Climbs, volcanoes and other trials...

The sneakers I've barely worn since Nicaragua still have black sand in them from the volcano.  I'm wearing them again as the weather starts to warm up consistently. The other day, as I kicked them off, a pile of the stuff spilled out onto my bedroom floor.  Days later, though I pounded them together upside down, I still feel the grit under my toes, reminding me of this:

Yes, I climbed to the top of that thing.  That being the Concepcion volcano on the Isla de Ometepe, a central destination of my late February trip to Nicaragua.  The one I had heard was a 10 hour hike. Part of my initial aversion to hiking it in the first place and the reason I had chosen, months earlier, to hike Maderas instead. The smaller, extinct volcano on the island's south side, was advertised as an 8 hour hike, which I'd heard people testify to scaling in a mere 5 hours.  But whatever, when I arrived on Ometepe, I was almost content to nix the idea of any volcano hike and just sit and enjoy this:

...instead of trying to cram in more activities in the short amount of time I had there. Not so much that my three day romp around Granada and the surrounding environs had taken it out of me.  No, it was just that beautiful there at Finca San Juan de la Isla that I thought, after all the hard work I'd done to afford the trip, I ought to just take it easy and enjoy the rum and the fried plantains with cheese and the sound of the lake and the birds and the hammocks and all the beautiful people I met there, most of them Canadians, some of them local hotel staff who were immensely kind and very open to helping me with my Spanish.  Also, cost was a factor. I was either going to have to find people to go in on hiring the guide, pay him the full amount myself, or go through an unappealing ordeal of phone calls and emails and attempts at Spanish to set up a tour with one of the many other options open to me.  I opted to just wait it out and see.

I met a couple from Edmonton, Canada and another from Toronto, my first full day there.  The Edmonton couple were recounting the story of their attempt at Concepcion the previous day, a feat they told us took them only 7 hours. The Toronto couple listened intently as they were planning on doing it themselves the following day.  I asked if I could join, figuring this was the sign I needed to make my decision.  The path of least resistance. They had already booked the guide and they were happy to let me join them. And I'm so glad I did. 7 hours seemed much more reasonable.

Why did I wait all this time to recount my tale? I don't know, part of me wanted to wait to blog again until I had some good news to share on the music and voice over fronts and even about my various day jobs; all the things that have been brewing there. I do, as a matter of fact, finally.  But in the meantime, life just got away from me and I didn't want to just type up a blow by blow of the whole trip. I had journaled it elsewhere for my own purposes, after all.  But also, I had to think through what it all means to me in terms of what happened to me on that mountain.

Guys, this was the hardest hike I'd ever experienced but I felt so damned alive at the end of it, like I could physically do anything and perhaps mentally do anything as well. Anything at all. Volcan Concepcion is 5,280 feet tall and perfectly cone shaped, making the hike relentlessly steep.  Hiking to the rim of the open and active crater took us a solid four and a half hours and the descent took another 3 hours.

The terrain was ever changing and kept our interest, with stunning views and exotic plant life, but the climb was brutal and taking a toll on us after only an hour, my calves burning with the exertion of continuous ascent.

My new friends and I brought liters upon liters of water that we carried with us, along with lunch that the hotel had packed (unfortunately, the only gluten free foods they could give me were plantain chips, some of their homemade cheese and a few oranges, pre peeled, of course).  We took frequent breaks but always kept going, determined not to stop or slow down for too long.  Although at times, individually, I'm sure we all felt like turning around. Something in me, personally, said no every time the thought came up.  I felt as though climbing this mountain symbolized something for me.  I had to keep going.  Maybe just to prove something to myself.  Maybe because I had set out on some mission and wanted to see it through to the end. Being able to conquer something despite ridiculous odds, to keep going when others would have stopped (another group that was supposed to have set out with us, was delayed and, upon our descent we learned they had quit after just an hour...no one else was on that mountain except us).

We passed through fields of plantain trees and rock strewn pits, and as the mountain steepened, we entered a dry forest with a sandy path that our feet slid into, making each step that much harder.  Everywhere was a chance to turn your ankle or slip. Every other tree branch we tried to grab onto for support had thorns protruding. Rocks were always loose, so part of what set our pace was having to be so sure of our footing each time we took a step. At some point along the way, the danger of what we were doing slowly became clear to us.

We left all the stunning vistas behind as we entered a white cloud and the wind began to blow relentlessly.

We were now in a cloud forest of mostly low shrubs, plants with giant leaves and more and more rocks to slip on.

Coming up out of that we entered a new terrain, unlike anything we had seen before.  Plant life had all but disappeared and all of us, except our guide, had to crawl up on all fours.

This was where I fell behind a little and had to keep talking to myself, telling myself I had to keep going. After all, regardless of whether I made it to the top, I still had to go all the way back down.  This realization was the most harrowing thing after everything we had gone through, knowing that, even after we reached the summit there was still a long road before we could finally rest. In a way, though, it helped knowing that no matter what we decided, we still had a long way ahead of us.  It would have been barely any relief to stop and go down at that point because the ordeal of descending such a steep slope was just as difficult, and ascending the 500 odd feet that we had left to climb would not have added all that much to our troubles. Only actually reaching the top could have lifted our spirits enough to power us for the rest of the hike, though.  That and lunch.  But only after we had reached the top, we agreed.

It was during this last stretch that I felt that something come over me again.  Something that told me to just go despite how hard it was.  I could feel my companions' spirits breaking a little.  I felt like each step was harder than the one before. I would get in five or six and then have to pause.

At one point our guide shouted down to us to get out of the way because there were rocks tumbling down.  Adrenaline pumping, not knowing, at first, exactly why he had told us to get out of the way, we scrambled sideways along the rocks as quickly as we could.  Someone who had hiked up on their own before us, had loosed a few rocks and sent them down in our direction unintentionally.  Seeing this bloke from California walking upright down the mountain past us like it was nothing was the last straw (you can see him in the shadows just out of sight in the above pic of my two Toronto friends).  I could smell the sulfur gas from the crater by now.  Knowing we were so close to the top I powered through, one last burst of climbing, grabbing at rocks and propelling myself upward, quicker than my body could signal the pain in my muscles. Behind me, Kelsey was saying she was done and ready to go down.  The wind was blowing her around so that she couldn't straighten up for a second without getting knocked over.  Just then I looked up and saw our guide perched on the edge of the crater.  I lifted myself into place right next to him and peered into the crater.

"No, c'mon! We're here.  It's right here, you can make it!" I shouted down to my companions.  I practically begged Kelsey and Ryan to come peer in the crater with me.  300 meters deep and 3 acres around at the bottom, and all of it obscured by sulfuric gas and clouds. She took one look and declared, "Nope!"

We all collapsed for this photo and agreed after a few moments of basking in our victory, that we should climb down out of the wind and eat our lunch before heading back down.  Without any shred of visibility there wasn't much in the way of views to take in.  I watched some YouTube videos of other people's hikes when I returned home, though, and concluded that, had we hiked up on a clear day, it would have been absolutely terrifying but exalting and gorgeous nonetheless. Here's my panorama when we came out of the cloud.  Close enough:

But what did I learn about myself from this climb? For one thing, that I'm strong and I can show determination and accomplish something big if I have my mind set on it.  Something I'm doing on a daily basis here in NYC but that I tend to forget. The other thing it taught me is to just keep going.  The last few months have been harrowing in their own way.  No stunning vistas, no payoffs, just waiting and waiting for one or more things that are up in the air, to show me some kind of sign I'm on the right track.  It's hard, even though you know you've done things and set other things in motion, to just wait for them to give you some sort of feedback.  It's hard to not always feel like I could be doing more. But then, that one thing happens that may or may not be a true accomplishment but that tells you that, yes, you're doing fine, you're on the right track, keep going.

It happened a few weeks ago.  An agent with whom I had spoken over a year ago, who had told me that I sounded as though I had some regionalisms in my voice, called me to tell me she liked the new demo I sent her and wanted to send me out on an audition for a job she thought I'd be good for.  Yes, an agent liked my demo.  So I went out there feeling pretty damn good, knowing that, even if I didn't get the job, it was still quite an accomplishment and felt like a nice step up to a new plateau.  The next day, another agent that I'd met at my voice coach's salon emailed me to say she loved my demo (exclamation point) but that she couldn't accommodate me as they keep a very short list and there isn't currently a space for me. There are still more steps to take up onto even higher plateaus but just to know that I have things ahead of me is exciting.

"The Life" finally had its premier screening a few weeks ago too and everyone in the cast and crew showed. It was amazing to see how many people were involved in bringing that thing to fruition and how many cared enough to come out for the screening.  Some of them hadn't even seen the whole thing yet so we got to see some candid reactions to the finished product which made it all the more worthwhile. Great things are ahead for this project, almost none of which I can speak on definitively and it's likely to be like this for a while but suffice it to say that I'm happy with the progression.

And I even had an opportunity to help out with the music on a web series called Redheads Anonymous that is getting all kinds of attention lately.  I played some guitar and bass parts on a song for the second episode which you can watch here. Huffington Post did an article on it and episode 2 even won Indie Series Network's Web Series of the Week award.  It's going to be a great affiliation, and they may yet call me for more music.

At any rate, I'm still feeling pretty good about this year so far. And if any of you are interested in seeing the rest of the pics from the trip to Nicaragua, I've posted them here.

The rules of troubleshooting...

Just a quick one before I head to bed.  Yeah, I did it.  I opted to try and work late at night instead of working on changing my bed time routine.  The crappy thing is that I might have been productive if I hadn't needed to troubleshoot some problems first.

I was about to sit down and tinker with some piano ideas using my MIDI controller through Logic and one of my piano samplers but the stupid M Audio Axiom keyboard that I use has this problem where, all of a sudden, when you turn it on, two notes (usually an augmented fourth apart, i.e. C and F#) just don't work.  So, before, I had found that all you had to do was just turn the thing off hold down the offending keys and then turn it back on and hold them down for 30 seconds.  Okay, so a lot of trial and error and reading forums led to that and I'm still not even sure if what I did was what worked to fix it or if it fixed itself or if some random hit of the keys jostled the electronics and put something back in place.  It's ineffable.  Because this time around it's A and D# that aren't working and my fix that I was so proud of is not working either.

I needed a win tonight so, I shifted gears (all while still sipping my glass of wine) and started to work on a hunch about what was wrong with my looping software Mobius.  This is going to become one of my favorite rules of troubleshooting: "Ask yourself what has changed since the problem started."

Duh.  I got a new audio interface about a month or so ago and hadn't yet tried it out with my guitar setup and, over the past few days, I was tinkering a little and noticed a problem with Mobius.  Usually the screen will animate, so you know what state it's in, whether recording, overdubbing, playing back etc. But this time around when I'd tap the buttons on my pedal, it would move and freeze and only when you interacted with the program again, whether clicking on the screen somewhere or tapping another button, would it actually update.

So this is a problem when you're performing because you want to know what's going on and what state it's in, and whether the pedal tap you just executed actually did anything.

But, when I had that eureka moment about the change in my audio interface, I decided to try the old audio interface out.  Sure enough, it worked fine.  Well, sort of.  It worked fine as a standalone but I usually use it in MainStage, Apple's live performance software that allows me to add all kinds of effects and have multiple channels that I can mix live.  In MainStage it was having the same problem.  So I had to tinker more and I think I've found a workaround but I have to test it more.  I basically have to go through a series of weird steps to get it to work correctly, which is frustrating enough but then add in that normally, I have to turn things on in a certain order and sometimes have to restart the computer so that one piece of software will recognize all the bits of hardware I have plugged in.

So, anyway, I feel somewhat accomplished tonight but it's all still underscored by the fact that my jobs are still coming so few and far between that when I go to dive into my work and dust off certain programs and pieces of hardware, I realize that I almost always have to fix some problem before I can even get started.    That is pretty frustrating.  All I wanted to do tonight was play some keyboard and riff a little.  Now I have to wait until Friday morning/afternoon when I can bang on my piano and think something up.

Happily, said piano was most recently banged on by the inimitable Crystal Bright just this morning before she left, showing me a new piece of hers.  Perhaps she will have imbued it with some of her creative energy.

Before I forget though, here's a little riff that I was toying with the other day and put up on SoundCloud.  Enjoy!

Productive...

Nothing like a productive Monday to put me in the mood for a late night glass of wine.  This Rioja I picked up a few weeks ago...pretty damned good.  And why not?  I got so much done in a day.  Started off with a quick breakfast of fried over easy and toast and out the door early to drop some clothes off at Goodwill in Downtown Brooklyn, then off to the best yoga class I've had in a while with the inimitable Holly Ramey.  Something about deep twists and creative sequences and just the right amount of balance poses and add to that my frame of mind and a nice sit before class, I was on cloud nine.  Perfect way to start up the day.  Got to catch up with a yoga friend on my way out the door and then I was off.  Cooked lunch at home and then sat down and proceeded to write three more cues for "The Life" to add to the one I started yesterday.  Got to work on time, emailed the director and producer the spotting notes and the cues thus far and finished out my shift at NY1.

Now I'm back and still wide awake.  My co worker at NY1 says to me this evening, "I don't know how you find the time."  I don't either.  But the fact that I do find the time, gives me a great deal of faith that we'll be able to get some music put together before this thing gets screened in Boston in two weeks.  I'm going to have to clear my schedule just a little bit but we should be fine.  I think, since we're all in agreement that the edit still needs some work, that we're not even going to try to get this thing perfect before this first screening but they did ask me, since we have time, to put together at least a few music cues.  I went ahead and spotted the whole thing, like I said the other day, and now I wait to see what we'll focus on actually covering.  It's exciting.  The main title sequence is in the works now too, so I'm getting to see what that's going to look like with my music.  The director was nice enough to have my credit for "Original music by" come on screen right when the song goes into the guitar solo.  Epic.

So, fit to burst with excitement in just getting to work again but also not getting too far ahead of myself.  It is nice to envision the finish line every once in a while but you gotta keep running to get there.

On another note, had a great time this weekend and saw two great shows on top of going to a yoga workshop with two of my friends from the Nicaragua trip on Saturday (good to see them again but the workshop was crowded).  After the workshop though, I was off to Four Tet at Terminal 5 on Saturday night (epic set), at which I made a new friend, a musician from Cleveland who had won tickets and came to the city on a whim (with no second person to take his second ticket), and then Stephane Wrembel at Barbés on Sunday night (yet again, never gets old) for which I tried to get said new friend to join me but, being new to the city and not knowing the trains, he wound up in Queens by accident and resigned himself to heading back to the AirBnB where he was staying. But then I made more friends at Barbés just hanging out by myself, almost all of them musicians themselves.  One of whom plays in an awesome French fusion reggae band here in the city called DecaDence. They're pretty frickin' awesome. 

All around, times are good these days.  And I'm heading into the long week with a good feeling...which is a lot better than most Mondays.  So, onward and upward. 

Reflection delayed...

Barreling towards the end of the year and finally finding time to reflect.  It's been a fun trip to NC this time around and I have one last night before I pack up and head back.  And once I'm back, it's not too long before I'm gonna be heading to Nicaragua.  14 days.  So, naturally I'm far to excited and nervous about that to really think too much about things like freelance work.  And even though my plan was to sit down and take a look at the upcoming year's goals during my stay here, I didn't really accomplish any of that.

So naturally I have a lot of things on my mind with regard to that.  I spoke once before about not stressing too much about trying to find work but rather just being ready when the next opportunity comes along.  Now, I kinda think that I should really be finding a balance between these two extremes.  I can look for work and spend time between jobs making sure I'm ready when an opportunity presents itself.  Sitting around and waiting doesn't sound like a good strategy no matter what you're doing.  I would rather be proactive and identify things that I can be doing to help myself out between jobs.  Working on tracks that I can license, writing music for the guitar looping project, trying to find a space and time to rehearse/jam with the drummer (this has not happened yet this year)...also, working on revamping the voice over demos and the marketing plan.  So there's a lot to do there.  A lot to keep me busy.

But I'd really like to talk about goals.  And not just goals for the sake of goals but targeted goals that take into account how over ambitious I was last year with some goals and how on point I was with others.  Which goals did I accomplish and which goals did I fall short of accomplishing?  Which ones did I neglect entirely?

There's a real pressure not to just do what I did last year, even if some of my moves were successful.  So I find myself sitting here reading old blogs and reflecting, as I do.  Another thing that has crossed my mind is that in order to focus on some things, I may have to leave a few things by the wayside.  I can't even wrap my brain around all that right now.  So, I think my first focus in the new year is going to be contacting producers, both voice over and film, to touch base and maybe scare up some work.  That's the big thing that I still don't have a lot of under my belt.  Work.  I mean, my website looks good, if I do say so myself, but I feel like it can never hurt to have more current material on showcase.   I could have had two feature film projects last year but both of them slipped through my fingers.  Not that I'm remorseful for that.  It was a great experience and it taught me that getting heard of is only part of getting the job.  You gotta be on your game and stand out from the crowd.   Which is a tad frustrating because it feels like it's out of your hands to some extent.  You can only do so much.  I mean, really, let's look at this: you can put together a stellar reel but you have to sort of pay attention to what other composers are doing and find ways to stand out from them with your work.  And you can have your hands in a lot of things, to get the attention of a lot of different kinds of producers for a lot of different kinds of projects, but then can you really be stellar at any one thing if you're spreading yourself so thin?  But then do you have to really choose just one area, be it electronic music, orchestral music, or pop?

All this floods my mind when I start to think about this.  And then I start to think about the licensing agency and how they haven't heard anything new from me in months.  The good thing is, there was one last piece of music that I never sent to them because I never finished it.  I liked so many aspects of it but it was missing something and I never really put my finger on it.  I revisited it a few days back and I think I have some ideas.  I may want to try some things I was afraid to before and get some restructuring underway.  I have ideas occurring to me out of the blue that I'm not sure why I didn't have before.  It's a good feeling, at the very least, to have a project I can get started on now without waiting for some job to come along.

Anyway, voice over is a whole different beast these days.  I haven't had a job since the summer.  By comparison this year has been a lot more meager.  But I did get my first out of the blue calls for work this year along with the attention of an agent...never mind the fact that she told me I sounded too regional on one of my spots and to watch for that.  I'm not too bummed about either because for one thing, that agent was way too hard to get a hold of for someone I'd like to be working with to find voice over work.  And for another thing, my lack of work in this arena can probably be directly attributed to me filling up my schedule with freelance TV work.  CNN and TruTV were great boons to my financial well being this year and are solely responsible for almost doubling my salary for the greater part of the year and finally, this trip to Nicaragua.

I think it's important, in the midst of all this stuff to remember that I worked hard this year and now I'm going to go and reward myself.  I need this.  Too much work and no play, make Tim something something...

So, I think instead of stressing over all of the above, I'm going to focus on the Nicaragua trip and then get started on all of it when I get back.  I think I'll leave New Year's Resolutions and game plans for the New Year untouched for a few weeks until I come back from Nicaragua with a tan and hopefully no tropical diseases.  At that point, I'll touch base...I may even send pics from the beach.  So stay tuned...

Sometimes it's okay to just chill...

First big snow of the year and I'm hanging in tonight.  I had to work this morning at TruTV and was planning on getting a little Christmas shopping done at the holiday markets until this happened: 

 

So then, I was compelled to go straight to DSW and spend what I would have spent on shoes for the Nicaragua trip on a new pair of boots.  This is not the first time this week I've had a wardrobe malfunction either.  I was sitting on the edge of my bed putting socks on before I left for work and one over zealous lift of my leg caused me to rip the jeans I was wearing in an unfortunate place.  And of course, this led to me changing said pants but forgetting to retrieve my apartment keys from my front pocket.  Hence leaving the apartment without my keys for the first time in a long time.

There are times when rushing around does me good and I'm able to cram a lot into one day (just the other day I managed to wake up early enough to squeeze in a voice over audition and still get to work on time and didn't have to eat out for dinner that day because I had prepared way in advance...never mind that I'm pretty sure this was the same day I forgot my keys) but there are other times when I just feel like life is catching up with me and I just need to chill for a bit to regroup.

Like today.  I just bought those shoes and came home because I figured I deserved a break...and some gluten free beer and home cooking.  Although, I did swing through the market at Columbus Circle for a look.  I only stayed long enough to get a pile of snow dropped on my head from the roof of one of the stalls just for standing in one spot for too long.  That and the slushy slippery snow accumulating on the walk between stalls convinced me it was time to just give up, go buy new boots and go home.

And sometimes it takes a while to quell the noise in my head telling me that, just because I have some downtime that I should be making the most of it by advancing one or more of the projects I have on the docket but then, I realize that I'm home and I'm tired and I've been working like a dog.  I haven't had a day off since Thanksgiving weekend and I won't have one off until Christmas.  I have even been squeezing in more voice over auditions to prove to myself that there's no reason to slack off there and that even a little bit of progress is worthwhile.  So maybe, I should just take a break.  Right?

I've even talked about this before on some level, I'm sure.  How it's important to put downtime on your to do list.  So, here I am, enjoying my downtime. And what do I do?  I pick up my guitar, put on some Smashing Pumpkins to reminisce and then text a friend to see what he's up to.

Things I need to do...

It's late.  Ha!  It's always late when I'm writing these entries.  Shut up Tim and tell them about what's going on.  Anyway, I was just reminiscing and reading an entry from last year on this exact date (well, yesterday's date now).  For some reason I had a hunch there'd be some insight there.  I do this sometimes. I don't just re-read to reminisce but to gain perspective.  And sure enough, I was talking about making lists and my approach to starting tasks and allowing them to remain fluid so that I can alter my course once I get a clearer picture of what it will take to complete said tasks.  This also hearkens back to a more recent blog in the past few weeks where I was talking about the science of procrastination. 

When I wrote the more recent blog, I hadn't yet gone back and read the first one I linked and now I realize that, seriously, I was right in the second more recent blog....a lot of this stuff is innate.

That said, I know January is over a month away but regrouping at year's end and making to-do lists for the new year is on my mind again.  And starting projects, actually getting my ass moving again on a lot of things, is also on my mind.  So glad I re-read my blog about just getting started and being flexible with my approach to various tasks.

The things I need to do:

I've been thinking a lot about the licensing agency and how, since about a year has passed since they received my first batch of tracks and I haven't heard anything, I might need to increase my output to them.  I've also been thinking a lot about how these voice over practice sessions my coach has been organizing are really bringing out some great reads and I'm feeling much more confident (especially around other VO actors...I'd truly be interested in studying the psychology behind why a person seems to feel more confident in groups versus with individuals or even more confident with some individuals versus others...but that's another blog entry).  Indeed, some of these reads I'm producing at the practice sessions are worthy of going on the commercial demo which needs constant attention, of course.  But what else do they need?  You guessed it: Music.  But wait, I need to write some new music for the licensing agency anyway!

About a week ago, I took a look at all the products of my riffing over the course of the last year and selected which ones I could turn something into.  I was going to just systematically produce one after the other to completion but now, I realize it might be a fun project to just listen to the best reads that I've put out from those practice sessions and focus on writing music specifically for them.

Every previous run I've taken at improving my demos always felt rushed.  I would just go through my library of unused tracks and grab the closest thing.  But now, I can see how both avenues would benefit from me taking the time to essentially produce these ads from the ground up.  Writing music specifically for them would both give me the experience of composing for an ad again and would leave me with a finished product I could use on the voice over demos and that I could send to the licensing agency.

So there's the goal and I now have a starting point.  It's time to organize my thoughts on that one and project how long it would take me to get this done.  The idea is that it'll get me started with two, maybe 3, 30 second music bumps that I could also extend to 60 second versions that would both go on the VO demo and go to the licensing agency (remember it's a non-exclusive contract).  And then I would have the momentum, in theory to compose a few more and by early next year I could be sending a few more off to the agency and would already have a new commercial demo in hand.

Sound good?  I hope so.  That's all the eureka I can muster right now. I'm about a day away from being off for four days and I'm mentally checked out of about every other endeavor that isn't music or voice over right now.  And off for four days during which I do not have to travel anywhere.  All I have to do is bake another gluten free pumpkin pie and truck my ass out to Bushwick without the use of the M train.  The adventure continues...

Recharge...

I did something amazing last night that I've not done in years.  I slept.  A lot.  Several hours in a row.  I don't know exactly how many but I will say that I got in bed around 10:30pm, also something I haven't done in years, and I got out of bed around 9:30am the next morning.  Somewhere in the middle, I did wake up, but I refused to get out of bed for at least a half hour, mainly because the bathroom here is up a flight of stairs.  I'm currently at my sister's house in Virginia, hanging with her family.  Basically recharging for a weekend.  And man, am I recharging, or what?  I actually took a nap a few hours ago, one from which I awoke to hear my niece yelling about zombies (she was playing Minecraft across the kitchen from me).  So far, the only other thing I've done today besides eating that was mildly productive was win a game of Magic the Gathering, a game I've never really played, against my brother in law and my oldest nephew.

Yesterday, I took the train to DC from New York and had my cousin pick me up at Union Station.  We spent some time driving around DC and ended up at Jones Point Lighthouse because he wanted to see one of the old DC boundary stones, actually the first to be laid.  It exists under the lighthouse and you actually have to look under the porch in front of the lighthouse to see it.  Check out my photos.   My cousin then took me to Alexandria to meet an old friend for dinner, one I haven't seen in 13 years.  We caught up over gluten free pizza and then she drove me to Potomac Mills where my sister picked me up.

It occurred to me that all day today, I have not even once put shoes on and gone outside.  So a little bit ago, I stepped out on the back porch and looked up at the moon.  I haven't had a day this lazy in a very very long time.

So, I'm going to feel great by the time I get back to NYC.  I'm at a standstill with the workload anyway because I just sent in the finished mixes of the long and short versions of "Another Day in the Life," and am waiting for the director's input.  Plus, the piano theme for the other short film hasn't been touched in weeks because that director hasn't contacted me yet.  I'm also going to be diving back into some voice over things next week.  I put the agent search on hold while I focused on my other projects but next Wednesday, my coach has put together a VO practice session at the studio where I've been doing my coaching.  There should be a couple of other VO talents there and we'll just run through whatever scripts we bring or whatever Sylvia has there.  Should be lots of fun.  I've been needing something like this for a while.  I lost two good auditions in the past week and then got a reminder of a client who was wildly underpaying me last year when the same guy contacted me to do a few scripts for the same amount of money.  I turned him down.

Anyway, I spent the remainder of my evening eating a fabulous meal (gluten free Yorkshire pudding prepared by my brother-in-law), playing with the kids' remote control helicopters and sucking horribly at rock band even though I'm a musician with two degrees.  Tomorrow, my train back to the city doesn't leave until 845pm so I'll have another nice long day with the kids.  I heard something about a hay ride and a pumpkin patch.  Sounds fun!

Hopefully, soon I'll hear some feedback and Amanda's song for "The Life."  Meanwhile, it's back to work work on Monday.  First week back on the regular schedule.  I'm really hoping that the work at TruTV will not dry up anytime soon, because I've made a big life decision to finally travel next year and, following a few signs from the universe, have already picked a yoga retreat in Belize that will happen in April right around my birthday.  It's not terribly cheap and I'm probably picking the first option that has presented itself rather than finding something as affordable as possible, but a yoga retreat and a Central American/Caribbean destination has been on my mind for quite some time.  I've never been further south than the airport in Miami, FL.  So here's to that.  If I stick to my budget over the next few months and if a few small miracles occur, then I can pull this off.

For now, I'm going to get to sleep, early again but NYC has left me with the need to recharge and I plan to take full advantage of that.  Talk soon.

Molecules...

Well, the rest of my day after that last blog in Philly was really fun.  So fun I forgot to blog about it.  I decided on the Eastern State Penitentiary for my afternoon activity.  I opted for an immensely informative guided tour and, after it was done, walked around a little on my own, saw Al Capone's cell, learned about the tunnel escape and took a ton of pictures.

Afterward Virginia and I met up and had a bite at, you guessed it, the only place I eat in West Philadelphia: OCF.  Luckily, she had to be somewhere relatively near where I had to go for Darcy's dance performance, so we opted to walk it, a good 4 1/2 miles, because that's what we do when we're together.  Funny, I avoided taking public transit for most of the weekend, except for one bus ride to Center City Friday night.  Cabs are really cheap there compared to NYC as well, so it was tempting, a lot of the time, to just take a cab.  The walk was much preferred though.  I got to see (and smell) a lot of the city I might not have seen had I taken the bus.  Seriously, South Street in Old City was buzzing with activity and smelled strongly of cheesesteaks. 

Anyway, Darcy's dance performance was at Christ Church Neighborhood House in Old City, right next to one of the oldest buildings in Philly, a church, that, when it was built was the highest structure in the 13 colonies for a number of years (I think I heard one of the guys there say 40 years, can't remember).  The dance actually started out in the courtyard of the church and featured video projections of footage shot in the Redwood Forest in California, as well as music composed by Andrea Clearfield, featuring field recordings from the Redwood Forest, violin and didgeridoo.  The music was emanating from a couple of boom boxes, some nestled in the bushes, others carried by the dancers.  One dancer recited poetry through a bullhorn by Quintan Ana Wikswo with themes of destruction of natural habitats and the ills of colonialism.  After the courtyard, the dancers led us up to a space on the third floor of the neighboring building, a dark theater space with no fourth wall (we were standing around the dancers as they performed) and sheets hung from the ceiling.  Overall, I thought it was a pretty compelling piece and really enjoyed the dancers' performances. 

Here are a few pics taken in Old City and around the Church.  That night we cabbed it back to Darcy's apartment where her new roommate had a house warming party of sorts in full swing, complete with wine and a spread of gluten free food (she's gluten intolerant, too).  Met some nice people, had some good food and conversation and then slept it all off.  After one more breakfast at OCF, I snagged a cab to the train station and headed back to NYC for my performance. 

It went really well, by the way.  Only, I forgot to hit record.  MC took video of most of it and I ended up with some extra time last night to re record it at home and edit it a little.  Just posted it to soundcloud too.



The audience enjoyed it and gave me some good pointers, all stuff that I was thinking was wrong with the piece, i.e. there wasn't enough of a build (I still don't think there is). I can't remember what else right now but I have since come up with a few more critiques like the fact that it's kind of long right now but as the song congeals a little more, I will be able to scale back the length of it and still effectively cover all the things I want cover.  There are essentially four different loop layers each with harmonies and syncopated counter melodies built into them, so the overall number of layers tops something like 10-16 depending on which harmonies I play.  The only real ramp up in the intensity of the piece comes with the introduction of a sixteenth note pulse drone on the lowest guitar string, which, when I recorded this version, I layered harmonies on top of.

I solo melodically over the cacophony of layers at least a couple of times throughout and only the first one on this version was pre composed.  The rest were improvised.  The distortion effect on the backwards loop is something I'm still toying with a little.  It's still kind of unpredictable because I've been recording it silently and not fading it up until it's been effected with the reverse function and the distortion patch that I'm using from Native Instruments.  I'm using my controller to change one of the parameters which, as far as I can tell is a sub audio control wave (for those of you who know anything about sound synthesis).  Anyway, once it's up in the mix, I am getting some wicked awesome sounds.  Later in the piece I even slow it and another one of the actual loop tracks down by half to get some even cooler contrast to the rhythmic drive of the piece.

In later versions of the piece, I'm going to focus on ways to ramp up the intensity even more, possibly exploring drones with syncopation in them.  Syncopation is lovely.  Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the piece.

The rest of MC's salon was great.  She danced, Morgana Rose danced, Gilbert-Michel Rolle, the tenor, a Swiss man actually from MC's hometown, sang a few French Renaissance pieces a capella, Lacy and I did three songs scattered throughout the performance and lastly a man whose name I can't recall now came and gave us an impromptu poetry reading.  Lost of wine and good conversation followed and then I went home ate dinner and watched Breaking Bad's finale.  Great ending!

I'll keep updating as I record new versions of the song, Molecules, and I will even be writing some more and trying them out on you guys and also performing again at the next Marie-Christine Giordano artists salon.  By the way, I still don't know exactly why the piece is called Molecules. 

Also, as the week goes on I've been working a lot more on the recording of Amanda Brecker's song, "Another Day in the Life."  It's going well and tomorrow we'll finish up recording backing vocals and vocal effects and hopefully, I'll manage to record the two guitar interludes.  Updates on that as well once it's finished and mastered. For now, it's back to work!

Chilling in Philly before a show...

Hanging out at OCF in Fairmount right now.  Just spent the better part of the afternoon so far editing the song for the end credits and the full length trailer of "The Life." Amanda and I worked part of the afternoon yesterday at my place recording the guitar and vocals on isolated tracks so I could mix this weekend.  All that remains is to redo some of the backing vocals and vocal effects, and for me to record a few more guitar parts for the ending guitar solo.  I feel good for having made some strides with it this weekend.  Especially since I've been able to effectively utilize several chunks of time during which I might not have gotten much done.  Yesterday night I had the vocal tracks edited before the bus to Philly had even left New York City.  Today, I'm killing time while Darcy has her tech rehearsals for the dance tonight.  I'm going to the 8pm performance at New Spaces, New Formats tonight.  Sort of my whole reason for being in Philly right now.  One of Darcy's companies is dancing this, which looks way cool...so meanwhile, I sit in a cafe contemplating my next move.  Yoga might be involved, also the Eastern State Penitentiary looms across the street.  And so do some weird temporary gargoyles.

This has been a nice welcome break from the pace of the city even though, last night we had a bit of a wild night.  We went to an apartment party in Center City, someone's 30th, and then went to the Trestle Inn to dance.  We didn't get in until around 3am.  Now, I bounce back with caffeine and sunlight and figure I'd better enjoy my day while I can.  I don't need to head over to the area until around 7pm.  At some point, I will try to meet up with Virginia for sure.

Meanwhile, I'm also trying not to think too hard about my premiere tomorrow.  Most of the stress involved is going to be in getting there from here.  My bus leaves at 930am and arrives in NYC, in theory, at 1130am.  The salon is not until 3pm so that, in theory, gives me a few hours to run it again if I should so choose.  The Lacy is driving me because we intend to perform a few of her songs as well.

The piece has come together quite nicely and the few people I've shown it to over the past week have responded by either spacing out or being wildly impressed that I can coordinate all the pedal tapping with my feet and knob twiddling, etc.  Luckily, when I performed it for Amanda, I found that her energy and interest in the piece kept me focused for the most part.  So I can reasonably presume that a similar energy from the salon's attendees will keep me focused on performing the piece and hitting all the right buttons at the right time.  That's really going to be the hardest part.  Focusing.  Because I've found myself wanting to get lost in the piece like I do when I play and am really enjoying the act of creating the music as well as hearing it come together.  But if I do that I miss tapping a pedal to loop or switch tracks and I get flustered and the piece could fall apart.  

Once the piece gets going though it becomes easier to do what I need to do.  I will say that a lot of it is going to be improvised.  The structure will not be but what I do during each section will be largely improvisatory.  I'm really really excited to be doing this finally.  And really really hope that a lot of people will come out for this.  The other artists should be fun as well.  There's Lacy and I, a dancer and a tenor who will sing French Renaissance music.

Here's a link to the event on Facebook.

You Are a Tourist...

I just spent the most amazing couple of days doing two things I love.  Composing music and wandering my city.  Had a friend in town for a few days and we even squeezed in a few live shows in the mix.

Whenever I have a guest in town I always make sure to show them my city.  The way I see it.  All the fun and amazing things I've seen since I've moved here.  Random things I've stumbled on myself, things people have shown me, things that make me happy, all the places I like to go.  The views from my apartment window to the random stained glass water tower atop a building in DUMBO you can see from the Manhattan Bridge to the animated Subway art you see from the Q train just after leaving the DeKalb Avenue stop on the Manhattan bound track. Being a tourist, or rather a tour guide, in my own city, is one of the best ways to remember why I moved here.  And to get back in touch with why I still love it here.

We went all over on Friday, from Prospect Park where we stumbled on a Japanese flute player hiding in the woods and unwittingly serenading us, to the views from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and the Brooklyn Bridge all the way to happy hour at a pub in downtown with wine on tap, topped off by a stroll down to the Battery to catch the views of the harbor.  Plenty of amazing things to show my friend, both planned and unplanned. And that was just one day that we spent together.  We hopped around the bars in my neighborhood on Wednesday, from Korzo to Freddy's to Barbes to Skylark.  She even got to see one of my favorite bands at Barbes that night.  Thursday we saw Crystal Bright and the Silver Hands at the Dr. Who themed Way Station (the bathroom there is a TARDIS...it's bigger on the inside).

On Saturday, my friend did her own thing and met with her friends while I spent the morning and afternoon, alone in my amazing apartment with the fall breeze flowing in my open windows, pushing ahead on all my music projects; the song with Amanda Brecker, the piece for Ben's film and a new project.  Yes, another new one.  This one, my own.  For once.  I'm working on a guitar looping piece that I've been dabbling with for months.  I got invited to play it in one week at Marie Christine Giordano's artists' salon.  The good thing is, having to perform it has forced me to push forward on completing it, so the piece has gone from a mere idea to something semi structured and almost complete in under a week.

Good thing too, because it's not like I have all that much free time to work on it.  I also spent a good amount of time getting all of my equipment to function properly together and learning what all I can do with it.  It's going to be a lot of fun performing this piece.  I have my M Audio Axiom keyboard set up to mix four tracks on which I can now set up layered loops of guitar parts using my Behringer FCB1010 pedal which is programmed to record, overdub, multiply, trigger effects and even reverse.  So, just having all these functions available to me is multiplying my creativity and I'm coming up with all kinds of cool stuff.  It'll be epic.  I promise.

It's happening at 3pm on Sunday, September 29th at Marie Christine Giordano's dance studio at 220 25th Street, Suite 202 in Brooklyn.  I hope some of you New Yorkers can come.

Meanwhile, I've got the Amanda Brecker song to work on this week as well because we're hopefully taking another crack at tracking this thing in my apartment this week sometime.  I'll keep updating that as always.  Meanwhile, seriously, come out if you can to the Salon on Sunday, the 29th at 3pm!!!

Anticipation, a baby, some mountains and a thunderstorm...

The D, N and R trains are finally not skipping my stop at nights and I began to realize this week how long it's been since I've even been in the Prospect Ave. R station on the Bay Ridge bound side.  I had been taking the F to 7th avenue on my way home from work and walking the 10 blocks south to my apartment.  While it did afford me a little extra time to walk and think, and, on some nights when I didn't feel like the hassle, got me a little more comfortable taking cab rides that would eventually be reimbursed by Time Warner Cable, it also put me dangerously close to Barbes on more than one occasion, which excused a few random stops during which I got to meet some interesting and cool people.

To be fair I only went in once directly after work last week for a drink and it was to kick off a nice 4 day weekend during which I traveled to NC to see family and meet a brand new addition, the nephew I spoke of  a few entries ago.

The mountain house in which we stayed was also quite comfortable and came with an amazing view of the mountain ridges.  We watched a thunderstorm one afternoon while we sat outside on the porch drinking, too. It was pretty spectacular and calming to sit and listen to the rain. 

After two nights, getting to hold my sleepy 2 week old nephew a few times, a few games of ping pong, some Dr. Who and Nintendo DS with the nephews and neice (my sister's kids), I took a ride down to Greensboro in my mom's convertible to see some old friends and paint the town.  Saw my old haunts and caught up with a few friends.  It all ended with me lazing around in the pool at my parents' house with my other sister and her kids and spending too much time in the sun before heading off to the airport.  Couldn't have planned a better trip unless it were longer and involved more relaxing.

Now I'm back to the daily grind, jumping right back in with a day at both jobs (for which the MTA made me 15 minutes late), some work on the trailer for "The Life," and even a phone call to an agent I've been trying to chase down.  There, I said it.  I told myself I wouldn't say anything so as not to jinx it but it's getting close enough I think I can mention it.  I'm also realizing I'm not as superstitious anymore.  If it doesn't happen it won't be because I got my hopes up but because it wasn't the right time.

And now I wait.  But I spoke about waiting a few entries ago.  Sometimes the anticipation can be just as stimulating as the outcome.  And it is an experience in and of itself.  Certain things may not pan out but the important thing is that I've worked hard enough that I'm up at bat for a change and that alone gets me pretty ecstatic.  Yes, I used a baseball analogy.  They're useful sometimes. What can I say?

Anyhow, there are lots of other exciting things that I have varying levels of confidence about coming up, some musical collaborations, some film scoring work and even a few concerts.  2013 has already been a pretty amazing year and I only expect it to get better.  Now I have to find some way to get to sleep amidst all this excitement. 

Shows...

It's the weekend and I'm off work.  Yes, I know.  I've mentioned that.  But leaving work last night knowing that I was off for the whole weekend, I breathed this huge sigh of relief.  And knowing that I was headed out to see a show, I was able to shrug off what felt like a cold coming on and power through, running on pure adrenaline and excitement.

The show was a band called Minor Arcana, two of the members being guys that played with us in Philly.  The venue, The Acheron, was in deepest darkest East Williamsburg at a little hole called The Acheron.  The front of it was a bar and the venue was separated so Lacy and I, not knowing that the venue had a bar too, got two drinks and stood there, realizing that we couldn't bring the glasses in the venue.  While standing there finishing our drinks, I took in the scene, assuming that the loud hardcore punk rock was being pumped in from the opening band playing next door inside the venue.  So, I was expecting the same style from this band and overall the venue was seeming far more punk rock that it actually is. When we finally went in there though, I realized there wasn't even anyone playing yet and Minor Arcana was setting up.  I went and said hi to the guys (Ross, I had seen outside already) and ordered another drink. 

The band started not long after and I was blown away by their sound.  They have two guitars, a bassist, drummer, singing keyboardist and another backup vocalist who played chimes, percussion and keys.  The stage was not all that big either.  They were very prog rock with multiple time signature and tempo changes during the songs, the first one of which was an instrumental.  Or at least had a very long instrumental intro.  Ross and Tony who played with us in Philly (Tony also in NYC), are very talented musicians but the rest of the band blew me away and they were all pretty tight as well. 

Though, I was increasingly tired and didn't even think I should be out, I was eating it up listening to the sound waves pounding around in there and it baffles me to think sometimes how incredible it is, not only that beings like us evolved out of the soup over millions of years to become the kind of creatures that can make sense of the way the air moves around a room influenced by the striking and plucking of things called instruments, but that we can manipulate that plucking and striking into something so amazingly beautiful that you just stop and forget everything for a minute but what you're hearing, what you're brain is interpreting into something that to someone without the benefit of working ear drums is basically just air molecules bouncing off each other in patterns that he or she may or may not feel.   Pretty incredible. 

And I don't recall if I mentioned this or not but one of my New Year's Resolutions this year, one that I'm absolutely killing, is to go to more shows.  If I include dance, open mics and shows I've played in in that, the number is up to something like 20.  Told ya.  Killin' it.  Some of those were our own open mics where I saw some amazing musicians, some were shows I caught part of at Barbes.  I included the four shows Lacy and I have played (including today's show at National Underground and last week's showcase) and a dance festival I went to as well as a few friends' bands and last nights show in Williamsburg.  Oh and I just upped the number to 20 before I finish this blog because I forgot about a random show I happened upon at Spike Hill one night a few weeks ago.    

As for today's show at National Underground, it went fairly well and we had an okay turnout considering the snow and how short notice it was that we found out we were playing.  We will have another one at this showcase on the 27th of April as well.  I will be reminding you. :)

For now, I am at home finally just taking it easy.  Because my body is telling me that I haven't been doing enough of that lately.  And it feels good to just slow down too.  I have spent the last few months (probably more than that), thinking I'm not doing enough when in actual fact I've been doing far too much.  Haha!  I mean, I got 10 voice over gigs in as many months, two film scores back to back last year, and scored a licensing contract with a company that licenses music for film and TV.  And on top of that, I just landed not one but two freelance TV gigs on top of NY1.  I'm going to be glad I took it easy this weekend in a few weeks when I start I'm sure.  Thankfully, I have a vacation coming up in April around my birthday. 

Anyway, I should rest up some more.  More excitement ahead!

Weekends...

Not much to report tonight.  Just feel like typing.  I'm in that phase now where I'm trying to figure out how to adjust to my new work schedule.  In some regards, it's a bit like two parts "it's about time" and one part "be careful what you wish for."  Like I was mentioning, not having the quiet weekend nights at work to catch up on important stuff and still having to spend at least some of my mornings cooking meals and running errands, is making it so that I have to improvise when it comes to finding time for the freelance stuff.  Add on top of that that Lacy and I are having to find new times and places to rehearse.  So, this is going to be a bit of a challenge.  I think I've set aside at least one day of the week when I can get auditions done.  But sitting down and recording for film scoring jobs and my own music may be a little trickier.

I'm going to love having weekends off though.  I gotta say.  Already, next weekend is shaping up to be a ton of fun.  Karishma'll be in town, there's a chance I'll be at least one show, we'll be playing an open mic on Sunday night for sure, and I don't have to work through a single second of it.

And the more I think about it, while it may be that the times I have off of work are not as ideal for doing freelance work (I'll rarely be home alone when I'm off work, except on weekday mornings), I do still have the same amount of time off from work, if you do the mathematics.  24 X 7 - 40 = 128.  Yep.  

Drom...

Just posted the last in a series of blogs on my main web page about my set up with my laptop.  Been reviewing all the research I initially did and realizing the whole time that there is still more to know about the equipment and software that I use.  I've been bending it to suit my needs but that only covers what I have imagined I can do with the software and hardware I own.  The wealth of ideas out there about what can be done is astounding.  I guess now that there's a lull after the album release parties I can start to delve into them.

Oh, the show the other night at Drom.  Incredibly fun.  We made it into town with plenty of time to make those three stops I mentioned and get to Drom minutes after 4:30pm.  Jeff, our bassist and the producer of the album, was already standing outside waiting for us.   Alec and Tony, were not far off.

When I walked in, I was blown away but what a nice venue it was.  Down a flight of stairs from street level and under a sushi bar, through the door and behind a curtain, there was the dimly lit lobby area filled with leather couches and chairs.  Beyond this seating area, the high ceilinged restaurant and bar area and the stage, raised up and in the far corner with a full lighting rig, projection screen, PA system with on stage monitors.   The sound guy was real nice and helpful and we had everything set up and miked in a matter of minutes.  We tested out the video projector as well for the video premiere and at one point he flipped a switch and a beautiful projection filled one of the brick walls beside the stage.

Afterward, we were shown the green room, accessed through the kitchen to the left of the stage, and up a flight of stairs.   The band then split up to grab dinner.  Alec, the drummer, and I hit a ramen place around the corner on 4th Street and we made it back in time to shoot the breeze at the venue.  Lacy was holed up in the green room until the show started so we were up there discussing logistics of the set and  the like and getting our drink tickets.  At some point, when discussing how to open, the idea came up to start the show with her song Dancing out of the Dark, but have the band start first and have her walk out to the song.  After that we didn't deviate from the set list too much and everything went fairly well, despite a hiccup with the video projector when we took a break to premiere the video.

It was so good to get up and play again with a full band, both in Philly and in NYC, but this night was particularly fun because it was the biggest venue I've played since playing at Pianos with Teletextile back in November of 2010.  The big turnout we had helped.  Also, having had the chance to become so familiar with the music and iron out all the instrument changes and technical aspects of playing with such a diverse array of equipment, made it all go smoothly enough that I was easier to enjoy the experience of being on stage and not be so stressed that everything is going to work.  I can only imagine it's going to get better the more we perform.

Now we are turning our thoughts toward forming a New York band and finding time and a space to rehearse regularly.  Should be fun.  And hopefully now, that I've bridged the gap between having all this equipment and software and barely knowing how to make it all function, and actually being able to play a show using it all successfully with almost no hiccups, I can start working on writing and eventually performing my own music.

Anyway, we had the whole show filmed and there should be pictures as well from it.  A few have surfaced on the web. I'll try and find them and link to them at some point.  For now.  It's back to the grind.

The Stone...

Last night got weird.  But in a good way.  I saw a band called Genes and Machines whose guitarist Lacy knows at a venue called The Stone in the E. Village at 2nd Street and Avenue C.  The Stone is a hole in the wall not-for-profit experimental music performance space tucked away in a non-descript building on a non-descript corner in Alphabet City.  Until they raise the gate, and you can see the name of the place in gold lettering on the front door, there's no indication that this is even the place you're looking for.  Lucky for me, I knew this going into it and as I was passing a woman on the street, I overheard her asking someone where The Stone was and he pointed it out to her just as I was walking up to it.  Looking down at the door, there it was right at waist-level, gold lettering indicating "The Stone."  That same woman asked me if we were in the right place as I pushed open the door.

It was a very narrow long room inside with rows of folding chairs filling up the back half of the room.  Lacy was not there yet so I found a seat near the front but fairly soon got crammed in with other spectators such that I couldn't save her a seat and wound up enjoying the show by myself.  The show.  They came out all dressed in funky outfits, all of them an homage to the fact that we are now in the year of the snake.  The singer stripped out of a zipped jumper to reveal a snakeskin jacket, under which he was shirtless, and green sparkly pants.  Their percussionist had the most outrageous cobra hat on his head.  Lacy's friend Adrian played guitar, they had two kit drummers, one with lots of electronic drums, another female singer who played a keyboard (my exact keyboard, the M Audio Axiom 49) and bass alternately, and the first singer with the snakeskin jacket played also my same keyboard plus a weird looking painted ergonomic computer keyboard strapped to his belt which appeared to be controlling his laptop.

This set up and their outfits alone led me to believe this was going to be out on the edge.  I was immediately enthralled by the palate of sounds they wove in all of their songs but as the night went on I was equally impressed by the array of musical styles they touched on throughout the night: punk rock, jazz, noise rock, even a song or two that sounded like surf rock.  If that wasn't enough fun, they had a dancer improvising in a very tight space for a couple of the songs.  This light and lithe dancer was also almost completely naked and painted head to toe in a bright orange snake skin like pattern.  At one point she even danced around the crowd, picking random people to come and dance with her.

The band is called Genes and Machines and are well worth checking out.  If not for their theatrics alone, the music is something else.  To top the coolness of the night off, Lacy informed me post-show that the curator was none other than Vernon Reid from the band Living Color.  How cool is that?!

Afterward, we walked the East Village in search of wine and food for me, even passing inadvertently by the venue for next week's album release party.  Drom.  It's hidden under a sushi bar...well not so much hidden.  There is a sign above it.  I took one look at it, though, and all I saw was a sushi bar.

The show is getting closer and closer every day and we're now planning a rehearsal in Philly on Wednesday night.  That will put us coming straight back to NYC to load in because, we realized, it makes no sense to try and unload the equipment anywhere else first (like my apartment or hers) because we'd just be loading it back up in mere hours.  As such, it looks like we're going to spend a morning in Philly and perhaps get to sleep in after a late night rehearsal.  Meanwhile, I'm busy practicing the parts I didn't play in Philly and also, somehow, trying to keep up with voice auditions and, somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm thinking about my next tracks that I'll be sending to the licensing agency.  Crazy life.  I hope to see you guys out at the show next week if you're in town and can make it.  Here's the event invite on Facebook.

The Adventure Continues...

So, I just had a really great time in Philly playing with Lacy James at L'Etage for her CD release party, catching up with an old friend, and meeting new friends the whole weekend long.  The guys in the band we hired were all amazing professionals, most of whom played on the album.  And I got to toast 10 years of friendship with my friend Virginia.  

On Friday night we headed out there, late unfortunately, because, for Lacy, there was an overwhelming amount of stuff to get done so she was forced to push it down to the wire. We made it to Turtle Studios in South Philly just in time for rehearsal and met all the guys. Getting started right away we pushed on until just past midnight so that we could try to touch on each of the 14 songs at least once.  By that point, though, everyone was pretty much exhausted and Lacy nor I had even seen our respective hosts nor dropped off our bags.  Lacy and I discovered soon that the friend she was staying with lived ridiculously close to the friend I was staying with, which made the whole weekend's logistics just slightly less complicated.  And made for an easy decision on my last night there.  

Early Saturday morning we all reconvened at the studio and began fine tuning each song so the guys could all lock in the structures and we could coordinate things like who counts in which songs and for Tony, our percussionist and hammered dulcimer player, could learn the ins and outs of the occasional keyboard parts he had to play when both Ross and I were playing guitar.  It was so much fun working on a show like this with so many instrument changes and it really does keep you on your toes.  I had to play the electric and acoustic guitars, the keyboards (both piano and synth, sometimes multiple synth parts on the same song) and the mandolin in addition to singing backup vocals on three of the songs.  Tony was all over the place with different percussion toys and drums on different songs, the dulcimer on two songs and keys on a few more.  Even Ross opted to play the bells on In The Garden, a tune off Lacy's first album.   The only people who stayed put were Jeff on bass and Alec on the drums...and of course Lacy on vocals.  

After our Saturday rehearsal stretched until 2pm, we gathered up our stuff and I went to finally eat a decent meal (I had been eating mostly fruit and nuts to save time the whole morning) at a place called Silk City diner.  Steak and Eggs has never tasted so good.  Then I finally met with Virginia, with whom I was staying.  Poor Cylar, her daughter, was sick and miserable but we hung out with her the rest of the afternoon while we waited for the babysitter to come. Then we took the bottle of wine we had bought while out on a walk with Cylar to a restaurant called Figs close to V's place.  The food here was amazing and I didn't have to worry about gluten because all of their sauces are advertised as gluten free.  So, that was nice.  I believe I ordered the crab-stuffed sole with mashed potatoes and haricots verts while Virginia had this duck breast with some kind of bread and spinach.  It was pretty tasty, too.  

After our dinner, we went to meet some of her friends at a bar sometimes referred to as the most Philly bar in Philly.  Bob and Barbara's.  Home of the Citywide Special (a PBR and a shot of Jim Beam).   We were crashing a girl's night and stayed here a good hour or so listening to good jazz while I got to know some of her Philly friends.  Every time V ordered the Citywide, I ended up drinking the shot half, due to my dietary restrictions.  So, by the time we got to the next place, a combination beer and bowling alley in the Northern Liberty neighborhood often referred to as NoLibs, I was ready to call it a night. Luckily, so was V so we went back to relieve the baby sitter and turn in. After all, Sunday was to be a long day and I wanted to be at my best.  

A good eight hours of sleep later, I woke up refreshed and we hit up another local restaurant called the London Grill for brunch.  This place had a build your own Bloody Mary bar and several different infused vodkas, the most interesting one being bacon-infused, understandably listed at the top of the Vodka menu. I'm not really a Bloody Mary person but I figured, "why not?"  After all, when in Rome.  I enjoyed it, too, until I got a little too experimental, after going back to look over the other ingredients they had, and dumped too much liquid smoke in.  Before it was just tomato juice, celery bitters, pickled watermelon and a host of spicy things like chipotle pepper sauce, black pepper and the like.  

Kevin, Virginia's husband showed up part way through brunch because he had been visiting a friend of his, the previous night so we got to catch up a little bit too, which was nice.  I left them around 3, so I could reconnect with Lacy to pick up our equipment which was left at the studio all weekend.  I found her and her friend at a local coffee shop, OCF, (which had gluten free options for all the offerings!) across from the Eastern State Penitentiary and, after they finished their food, we walked back to her friend's place to get some merchandising details sorted out because her friend would be helping with that at the show.  Then we trucked it over to Turtle, picked up what we could and went to load in at L'Etage.  

The venue is above a creperie type restaurant on Bainbridge and N.6th Streets called Beaumonde.  Cool thing about this place is that, on our way back from Raleigh back in December, we stopped through and asked them if they would make their crepes without the crepes (as in just a pile of ingredients). They were accommodating and, in fact, said they do it all the time.  Gluten free seems to be catching on all over the place.  The bartender was even nice enough to check several dishes for me with the cooks in the kitchen.  We ordered and ate upstairs after having set up (which took almost no time at all) and sound checked. The stage at L'Etage was weirdly shaped (essentially a raised and elongated rectangle with banquets on three sides) so set up was a bit of a challenge but, even with six cooks in that kitchen, we were able to come up with a set up that took advantage of a long table that usually sits up there that we used for the keyboards and laptops. Lacy and I set up on either side of it at the front of the stage and everyone else behind us.  Tony and I were dancing around each other the whole time as my set up was basically right next to his and he had to use some of my setup (namely, the keyboard) and I had to keep going behind him to pick up different guitars.  

All in all, the performances were a success and we were well received by a diverse crowd, most of them either my friends or Lacy's friends and family and members of her production team and the producer from her first album.  We all had a great time and stayed behind for a few drinks after the premier of the video for Old Languages, which was also well received.  I had a ton of fun performing again and especially with such talented musicians.  All of whom were highly professional and pulled together an astonishing fourteen songs in an incredibly short amount of time.  I had the advantage of knowing them all ahead of time (some more than others) for the most part and having rehearsed them with Lacy a bunch, but they had to learn a lot on their own and piece it together without us there.  

Luckily, we made it work and were even able to improvise some parts that we didn't have the instruments for. The show at Drom in the East Village in a week and a half is going to be tons of fun as well but will present new challenges as we will have a slightly different lineup.  I will be playing guitar on more songs and Tony will play keys where I am unable to.  But the challenge of realizing recorded music in a live format is part of the fun of this whole experience.  I have been performing with Lacy for just about two years now and having a blast working with her.  She is such a creative person and her music presents all kinds of new challenges to me but it is always refreshing to be challenged musically.  It always inspires me to do more with my own music and reminds me how much I love performing live.  Up until Lacy and I teamed up I wasn't really performing live and would get something I dubbed "rock out envy" every time I went to see an awesome band. Now, I'm finally feeling in my element again performing.  And closer doing what I want to be doing.  

Anyway, we had one last night of drinking, just Lacy and I and her friend in the Fairmount neighborhood.  It was so damned cold that, after storing our stuff at her friend's place and parking, we slid into the first open bar we could find and chatted the night away.  This morning I actually ate at that cafe with the gluten free options, OCF cafe and we headed out of town from there, the Philly adventure over for now, arriving in Brooklyn with just enough time for me to decompress for half an hour before coming to work.  

This week we'll hopefully get to rehearse some and prepare ourselves for a slightly different experience. Next week's show at Drom is on the 28th of February, so if you're in NYC I expect you to come out and support!  It'll be legendary! Plus, there's the premier of the video for Old Languages directed by my good friend Mohammad Maaty.  Show starts at 8pm! 

Four years!

I wanted to write this blog a whole lot earlier in the day but I guess it's just a mark of how busy I am that I couldn't even make that happen.  Not that it was all work.  I did accomplish a lot today, in terms of music mostly.  Lacy and I rehearsed all afternoon but I also finished submitting my entry for the remix contest I've been talking about and even managed some errands, most notably finally taking my stuff to Goodwill to donate.  Later on I had dinner with a friend at my favorite gluten free pizza shop (even got a gluten free beer on the house when they found out I was gluten free...think it was the owner who I was talking to, himself gluten free for 8 years) and then I went to Brooklyn Raga Massive at Tea Lounge in Park Slope to meet a friend whom I knew would be there.

Today marks my four year anniversary in New York City...well, yesterday, the 7th.  It's 1am as I'm writing this.  When I first got here, being as settled as I am now in my routine and having friends whom I could just call up and have meet me wherever, was as far from reality as anything.  I knew no one, except a handful of college friends and my cousin, and had no full time job to fund such social excursions as I find myself in these days.  You could say I've come a long way but it was all, of course, inevitable.  I had to find my stride.  I remember the few times I did go out back then I'd see people who had it all together, it seemed, sitting around a table with their friends, drinking and having fun at the neighborhood bar that they all seemingly lived close to, and I sat over there wondering when I would feel as stable as they all looked.  Granted, I had no idea what their lives were really like but I knew what mine was like and I felt I had such a long way to go before I could be as comfortable as they looked.  I called it Life Envy.  Now, thinking back, who knows if they even had it together.  The point is, I still don't feel like I have it fully together, though always on the cusp, but either way, I know how to relax and have a good time.

Brooklyn Raga Massive is a gathering of musicians who play South Asian music, mostly Indian with the occasional jam session thrown in a the end.  My friend Robindra, whom I know from college and who I just recently discovered lives several blocks away from me, introduced me to the evening.  Tea Lounge was a favorite spot already but now we try to make it as many Thursdays as we can.  Tonight was amazing though.  A couple of Indian singers highlighted the night while one of the best dulcimer players I've seen tore up the stage near the end of the night.  We closed the place down and headed home not too long ago.

Now, I'm reflecting on my day.  Lacy's and my rehearsals are going really well and the both of us cannot wait to get in the studio with the other musicians in Philly next weekend to start going over the set list.  I can't tell you how excited I am to be playing with a live band again.  My roles in this concert will be pretty diverse too.  Doing guitar parts, keyboard parts and mandolin even on one song.  The concert in Manhattan will be awesome as well.

In addition to that, I'm psyched about finishing the remix ahead of the deadline.  Here's the link to my finished submission.



I wanted to write more about it in their submission form but was limited to some 365 characters or something like.  Basically, I took one listen to the song, "Golden Arrows" and decided that highlighting the syncopation in the guitar part was the way to go.  I wrote a whole new drumline with more emphasis on said syncopation but one of the first things that struck me before I even did that was this nice vocal ad lib part in between the first verse and the second verse where the singer just sings the word "Arrows" a few times.  I sampled it and had it open the song, and then brought it back, slightly sliced up, during the guitar solo and other parts of the song as an almost percussive highlight.  I messed with dropping certain parts out of the mix during different parts of the song to give it a more dynamic range, added some neat effects to both my drums for the bridge leading up to the interlude and the existing keyboard part there to give the whole section a spacier feel.  Ultimately, until this morning, something was missing.  I ended up experimenting with running the existing rhythm guitar part back through Guitar Rig with some effects, and played around with an LFO (Low Frequency Oscillator) on one of the parameters and came out with that triplet rhythm you hear in the guitar part now.  That sold me and I realized it was done.  Or as done as these things can be.  :)

I suggest listening to the original version here, and then listening to mine again.  Regardless of whether or not I win the contest, it was such a fun process that I hope to do something like this again soon. 

Meanwhile, I think I've had a pretty awesome four year NYC anniversary but I am tuckered out and should have been in bed a while ago.  Oh, and there's apparently a blizzard happening tomorrow so that'll be fun.  More updates to come in the next few weeks as we prepare to rock Philly and then come back and rock NYC.  Oh, and btw, I got another VO gig! Good night all!

Masters, licensing, upcoming concerts and nostalgia...

Just finished in the studio with my man Julian over at On Air Mastering yesterday.  The tracks sound great and I was incredibly eager to push through my copyright registration and send them off to Parma Licensing.  So, naturally, I took care of that right away.

They've received them as of this morning and should be reviewing them soon.  So, now I wait.  I'm truly excited about the opportunities this could open up for me but not without a healthy dose of impatience.  Healthy because it's motivating me to devour this list of other music licensing sites.  The idea being to spread my music out over the internet to get more simultaneous exposure.  After all, my contract with Parma is non-exclusive.

The article, which I can't remember how I stumbled on it...might have been one of the LinkedIn forums that I'm on, has been invaluable and whoever spent the time compiling the information, I thank you.  Now, I'm just trying to parse it all out and figure out which ones are worth my time.  Some do not offer royalties on placements, others require a minimum upload that I can't fulfill at present, while still others have a crappy payout split.  The list isn't necessarily exhaustive but I may just pick two or three good ones for now and delve into their terms and conditions and start making profiles if they're worthwhile.

So, that's keeping me busy.  But so is Lacy's music, which is nice.  We're trying to rehearse much more now because we're gearing up for a few shows.  I'm getting extremely excited about that actually.  Now, we have three shows planned, two of which are the CD release parties.  And I have my Behringer pedal cooperating with Mainstage and my Mainstage concert set up so that I can flip through the sounds for each song as well as turn on and off some of the effects with my foot.   All that remains for me to do is to get Mobius (my software looper) set up so I can start doing some of my own things with looping and layering.  Gah, I love playing live!

The first show is this one, performing at Caffe Vivaldi with the inimitable Tania Stavreva, who is in the process of completing her debut classical album (about which I'm so excited for her!).  That should be a good show.  Lacy and I are playing electric, too, so it'll be different from our open mics.

Next up is the Philly CD release party on the 17th of February at L'etage on Bainbridge and 6th in Philly, followed a few weeks later by the NYC CD release party on the 28th of February at Drom on 6th and Ave A in the E. Village.  Some of the players from the album have signed on to play with the band already so we're almost at a full band for this.  Both of us are really excited to rock out and can't wait to bring the new tracks to life.  Also being featured at both parties will be the premiere of the video for the song "Old Languages," directed by my good friend and colleague Mohammad Maaty.  So, if you can make either show watch out for that.  It's pretty awesome, I must say.

Now that all that's out of the way.  Some thoughts.  Just the other day, I received a piece of mail from my brother that was a rare memento he had dug up from the days of my first high school band, Buggstar (one g, two r's, no spaces).  A hand written history of the band by yours truly.  I read it back to back cover to cover (okay it was about five sheets of notebook paper), and I actually got a tiny bit wistful.  Just reading the way I talked about things back then, life seemed so much simpler.  It was before my dream of having a career in music had ever been tarnished by the harsh realities of the world.  And I talked about it as though it was a sure thing, as though nothing could stop me.  It was great to remember that I thought that way at one time and that somehow despite everything that came in way between now and then, I somehow got to where I am now.

It also made me miss my old band mates, hence the wistfulness.  We had such good times back then.  Throughout my parent's garage in boxes and probably amongst my brother's things are all these notebooks filled with songs and set lists and lyrics, chronicling our entire journey just about.  That was my first experience playing with other musicians.  It really came down to me, my brother and Jeremy, our singer...oh, and the six drummers we went through.  We recorded a bunch of stuff too, which is still around, on demo CDs and cassette tapes.  Cassette Tapes!  Boxes and boxes of cassette tapes.  I used to have a four track recorder that I would use to overdub tracks onto our demo recordings and come up with all kinds of stuff. While it wasn't the height of my composing career, I still like to go back and listen to them sometimes.  The songs were complex for what we basically were: a garage band.  But, nonetheless, I figure, what the hell?  Why not?

Here's one of my favorites from my sound cloud page.  Guitars: Tim Daoust, Vocals, Rhythm Guitar: Jeremy Shaner, Bass: Paul Daoust, Drums: the elusive Russell Foley...where are you kid?