clear my head. But the biggest thing was looking at these pictures again and realizing, of course we effing have a valid reason for wanting to get out of this place!

Messed up Kitchen

And anyway, if I were to get a subletter, the task would be convincing that person, likely a friend that I've probably already bitched to about my predicament, to live in the very apartment that has been the source of my woes. So, that's one of the cons of that situation; the extra effort of acquiring a willing subletter.

All in all, it was a fruitful exercise and by the morning, tired though I was, my head was clear. I didn't call my landlord today though because for some reason, all the thoughts I had about what I was going to say to him had escaped my head (or buried themselves behind other synapses). Plus, I had a test screening for Sides of the Track that I wanted to make it to before heading over to the dentist to get a damned cavity filled. The test screening was awesome, getting the cavity filled, not so much. But then, it's getting a cavity filled, what do you expect?

Mohammad was able to rent out the very theater that we will be screening in on Friday this afternoon so that he, I, the DP and the Executive Producer could take in the full experience, big screen, big speakers, etc. It sounds awesome! And looks awesome! There's nothing to compare to seeing (and hearing) your work on the big screen. Unfortunately, the screening is by invite only and I've already chosen my +1. They are sure to screen again soon. But I'm psyched, you know? It's another milestone marked but it's also a chance to network. I haven't gotten to meet any of the other cast and crew yet and am especially looking forward to meeting certain people on the producing team. All around it should be a good night as I have the whole evening off from work and there is a reception and after party as well.

For now, I need some sleep. The leg is feeling better, especially after another amazing yoga class with Adriana, my favorite teacher at Abhaya. I think it should be okay for my long planned trip to the Statue of Liberty with my friend Allison. Sure I nearly killed it this weekend hiking about 6 miles through the Adirondack mountains, but a few stairs shouldn't be a problem right? Anyway, I'm excited because I'm finally doing this for the first time...plus, it's Allison's first time too (she, a lifelong New Yorker, too!). So it should be a blast! Pics are, of course, forthcoming.

Conquered by the Adirondacks...

2011-10-02T22:20:00.000-04:00

Okay, first of all, my left leg really hurts right now. I'm debating going to the doctor about it. Backpacking did not help it at all, obviously, but it feels way worse. Worse enough that I'm taking Ibuprofen right now, something I haven't done in years.

The camping trip was a lot of fun though. Even if we did get cut short and even if I did come off the mountain feeling pretty crappy. We drove up to Lake George, NY from Albany, stopping briefly to get a few things at an Eastern Mountain Supply store, and lunch, in Saratoga Springs. Here's a link to the hike that we did. The Tongue Mountain Range. I said it was fun but the following description is going to make me sound practically sadistic.

We were supposed to hike up to the first lean-to about 3 miles in, camp and then do part of the loop, possibly camping further in and making it back to the car early Sunday morning. We revised this plan when we saw the lean-to was free and decided we'd take what we needed in our day packs leaving the larger ones behind in the lean-to, so that we could make good time around the loop on Saturday and camp in the same spot Saturday night so we'd be near the car.

Then, of course, that plan got blown out too. We knew as we watched the sun set from a clearing near the lean-to, a rain cloud slowly creeping up, that the weather was going to figure pretty prominently in our plans for the next day.

We couldn't start a fire because everything was too damp, though we tried for an hour or so. An earlier attempt to use stove fuel to get something going proved futile even if it did almost singe my eyebrows. (This, immediately after J. Scott said to me, as I was trying to light the fire a bit too cautiously, "I didn't put that much on there." Famous last words.) Our decision to cut things short, though we made it the next morning upon seeing the rain finally start in earnest, was actually somewhat influenced by this inability to ignite anything. The camping stove was leaking fuel too, so between that and our lack of campfire, hot food wasn't an option.

We slept pretty soundly in that old lean-to but shortly after we woke and saw the rain starting and felt the cold chill in the air, the lean-to began to leak, first above my head and then above J. Scott's. A futile attempt was made to repair the camping stove but peanut butter sandwiches ended up being the breakfast of choice. We then agreed on a plan to hike back to the car, drop our packs and take a smaller pack each, filled with snacks and water, back up the mountain to explore the shorter Dear Leap out-and-back trail. This took us to a nice vista of the lake and the town of Hulett's Landing on the far shore. The wind was so heavy that even from our height we could see white caps in the lake.

Dreaming of diner coffee and steak and eggs, we hiked back up the steep incline and back to the car. Both pairs of socks I was wearing were thoroughly soaked when we arrived at the car because my boots are no longer water-proof apparently. When I sat down in the car, I felt like I had fever and my bones were chilled. It was a bizarre sensation, but I guess it was I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and a nylon wind-breaker over it and the hike had simultaneously heated me up and chilled my extremities. Though I had wrapped my knee before attempting the hike, it throbbed something awful, too.

No matter. We had called my aunt before setting out to inform her of our predicament. She offered to have us over so we could get out of the rain and put us up for the night. Before heading down there, though, we found a little street side diner where I got my much sought after steak and eggs and was able to charge my phone and call my aunt to talk logistics. We took our time getting down there and made sure we showed up with food and drinks...never mind that it took a wild goose chase around the towns of Coxsackie and Athens and several back roads in between to find a grocery store that was actually across the street from our first stopping point in Coxsackie; the liquor store. I'm a terrible navigator and was not able to redeem myself the whole weekend.

Anyway, as a result of my plan and my aunt's hospitality, I had a nice relaxing evening as opposed to trying to sleep out in the rain again. She made us a dinner of ham and cabbage with potatoes (just the thing on a cold evening) and J. Scott and I watched the Florida Gators game until my aunt returned from her defensive driving course. That night I slept like a rock. Forget that the Adirondacks beat us. We were comfortable.

This evening I still feel pretty sick though and my leg is not happy at all so I'm taking the night off work to recover. Hopefully, I can stay off my leg for a day and give it some time to actually get better. Because this Wednesday, I have plans to go to the Statue of Liberty with a friend. And I'm pretty sure there's no elevator there.

Coming back home to Brooklyn was interesting. The contractors worked in my apartment at a break-neck pace this weekend and did sort of a sloppy job. The new sheet rock is stained through brown from the dampness of the bricks and it doesn't even look as though they did anything but make it worse, at least aesthetically. If I don't hear from my landlord tomorrow about our demands as per the rent for this month and our security deposit, he'll be hearing from me. With any luck, we'll be looking at new apartments by the end of the week and not this:

Messed up Kitchen

The prospects for this week are starting to look worse than that other week I was complaining about a few entries ago when nothing would go right. This time, I have a bum leg, I'm getting a cavity filled on Tuesday, I'm still in a crappy apartment and I could go on but I won't. I found a four-leaf clover today while waiting for the bus in Albany and couldn't help but hope that my luck might change soon. We'll see.

The next step...

2011-09-28T00:07:00.001-04:00

I sent the letter to my landlord via certified mail on Monday, saying that we wanted out of our lease. The ball is rolling and I'm feeling pretty good about it all. And about a lot of other things too. Let's forget for a moment that I just hurt my leg jumping the stairs in the subway trying to catch a train, right before I'm about to go out of town to go backpacking. Let's also forget for a moment that I'm a little scared that I can't really afford this move right now. I've proven to myself over the last few years that I'm remarkably resilient and though I may not be entirely solvent, I am incredibly resourceful and intelligent enough to always find a solution. So, go me and all that.

I actually sort of had an epiphany, or rather, have been having an epiphany, slowly over the last few days in a sort of it's gradually dawning on me kind of way, that things may be going pretty well even though I'm nowhere near my goals. The thought occurred to me that I could be on the right track and still be pretty far from the destination, or in this case what I want to achieve. And maybe I'm not going to be able to see the destination over the horizon for some time. And strangely, as the Universe tends to do to me on occasion, right after the epiphany becomes solid, I get some kind of sign that I've interpreted the signs correctly.

This all kind of started earlier in the week when I got thinking about the informational interview I had with that composer a few weeks ago. How he was pretty much saying that it sounded like I was on the right track and to just keep doing what I'm doing, writing new music and trying to meet people and network. It's funny. It still didn't set in fully, even though I had said, at the time, that it was great to hear that from someone in the business who is actually out there doing it right now and has probably been where I am now and knows exactly how I feel. The first chance I got to start doubting myself I was right back in the pits thinking I had so far to go and about how frustrating it is to work so hard and not seem to be getting anywhere, how things seem to be blocking me at every turn. But then at the beginning of this week, I entertained the thought again that yes, I was on the right track, probably for no other reason than I was sick of hearing myself think negative thoughts.

On a practical note, I realized that, in voice over and in music, I've been far too eager to jump ahead, often deciding where I want to be and trying to just go there directly, i.e. applying for jobs I have no business applying for and wondering why I don't get them. Sure, I should have the confidence to apply and maybe applying doesn't hurt, but ultimately, I was expecting far too much. What I really should be doing is, yes, applying for whatever the hell I want, but also taking the time to consider what level I'm at and having some realistic expectations. Maybe figure out what kind of jobs I can get right now and how I can find them.

With voice over, for example, I tried for a few weeks to apply to jobs on Voice123.com but then I started to really get a feel for the culture up there and what it's really good for. People who get jobs on Voice123.com, first of all, only supplement their income with those jobs and are typically the kinds of people who can apply right away, (i.e. those doing voice over full time and therefore people that are really good already), and be among the first submissions, and therefore be the first heard and probably most likely to get the job. I have a day job and cannot apply to every job that comes to my inbox and even if I could, I don't have the chops yet to stand up next to people who have been doing it for years and years. The same thing came clear when I was looking into Guru.com again, a site where I can find freelance jobs in both fields, music and voice over. They have something called a Customer Acquisition Rate that affects your ranking on the site, and your likeliness of being awarded projects. It's the age old catch 22 that you need experience to get work but in order to get experience you need to work. Suffice it to say, these sites probably take a long time to benefit the people using them. Sort of like a microcosm of our entire careers. It takes a long time to be solvent in any field. A lot of dues paying and waiting for that break.

So, what I'm realizing is that these sites are not for me right now. I was at Learning Ally today just finishing up my regular weekly 2 hours of recording and I decided that I wanted to try and chat to my voice coach Sylvia, a former regular at Edge Studio where I did the demo, and get some advice. It really only occurred to me this morning, er, afternoon, when I woke up, that all of these questions I've been having, the what to do next's and the am I doing this right's could easily be addressed to Sylvia, who was ever helpful, though I only had one or two real sessions with her at Edge. I was thrilled, back then, to discover that she volunteered at Learning Ally too. Anyway, when I cornered her after my session, she was saying exactly what I was thinking, that these sites are good for practice but that even the people who work on them successfully only do them as a supplement to the jobs that actually earn them the bulk of their wages.

Anyway, the question that leaves me with (and sometimes narrowing it down to a question, even if you don't have an answer, can be satisfying enough) is what is the next step? I keep envisioning where I'd like to be but that place is often several footholds up the rock I'm climbing and I need to look for footholds that are closer to where I'm hanging at the moment. Sylvia told me I was on the right track with voice over, practicing weekly at Learning Ally. Soon, they'll be doing voice coaching at Learning Ally as well but in the meantime, I may do some additional coaching with Sylvia. And my new composer friend also told me I was on track. So beyond knowing the answer to that question of what the next step is, it feels great to finally let go and just accept that I'm on the right track and, for all intents and purposes, I may just be exactly where I'm supposed to be right now.

Dumbo Arts and Wall Street on a whim...

2011-09-26T01:43:00.004-04:00

Good but exhausting day. I think sometimes it's the prospect of staying up all night for work that makes me tired. I managed to sleep for a few hours before coming in but I'm certain that I'm going to crash later. It's just what happens on Sunday night/Monday morning.

The DUMBO Arts Festival. We started with brunch at Superfine which was great. I had almost forgotten that there'd be a band playing there too. The Jack Grace Band. And my steak and eggs and coffee were damn good. Superfine is another of these local, seasonal, changing menu kind of places, which makes it pretty cool in my book. Mine and Katie's friend Rachel came all the way down from Washington Heights to meet with us so we had a little mini-UNCG reunion going on.

After brunch we mostly strolled, stumbling across whatever until we found one of the festival programs on a counter in one of the restaurants on Pearl Street. Here's a pretty good digest of the thing we saw, captioned and all:

Best of DUMBO Arts Festival

Among, many outdoor exhibits and open galleries and studios, there was dancing (both inside and out), musical performances and even a guy cutting someone's hair with clippers that were hooked up to a guitar amp and several effects pedals. This was pretty awesome but not the coolest thing I saw all afternoon. Here's a link to a description of what I thought was the coolest.

After Rachel left us to go to a rehearsal, we walked around for about as long as we could stand and then spent some time watching the dancing and trapeze at the Galapagos Art Space. Galapagos is a great venue and I'm really hoping that Tania and I can book it for Rhythmic Movement 2 in November. The seating is fantastic. Floating islands in a 1600 square foot indoor lake. And it's a LEED certified green building too.

After a little bit of time off of our feet we decided not to wait for the next set of dancers and instead go down to Wall Street to witness the spectacle of dirty hippies protesting everything and anything. I had seen some Facebook posts from one of my coworkers who was there. And we actually ran into the two of them who were there shooting the event, a reporter and a truck operator. Dan, the truck operator who had posted, was telling me how some of the protestors were hassling him as they were trying to interview other people, telling him he was part of the problem. Oh, the disillusionment. One protestor had been sitting around topless all weekend. Not sure what that was about.

The protestors have basically been camping out in Zuccotti Park for over a week now and complaining about Wall Street bankers getting bailouts among other things. The wikipedia article I just linked apparently mentions the protest and already has a pic up. Here are some pics I took:

Occupy Wall Street Protest

We watched the protestors for a little bit, standing in a tight group and airing grievances. It was a lot more peaceful than what I've been hearing about the last few days. Idiots in the streets getting maced because they were resisting arrest or otherwise not complying with police requests. Apparently, they're not allowed to have amplification so, to get around this and so everyone would be heard who was speaking, they would repeat everything that was said, line by line, by each individual person who stood up to speak. This was fun to watch for a while but I still couldn't hear half of what was being said. In addition to not being allowed to use amplification, they are not allowed to even be camping there. The park is privately owned and flyers were handed out today instructing them to not camp there anymore.

I'm glad I got to go down and witness it all on a relatively peaceful day. Whether or not I agree with what the protestors are going on about (some of it I do agree with), and whether or not I agree with their methods (I don't, in fact, I always think they do less to help their cause when they present it in such a way where the people whose attention they're trying to get surely won't take them seriously), it's still interesting to see how many people come out and what they're all saying, what they're signs say. Some of it dumb, some of it compelling, some gross misuse of statistics and some kind of cool ones. There was one in the pics I took with one of my favorite quotes from the Buddha, and probably the most sensible thing written on any of the signs, which I will leave you with now:

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason, and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it." - Buddha

Blurb #26

2011-09-25T10:46:00.004-04:00

We're moving out. We decided this Friday night. I came home with the letter drafted and planned on showing Katrina but before I could get through the finer points of what it said as far as our terms, she says, "I think we should just move out." I was actually pretty excited having thought I would need to do some convincing. I guess mushrooms in your ceiling are about as convincing as things can get. I guess that's one thing that's turned out the way I had hoped this week! That and I heard finally that the Celiac Disease study payment is on its way!

Anyway, I redrafted the letter and Katrina and I spent the rest of the evening on our laptops scouring padmapper.com and our other resources just to get started with the apartment hunt and discussion about our preferences this time around...which include no slumlords. Anyway, more chronicles of the third New York City move will certainly be forthcoming. For now, I'm off to the DUMBO Arts Festival with my friend who's visiting from Chicago. We're headed to brunch at Superfine in DUMBO first. See ya!

Mushrooms, still, and other non fungal topics...

2011-09-23T10:34:00.001-04:00

There are still mushrooms in my cousin's ceiling and the work outside on the bricks has stopped because of the threat of rain. This is not good. I've been stressing mildly about it all week even though I'm not the one sleeping not in my bed. My poor cousin has had to endure sleeping in the living room and getting woken up by me coming in late every night this week. The next course of action for us is to withhold rent until the repairs are done and to only pay what we feel we owe for the month of essentially living in a one bedroom apartment. But good luck getting in touch with my landlord. This is the guy for whom I only have one phone number and no email address. I'm going to start putting all my correspondences in snail mail if I have to...registered snail mail.

I met with Tania last night after work and ended up chatting about our upcoming endeavors at a little place called The Tea Set just off Greenwich Avenue until just about midnight when they kicked us out. It's getting exciting now that she's back from Europe, talking about what's coming up next. We're going to be doing Rhythmic Movement, the concert she did back in July, again sometime in November and she already has a spot booked on a program of new music at the Harlem National Black Theater in February 2012, at which she's going to premier my new piece for piano and electronics. As it stands now, I'm taking a sketch that never got premiered but deserves to see some daylight in my opinion, fleshing it out and adding an electronic element. Back when I was in grad school I saw a classmate of mine put a saxophone through a computer, sample it, and, using a program called Max/MSP, do all kinds of random shit with the sound. I intend to do this same thing with this piano piece but the shit is not going to be random. Like I did with Moon, Tides, Cycles, I plan on running the piano through Mainstage but instead of just adding effects to it and fading it in and out, I plan on sampling it, twisting the recording around a little and running it through some effects and mapping the sample chunks to my keyboard so I can play them during the second half of the piece. We're going to get together again in November when she's less busy so I can record her playing what I've written of the piece and do some test runs with the sampling. Meanwhile, I flesh out!

That sounded funny. Idioms used in weird contexts. Heh.

In other exciting news, if I haven't mentioned, the premier screening of Sides of the Track is happening on October 7th and here's the trailer on Facebook. Yes, that's my music!

This weekend, I have a friend coming into town for some art related conference and we plan on going to the DUMBO Arts Festival on Sunday. I'll post about that and hopefully, I'll at least have the sense to bring my good camera. More to come!

Time management...

2011-09-19T22:54:00.003-04:00

A lesson in time management today, I think. Wanna know how much I got done today and I've only been up since 2pm? A lot. And it's not just how much but the manner in which everything timed out so I was able to several things at the same time and was able to leave the apartment a little early and, once again, get some time to work in my "office." You wouldn't believe how quiet it is back here. Well, I mean, I'm playing music on the laptop as I work. What I'm really talking about when I say quiet is lack of outside distractions. No one is likely to come back here at this hour of the night. Not even sure anyone has any idea I'm back here.

I digress. I woke up at 2pm as I said, and managed to get in an episode or two of whatever was on my DVR while eating my breakfast. Made some tea to go, had time for a stroll to 4th Avenue/9th Street to take the F directly to yoga, instead of connecting from the R train. Managed to scope out a restaurant that I'm planning on having brunch at in DUMBO on Sunday with a friend who's visiting and even wandered over to the waterfront to check out Jane's Carousel, which is now open and operational. All this before even laying out my yoga mat at Abhaya.

After yoga, I scampered back to the apartment, put in two loads of laundry and got right to work recording some scripts for Edge Studio's weekly contest. Finished that in just the right amount of time that my laundry was ready to be moved. Plus, since I made enough dinner yesterday (planning ahead here), I was able to heat up leftovers and do a little job hunting/resume updating while simultaneously watching an episode of Good Eats (the Alton Crown affair where he shows how to make a crown roast with a rack of lamb). Then, I put together a lunch while simultaneously washing dishes and finished in time to make it down to the laundromat slightly before my load was done in the dryer. Folded laundry and managed to input the main melodic idea for the choral piece into Sibelius on my laptop so I could work on it tonight, all with enough time to swing by the food co-op to pick up some things that my lunch was lacking.

Got here at around 10pm and was able to apply to a job on Mandy.com, join voiceregistry.voicebank.net (which I was reading about earlier this afternoon in one of my emails from Edge Studio this afternoon) and do even more job hunting. And now I have about 15 minutes left to mess around on the internet and type this blog.

Sigh. Notice that I even worked in leisure time during the day. Time for walks and yoga. Keeps me sane.

Caffeinated...

2011-09-19T01:51:00.000-04:00

Yerba Mate can be my salvation when doing these overnight shifts. It has just enough caffeine so that I can push my way through the last 8 hours of a 24 hour period of wakefulness that is often only broken up, as in the case of today, by a meager 40 minute nap. A nap that was interrupted by my precious and wonderful cat scratching around in the litter box. She seriously has some kind of compulsion where, after she uses the litter box, she repeatedly wacks her front paws against the side of the box, probably in attempt to dislodge little disgusting granules of cat litter with no regard to the fact that I'm sleeping like a BABY! Or that I was sleeping like a baby, that is.

I'm in a little early tonight and working on the laptop in my "office" overlooking 9th Avenue. Okay, so it's just a conference room that I have no claim on that happens to reach Google's guest wifi. Anyway, I spent a lot of time last night looking up alternatives to a plugin that comes with Mainstage that's used for looping. I have it all set up as such (see blog on main webpage here), and yet I'm having issues with record latency so I've downloaded two open source plugins, one called Sooper Looper and the other Mobius. Tonight I'm going to be devouring all I can about the two.

This week, Mohammad and I will try and do a test screening Sides of the Track on the big screen. If not, this week, then next. It's still not solid yet when we will do it, but expect impressions on that once it happens. I'm excited to see and hear it in a big theater.

And, with any luck, I'll have some updates on the state of the apartment that will not include rants about interrupted sleep. I anticipate work being done during the day tomorrow and Tuesday, outside and I'm hoping that my super and his guys will be working demolishing the walls and ceiling in my cousin's room. I implored him not to come on Monday or Tuesday but to definitely come at some point and, even if they aren't yet finished on the outside, to at least start cleaning up the mold and disgusting-ness inside. Hopefully, that will pan out in the best possible way. I have a guest coming to stay with me this coming Saturday. Let's just say the apartment is going to be a little bit crowded if Katrina can't sleep in her own room.

All this has gotten me thinking about my luck lately. I've got so much floating up in the air right now, from little things like the payment for the Celiac disease study to much bigger things like the resolution of the apartment debacle, that I can't wait for it all to just resolve itself and have found myself hoping that at least something will work out for the better. Because I've had a handful of other things come to rather disappointing resolutions lately, not all of which I will talk about here. Have you ever gotten that feeling like several things are about to happen and any number of them could go any way? Yeah, I have that now. And it's the anticipation that drives me nuts. You almost stop caring about the outcome out of a sheer desire for something to just happen already! But then, I feel like sooner or later, my luck just has to change and maybe something will turn out the way I had hoped. With the apartment situation, I just wish I could be comfortable again soon whatever the outcome is. With my music, I just want new jobs and to pick up some momentum on my own projects. With voice over, I just wish I had the time to devote to it and could finish my new demo on my own.

The good news is, and I hesitate to say too much about this but, I came up with a musical idea today that may actually turn into something. I was sitting in church this morning and our new interim minister was reciting a Rumi poem that really hit me, so I googled it on my phone, copied it and pasted it into an email to myself. While I was sitting with Jennie after brunch, enjoying the weather, and waiting on our friend Dawn to meet us, I read it out loud and it still resonated. So, this evening, while I was laying in bed trying to drift back off to sleep after my at woke me up, a melody and accompaniment started to swim around in my head. Ultimately, this is what made me finally give up on the tossing and turning and catapult myself out of bed and toward the piano. I plunked out the idea I had and luckily it fit the first few lines quite well. I played through a few things and scrawled out my ideas on some staff paper that I keep on the piano. Tomorrow I plan to drop it into Sibelius and flesh it out a little (or a lot) and we'll just see where it goes. The rest should fall into place as long as I still like it when I sit down with it tomorrow evening.

All in an afternoon's work. That having been given away, I hope soon to have something basic I can show to my choir director and maybe we can get another piece of mine premiered before the end of the year. I think the choral music might become a staple for me since I have a definite outlet for it. It's hard to write my chamber pieces without any idea of when or how I could get them performed. The piano works of mine are probably going to become another important area for me, especially piano with electronics, now that Tania and I are working together so closely. She wants to premier something new at a concert in Feburary and we are planning on doing the Rhythmic Movement concert again at some point later in the year.

Anyway, I'd better go for now. Hope this rambling blog made some sense. Cohesion is not my forte in the wee small hours.

Fun things and not so fun things...

2011-09-15T23:55:00.000-04:00

Tassles and G-Strings. Tuesday night, I found myself at a Burlesque show that was done "in the round" at a small club on Chrystie Street (see, fun things happen on Chrystie street, see my blog from last week). Mystique Ultra Lounge was holding this event which was planned by an ex-coworker of mine who just recently started her own event planning company. The show was part of a launch party for a deck of playing cards with a selection of the city's most well-known burlesque dancers photographed for the backs of each card. The "Play Me Burlesque" playing cards.

I arrived a little early and had to wait a bit to get in but I had a friend with me so it was good. Prime people watching anyway. Once inside, and after an hour of waiting and drinking scotch, there were three back to back sets of burlesque dancers, with names like Miss Tickle, The Asian Sex-sation, Heidi Honeysuckle and others I can't immediately recall. My favorite was Miss Tickle, if only for the elaborate costume she wore that incorporated feathers which she wore as a dress and then reassembled, at the end of her dance, into a pair of 6 foot tall wings. They get pretty fancy with the costumes and the routines.

Jennie and I left after the second set. I was running on 4 hours of sleep, like I do, and she had work in the morning. And it was a tad crowded. Since I lost my seat between sets I had to sit on the floor for the second set. Mildly uncomfortable but overall I had a good time. This was my first burlesque show and I wonder why I never went to one before now. It was, for lack of a more descriptive impression, pretty cool.

And speaking of pretty cool, Lacy and I continued to explore the open mic circuit, adding Paddy Reilly's and Arctica Bar up in Murray Hill to our list. Both of them were mediocre to fair. Paddy Reilly's having great sound and good performers but poor attendance (and generally weak audience response...it was dead in there!). By the time we got to Arctica Bar, several people had already signed up for the opening slots, so as the night progressed we made a decision to leave before we went on because Lacy had to drive back to Philly and it was getting late. So after sizing up the crowd and the scene and chowing down on some spinach and artichoke dip, we bolted. It was a great sound system but the space was odd...it was essentially a classy sports bar...which as you should know is not classy at all but merely has the appearance of class. Either way, I think we'll try to attend both again next week before we pass any judgement on them. Next week, we'll even try to get over to Arctica sooner and maybe get the first slot.

On the apartment front, I don't know if I've mentioned the scene here lately. Remember the leaky windows and walls from the nor'easter about a year and a half ago? While, back then, we did complain to the landlord and the superintendent, nothing ever got done and, as the leak only reoccurred when the rains were accompanied by heavy winds, we never followed up all that well. Until Hurricane Irene came through. The damage was getting worse.

Apparently, we weren't the only ones who complained either because all of a sudden there was a lot of talk about them actually doing something about it. So what they did was they started renovating the upstairs apartments before they fixed the leak. While I was trying to sleep after an overnight last week I heard the banging on the walls upstairs. I found out later that they had to wait until the bricks were dry outside before they reset them. At first this did not make sense to me, why they would fix the inside first...it was even raining the day they started renovations! At one point, my super told us that he'd be working in our apartment sometime last week, but with one night's notice!

Of course, this didn't happen and good thing, too. I saw Frances' apartment (the one right above me) because she beckoned me to come look at the state the workers had left it in; all the furniture moved out of the room and covered in plastic, walls and ceiling totally stripped down to the bricks. The next morning after they started renovating upstairs, I get a panicked text from my roommate that there were now mushrooms growing out of her ceiling. I didn't believe it until I saw it.

Ceiling Mushrooms

They must have kicked something up upstairs when they were renovating Frances' apartment. The musty, fungal smell in the other bedroom was to the point where my roommate couldn't sleep in there let alone go in there for five seconds to get her allergy medication.

At this point, I started calling the landlord. I left two messages before he got back to me. And he told me that they'd be fixing the bricks outside this morning and Alex would need 2-3 days in my apartment after he finished with the apartments upstairs. Luckily, this morning, I actually saw people outside in the alley surveying the walls and later up on the fire escape. So hopefully, this will all be over soon.

So there's a pretty good summary of New York life these days: live music, burlesque dancers and some pretty classic New York apartment living anecdotes. Today, I was back to work after three nights of excitement and so tonight I've decided to stay in for my health...which is why I'm only drinking one glass of wine before bed. Not much else to report, except that I still love this city and the weather has turned cooler all of a sudden. It's always exhilarating to me when I take that first breath of 50 degree air in the fall. I love the change in the air. I was taking huge draughts of it on the walk home which I extended by getting off the train early at 4th Avenue/9th Street and walking the extra 13 blocks. I know some people may think I'm weird for actually liking the cold but I know I'm not the only one who likes the days of sweater weather. Bring it on, New York!

Gluten Free Meetup #1...

2011-09-13T02:15:00.000-04:00

Went into the city early before work today to, first, pick up the payment from Mohammad for the film score and, second, go to my first gluten free celiac disease meetup. I've been putting that last one off for too long. We were to meet at a Vietnamese restaurant in the Union Square area called L'Annam. 10 people RSVP'ed to the event and 9 showed up. We were only short the organizer who was sick and couldn't make it.

Overall, it was a great experience. The menu itself was a designated gluten free menu that even had instructions on how to order certain dishes gluten free (i.e. "request no soy sauce," or "request Nouc Cham sauce"). One of the people in our group, I learned, was responsible for getting this establishment to write up the gluten free menu. On the table, as well, were bottles of gluten free tamari soy sauce.The food was great and came out piping hot in most cases, and I was able to enjoy a hot sake with my meal along with some pretty classic Asian menu typos (which always set me laughing). In fact, one such typo motivated the decision for my entree...the red chile sauce on my beef was sold to me as "red child sauce." Love it! It was down to that and the "Steamed Grandma recipe."

What was more memorable than good food and even better typos, was actually, for once, getting to meet real Celiacs. Ever since I've been diagnosed I have yet to meet someone with my disease, save for my new doctor at Columbia University. Only people who I wind up talking to about it seem to have a wheat allergy or a wheat intolerance to some degree. The implications of such things are similar but some of these people can still have spelt or slip up and not have to worry necessarily about destroying their body's ability to absorb nutrients. I can't even describe the feeling I'm getting now, knowing that I have friends now who know exactly what I'm going through. Conversations throughout the evening, while not always about the disease and its effects, often centered on how we were diagnosed, how we adjusted and how we were doing now. And of course, where to find good gluten free food and imbibement.

After the meetup, I took one of my new friends to Risotteria for a gluten free Bard's beer. It feels good to be able to share something like that with someone who can appreciate it on the level that I do.

So, feeling pretty stoked about life in general, I'm sitting here at work, having just finished my first "final" mix for Mohammad of the trailer music. I think we're both pretty satisfied with it and if he approves it should be up on imdb.com by the end of this week. Look for it! I'll most likely inform via the blog when this actually happens. For now, I'm going to go and take care of some work.

September 11th

2011-09-12T00:51:00.000-04:00

Today felt like a day off…and that was my intention. Karishma and I decided semi-last minute to go to Governor's Island. Lately, I haven't done enough of that kind of thing. We both sort of lamented the passing of summer and how we didn't manage to do half of the fun things we wanted to. One of my big things was sailing. Seeing the sailboats all over the harbor as we sat on the south end of Governor's Island kept reminding me of that. Oh well. There's always next summer.

I'd just like to say that Governor's Island is fun. Not for the events or the art installations or the biking or all the other things you hear about that are meant to attract you to the island. No, what I'm talking about is the sense of history in the old buildings and the fact that, for the most part, you can just wander at will wondering what all these places were for. Of course, I've been meaning to actually read up on the history of the island more but it's much more fun to just stumble on it all not knowing anything about it.

We came upon Fort Jay, on the north side of the island, and with no one around on such a dreary day, it was a little spooky. On the south end of the fort, beyond a dry moat was a large black door in the wall. Sneaking up to it, we pushed on it only to find it was chained on the inside. But as I pushed further the chain slid completely out of the latch and the door opened enough for us to slide in. Feeling a little mischievous and a little unsure of ourselves we wandered up a short tunnel that led into a courtyard surrounded by what looked like houses. We were most certainly okay to be up there but the chained door and the lack of other people sure made us feel like we were up to no good. So for good measure, I actually jumped up on the highest part of the defensive wall behind the houses to get a good look around. It was at this point that I saw the trapese down in the field below. Yes, the New York Trapese School has some of its classes here in the summer time. Later on when we walked down in the field and approached their setup, I started to get some ideas in my head. This might be my next thing. :)

Continuing on, with Karishma getting nervous about my adventurousness, we walked along the wall for a bit until we came upon some vines wrapped around a fence which blocked us from getting anywhere near the canons up on the highest part of the wall. Closer inspection revealed them to be grape vines...which were in fruit. So you can bet I tried some. The Lower Manhattan skyline loomed over the embankment reminding us that even despite being so isolated, we were still in the city.

Today was September 11th and I manged to miss the barrage of coverage I would have taken part in had I worked during the day. Instead, I got to be out and about on this day. Some of my friends back home would say things like "be extra careful this weekend!" But I shall be no more careful than I usually am. If we live in fear the terrorists have won exactly what they were after. Besides, no terrorist would plot something when everyone's expecting them to do something. As Karishma and I lazed around on the south end of the island (hammocks are so nice!) we noticed a red helicopter and a military plane of some type circling the Statue of Liberty. The harbor was full of police boats too strangely, all with their lights flashing. Cops were set up at the entrances to the subway station at South Ferry. So, I wasn't worried one bit. Just another day in the city.

I came into the city a little early before work and walked from Rector St. up to Chambers, taking a meandering course so I could glimpse the tribute in light up close. Hauntingly beautiful and moving. There were so many more people coursing through Lower Manhattan than usual. I stumbled into a candlelight vigil or two and stopped for a bit to get a view of the new towers under construction. You needed to have tickets to get into the memorial museum and I think they were only letting in family members of victims today. I will go some time this week when it's open to the public.

Tonight, though, I plan on pushing forward on the music for the trailer to Sides of the Track. There's not much left to do. Tomorrow, I'll meet Mohammad for the payment right before I head to Union Square for a Gluten Free Meetup I signed up for. I'm pretty excited about that. For now, I should get going. Maybe some pics in the post eventually.

Dixon Place Dance off...

2011-09-08T19:47:00.000-04:00

I just love the street names on the LES. Names like Rivington, Orchard, Essex, Delancey and Ludlow float through my mind as I stroll to the subway stop at Delancey Street. That and the coolest spelling of the name Chrystie. I was just leaving a dance performance at Dixon Place on Chrystie Street. My friend Julia had a piece showcased in a program of pretty spectacular works. All of them modern dance, with great music and great great choreography. A fair mix of break dance, hip hop, ballet and other styles that just blew my mind. Julia's work was amazing and I had, in fact, seen the piece before, a fragment of which was presented back in October of 2010, the same night that my music premiered with Jahna's piece at Triskelion Arts in Williamsburg.

At the end of the evening, the works, which were performed back to back in quick succession, were punctuated by an impromptu dance off. The dancers all seemed to have a gaggle of dancer friends in the crowd that they suddenly began dragging on stage to dance with them. It was the most exciting part of the evening. Then it was a bit of a downer because, a side effect of going solo to an event where most of the audience knows the dancers personally and has most likely come with friends or met friends at the event and where your friend who did the choreography is more than likely not going to hang around because she teaches pilates crazy early in the morning, is that you're sitting alone at the bar sipping your second $5 glass of wine you had to purchase to make the credit card minimum because you never carry cash anymore. But still, did I mention that Dixon Place has $5 glasses of wine...and it's in Manhattan?!

So there's that.

In other news, currently, I'm in the throes of working on music for the trailer to Sides of the Track. I've seen the first two ideas he has for a teaser and there's likely to be a longer form trailer coming along soon. I'm psyched because I get to play around with the ideas from the movie and do sort of an alternate version of everything. It's always a bit bittersweet when you think you've locked in the music and the process is over but then, when you get to evolve it just a little more, it can be really rewarding. Like when I was younger, in high school and college, I became obsessed with writing reprise versions of songs. I remember hearing the Tonight, Tonight reprise from the Smashing Pumpkins and I had to do the same with my band Buggstar's "Teenage Love Song." Never did record it but I still love to play it on my guitar.

This newer version for the trailer, takes a chunk or two of an oud performance that was unused in the film and mixes it with a stripped back beat with a solo piano line. I may do more yet though. We'll see.

Now, I have to clear my head from all this excitement and get to bed. More on the trailer soon.

I did it!

2011-09-06T17:42:00.001-04:00

I actually slept past 2pm after an overnight shift! Even despite hammering outside my apartment that woke me up at around 1045am, I still managed to finally sleep it off like a rock star. It takes a rainy day, with the lack of direct sunlight to make the conditions just right for uninterrupted sleep. Simple fact of the matter though is that I'm not sure how much longer I can do this. Although an odd schedule like mine can be conducive to creating sometimes, having the apartment to myself when I'm off work at odd times, it sort of drains you. And being drained is not conducive to creating. I can't keep my focus and I start to get a little bedraggled.

This has all kind of gotten me thinking about success and how you measure it. I harp on a theme on this blog a lot, that I often forget, or that often moves to the back of my mind. I have already accomplished a lot just by moving up here and sometimes it can help me when I'm feeling overwhelmed to remember this fact. But I can't stop at that obviously. Sure moving up here was an accomplishment but there's still more to be done. I'm semi-comfortable in my routine and am happy with the individual things I've done so far but I'm always trying to get to the next step. And sometimes, figuring out what that next step is can be a step itself. So, I find myself at a bit of a crossroads. Or maybe it's more like a river crossing. I can see the other side. I just can't quite find a way to cross over yet.

Specifically, I'm trying to get from a place where I know confidently that I can do the kinds of jobs that I'm after to a place where I'm able to prove that to the people who might hire me to do those jobs. I've met people who are doing what I want to be doing and I'm getting the impression that I'm not far off. The thing I keep hearing is that I just need to keep working. Writing every day. Networking. Working on my web presence. Etc.

I guess I just need to keep my head up and accept that it's not the kind of thing that happens overnight. It's good to check every once in a while to see if I am, in fact, on track. I've done a lot this year. But next year I want to do way more. I mean way more. I've already got designs on performing my electronic music and I'm getting closer to logistically being able to do that (learning how to make Mainstage do what I want it to do and buying that one last piece of MIDI equipment that I need). One place I'm wanting to increase my activity even more, though, is my contemporary music. Tania is sure to be performing more of my pieces next year and we may even be doing Moon, Tides, Cycles again in the fall. My goal is to write more not just for her but to get one of my new chamber pieces finished and performed. Specifically, the one with electronics. This will be an undertaking of mass proportions however.

On top of all that, the most important goal of mine is to score more films. And I realize that that one requires more networking than anything else. I could apply to scoring jobs online until my face falls off but when it comes down to it I haven't done all that much and I'm up against so many other candidates who either have or at least look like they have done way more. So I have to work on making the kind of connections that I've made with George and Mohammad and bank on the recommendations from the work I have done. Once I build up work like that, then I'll have a more bloated and impressive portfolio that I can use to apply to jobs with directors that I don't know yet. That's the idea anyway. I think I've spoken before on here about breaking things down into manageable steps. Step 1 in this case would be network.

Funny enough, I'm going to a Celiac Disease meetup next Monday and while I was trolling around meetup.com, it occurred to me to look for filmmaker groups. Found a few and joined but not all of them have meetups scheduled, nor does it look like they've even been active recently. I'm already a member of the IFP filmmakers group on Facebook but I've yet to make use of that membership. Either way, over the course of the next few weeks, and once the music for the trailer for Sides of the Track is finished, I intend to be networking like gangbusters.

If I can get some sleep. Speaking of Facebook, they've been doing this thing lately where your status updates from this day in whatever year appear on the sidebar. The one from this day in 2010 said something about sleeping in until 5pm and that I guessed my body needed it. Sort of puts in perspective how long I've been enduring such a crazy schedule. It'll be two years this January.

Update to the first paragraph of this blog. The hammering was coming from the apartment above. They're finally working on fixing all the water damage. The woman who lives above me wanted to show me all the work they were doing because her apartment was in shambles, all her furniture moved out into the main room while in the bedroom the walls were completely stripped of plaster. She was complaining in broken English about what an upheaval it was. Let's just hope that I don't have to endure the same thing in a week. Why? Because I'll be sleeping all day again.

Home at last...

2011-08-30T12:11:00.005-04:00

I type that title as though my travel experience yesterday was so awful. While it was as long as it usually is on the way back, it was actually my smoothest day of travel all weekend, in a weekend that started with a bus accident and then preceded to an airport delay that had nothing to do with the storm into which we were flying, all followed by a near miss or a close call, whichever way you want to look at it, in which we barely made it to the airport in Raleigh before it closed! Aside from the 30 second sustained screaming of some demonic child on my flight and a seemingly unnecessary detour out over Long Island (halfway to the freaking Hamptons!) which I assume had to be some kind of holding pattern (we did arrive a little late), it was all pretty smooth. In fact, I had some of the best train luck ever getting home...mind you, I said train and not bus luck. The MTA is apparently working to restore their riders' faith.

Of course, what I saw in my room, though what I pretty much expected to see, was a bit of an adjustment. One of my shelves, which had until recently been screwed into the wall most likely to leak in my room during a rainstorm, fell, sending my tool box and other large objects to the floor. Why I've had the heaviest object in this room aside from my guitar amp on such a weak perch is beyond me, as is how it didn't break anything on my desk during its flight. I cleaned everything up in about a half hour and even unpacked before taking an epic nap which almost went uninterrupted due to my inability to set an alarm properly. Luckily, my internal alarm went off and I sprung out of bed a full forty minutes after I had expected to be up. Thank god for leftovers. I had plenty of time to nosh on something and put together a lunch for work, my nightly routine on Sundays and Mondays for over a year and a half now.

Since I missed my shift Sunday because of my altered travel plans though, I was essentially napping on a day when I don't normally have to. And now that I've had fewer days to get used to the sleep schedule, I'm somehow up slightly before noon and typing this blog. When I get up after having strange dreams about getting knocked off my bike (a dream that will likely deter me from biking to yoga tonight) and can't get back to sleep I tend to just want to give up on the whole affair. So, I'm up and, because this is the way my mind works, I'm already trying to think of ways to use this unexpected time. Eating is in order but then music is probably next. Gotta tweak the mix of the film score one last time. Then see what's happening with the edit for the trailer. I think I'm going to sit down at the piano at some point today too. But we'll see what actually happens. For now, I'm going to start my day.

Rain and wind...

2011-08-27T20:31:00.006-04:00

I'm sure everyone in NYC is starting to freak out. Meanwhile, NC is clearing up. We spent the day watching relatively tame winds and rain from the porch and grazing on food around the house. The power went off around noon and we soon found out it was due to a tree which had fallen on some power lines that feed my parents' street. Surprisingly I wasn't half as stir crazy as I thought I would be in a house with 15 people and no power. No, we're pretty well adapted around here. Anticipating at least a dip in the power, my mother had most of the food for the day prepared before it cut out. Lunch was her famous corn and cheese chowder and dinner was mostly cold salads with steak that was to be grilled (my dad wheeled the grill over to the garage door to get out of the rain). The only thing that was a bust was the bean dish that we usually do in the crock pot. The whipped cream icing for my niece and my dad's birthday cake almost didn't happen but my brother-in-law the chef ended up whipping that up by hand because he's the man. We even broke out the Sterno for some coffee after dessert.

I needed to charge my phone at one point because, admittedly, checking Facebook ran my phone battery down. My dad has a 400 watt converter in his car hooked up to the cigarette lighter adapter so we went out there to escape the kids for a while and charge my phone up. This led my dad and I to take an excursion in his car to see the very tree responsible for our situation. Later on we took a walk back up that way to get closer than we could in a car. The police had blocked the road while the workers removed the tree and got the power lines back up and running. Even with them working all afternoon, the power didn't actually come back on until around 8pm. By then, even with the fading daylight we were already all in the pool because the rain had finally stopped. It's a mark of how well we fared without power that seeing the porch light click on while we were out there didn't even register with me.

Now, I sit blogging at the kitchen table, talking to my brother, drinking a gluten free beer and listening to Ra Ra Riot on Grooveshark, fully ensconced in my electrified life again. So, as I sit with my comforts and the thought of a full sunny day to swim in the pool tomorrow I say "Good luck NYC!" It's going to be a real shit storm for you guys. Have fun! And of course, be safe! Here's a video of the wind outside my parents' house:

Airport blues already...

2011-08-26T19:34:00.006-04:00

This was typed earlier today in the airport:

This does not bode well. I've been here since 10am and my plane keeps getting further delayed. First it was late getting here. Now, the plane needs maintenance, and apparently, two hours worth. This bird better be flightworthy by the time I get on it. And all this time I keep thinking about how Sunday is going to be so much worse. Or maybe not. At least Sunday, I'll know ahead of time about delays and cancellations. I can plan ahead and not even bother to come to the airport. Only thing is, if I have to miss another day of work because of this storm, I'll have to use a personal day I was intending to use for a camping trip I was going to take with a friend in late September. That might get blown out or moved to sometime in the middle of the week when I don't have to use personal days to get the time off.

Going on four hours in this god-forsaken airport but this is till nowhere near the longest I have spent in an airport. That title goes to a stint that I spent at this very same airport on the way back from Paris in 2002. The scene: I was returning from a month long study abroad trip in Angers, France with 5 of my classmates, anticipating a layover that we were all prepared for. It was probably the reason our flight was so cheap. We were to land at New York's JFK airport at 8pm and then take a cab to LaGuardia to await an 8am flight the next morning. On paper this didn't seem so bad as we thought, incorrectly, that we'd be able to leave the airport, get a hotel and spend some time partying in the city as a final highlight to our trip. The reality of the situation was that by the time we got to LaGuardia, it was 10pm and there was nothing open, no way of checking our luggage until the morning or checking in for that matter. If we'd tried we maybe could have gotten a hotel room for the night near the airport but for what? To wake up at 5am to make sure we made our flight on time? No, we decided collectively to spend the night in the terminal (this very same terminal in which I sit only out in the lobby). We slept in shifts and some of us started hallucinating. But back then, it was fun. Despite the jet lag (considering we had been awake since 7am Paris time) and all that goes along with that, we just powered through. Funny how a few hours in an airport when you don't know when you're getting out of there can seem so much worse than a situation where you know what you're in for.

In the middle of typing that story, I got talking to a woman who was also waiting to fly back to Raleigh, swapping stories and speculating as to when we would actually get out of there and what the best course of action would be. She became my airport friend pretty fast. It came out in conversation that she is actually the owner of the Guglhupf Bakery in Durham, a place that I've been to a handful of times and have always enjoyed. So that was kind of cool. It helps at a time like this to have a friend to go through it all with. Someone to bond with over the shared discomfort and aggravation of airport delays. It's also good to have someone to drink with. She was very outgoing and had already made friends with two French guys who were also flying to Raleigh. At one point, when trying to explain to them what was going on with our flights, she turned to me and jokingly asked how my French was. So I was on the hook and had to try my best to help out. I stuttered out a few phrases but ultimately the jist of what was going on ended up being communicated in simplified English phrases.

So anyway, we were all collectively losing faith in the maintenance crew working on our plane (and I'm starting to wonder when they're going to just swap planes out instead of trying to fix a plane that obviously has a real problem with it). My new friend then proposed that we see about switching flights, a thought that had occurred to me as well. So we started to ask the woman at the desk if there was another flight to Raleigh we could switch to. There was. But not until 3:20. At this point, I think it was around 1pm. So 3:20 was not seeming so bad. At least it was a solid time we could somewhat count on. They were literally announcing every half hour that it would be another hour until our plane was fixed. So, I swapped my ticket out. But it was only a matter of time before the word came down that they were, in fact, swapping our plane out with one that had just landed. So then they were saying the original flight was going to leave before the 3:20 flight. We decided to switch back to that flight because there was one fundamental difference between the 3:20 flight and the flight we were originally on: The 3:20 flight hadn't even arrived yet. The new plane they swapped us to was at least on the ground at LaGuardia and pulling into our terminal.

Once we had all that settled, my new friend and I went and had a drink and I scarfed a burger while she periodically checked back at the gate to see what our status was. We later found out the 3:20 was delayed getting to LaGuardia and when I finally did arrive in Raleigh, on the original flight, my airport friend heard from her friend that our flight was the last one in to Raleigh-Durham airport before they shut down the airport. So the 3:20 flight wouldn't have even made it out of NYC! What luck!

Getting into Raleigh and hearing all this news about airports closing and seeing the dark clouds on the horizon was pretty crazy. But not even the fact that a light drizzle had started to fall kept me from jumping straight into the pool when I got here. Now, I'm sitting typing this blog watching HD TV and hanging out with the family. So glad to be here right now. While I was waiting at the airport I got an automated phone call from US Airways informing me that my flight back Sunday was cancelled. I called right away to get another fight but was already hearing that every flight into NYC on Sunday was cancelled. I managed to book a flight back on Monday afternoon so hopefully, that will be the least eventful travel day of this crazy ass weekend. Meanwhile, it means that I get a full sunny day of swimming in the pool after all. Sunday should be nice.

Flying into the Storm...

2011-08-26T19:32:00.002-04:00

So, I got to see a cut of the film last night. It totally holds up. And of course, I'm hearing more that I want to do to the mix. Especially the solo oud parts. It seems like they're over compressed or there's some EQing that needs to be done.

Anyway, I'm typing this in LaGuardia airport into a text file which I will upload later. When are airports going to start having free wifi? You have to sign up and pay for Boingo to be able to get online in here. I guess they can't afford to give away wifi like other places can. So, why am I at the airport and flying into the path of a storm when everyone else in NYC is freaking out and buying bottled water, deciding whether to hunker down or evacuate? Because I miss my family and I made these plans weeks ago when this Hurricane was just a gust of wind in Africa. It's kind of exciting but I do face the possibility of not getting back in time for my shift on Sunday night. They're making all kinds of plans at work to have people stay in the city at the Maritime Hotel across 9th Avenue from the Chelsea Market because mass transit may get shut down as early as Saturday afternoon. Ironically, they're even talking about having to evacuate the Chelsea Market, at which point, our affiliate in Albany will take over our programming. In a way, I'm sad I'll miss the excitement but I'm sure there'll be enough excitement in NC.

At any rate, I need to find out what's happening with my flight. It was on time when I left home but I just overheard something about another flight being delayed arriving here so anything could be happening. And I have earbuds in, music blasting like usual so I might have missed even more info than that. More later.

Bolt to Philly Part Deux, Amtrakin' it back!

2011-08-25T18:53:00.003-04:00

So, that was effing crazy. a half hour after I closed my laptop we were slowing to get off the turnpike and someone hit us from behind. Before it happened I was only marginally aware that there might have been something happening. We were slowing pretty fast and our driver hit the rumble strips a little but we weren't in any danger of hitting anyone. Then, a huge thud and my neck swung forward. We were stopped again just as soon as it happened so the truck that hit us couldn't have been going all that fast though my neck did snap back a little. We all looked around and checked ourselves and made sure the person next to us was okay and then the bus driver began shouting toward the back of the bus to make sure everyone was okay as well. At this point, I had to hand the lady in front of me her shoes as they had slid back. Turning my head to look out the window behind us, I saw another car half spun around and crumpled like a tin can. A second later I heard the bus driver shouting back to the passengers to get off the bus. I went for my bag and then realized it had slid to the seat behind me. Once I had all my effects, thanking my lucky stars I hadn't opted to bring my electric guitar with me to the studio (it would have surely been stuff under the bus in the luggage compartment), I followed the other passengers off the bus. We all then gathered on the shoulder of the highway and as I turned back to look at the bus I saw it:

Our bus was the front end of a vehicle sandwich. The other slice of bread being an 18 wheeler and the meat was a smaller semi. The juice running down the shoulder I assumed was gasoline. About this time I started to notice the other cars. There was one ahead of us which had been rear-ended and I'm assuming was the accident that we were slowing down for. The other cars were off behind the two trucks and I'm not sure how many more there were besides the one I had already seen. I recall, shortly after the initial hit, seeing another car careening off into the ditch just off the shoulder. This one disappeared so I'm assuming the driver, having had such a close call and come out relatively unscathed, decided to keep on driving.

Not so lucky, my fellow passengers and I were being held on the side of the road, subjected to legal red tape. We were told to all stay together and write down our information and then someone with the paramedics, who had arrived almost instantaneously, came around and starting asking who wanted to go to the hospital to get checked out. A few people, probably litigiously motivated, took tags from this guy of varying colors depending on, I guess, the severity of their supposed injuries. I felt nothing but a little soreness in my neck and was hoping, between phone calls to Lacy and my parents, to be able to leave at some point, already hatching a plan to have Lacy meet me at the exit once I filled out the form they were handing out.

While I was waiting for someone to hand me a form, I looked down and saw about ten ants crawling on and under my shirt. Apparently, there are ant hills all over the highway shoulder and I was standing right on top of one. Those bastards bit me too!

At this point, once I had handed in my form to the bus driver and scratched all the ants off of my body, the woman to whom I had handed her shoes approached me and asked me if I was headed anywhere, complaining about the fact that they didn't want us to go anywhere. I could see we were of the same mind and I offered her a ride if we could get out of there without too much trouble. I was simultaneously coordinating said ride with Lacy on the phone. The first time we try to abscond, we were stopped by one of the guys with the tags. Yammering about there being a process and blah blah blah whatever. We feigned compliance and then waited for the next opportune moment and bolted, no pun intended. In fact, it was more of a sneaking than a bolting. All the emergency workers between us and Exit 4 on the New Jersey Turnpike couldn't be bothered with our apparent escape.

It was a short quarter mile hike to the exit and during this time, I found out that Margot was from NYC but had a biomedical business in Philly and therefore took this trip all the time. She was relatively unfazed and like me had business to attend to. We made it to the gas station on the corner of highway 73 and Fellowship Rd. and Lacy met us shortly after but not before I made a few phone calls and accidentally broke the soap dispenser in the men's room sending a cascade of that disgusting neon pink soap down to the floor. I didn't tell the management.

The ride to Philly was short thankfully. Lacy informed me that when I called her it was only about 30 minutes before I was supposed to arrive. And the session at Turtle Studios went well. We only really needed to lay down a few takes of a few different ideas on the guitar and get started with mixing it all in. The guys handed me a blue Les Paul and hooked me up to their Vox amplifier, miked me up, tweaked my sound and handed me a headset. The room was huge and filled with all manner of musical instruments, the most notable an organ and a beautiful Steinway grand. At around 12:30 I had to go back into Philly with Lacy in order to catch the 1pm Amtrak back to NYC and here I sit typing this here blog entry. Hoping to god that nothing jumps in front of the train before we get back to Penn Station…and then I go to work.

So, in short, I'm unscathed but very lucky. Just goes to show that even a semi and an 18 wheeler can't stop this train from gliding down the tracks. Notice I didn't use a bus metaphor.

Bolt to Philly...

2011-08-25T08:15:00.003-04:00

Now, free wi-fi on a bus. That's something I can get excited about. Heading to Philadelphia right now on the Bolt Bus to record a few guitar tracks on a new song Lacy is recording for her new album. First time going to Philly ever and unfortunately, I have to turn right around and come back to NYC for work tonight right after the session is over. But it's still going to be a fun little adventure. Mostly the making it back to work on time part. In all honesty though, I feel like I've gotten the hardest part of the day out of the way: waking up at 6am and making it to 34th and 8th in time for the bus. At which I succeeded, in fact, even had time to grab a tea at Starbucks. Don't know how I would be doing right now sans caffeine.

Tonight, I may blog again to let you know how the session goes. It promises to be a lot of fun and a lot of hard work. Though Lacy and I did spend some time on ideas yesterday when she came to Brooklyn. The song, name of which I shall keep private, is in need of something to make it sound more urgent and have more momentum. That's where I come in. And here comes another challenge in blending my music with another musician's. The studio musicians have already laid down guitar tracks of their own. But you know me. I love a challenge.

Now, what to do with the rest of the bus ride? I actually have some editing on the site I want to do. I was showing another composer my site yesterday when I met with him at his studio in Korea-town (East 30s), and it immediately occurred to him that the players on my site have no volume control. The reason is that the divshare site's embedded player has so much crap on it that you don't need (a shuffle button for starters) that I trimmed them down in the code. Luckily, I just needed to adjust the number for width a tiny bit to allow room for the volume control. Now, I just have to fix that on every player on my site! Shouldn't take too long though. And as long as this driver continues to drive relatively smoothly, I should be motion sickness free.

And now, to work!

Earthquake!

2011-08-23T18:51:00.002-04:00

So, the earthquake that I didn't feel here in Brooklyn but was hearing about all day actually forced me to be productive. You know how I can't sit around idly when there's work to be done but you may not know about a fear I have (actually a pretty common one) of being buried alive. After hearing on NY1 that there had been an earthquake and knowing how aftershocks can happen, I opted not to go into the city for my regular volunteer session at Learning Ally, so as not to have to ride underground on a train for 30 minutes. Instead, I stayed home and redid my reads for the voice over demo I'm working on.

I'm actually quite pleased with it and if it all goes over well and I get good reviews from some of my peers I may put a shine on it and upload it in place of the old one. More on that later. In a second here, I'm gonna ride the bike up to the yoga studio in DUMBO. The weather here right now makes it impossible for me to refuse the temptation of getting out on the bike.

I may try to blog later in the week more about the recording session with Lacy and about my upcoming trip to NC...hoping to swim in my parents' new pool all weekend but there's a high probability that Hurricane Irene will make landfall Saturday. Nature is pissed off this week apparently. So long for now.

Sleep no more...

2011-08-21T00:17:00.010-04:00

Oooo! Free wifi in DUMBO! How cool! Blah blah blah whatever, I had the coolest night last night. Really. I'm so excited about it I can't even get excited about having free wifi in the park. I went to see Sleep No More with a free ticket from my work. What an incredible time! I don't even know where to begin.

I feel like this is the kind of play where you could go not knowing too too much about it and have an amazing time still…mostly because of how alarming it might be to walk into this place not knowing what to expect and how unique your experience would be. You get taken for quite a ride. It's a modern dance production of Macbeth crossed with Hitchcock's Rebecca and set in an old warehouse that they've cleverly reconstructed into a hotel, The McKittrick Hotel (apparently a reference to Hitchcock's Vertigo), with several floors of intricately decorated sets (of which you can and should touch anything and everything). You are allowed to walk around the hotel during the performance, following performers from scene to scene or just exploring the place to your heart's content. Also, you are made to wear a mask and told not to talk during the performance so it becomes a highly individualized experience. You could be all alone exploring the hotel and it feels like your own little adventure. There is period music and Bernard Herman scores pumping through all the speakers as you wander from room to room providing the eeriest of soundtracks. Goose bumps covering my skin most of the time, I got lost rather easily and, in my disorientation, was always surprised when I came back upon something I had already seen. When we first entered the hotel, there was a 1930s era bar filled with fake smoke at which you could order a drink, punctuated by a stage with piano and drums set up. Here, we waited for a gentleman, presumably the host, who stood on the stage to call us up according to the playing card we were given upon entering the hotel. I was a 3 of diamonds so, once I realized they were going in sequential order from Aces up through whatever, I had to guzzle my scotch that I was drinking. We were then masked and given instructions and then funneled into an elevator.

Now, I went in having heard a ton about my co workers' experiences who had seen it last Tuesday so I don't feel too terribly bad sharing most of mine. I'd say spoiler alert but honestly, you won't have the same experience as me if you go. So, consider this a preview.

One co worker told me about how he ended up being the first off the elevator and how the elevator operator stopped the other audience members from leaving the elevator. Now my co worker was totally alone in the near pitch black hallway and eventually a woman walked up to him with an old fashioned wheelchair which she directed him to sit in. She wheeled him into a room and reclined the wheelchair so he was looking up at the ceiling when the lights came on to reveal a painted ceiling (I believe that's what he described). Anyway, the woman kissed him on the cheek and told him he'd never be able to see that place again and then promptly sent him on his way.

I did not have the same experience though I expectantly waited to be the last on the elevator so that I'd be the first off. As had happened with my co worker, I was the only one let off the elevator while the others were held back. I turned slyly to my fellow audience members to see their stunned expressions showing through their masks as I raised my eyebrows and grinned though they couldn't see my face.

The floor that I found myself on was a psychiatric ward with rows of beds and charts describing patient conditions. I wandered through the ward into another room lined with claw-footed bath tubs, one of which was filled with water. More on this later.

It wasn't long before I ran into other audience members and started to traipse around amongst them exploring, picking things up and reading letters on the desks and tables. Soon after, actors started to appear. It was quite hilarious to watch every one perk up and start swarming after them as they moved out of the rooms. I won't say much about the scenes acted out so as at least not to spoil that aspect for any of you who might go but I will say that it was some amazing acrobatic stuff and that the costumes were spectacularly done as well. I found myself in one particular scene shortly after that my co workers described as the naked goat head man dead baby orgy scene. Use your imagination and don't hold back.

This is where my experience got way weird and incredibly exciting at the same time. After the strobe lights went down and after one of the dancers, supposedly one of the witches from Macbeth, did her solo dance, a lady in red with feathers walked past me and trailed her feathers along my neck as I locked eyes with her through my mask. After watching a scene unfold between her and another woman, she began to leave and made the same motion with her feathers along my neck and so I did what any curious audience member might have done and followed her out of the room. She turned at one point, in the hall, and met my eyes again, studied me for a second and then grasped my arm and gently pulled me into a room, closing the door quickly behind us. Not sure where she was going with this, but terribly curious and excited to be essentially in the scene with her, no longer a passive observer, I consented to join her. She studied my face again and then drew in closer, lifting my mask. At this point, she quickly turned to a desk covered in tiny vials and jars and raised one to my lips. It tasted salty and I imagined it was either salt water or tears. Either way, I didn't exactly drink it but some dribbled down my chin at which point she hastily turned and grabbed a note, saying, "I need you to take this to the porter in the hotel!" I asked, "Downstairs?" She nodded, "I can trust you with this?" I said yes and she pulled me towards the door, then quickly turned to me and kissed me on my mask and then shoved me out the door.

Holding the note in my hand, I began to frantically run through the hotel, now fully ensconced in the action of the play, feeling truly a part of it, trying desperately to trace my steps back to the hotel. Before I could get very far, new scenes were unfolding in front of me and I got drawn in. Then I started to think, "This is just a play! Of course, I don't need to take the note if I don't want to, and I can't be that big of a deal if I don't find the porter right away and besides, I don't even know which one is the porter!" The gentleman on the microphone in the bar could have been the porter, so could the elevator operator. I was at a loss and the play was happening before my eyes. So I chose to follow the actors that I first saw and wound up watching scene after scene unfold not sure at what point in the narrative we were. Some were more obvious. Lady Macbeth was played by a young woman who, at one point, was stripped nude and was washing blood off herself in the same bath tub I had noticed earlier in the psychiatric ward. When I saw it this time the water was tinged red already, a sign that the scene had already played out once before by the time I came back to the room. As the scenes changed I followed her and watched her dances which were incredibly choreographed and artfully executed. The most fantastic scene I saw took place in a giant ballroom with a huge table on an elevated stage. I figured that this was the banquet scene at the end of Macbeth. Seeing this climactic scene for the second time signaled to me that the play was through its second run of the evening and that it would soon be over. The disorientation complete, I was startled when I found myself jumping out into the hotel bar to the sounds of a jazz band in full swing (no pun intended) and being pulled into the room by grinning hosts, shuffling me onto the dance floor where I was offered champagne and absinthe. Here I joined up with some co workers who I knew were attending but whom I had not seen the whole night (masks and all that). So I sat with a fellow media operator and watched the band while swilling a shot of absinthe, something I had wished I knew they served before I paid $15 for Johnnie Walker Black Label earlier in the evening.

I'm finding out more and more about what I was seeing as I read the reviews linked from Sleep No More's website. Here's a really good one I'm currently devouring. The reviewer really captures the essence of what an evening at the McKittrick hotel will entail and even gives really good tips, one of which I may take if I happen to get the chance to see it again before it closes in September. That is, read Macbeth and/or see Rebecca.

Train logic....

2011-08-19T21:45:00.005-04:00

Often on a train ride home I find I have multiple options as to what route I take. The number of routes I could possibly take numbers in the double digits and it usually depends on which train comes first. During rush hour anyway, any route will take about thirty to forty minutes. In cases where it's late at night and the number of stops, whether the train is stopping at local stops and whether or not it's actually running on its regular route, all come in to play, often it makes sense almost immediately which one is the best way to go. But sometimes I find myself debating what could get me home faster, if I actually have the time to engage in such ridiculous analytical exercises. Picture it: I'm on the F and the train is stopped at the Jay Street/Metro Tech stop in Downtown Brooklyn for a seemingly indefinite period of time (probably more like 3 minutes). Here, I could forego the waiting, get up and switch to the R up the stairs and down the hall. Or, I could stay on the train until 4th Avenue/9th Street and switch to the R there. I'm debating whether I'll end up waiting for the train longer at Jay Street or at 9th Street and then I'm wondering if the R train is even stopping at Jay Street (it is the weekend, though probably not late enough on a Friday night for the service changes to be in effect). If I get up and check, I risk missing both trains and having to wait for the next F. If I stay on the F until 9th Street, then I'm at least walking distance from home should the R train fail me entirely or if I end up missing the connection and don't feel like waiting longer. A unique aspect of the R train stop at 4th Avenue/9th Street is that it takes me the same amount of time to walk home as it does to wait for another train when I've just missed one late at night. Just about. So, I end up staying on the train at Jay Street and getting off at 9th Street for the R train. And wouldn't you know it? I just miss the R train at 9th Street. Maybe I could have caught that same R train if I had gotten off at Jay Street? Or maybe I would have just missed it there too and had to wait the same 10 minutes.

So you see, to some degree, such speculative calculating is seemingly useless especially when you factor in the amount of time it actually saves. It's usually zero time though it might be 5 to 10 minutes. Maybe I find it fun because while it may not save time it certainly kills time and on the off chance that it does save me time it gives me a boost of confidence like I have beaten the system that screws me over so regularly. It is also good to know these things when considering whether or not to even bother with trying an alternate route that isn't dictated by which train arrives first. After all, in this case, the distance in number of stops between Jay Street and 9th Street is the same on the R train as it is on the F train (at least it will be when they open up Smith/9th Sts again).

And then I deal with ironies like the fact that the route that is shortest for me from home to work, in terms of number of stops, requires that I take 3 trains, while the route that takes the fewest train connections nears the most possible stops it could take me to get to work.

Either way, whether thinking like this can make my dealings with the MTA more efficient or not, it certainly does make good practice at time management in every other aspect of my life. I use the same kind of logic in the name of productivity when deciding what to work on while at home and what to save for while I'm on the train or at work in my downtime. It doesn't make much sense to answer emails at home or blog at home when I have work to accomplish that I could only do with the equipment I have here at home. I can't exactly bring my MIDI keyboard to work so I can compose on my break. Nor can I practice piano or write songs on the guitar (or do laundry for that matter). I can, however, mix things on my laptop, write blog entries and answer emails from my phone or laptop while at work or in transit.

That's not what I'm doing now. No, I'm actually blogging at home after a thundery, rainy commute home and debating, as always, what to start working on next. I have to play piano at church on Sunday, so I'll practice a little bit and I feel like I may be able to accomplish some VO stuff tonight but ultimately, I'm just planning for the week. I'm planning on starting to take a look at a few pieces that I've left unfinished and seeing what sparks the most inspiration to decide what I'll work on next there. I'm still waiting for a friend to find me lyrics for the choral piece, so there's almost no reason to start work on it yet. I'm excited because, beyond all that, on Thursday, I'm shooting down to Philly for half a day to record some guitar tracks for Lacy's new album. After that, I fly to NC for a little visit to the family. When I get back is when I'll really get to dive into my new projects. For now, I think I'd better get to practicing...

A musical day...

2011-08-17T11:42:00.003-04:00

So, I'm about to tweak a few things on the film score mix because a composer's work is apparently never done. I dreaded listening to the mix after I submitted it for exactly this reason. But last night I was showing Karishma and a crucial part was not coming through the mix strongly enough. Plus, I just spoke to the director, who submitted the film yesterday to both Sundance and the Big Apple Film Festival, and he had a few extra ideas once he heard I was in an editing mindset. But that's okay. Perfectionism can be a good thing. At least it's not procrastination.

And speaking of, I don't want to procrastinate since I'm free of one job and essentially don't have anything big on my plate. So I spent most of last evening trying to figure out why my notation program wouldn't open. Turns out there was some background process interfering with Sibelius. I need to be able to edit my scores though so that was something I definitely wanted to work out. I'm planning on diving into at least three different pieces. I want to tweak a piano sketch that I finished writing this year, write a new choral piece for which I have no lyrics yet and finish a chamber piece with electronics that I started the year I moved to NYC.

On top of that, I'm playing three hymns on piano at the Brooklyn Unitarian church on Sunday so I need to practice today and then Lacy is coming so we can practice a little and maybe play Bar 82 or scope out another open mic to play.

So, it's going to be a pretty [insert title of blog entry here].

Film Score = Done!

2011-08-14T19:24:00.004-04:00

I just submitted the final mixes for the film score to my dropbox so that Mohammad can download and listen. Tomorrow is the deadline for online submissions to Sundance Film Festival, the first of many that he intends to submit to.

So, I'm pretty psyched about that and pretty pleased with my final cut of the music. It's been a great project to work on and has taught me a lot. I especially enjoyed working with another musician again. My scores for Boyce Returns (2008) and Solstice (2007) both included my friend Jon on the clarinet but most of the other scores I've done, I worked alone on even if they were collaborative scores like Zero Sum Game (2008) and Peeper: A Sort of Love Story (2009). I was just responsible for my cues and the other composers either were working before I came on to the project or were working simultaneously on their cues.

Anyway, there's a dynamic nature to the piece when you have another mind come in to interpret what you've done. On this score, in particular, there were ideas that occurred to me only after we had recorded the first few takes of the oud (sampling his performances and mangling the results to create atmospheric sounds, for example). Add on top of all that the fact that we had our oud player improvise around an idea that I wrote. You almost never know what you're going to get in that case. All you can do is set a mood and hope that it works with what's on screen.

And in this case, as with Solstice, I was writing the music before the film had even been shot and continuing to work on it after the shoot and well into the editing process without even having seen the scenes I was scoring. Luckily, there wasn't too much that had to hit at the right time, so it was easy to conform the piece to the action on screen after it had been written. But miraculously the key, the tone, the mood, the tempo, everything fit perfectly when we saw it with the scene. I can't wait to be able to show everyone a finished product.

Right now, it's rainy and muggy in New York and I just finally dealt with a fly problem we were having out in the living room. It was apparently due to the window being cracked open at the top, unbeknownst to us. Our window is uncomfortably close to the recycling bins down on the ground level, so that explains the high number of flies and why they were wafting up to our level.

Either way, it feels good to have a clean apartment and a clean slate to get to work on some of my next projects. I do want to write a choral piece again and I have tons of other unfinsheds and as yet to be writtens floating around the apartment and the inside of my brain. But I've also thought it might be nice to try and find some more film scoring work. I'll probably focus on the choral piece first though because it's always good to know when starting a piece that there's a high probability that I can get it performed without too much financial investment.

So, I'll be updating as that progresses. For now, I'm too tired to think of anything else to say...imagine that. Me. Tired on an overnight shift.

Diving into work...

2011-08-09T01:33:00.005-04:00

When I get depressed or just harried or when things don't seem to be going my way, I tend to throw myself into my work. It's gloriously therapeutic and has the strange effect of helping me to change my perspective on a lot of things. I remember that I'm lucky to have something I'm passionate about and that things are going to swing back and forth from good to bad, overwhelming to underwhelming, good times will come and go. The ever popular, "This too shall pass." No matter how bad things get I remember that at least I have the basic things I need to be happy, right here and right now and that whatever is bothering me probably won't last too terribly long.

That having been said, this is the perfect time for me to be feeling like that because I have a lot of work to do. Sunday night I finally saw the scene that I've been writing music for all this time. It fits amazingly. I watched it about three times in a row with my music over top of it before actually sitting down Monday afternoon when I got up to put it on a timeline and line up all the hits. There were at least three points in the animation where we wanted to have the music accent and sync up with the action on the screen. So that only took me about an hour or so. I had to play with the length of the oud solo a tiny bit and then cut down the electronic part at the end so it would finish with the end of the scene.

But seeing it with my music was pretty awesome. I actually got chills a few times! This is going to be a great film. The rest of the week will be devoted to getting the mix to pop. I'll be trying it out on a few different sets of speakers and headphones in order to really fine tune it.

On top of squaring away all that, I've been plowing ahead with my new VO demo. I've decided to get some peer reviews on this, first to get an idea of how the quality of my equipment measures up and then to get an idea of how my delivery is. Additionally, I've decided to compose the music for all the scripts I'm reading and have gotten three of them done so far. But this won't be finished until I get the peer reviews. That's key. I can go on Edge studio's website and upload it to get people to review it. They have system where once you've uploaded your first, you have to review two other people. And then each subsequent time you upload you have to first review two other people again. So, I can at least expect to get some attention up there. Either way, I've found other online VO forums as well that I can tap into.

It occurred to me that this was the way to go. I'm not going to be able to jump to where I want to be without acknowledging where I still am. So, I decided to back off of trying to jump to getting a paid gig right away and start to work on honing my skills even more. That doesn't mean I can't submit to jobs and auditions but I feel I should spend more time on presenting myself professionally. Just a few things at a time. The next thing after re-doing my demo is going to be to train a little more and then eventually, when I'm confident I can get one, to go look for an agent.

Incidentally, this is also attached to something I've realized a long time ago. The best way to achieve a goal is to break it up into manageable increments. If you tell yourself, "By next year I want to be blank," and blank happens to be a monumental task, it can get overwhelming thinking how you're actually going to get there from where you stand. So, I find, you should set the goal and then just focus on the next step. You can't reach the goal from where you're starting, you can only reach the first step, so worry about that first. It's sounding a little bit trite and obvious the way I'm explaining it but you get the idea.

At any rate, I'm pretty confident about the first few steps. Once I finish those, the ideas is I'll be confident about what comes next until I'm doing what I couldn't have imagined doing a few months ago.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll spend some more time on the mix and then devote the rest of my time on getting a first version of the demo together for uploading to Edge's website. I got here late today because of the trains so I have to stay a little later and then I get to sleep. Glorious hours of sleep.

The best place to work away from home...

2011-08-07T14:40:00.005-04:00

Trying to decide where to do this comes down to three factors: how restrictive is the wifi (i.e. does it time out or do you have to pay or is it a weak or often interrupted connection?), how expensive the coffee is (does it justify leaving the apartment to do work), and how full it tends to get on a typical afternoon (i.e. will I find a seat that I can hold on to and make my trip worthwhile)…this also depends on what day of the week it is. Like, is it national effing brunch day in New York City and does the place serve food that attracts brunchers? So, considering all these factors, I wound up at Tea Lounge on Union Street. I needed to spend the afternoon here working on the business plan and other stuff so I couldn't go to Ozzies, even though their prices are a bit cheaper, because Ozzie's wifi connection times out after a certain amount of time (or at least it did last I was there) and I think you have to pay to keep it going. 'Snice was full of brunchers because they are first and foremost a veggie sandwich shop that sells coffee and happens to have wifi that attracts laptoppers like myself. (Boy, I'm just making up words left and right, aren't I? There's lots of red squiggly lines in this blog entry). Unfortunately, I paid almost $4 for an iced green tea so I could sit here all afternoon.

I could have honed in on this shop first and saved myself some time but I tried "Snice first. Was full. I had wanted to take a meandering stroll through parts of Park Slope I don't get to that often, anyway, just to feel a little leisurely before diving into work. I find that taking an aimless walk or just allowing myself some leisure time helps with my focus just as much as the act of getting out of the house. While the internet itself is rampant with distractions, I find so many more at home than I do when I come out. Here at a coffee shop, I have the sense that I've allotted time and I'm here for a reason so I'd better take advantage of the time and be productive. At home, I feel like if I wanted to laze around, no one would judge me. Not that they would here but I'm still not compelled to lie down on this couch on which I sit.

But I digress, I'm considering in a few months when I have the extra money to throw at it, going back to Edge Studio to take the next round of webinars and workshops. Actually making a plan to take off two Saturdays in a row from work so I can make it to the workshops and mock auditions that they have. I missed out on getting to take these when I was doing the program last summer because of work. I did do two of them, one of them over the phone, but I feel like I could benefit from going to a few of them this time around so I can meet more VO artists like myself and keep in touch with them this time. I met some great people last time but they too quickly disappeared off my radar.

So, that's the bulk of what I've been doing this afternoon, researching the cost of all of that and working it into the business plan. Additionally, I'm trying to hone in on voice over events and places I might go to meet an agent. This one is not as urgent because I'm not even going to approach an agent until I re-record my demo. This might be what I spend the month of September on. Doing the first test runs of that this week. My cousin will be on vacation and I will have the apartment to myself to focus on that.

Beyond all the VO work, I think we'll be done with the film score as I mentioned last night. So, it'll be a busy week for me but I don't mind. I'm getting my opportunities to socialize. This past Friday was Ra Ra Riot in Prospect Park. I went with Karishma and met a co worker and his wife and another co worker there. They're a great band with an incredible live show. We had to sit pretty far back and the band was half blocked from our view by the beer tent but we didn't care. The weather was freaking amazing and we had snacks and booze. If you haven't heard Ra Ra Riot, give them a listen. For now, I'd better get back to my work. Talk soon!

Film Score...

2011-08-07T00:43:00.004-04:00

Another evening spent working up a mix for Mohammad. We were hoping to get some more time with the oud player but he's leaving the country for we don't know how long so we have to either get him to record us one more take from his apartment and send it via FTP in .wav format, or just go with the cleaned up mp3 files that we have.

Tomorrow will tell what we end up doing. But I think we have just about everything we need to make it good. I finished a mix this evening but I may still have to tweak the timing of things once I see the fully edited version of the scene which we'll be laying it over. That should be tomorrow as well.

It's exciting that it's almost finished and that there's a first deadline in sight. I had a lot of time to work up my part of the score because I started working on concepts before they even shot the scenes. But now that everything is coming together in the editing room over there, I can see an end in sight. Well, in truth, my anticipation is just heightened. I can't really see anything yet. Except for the few concepts I've gotten to glimpse along the way.

Either way, it's been fun getting reacquainted with using Logic Studio along the way, and finding ways to use Native Instruments' Kontakt Player as a sampler. I even got to use Guitar Rig 3 again, as one of the things I added this evening to make the mix a little stronger was guitar.

Anyway, here I sit, exhausted but wide awake and listening to the indie version of Marvelous 3's Hey! Album. A song I haven't heard in ages that wasn't on the later version of the album. It's really bringing me back to junior year of college when I last listened to this album regularly. A time when I lived in West Greensboro in a house with 3 other guys while I was finishing up the last semesters of my music degree and before I ran off to France for a summer and met the woman I would eventually marry and later get divorced from. It was an innocent time. Little did I know that that would be the last year I took piano lessons. And little did I know that a decision I made that year to study composition instead of piano for my masters would lead me where it eventually did. As I remember, it was a decision that was hatched partially out of my disappointment with my piano professor and my disappointment with myself for failing at lessons and not having improved much over the course of three years of study...but mostly out of a realization that I was not cut out to be a performer and that I should be a composer instead like I had dreamed of as a kid at the age of 13. Of course, I needed the expertise if I was going to become a composer. I remember feeling as though I'd wasted the time I had in college doing the wrong thing for myself, studying piano and doing horribly at it (I was a bad sight reader and couldn't discipline myself to practice 8 hours a day like some over-achievers that I was studying with) when I could have been learning about composing and getting started earlier. I regret that more and more that I didn't realize that from the beginning.

I was told by that same piano professor when I suggested changing my major that I should just do a masters in composition because it didn't really matter what I did my undergrad in. Of course, he made this statement because he was assuming that I wanted to go into academia, a place I still find myself at odds with. After that year, so many things changed and I almost didn't pursue this career. But I did. It just took me a while to feel like I was making any headway.

I'm going to start this next thought with a disclaimer that I'm not comparing myself to other composers and other human beings by this, but I often do look at other people and see how far they've gotten when they've been alive the same amount of time as I have or shorter. By "far" I mean that they've succeeded in doing things I've aspired to do but haven't been able to find a way to do...yet. I consider that maybe they've had more opportunities than me, but then maybe they've had the same amount of opportunities as I have and have just taken more of them, or just taken the right opportunities and not wasted time with ones that weren't right for them or weren't going to lead them anywhere. I wonder what they knew that I didn't know and where they were getting that information. Was I cheated? Or was I just not paying enough attention? Letting things slip by while I got distracted by things like love and alcohol and social situations?

I know. It's pretty dark stuff for a Saturday night, but I assure you I'm not depressed right now. No, I'm feeling relatively good despite how harrowing it can be to pursue something for years and feel like you're moving at a snail's pace. But I guess this is just the way it goes for some of us. I've already said I'm not doing this because I think it's going to be easy. I'm doing it because I have to.

Despite having just done some fairly big stuff recently (performing in two very different concerts back to back for starters), I still feel like I'm in a bit of a funk. So, I should probably just sleep on it and I'll be good tomorrow morning. Good night.

Casual reminders on a Saturday evening...

2011-07-30T23:41:00.005-04:00

I live in New York City. Occasionally, I feel like I need to remind myself of how awesome that is. Just to keep myself going. As a kid at 17 coming here for the first time, the trip was followed by weeks if not months of dreaming that I'd one day be living here as an adult. Now I'm here and sometimes I just let life go on and get wrapped up in whatever problem I'm trying to solve. I get overwhelmed, obsessed with outcomes and altogether befuddled. Then, I recall that at least one good thing is going on. I'm living somewhere I've always wanted to live and I'm doing what I love. Sometimes I'd like to tell that wide-eyed kid what eventually happens to him.

Still in the afterglow of the concert and all the response we received, and today Tania posted the first review. I read it with great anticipation, trying to discipline myself not to jump ahead to where the reviewer talked about my piece but after about five paragraphs of the reviewer expounding on various things, I did it. I skipped ahead to my paragraph. It's the ninth one down in case you want to do the same. But do read all of it eventually. It's important to note that the idea of shaking up the paradigm of traditional classical music recitals in order to reach a younger audience was not lost on the reviewer...nor was it wholly frowned upon.

It's a great partnership brewing between Tania and myself and all the other composers and musicians I'm meeting through her. We are considering doing the same program again somewhere else in the fall. And I plan on writing more for Tania and eventually commissioning her to record some things of mine. All in good time though. All in good time.

She's off to Holland for the Holland Music Sessions Summer Academy for a bit and then off to Bulgaria for a bit as well. You'll know more when I know more.

Meanwhile, other than Lacy's show (for which we will have our last rehearsal tomorrow), the next big thing to wrap up is the music for Mohammad's film. The interesting thing is that we're working with music that has already been written and trying to make it conform to several ideas that he previously had about the structure of the video portion of this particular segment. If I haven't mentioned, it's a video timeline of events leading up to the beginning of the story, sort of an exposition, if you will. The music was going to be all Oud, and then some audio from a call to prayer which would line up with the dramatic reveal at the end of the animation. In my boredom waiting for the oud player to arrive on the scene, I came up with an electronic part inspired by the script and the setting of the film (the subway on the Manhattan bridge). I incorporated not only electronic drums in a slow 12/8 beat and a low droning ostinato string part, but actual audio from the subway trains screeching to a halt and bumping sounds made by the train as it crosses the railroad ties which I incorporated into the rhythm of the drum part. This whole thing may end up being the score for the trailer and only a small part of it may end up in the film but we'll see. Anyway, it's always fun to see how different an end product you can get based on whether the piece is cut to music or the music is composed to fit a finished cut of the video. I love this part of the process. The bouncing ideas off each other, the constant revisions, the honing of it all. Most might get frustrated in this stage but I tend to get more frustrated at the beginning before the ideas start to flow. Once I have an idea it's like I finally got the car started and can just start driving. Even if I get stuck in traffic at least I'm not still stuck where I started. Being stuck in traffic, I can at least turn off on a side road if I need to.

At the risk of exhausting my metaphor I think I'll end here. Gotta get some sleep at some point. I think we're going to try for another recording session next weekend and then get the ball rolling on a final cut of everything. Talk soon!

The concert...

2011-07-28T22:42:00.009-04:00

Rhythmic Movement was a great success! Tania's concert received a pretty big turnout considering the size of the venue. We even spotted a few reviewers in the crowd! In addition, I had the premier of my work, "Moon, Tides, Cycles" and I couldn't have been more pleased with the outcome. Actually, that's not true. I could have been way more pleased but after a certain point you just have to accept outcomes and embrace them.

The performance itself went over really well and the piece was very well received. But the venue had limitations. Nevermind a few misunderstandings with the main sound guy (who wasn't even there that night), when we arrived for our sound check we met Ted who was much more accommodating. However, I was to find out that a crucial aspect of my piece was going to be impossible to achieve. The panning. Yes, even though I told the sound guys that I was giving them stereo outs from my laptop, I forgot to mention that I would need to be able to pan my mix left and right. There was nothing to be done in a pinch though. The house system was set up to sub both stereo channels to one output. The speakers were just a cluster over the stage pointed out in three directions at the seating area. So, no panning for me, and thus a crucial part of the piece was not heard. Well, no one knew the difference but me anyway. And when it comes down to it, it's not wholly essential for the piece to come across. And I still did the panning while on stage mixing because he told us that the recording could have two distinct channels of stereo. So, at least we'll be able to hear the whole piece at some point.

Leading up to the performance, I felt that familiar thrill of nerves (yes, I know I was just twiddling knobs up there but there's a performance element even in that!) and had to meditate to not let it overwhelm me. I then realized that it had to be compounded by the amount of caffeine I inadvertently ingested throughout the day (cup of green tea, two cups of mate and a ginseng black and green tea that had mate in it as well!). The nice part about performing though is that all this energy gets to be channeled into something you're creating. And the release of it all is the best part of the act. If you've ever performed you know what I'm talking about.

The most exciting part of the evening for me, aside from actually performing, was spotting the reviewers out in the crowd. I saw at least two gentleman sitting by themselves and writing on their programs in the dark and I figured them immediately for press.

The response afterward was nice, too. I met so many people who enjoyed my piece and heard some very nice compliments. One of my co workers, actually, the gentleman who introduced me to Tania and effectively made this collaboration possible, Asa was there with his wife as well (he showed me some photos he took of us today at work). And both of my parents came as well. They had been spending the weekend up in Athens, NY with my aunt and just took the train down Tuesday evening to Grand Central, where I met them. I spent some time up there as well over the weekend and I never got around to blogging about it!

After I met my parents at Grand Central, we took our time getting back to 25th Street in Brooklyn, stopping at my favorite GF pizza joint in the Flatiron district (an area I'd be spending a lot of time in over the next few days) and went and ate in Madison Square Park. Then we stopped by one of my favorite bars in Cobble Hill, Local 61. We tucked in relatively early because we had designs on getting up early and biking. I dragged my bike through the turnstiles and carted it all the way to Whitehall Street while Mom and dad rented bikes in Battery Park city at Bike and Roll. Mom wanted to get from Battery Park all the way to the George Washington Bridge and we just about did it. I think we turned around at 165th Street and rode back down to 44th Street near the USS Intrepid where we could drop their bikes off. From there I walked my bike back to 8th Avenue and 34th Street to get the A train back to Brooklyn.

All in all, it was a great experience and one I intend to repeat soon with a biking buddy. There are parts of the greenway on the west side that are absolutely gorgeous. There's a causeway at around the 70s and 80s that takes you out over the Hudson River a little ways. Beyond that there's a lane of cherry trees and a fairly wooded stretch. We reached a spot around the 150s where we had a clear view of the bridge (which is actually around 178th Street) and stopped for a series of pictures.

Instant Upload

Additionally, in this album is a shot of our reward which waited for us at 4th Avenue Pub, and me, all suited up back in the Flatiron District before the show last night. There are also a few pictures of the Irish Hunger Memorial that we stumbled on while trying to snake through all the downtown bike lane detours in place from all the construction. You'll even see a pic or two of the new world trade tower.

Yeah, I figured out what I could delete to get a little more storage space on my SD card for my phone so I was actually taking pictures yesterday!

There'll be more on the aftermath of the concert pretty soon as I hear about it. Meanwhile, I have a deadline now with the film score and next Wednesday is mine and Lacy's show at Bar 82.

I'm gonna be on TV!

2011-07-20T22:58:00.007-04:00

Today's shoot went well at the Metropolitan Room. I admit I was a little nervous with all the elements involved: reserving and renting the space, me getting the reporter on board with covering us, Tania getting the body painter to come and me getting myself there with my equipment and getting everything to work while we were shooting. But, everything worked out great. Aside from the fact that we had a little bit of a problem getting the guy to turn the lights up for us (he was afraid to touch the board without the audio guy being there, but we impressed upon him that we were doing a report and it was sort of crucial to have more than just wall sconces to light the place) and then we had a problem later on as he was rushing us to finish (he said he'd have to charge for the extra hour but he'd give us 10 more minutes, which you'd think would denote that he would make good on that. When we still weren't finished we offered to pay for the next hour but then he said he had someone coming to clean the place and the guy had to be somewhere else right after). Oh, and until I showed up and he actually made a phone call, he had no idea that anyone had the space rented today.

Beyond that, it was fun. I'm sitting here wondering, though, if I made any sense at all talking on camera about my piece and if I wasn't too fidgety and if she's going to have anything at all worthy of a sound bite in that interview. She interviewed both Tania and Danny, the painter, as well, then got some shots of us performing as well as shots of Danny painting Tania's back. All in all, I think she's got the makings of a great report there. Watch for it on NY1 on Friday and Sunday this week. I'll try to find out exactly what times they usually air the arts reports. I'm sure it'll be airing all day. And if it's posted online I'll definitely link it.

This'll be the first time I've been on television I believe...other than the occasional wide shot of the studio I've been in when I've worked floor directing at TV studios. I have also had my name on television in the Triangle area in NC for that show that I wrote the music to. But those don't count.

Anyway, it was fun getting to talk about my music and chatting with my co workers. We even joked a little about how those data cards she was recording on are probably going to go through my department at work (I work in the media department at NY1) and that I'm probably going to be the one making sure they get into the system and don't get deleted by accident. You can bet I'm going to be on top of that tomorrow.

Meantime, Lacy and I rehearsed all afternoon but opted not to perform this evening. She's feeling a little under the weather so we just attended Bar 82's open mic and stayed for Blueberry Season, the featured artist, a guy we've seen at many open mics in the past few months. He's quite energetic and has this gravelly Tom Waits/Kurt Cobain thing going on. It works. You should check him out if you get the chance.

Our other motive for attending was to try and talk to Wayne, the organizer about the logistics of playing with our laptops at our show. Yes, we've decided to do a partly electric show, about which I'm very excited. I don't want to give too much away but there are a handful of songs that we will do in the middle acoustically and then we will sandwich those between electric songs. Stay tuned. That's on August 3rd. Here's the Facebook invite. Please come if you can. I'll be pestering you all more closer to the date.

Anyway, we got to talk with Wayne a little after the open mic and subsequent show about random stuff. Turns out he used to do music stuff at Marz Bar on 2nd Avenue, an iconic rock bar that was a mainstay of the East Village for years, until it closed a few years ago. He also runs the open mic at Banjo Jim's, a paid bartending gig for him, but which is also about to close to make way for a new artisanal wine bar. There was some talk of the East Village gentrification and the loss of rock clubs like this being a shame. Although, it sounded to me like the reason for Marz Bar closing down was that they were going to renovate or rebuild that block and that the bar just had to move for a while. At least that's the impression I got from this article and this article. One article said that low income family's already living in those buildings would be guaranteed a spot in the new buildings. So maybe it's not such a bad thing...not that I want rock clubs like this to go away, it just sounds like maybe there'll be a new incarnation. It is a shame that the damned rent will probably go up.

Anyway, it's always disheartening to hear people, old school lifers, talk about how older New York is better. In the grand scheme of things, I just got here, and it still seems pretty effing cool to me but to some extent I feel like I missed out on a bunch. But then, the way I tend to look at life is that no matter what you missed there's always something spectacular out there that you're inevitably going to catch as long as you put yourself out there and go explore your world. I know it's often hard to feel this way about anything new especially if you feel you've already lived your glory days but sometimes you just have to let the old go and embrace the new...sometimes.

That's the end of my train of thought for the evening. I've got a busy couple of days ahead and should get some needed rest. Talk soon!

Intensity in ten cities...

2011-07-17T23:56:00.008-04:00

...is what the next few weeks are going to be like. Between rehearsing for Tania's concert (and my premiere) and Lacy and I arranging a set list for the 3rd of August for our first full length show AND working on the last touches of the film score, I may go insane. But, the good kind of insane. Luckily, I can sort of organize my thoughts in my spare time here.

Today, after Harry Potter 7 part 2, I worked with Lacy on the set list and deciding which ones we would do electric with laptops and which ones we would do acoustic. We've arranged with Wayne, the organizer of both Bar 82's and Banjo Jim's open mics, a full 40 minute set on the night of August 3rd at Bar 82. It's exciting to take this project to the next level now. Plus it's been a long time since I've played that long of set with a band...I mean, I played with Teletextile back in November but I believe that was only 30 minutes and I only played and sang on about 3 of the songs out of 5 that we did. I'm remembering the days with Brilliance as a Fashion and with Buggstar, though, rehearsing for shows and working out logistics of set lists and things like that and I didn't realize how much I missed it, the excitement of presenting all the work you've done, pieceing it all together into a cohesive whole.

Intense though today was. I had to scarf down dinner after that rehearsal and pack up all of my electronic equipment to head to Queens to rehearse with Tania for the electronics and piano piece, now being called "Moon, Tides, Cycles." I'm going to post program notes to it eventually once I get a recording of the new performance. Here's a link, for those interested, to how I'm setting everything up with the Macbook and my mic, interface and keyboard.

Anyway, we had a few good run-throughs and then I had to truck it on over to the Chelsea Market for work at NY1, the trains running all screwed up in normal weekend fashion. (Tania's apartment and studio are right off the E train in Queens at 23rd St./Ely Ave, yet the first train to come was the F, allegedly running on the E line until West 4th, which would have gotten me straight to work at 14th Street/8th Ave with no connections. Yet, the F was actually running, not as advertised on its regular track after 5th Ave/53rd Street...so I had to take the L at 14th Street one extra stop). Dizzying I know. But luckily the train came as soon as I hit the L train platform at 14th Street/6th Ave.

So things all together felt much smoother than my day on Friday, when, though I began my day with a perfect sans spatula flip of my eggs without breaking the yolks, all hell broke loose. I was planning on buying Harry Potter tickets using a Groupon and then packing all of my stuff together for work, including my equipmnent, so that I could head straight to Queens for rehearsal with Tania right after I left work at 8pm. I would have gotten there way too early and needed to kill time but it would have been better than going all the way back to Brooklyn to get my stuff...which ironically is what I ended up having to do anyway. I was all set to get the movie tickets for just $2 a piece with the Groupon codes but I wasn't sure if Fandango would let me use both Groupon codes a the same time so I figured I'd just buy them separately. After hitting back on my browser though, I forgot to reset the correct date in the date field and ended up buying a ticket for Friday's matinee. So, with an hour before I had to be at work, I now needed to somehow manage go by the theater in downtown Brooklyn and exchange the ticket. The sooner the better they told me. And then I had to still buy the second ticket and hope the show wouldn't sell out before I could get to a computer again. In all this frenzy, I thought I already had everything packed: lunch, laptop, keyboard, cables, microphone, stand, etc. Until I got to work (late because of the effing 2 train being stuck for 10 minutes on the track), I didn't realize that the audio interface was still sitting at home plugged into my PC. This set up of mine will not function without an audio interface. Even if I could plug the mic directly into the computer it's a condensor mic and needs phantom power to operate. So, I cursed for a while and then realized that I'd have to just leave on time and pickup the 15 minutes I'd missed, being late, on another work day, and head home to Brooklyn. First, I decided that I wasn't going to drag the keyboard and laptop all the way home and then back so I left them at work to come pick up later. Since the E train was actually running on its proper track I would only need to take one train from work to her place in Queens. And wouldn't you know it, I got home and back to work in just an hour and 15 and, after leaving work with the rest of my equipment, that put me in Queens squarely on time. All that fuss and everything still worked out.

There's a lesson here I think. Barely anything will go as planned. Not to diminsh the importance of planning, it's probably also a good idea to know how to improvise.

Simultaneously, the film score is coming together quite nicely. Tonight I just saw the first piece of the film, an opening scene. Ideas are pouring out of my head and can barely write them down fast enough. Most of them revolve around taking the Oud performances and sampling them and layering them in the background along with other ethereal sounds like sampled vocals from the Muslim call to prayer we've been using for the full piece. But also, I'm considering some music bed for the opening scene I just saw which centers around a press conference held in 2015 about the new law that is put in effect requiring all Arab Americans to be registered with the government. Soon we will have the animation timeline that follows and at that point we'll start to see the whole thing come together. We may or may not need another studio day. I'll keep you all up to date on it.

For now, I have to work on getting all those ideas in print before they disappear.

Gearing up for concerts...

2011-07-11T00:07:00.005-04:00

Some of the best moments being a composer are when you hear one of your pieces performed by someone else. It's the moment when the piece starts to live. Before, it's just an idea you've been tossing around in your head and then one day you wrote it down but until it's actually articulated, it's like it's just a theory. Then, it's suddenly an actual valid work of art just by simply having its notes plunked out in a practice room.

Tania and I went to Queens today to go through Moon, Tides, Cycles in one of the practice rooms where she teaches lessons. We really only got to go through the piece one time before I had to head back into the city for work. We were just going over certain improvised parts and interpreting some of my ridiculous notation. It was nice though to hear it realized by a performer not myself. It's also a joy to work with a performer who doesn't complain about a piece being difficult or that there's meter changes in it. (I would get this a lot in graduate school!) She shouldn't have any problem with the piece at all and we're going to get in a couple of rehearsals with the electronics and everything soon. I'm so pysched. We're getting pretty close to the date of the concert and there's still so much to work out just logistic wise. Who's going to tape it, are we going to get it recorded by the people at Metropolitan Room, how are we going to get the word out to the press etc. They're unfortunately not giving us any comp tickets at the venue and there's a freaking two drink minimum...but I hope that won't dissuade any of you from joining us. It really is going to be a unique concert.

Plus, my parents are bringing up my tuxedo for me to wear...I have no idea why I didn't have it with me before now. Guess I just didn't foresee a time when I would wear it when I left NC. There are two in existence and one is from high school while the other is from college. I had to skype with my mom so I could show her which one to bring.

Anyway, Lacy and I had a long rehearsal today and no open mic because we're preparing for the eventuality of a full 40 minute or more set. Spent the first half of the rehearsal working on the logistics of performing with our laptops and the last half doing all the acoustic stuff. Meanwhile, I'm dozing off with my guitar in my hand because for the last year and a half, every Sunday, I take a nap. So, despite getting 10 hours of sleep last night, at 4pm sharp, my body says, "Take a NAP!" The rehearsal went great though despite my lethargy but I've seriously gotta find something else to pay the bills that doesn't require me to basically give myself jet lag every week.

That having been said, I must get back to work.

Goings on and other fun things...

2011-07-08T22:25:00.005-04:00

I've really gotta catch you guys up don't I? I've been hard at work on the film score for a while, mixing and remixing, recorded the oud player the other day and we may do some more recording, plus things are really ramping up with Lacy and we've been playing more consistently at open mics and working on her new stuff and some covers (We just played "Anthem" by Leonard Cohen at this week's Bar 82 open mic). So, things are crazy. I've kind of been trying to build up things to talk about in the next newsletter, which, get excited, is coming up soon!

In the past week, I've had some fun times though in addition to all the work. Monday night, the 4th of July, I went to a cookout at my friend Kirsten's, whom I know from undergraduate days and with whom I reconnected at the Unitarian Church last spring. Met two electronic musicians both named Phil while there and hung out most of the afternoon and all of the evening up until I had to go to work the overnight shift. Some of the Unitarian folks were there too and we all got talking about going to see a concert in Prospect Park, most likely this one, and doing other cool Brooklyn summer things (God, I love this borough!).

Tuesday nights are always fun when I go to Adriana Rizzolo's yoga class at Abhaya. Wednesday night, Lacy and I went to Bar 82 to play the open mic as usual. We did a new song of hers and the Cohen tune, which went over well. Our organizer, Wayne, was highly complimentary of our performance. The rest of the open mic got a bit rowdy but we stuck around until the end. Now, I'm really wishing we hadn't because my very good friend Crystal Bright was in town with her band Crystal Bright and the Silver Hands playing not one but three shows. I stupidly didn't look at the second Facebook invite she put out which announced the three shows as part of her band's whole tour. The first Facebook invite only mentioned the show last night which was at Pete's Candy Store. There was one Tuesday at Pianos and one Wednesday at The Delancey. Man, what a good show at Pete's though. She plays accordion and keys at the same time while balancing a musical saw between her knees and a Ugandan stringed instrument on her nose and occasionally drops it all to pick up a drum she got from Argentina...all with a spectacular backing band. If any of you anywhere ever get the chance to see Crystal's band, go see them, or else! You won't regret it. I had a great time and the other band headlining were great too, Tin Pan. Check them out as well. They rocked the place clean in half with their raucous 1920's style swing. They even sing songs about pirates and toss used CDs at the crowd if you answer pop culture questions correctly between their songs. I caught four.

The ride on the G train home and subsequent walk through downtown Brooklyn because the G wasn't running all the way to Park Slope, was worth it.

This evening, while tired, I'm excited because Tania and I are getting closer and closer to the show we've been talking about for months. I won't give away too much yet but we're working on getting more press on the event. Here's a link to a Daily News blurb about it. We're meeting tomorrow to discuss rehearsals, etc. The show itself is on the 27th of July, a Wednesday night at the Metropolitan Room in the heart of the Flatiron district. So please come all you New Yorkers...and you too mom and dad. I know you'll be up here in the city!

Other than that, some exciting news on the health front: I just had my first appointment with the Celiac experts at Columbia U and I am happy to report that this is the best doctor I've had since both moving to NYC and being diagnosed with this disorder. I spent about an hour and a half there and an hour and fifteen minutes of that was spent talking to the doctor. So, I'm happy about that, especially since I left with Dr. Peter Green's expansive tome on Celiac which is more informative than anything I've read on the subject. Happier days are on the way.

That having been said, I must get some sleep.

The East Village bars and Chinatown at the wrong time of night...

2011-06-25T16:41:00.009-04:00

I bar hopped last night for the first time in a while. My friend Emily from Raleigh was in town still but staying with another of our friends, Paul, so the everybody was hanging out in the East Village where I went to join them after a stressful two days of work. Paul is also a UNCG alum and so were a handful of the others all hanging out with us. So it was good to reconnect and connect with them all. We started off the night on St. Marks Place, a place called McCabe's. As I was walking over there, I came across a procession of oddly dressed characters, some on bikes, some just walking. There were men in dresses and a lot of people painted and decorated. It only clicked later when I heard the news that the senate vote that we were waiting to hear about at work (whether or not to legalize gay marriage in New York State) had probably passed and that what I was seeing was an impromptu parade (they even had police escorts holding up the rear). Woo hoo! So, there was already an air of celebration and whimsy in the air that evening. And the East Village was lively as ever.

McCabe's was playing 90's rock but we only stayed for a few beers there before hitting up a pizza joint (yes, I allowed myself a slice) on Ave B by Thompkins Square Park. Next we headed to a place called Tile Bar (Technically called WOUC Radio Bar but the Tile Bar nickname stuck) where we met up with Miles, who attended UNCG around the same time I did, and a few of his friends. Miles freelances in video editing so we had a lot to chat about before I hijacked the juke box for a little bit. After Tile Bar we went over to one last place on 5th Street, that I don't remember the name of and can't even find on Google Maps, where we ended up playing one of those buck shooting video games while Miles and one of his friends played a few games of pool. At this point in the evening some of the gay revelers had wandered into the bar with us and it was starting to get crowded. Eventually, when the night felt like it was over, Paul, Emily and I began to head toward 1st Avenue to get cabs back to our respective boroughs. None would take me to Brooklyn from the East Village strangely so we started to walk toward Houston Street. Somewhere on this walk the idea was hatched to go to Chinatown (think it came from the mouth of Paul actually). I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have normally agreed to this but something clicked on inside me. Realizing it was Emily's last night in town and that she needed to have a quintessentially New York experience, my eyes got glazed over and I had this dreamy look on my face thinking of all the wonders of Chinatown and the adventures I'd had there...and the food! That was it, we were doing this! So we hailed a livery cab who agreed to take us down to the area but the cab ride that followed was dominated by an intense discussion about what was a good place to go in Chinatown at that hour for dumplings. The cab driver didn't think it was a good idea to go to a place that Paul had in mind, so Paul tried to get a recommendation out of him. Something about this exchange had me in tears I was laughing so hard. Eventually we were let out around Market St. into the barren quiet of Chinatown at 4am. This was seeming like less and less of a good idea.

With Paul leading the way we stumbled down a few blocks looking up at the Manhattan bridge and eventually slid into a bodega to ask for directions. A kind of sketchy bodega that Emily and I decided to wait outside of, glad of our decision when we noticed a guy by the door locking the door behind Paul as he went in. At this point, poor Emily was thinking we were going to get mugged any minute. The fellows in the bodega pointed us in another direction but, by this point we weren't sure where we were and were either too tired or too lazy or my GPS wasn't accurate enough to figure out. About to give up, we spotted fluorescent glow and a red building down the block from where we were. I suggested we go for it. And we did.

The food was pretty decent but there's something about not knowing exactly what you're eating and having it boldly lit with fluorescent lighting, the bleary eyes of your cohorts in stark relief as you realize exactly how drunk you are that you are eating conch, cauliflower, some kind of bony cuts of pork and some weird dish with duck in it and loving it while your friend who's been to Hong Kong is trying out all of his Mandarin on the staff. Hilarity.

Thankfully, finding a cab home after this adventure was not nearly as hard. Cabs were pretty frequent out on East Broadway.

This morning I slept in and went to yoga to avenge my guilt at my self indulgence the night before then spent the day toying around with some of the music for the film score. Our oud player is coming in to town from Philly tomorrow afternoon and he, the director and I are meeting to talk about the music and play some stuff. The oud player has already sent me a draft of some ideas that he gleaned from the themes that I wrote so far. Dropbox is great and the audio he's sent me is awesome.

Tonight, I went to Queens to celebrate Karishma's birthday with a bunch of friends at a Greek restaurant called Taverna Kyclades on Ditmars Blvd. I had the grilled shark and tried someone else's grilled calamari. This place was pretty big on seafood and luckily, we had a girl at the table who's from Cypress ordering for all of us. They all went to the East Village afterward and I, having had quite enough of the East Village for one weekend, came straight home.

Anyway, I am so tired I think I'll fall asleep sitting up if I don't finish this blog and hit the sack. So goodnight.

Falling TV sets and a jaunt around midtown with a friend...

2011-06-22T17:50:00.010-04:00

For some odd reason one of the maintenance people (I'm pretty sure it was him) was just dropping television sets off the roof. Sounded like gun shots and breaking glass so I got a tiny bit freaked out and ran to look out all of my windows. Just got to the kitchen window in time to see the third one drop out of nowhere. I gotta say, I was mildly alarmed.

Luckily, there's nothing else falling from the sky as of late. No asteroids, no hailstorms, not even rain. Well, a little today but that didn't stop me from getting out and about. Finished another blog for the new site and went to a noon yoga class, then picked up groceries and here I sit. Just took a look at the iRig mic and iRecorder software that my friend Emily has and wanted me to give my opinion of. I hooked it up to her iPad and messed around with it. Recorded myself reading from "On Bullshit" and messed around with the edit functions so that I could cut out some mistakes I made and then tried out some of the processing options. Without being able to hook up my good headphones I can't really speak to the quality of the audio recording. But it sounded decent through the iPad's speakers and the Sony earbuds I carry around in my pocket to listen to music on my Droid. It's pretty easy and intuitive to work with as well.

More on that later though. Emily is in town attending some tech expos and the like for her job at Techno Buffalo. Yesterday we went to a couple of places together around midtown. After catching those break dancing kids on the N train we went to my favorite gluten free pizza place, Mozzarelli's. Afterward we went to Madison Square park and saw this:

Then we wandered around the Flatiron district for a bit, explored Eataly and then stumbled on a place called Limelight Marketplace. It's a bunch of upscale clothing and jewelry stores and a wine bar crammed inside an old converted church. I have to say I was pretty amazed at how cool this place was. Granted the jeans were all over $100 and I'm pretty sure I wasn't going to buy anything in there.

We even went down to Babycakes on the LES for a quick cupcake fix. And I'm making poor Emily walk all this way and me running on about 3 and a half hours of sleep. The overnight shift sucks.

Tonight, however, fully rested, I'm about to head out and go meet her and another old friend from college somewhere. No idea where yet.

Before most of you would have woken up if it were your day off...

2011-06-15T16:10:00.004-04:00

Something peaceful about a casual walk through several neighborhoods and a rest in a park to cap off a morning of hard work and productivity. I just got back from dropping off a few books at the Central Library in Brooklyn, first walking through Park Slope from 4th Avenue up Union Street to the library, then sitting on a park bench by Grand Army and reading a bit of my weekly magazine and then walking from there through Prospect Heights briefly before catch the 3 train back to Atlantic Avenue. It's also nice that my day off can feel leisurely and busy at the same time. Of course, I did have to get up at 7:00 am for a yoga class, like the yogi rock star I've been lately, so that I'd have time to polish off most of the other tasks I had on my to do list before Lacy got here at 2:00 pm. Anyway, poor Lacy's effing car got towed so she had to alter her plans and take a bus to the city and is meeting me in Tompkins Square Park in about an hour and a half. We'll probably try to run a few things out there before heading to Bar 82 for the open mic at 7:00 pm.

This morning, post yoga, I grabbed a bottle Tea's Tea at the bodega on my walk back to the train and headed home. Fried up some eggs with toast and sat at the computer to write this. Then, I penned some program notes and came up with a new title ("Moon, Tides, Cycles") for my piano and electronics piece that Tania will be performing in July. After that, I hooked up the mic, setup the portable sound booth and recorded a handful of auditions for some voice123.com jobs. Once satisfied with those, I took down my setup and moved it into the living room, miked the piano and hooked it up to the laptop and my M-Audio Axiom keyboard and MIDI controller and toyed with MainStage, an application used for live performance through your laptop. The aim was to get it setup so that I could use my laptop to perform the electronics part of the piece, using my keyboard's controllers to fade in and out and pan left and right. Sounded awesome, by the way. And programming it all in Mainstage was a piece of cake. I love my Macbook! I'm going to be writing another blog entry tomorrow about that on the new site as well.

All this, and I still have plenty going on tonight! Don't worry, I plan on sleeping at some point. Tonight after Bar 82, I'm having Ethiopian Food in the village at Meskerem and then heading across the street to the Grisley Pear for a bluegrass jam session. Should be fun!

This Sunday, I'm actually playing guitar at the Brooklyn Unitarian Church for their Juneteenth service. More on that later. Huzzah!

Museum Mile and my bucket list...

2011-06-14T23:12:00.007-04:00

A few weeks go by and things just get away from you. I haven't blogged in a bit. I realized it's been even longer than a bit since I last posted on the new site...and wouldn't you know it, when I was on last night trying to tweak the sidebar and make it look better, I realized that I had been completely overlooking the comments that people have posted on the blog entries. There were 30 of them waiting for me to approve them! All good stuff too besides. That means I'm actually getting traffic to the new site! So, now I'm frantically trying to get back on the ball with posting on that site. Right now, I'm thinking of blogging about my using Logic again now that I have it and perhaps Battery 3, which I've been using to record drum lines.

Anyway, that's for the other blog. I wanted to mention that I actually finally got to see the Guggenheim Museum today. Granted, it was only for about half an hour since the rainy picnic I had with a friend in Bryant Park ended up taking up most of the early evening...yeah, we were dawdling. But that's okay. I didn't really have much interest in seeing the other museums taking part in the festival and, just being realistic with the the time frame, I wasn't sure it was really possible. I've already seen the MET a handful of times and while it's by no means fully explored, it is something that I can always go back to...it's always pay as you wish.

As for the Guggenheim, it's a little hard to really take in a museum when it's over run with people trying to do the same things as you: take advantage of free entry to several of New York's most popular museums. Try reading the descriptions and artist bios on the walls and really absorbing each art work with people walking in front of you and crowding behind you. I still had fun though and it was cool to actually get inside the place. It's such a cool building and I can definitely see myself coming back to explore all the secrets of the place...maybe when they open the ramps back up after the next exhibit is installed fully, I'll go back.

After we were corralled out of the museum by several hard nosed security guards, along with the gaggle of tourists accompanying us, we took off down 5th Avenue and eventually crossed Central Park to get to the West Side where my friend lives and where I was going to catch the B train at 72nd Street. Smack dab in the middle of the park at about the level of 72nd Street, is the Bethesda Terrace, a feature of the park I had not seen before. "Dammit New York, why were you hiding this place from me!?" I exclaimed as we turned the corner at the bottom of one staircase to see the arched tunnel that goes under the road, with it's tiled ceiling all lit up at night. I wish I could have seen some of the carvings in the stonework a little better but alas, it was quite dark. And damn my phone for saying my SD card was full when I knew full well it wasn't. I'm going to go back in the daylight sometime anyway because it's just gorgeous. And at that point, I promise multiple photos...and with the Canon for god's sake! Yes, I'm going to try and get back in touch with my more touristy side again. Because this city constantly surprises me and I have this inexplicable impulse to document everything.

So, that's one more thing ticked off the NYC bucket list and one more added to it. In fact, I'm probably going to do both the Guggenheim and Bethesda terrace again soon. Maybe as a means of forcing myself to go up to Central Park more often this summer. Perhaps I'll even add one of the Summer Stage concerts to that list. Already on the bucket list though is Hayden Planetarium, sort of also in keeping with my recent obsession with all things extra terrestrial (Gotta love History and Discovery Channel docs!). Today while I was shooting the breeze with one of the interns at Learning Ally, we got talking about our shared interest in space and Hayden Planetarium came up so we talked about going sometime.

And of course, the Statue of Liberty with one of my old co-workers is on that list...and I'm talkin' about going all the way up in the crown now that it's open again. It won't be until September though that we can go because it's pretty well booked up until then.

The more I think about it I probably shouldn't even call it a bucket list. It's not really in the spirit of finish things before I die. It's more in the spirit of get out and live now, go do these things! The city is your oyster! How about oyster list? Or just get up and do list? I'll think about it and get back to you...

A quick update on the score: Mohammad has reached out to the new oud player from craigslist and we're awaiting a response so we can get the ball rolling on that. I've re-recorded, fleshed out and remixed my first version of the electronic section of the piece and am getting closer to a melody that will tie the whole thing together. Once we get the oud player in everything should fall into place.

In addition to the score, some exciting news has popped up about Tania's concert. It's now booked for July 27th, 2011 at 9:30pm at The Metropolitan Room. Here's a link to the facebook invite for the event. My piece is going to be getting a new title because we're revamping it and doing it without the dance that it was written for. I'm really excited because it's technically a premiere and my name will be on the program as performing live electronics! More on this to come.

Bar 82, yoga and the score...

2011-06-02T11:14:00.004-04:00

We played Bar 82 last night, a small but very nice venue with a generally under-attended open mic (according to Wayne, the organizer). We ended up going first and played the best versions of "In the Garden" and "Vengeance is mine" yet. The performance went un-recorded as there was no really good person to ask to do it. But we'll do it again in a few weeks at Pete's Candy store and probably rock the place right in half.

There were at least two folks from Banjo Jim's open mic crowd (other than Wayne) that were there last night, too. One of them, Walter Ego, spoke to us for a bit. He's a good guy and has his own thing going for him, which I appreciate. So many times you meet a musician trying to emulate, which can be good in its own rite. It's always nice though to see some originality poke through the chatter.

Right now, I'm getting ready to bike to work for the first time. First chance I've had to do it all week since I started considering it and the weather is perfect for it. It's not going to get much hotter than 80 degrees F today and I already sampled the air this morning on the way to and from yoga. A great class this morning, too. Sarah's a great teacher and one of my favorites at Abhaya. There is nothing at all like getting up early on a bright morning and practicing yoga, pushing your boundaries and finding new strengths before most people have even sipped a cup of coffee and groggily entered the subway station. Most first time yogis that I have the pleasure of talking to after their first class say things like they feel taller and some say they feel like they could fly. While I don't ever encourage this, I do agree with them. Part of what I enjoy so much about yoga is that rush. For me that comes from stretching my own ideas about what I can do on the mat (which translates to off the mat as well). Whenever I do something I've never done before in yoga, I bring that feeling of power I get back to my real life and apply it as best I can. You really do start to feel like you could do anything short of flying.

I get a similar feeling of empowerment when I look back at all that I have done since I moved here. While, on a grand scale, it doesn't seem like much, it certainly does seem like a lot when you consider where I came from. From my own perspective, I have done things that six years ago I might not have even considered possible. Sure I might have dreamed of them but thoughts of implementing those plans and realizing those dreams had yet to surface.

So here I am. Working on major film project #2. The oud player we have our sights on now is a guy who responded to one of Mohammad's cragislist ads. He has some recordings on last.fm so I've had a chance to listen to what he can do already. I think this one will be better since he's actually a professional player, not a hobbyist. Plus, he responded to us so that indicates a higher level of interest than anyone yet involved. We'll see. With any luck, I'll also have my hands on an oud as well within a few days. My choir director may have one I can use. My idea i to get an idea of what can be done on it and ultimately let the oud player we use improvise on some ideas I've written so that it'll segue perfectly into the electronic part I've already written. I'm also debating using edited samples of the oud to layer in with the electronics or just having the oud player continue to improvise over the electronics. We'll probably try both once we get in the studio.

So that's the next step and meanwhile, until then, I flesh out ideas here, adding more layers to the track.

Wish me luck not getting run over by asshole cab drivers on the way into work.

Blurb #25

2011-06-01T15:03:00.003-04:00

Lacy should be here any minute. We're rehearsing all afternoon and will be playing an open mic at Bar 82 in the East Village tonight somewhere between 7 and 9. Come out if you can. Meanwhile, it's pretty hot out isn't it? Well, comparatively speaking. One of my yoga instructors joked that we went straight into summer. It still feels like we had something of a spring though. I guess those mild 70 degree temperatures never last more than a few weeks either way. Anyhow, it sucks a bit because I've just gotten to where I can find time to ride the bike. Took it to yoga class the other day and, while it was fun, I found myself pretty uncomfortable by the time I got there. Good thing I was going somewhere where I expected to sweat anyway. Another thing, I thought for certain that one of those effing livery cab drivers was going to kill me. Who cuts across a bike lane and slams on the brakes to pick up a fare? I nearly had to jump off my bike and this guy thought a honk in my general direction a mere second before he pulled the maneuver was going to be enough to alert me to his presence. What can I say? It's hard being a biker in the city, even with all the bike lanes and bike paths at our disposal. I've got more news on the score but this is supposed to be a blurb. More on that later.

Many hats...

2011-05-26T12:19:00.005-04:00

I'm sitting at one of my favorite coffee shops in the village right now (The West Village) killing time between working Technicolor this morning and working at NY1 this afternoon, drinking mate and charging my phone. Yes, I can do all these things and type a blog. I'm pretty sure I just saw Keri Russell on the street on the way here too. Which is weird because she was in August Rush and one of the films I screened this morning at Technicolor had Freddie Highmore in it who was also in August Rush. Weird coincidence. She had a very floppy hat on to hide her face but I saw it was her.

Speaking of hats, (kick ass segue I just thought up) I've always worn many hats in my professional life. Currently, I'm a projectionist, broadcast media operator, composer, performer and voice recording artist (I used to joke that I was like Tyler Durden from Fight Club because of the multiple jobs and that one of them was a projectionist job). I am all these things to varying degrees. Because I can't be them all at 100% I've recently realized. I was starting to get a little overwhelmed last night in fact, which somewhat prompted me to write this blog. Last night, despite being sleep deprived from the night before and having to switch my sleep schedule around so that I was waking up when I usually get off work, I couldn't sleep. Juggling so many of these things, having a professional career, a side career, music as a hobby and then trying to have a social life as well can be daunting. So, in a moment of clarity, I thought it might be a good idea, instead of tossing and turning, to do a little exercise in compartmentalization. Dividing my life into five categories seemed to be the way to go.

1. Professional Career, i.e. day job.
2. Side Career, i.e. voice over and composition
3. Music as a hobby, i.e. performing with Lacy and singing with the choir, as well as working on my own live music projects
4. Social life, including dating
5. My health.

The reason I put health up here is that it's important to me that I remain healthy and if my focus is taken up by too many of these things my health will suffer, no doubt. Not only from lack of sleep, negative effects of stress could really put a damper on things quickly. It becomes necessary to put all these things in an order of priority then for this exercise to have any real effect on my life. Of course, health is always going to be in slot number 1 or 2 because of how important it is to me to remain healthy. It is also necessary to point out that if one of these "hats" is lower in ranking it doesn't necessarily mean I don't work on it or that I neglect it entirely. It merely means that I work on it next, after I finish working on those things that are higher ranking. Or if there's a day where I have a limited amount of time, items that are lower in ranking just might not get worked on. On any given day (well, day of my work week), my day job will of course be in slot 1 or 2. And all the other things will fall somewhere else on the scale. Health will always waver between 1 and 2, likelier to be in slot 1 on days when I'm not feeling myself.

This system, now that I've worked it out, should keep me slightly more sane, in theory, because I won't be hassling myself if I don't get to work on a particular project on a given day. And I will be making sure that I keep things in perspective. And that alone should reduce stress significantly. Particularly the kind of stress that makes me toss and turn when I know in my mind that I should be tired enough to fall right off to sleep.

At the moment, for example, here is my current ranking: 1. Health, 2. Professional Career 3. Social Life 4. Side Career 5. Music as a hobby. The reasons: health is 1 because I'm feeling a little off today from lack of sleep. Professional Career because first, I'm working extra shifts and freelance at Technicolor this week, and second because I'm job hunting…shhhhhh. Social Life is 3 because I've started seeing someone and I have a few friends that are moving away or leaving town soon. 4. Side Career should be two sub-categories, music and voice over separately. Right now, I've put VO on a small hiatus while I save up for some more seminars and coaching session. I'm figuring out if I want to do a new demo for audio books or commercial work as well. Music is on an even smaller hiatus because Mohammad and I are meeting today to talk about the first bit of music I've submitted to him (sans oud) and then we have to wait until we can finish anything else because, while I have finally come by an oud, it will be a few weeks before it is in my hands. My choir director has to get his oud from his parents' house in NJ. And then I might need to re-string it. 5. Music as a hobby is on a small hiatus because Lacy and I won't rehearse until next week and I'm skipping choir Sunday to help a friend move, a friend that helped me move in back in 2009. A move that involved three very scrawny people heaving a piano up 4 steps and down a short hallway. I think I owe this friend.

Anyway, things may change with that list in a few days, but I like the idea now of having a priority list like that. It means I can more easily tell myself that it's okay that I'm not doing everything. It acknowledges that I simply can't. And I should be okay with that.

Biking and Sailing....

2011-05-21T16:25:00.006-04:00

Got into a cleaning frenzy today and all that could stop me was the prospect of finally having some time ride my bike. So, I just got back from a round trip to the library in Grand Army Plaza, up Prospect Park West and back through the park. It feels so free to ride your bike in the park, even with the idiot pedestrians (sorry, if you're a pedestrian) wandering diagonally across the path. I still don't understand this behavior. And it was starting to rain as I was heading back, though not pouring. It was just right.

Anyway, I took today off work so I could make it to see a concert, part of the First Acoustics series at the First UU Brooklyn. The Bob Cunningham Trio will be playing and I'll be taking a friend from work. The same trio is actually performing with the choir tomorrow morning as well for our annual jazz service. Should be fun.

I'm culminating this week with one part disappointment and two parts accomplishment. The disappointment was that I was so close to buying a Middle Eastern Oud off a guy on craigslist out of the budget from the film but the guy backed out last minute. His wife wouldn't let him sell it. But we (both Mohammad and I) are on the hunt for something else. It's looking more and more like I'll be the one to play the part on the recording. Which is totally fine with me. I'm, in fact, excited to do so.

I've gotten most of the work writing the rest of the music all but done. And that's one of the accomplishments from this week. I just edited together the beat I was working on with the subway sounds sample and the Muslim call to prayer sample mixed together and (I think) it sounds awesome! I just laid down a loop of some Darbuka playing to lead into that part as filler until I can actually lay down the tracks for the Oud part. It's all coming together!

The other accomplishment is that I sat with my VO mentor (I'm officially calling her that now) and asked some questions and got a clearer picture in my head of what my next steps should be. I've decided I'm going to keep up applying to jobs on voice123.com (even though I've had no luck) because I'm getting incredible practice out of it. Another thing she brought up is that the order of the cuts on my demo is not the best it could be, i.e. my best read is not up front. It is now. I just edited it together and cut out a glaring mispronunciation that was in one line of a museum audio guide script I read (I should be ashamed of myself). Miraculously the edit that cut out that mispronunciation somehow worked with the background music so that it doesn't sound disjointed at all.

Anyhow, I could stand to take a nap or clean more or eat dinner and I have no idea what I'll do. The sun is back out again and I have half a mind to go back out and soak it up. If only it had come out while I was still at the park. I don't get up there very often, in fact, I went the entire winter without wandering further west than 7th Avenue in Brooklyn. Sad. It's also a bit sad that I let the first three weeks of May pass without taking much advantage of the opportunities I had to get out and do things in the city. (!) I was planning on the Statue of Liberty (booked until September), the Guggenheim (missed my chance to with a friend because I was too busy that week), a boat ride of sorts (didn't have the money at the time for a Circle Line Tour at $36 for the 3-hour cruise around Manhattan) and countless other things. The boat ride keeps coming back to my mind, though, as the next fun thing. Mainly this time around because I just heard about my dad's little sailing adventure out on the Outer Banks of NC where he went to help a friend pick up a boat he had just purchased and sail it to where they were getting the bottom of the boat painted. I got a little jealous but mostly just enthused. I don't know where this desire came from. I think I've wanted to learn how to sail for a long time now, probably ever since the first time I looked on New York Harbor and saw all the sailboats out there in the summer time the first year I was here. I was talking to one of my yoga teachers about it before class the other day because there are always boats going past in the East River while I'm in class and I just struck up a conversation about it. He mentioned to me that there's a volunteer program where you can learn how to sail at the Seaport Museum by South Street Seaport, where two schooners are docked, the Pioneer and the Lettie G. Howard.

I'm going to have to look into this further. Sounds like good times. Anyway, I gotta get some dinner ready here and get ready for the concert tonight. Happy Weekend!

The beginning of another week...

2011-05-15T23:45:00.017-04:00

Starting off another week here. The right way. Sort of. I pulled off a two hour nap after spending all of my morning and most of my afternoon at the church. It was our annual meeting today so I sat through that for two hours so I could vote on the budget at the end. After that, for the love of being outside after being cooped up for two hours, I walked with a friend one extra stop into downtown Brooklyn to Lawrence St./Metro Tech and then headed off to the co-op to pick up a few things. The 5th Avenue festival was apparently this afternoon, too, so I wandered through that for a few blocks, post co-op trip, until I couldn't stand being in the crowd anymore. Saw a band for half a minute but mostly just got grill smoke in my eyes and noted that everything there, all the food anyway, cost at least $5, more than I had in my pocket at the time.

By this point, the sun had come out and the humidity was on. So, I headed home and slept, but not before hashing out another quality to-do list for the week ahead. Items ticked off tonight other than napping: voice over! I submitted to another gig tonight (earlier, I had done one from my phone during the meeting because it didn't require a custom audition). I am potentialy meeting with a voice over friend sometime this week so we can pick each other's brains about our various processes. She's used voice123.com a lot more than I have and I come from an audio background so we should be able to help each other out a lot.

Beyond that, I'm diving into the score for Mohammad's picture tonight and the rest of this week. I'll be working mainly on the electronic part since the opening Oud solo will have to wait until our Oud player resurfaces or I can get my hands on an Oud of my own. I'm fully aware that I may be changing certain aspects of this piece to fit whatever I (or someone)end(s) up playing on the Oud. But probably no more than the key the piece is in. I have a slow, swung 4/4 beat running, with a low synth and cello playing an ominous ostinato and have been experimenting with layering samples of subway train sounds underneath (sounds awesome!). I have a sample of a call to prayer from a well known Muslim Imam that will signal the end of the animation and will segue into the electronic beat. So, it's mainly about placement of all those elements right now. The beat, I feel I need to work on choosing the sounds of my kit and the mix of everything. I may experiment with more parts other than the ostinato. Certainly the Oud will be in the mix but I'm also considering some clean delayed guitar. We shall see.

Saturday was another great open mic at Banjo Jim's. Lacy and I really rocked it out, bringing two songs that the crowd there had never heard, Vengeance is mine (which we only played once before at Pete's) and Silverback which was new for us this week. We arranged an acoustic version of the song last Wednesday at rehearsal that has a somewhat different feel than the album version which you can hear here.

Again, I love this crowd and the sense of community and camraderie they bring to the place. They have their regulars but are so supportive of newbies. Highlights were a Welsh girl getting up and singing with an electric uke and then reciting a poem she wrote, and then a brother and sister duo that covered I shall be released by Bob Dylan (the boy was 10 and sang and played piano).

The same 8 year old Asian girl came but we didn't get to hear her sing because I had to leave at 6pm. Lorraine Leckie came again (brought her dog into the bar) but we missed her performance, too. She was great last time.

The videos of our performance are here and here if you're interested.

Anyway, I had one of those stupid commutes tonight. It was just back and forth between good and bad train luck the whole time. First, I catch the R train right away at my station. Then I jump on the N train at Atlantic and before I know it, some urine smelling dude jumps on behind me and sits right next to me on a mostly empty train (I'm thinking, "thanks, dude!")...the next stop after Atlantic was over the bridge in Manhattan, too, so I'm pretty much stuck in this car until Canal St. Then I see the Q train on the next track over when we're in the tunnel and realize that our train has to stop to let that train go first over the bridge. If I had taken the R train one more stop to Dekalb Avenue, I might have been able to jump on that Q, go first and then bypass all the local stops and potentially not have to sit next to someone who smells like urine. Then when I get to Union Square, I just miss the L train and the next one won't come for 12 minutes according to the countdown clock. So, I try to grab the M14D bus but it's leaving once I get up into the street. The next one doesn't show and I figure, I might just have time to get back down into the subway before the next L train arrives. Sure enough, once I get downstairs, there's the L train rolling up. And I make it to work at 10:55. I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes it just doesn't matter what happens in between as long as you get where you're going on time. Even if you have to endure the smell of urine...which was what greeted me coming up the stars in the 8th avenue station.