Obligatory end of year post...

Approximately 12 hours ago I was riding in the dark and the pouring rain to Indianapolis International Airport.  Yeah, that was about 5am.  The cheap flights are always early in the morning. But it's a mark of how well I'm doing that I'm not only traveling to see my girlfriend's family but also my own in a few weeks.  Yes, I may still be buying the cheaper plane tickets but I'm traveling twice for the holidays.  CNN has been treating me well over the last few months and money's not as tight as it was before I started working all three jobs two years ago.  Finally.  I'm really enjoying getting to work there not just for the view out my window that I can't stop posting pics of.  The people I work directly with are great, my boss is great and I'm meeting incredible people in all the other departments and learning that I can find opportunities to expand my duties there.  Sometimes they even find me.

I'm not sure I can post the last voice over I did for them but I swear I'll alert you...no wait! Here it is!
So, that was a lot of fun to do.  The job seems to get better every day and then some opportunity like that jumps in my lap.  A few weeks ago I was looking up new music for GPS with Fareed Zakaria using Turner's massive music library at my boss' request.  And I even helped translate an interview in French with one of the survivors of the attack on the Bataclan club in Paris for Anderson Cooper's show.  Apparently, I've effectively used all of my degrees at my job now.  What?!

Anyway, don't think this means I'm giving up on being a composer. Oh god, never. One of the things I can count on is one of the handful of directors I've worked with that have varying degrees of prolificness eventually calling me for a job.  I got a VO and a separate music job from the same guy last week just before leaving for my short vacation in Indy.

I will say that things were a little touch and go for a minute there as I was focusing on CNN and not really devoting time to it. Also my laptop was on the fritz.  All that is fixed now thanks to my friend with whom I had been trying to write music with.  He and his wife and I jammed together a bunch in the summer time but when their respective semesters started school just kept getting in the way for them.  Turns out though, he's a whiz with Macbooks and I happened to need a new hard drive installed and a memory upgrade.  And thanks to all those slips and disasters I had in the past, my diligence when it comes to backing up my data paid off.  I was back up and running within a few days or so once we did the install together.

And just in time too.  Mohammad came through with a quick music gig, a track for his directing reel and I busted it out in record time cuz that's how I do.  The VO for the sizzle reel (separate job) was, inevitably, a mock movie trailer voice so you can imagine I had fun with that one.  One thing that I really want to do next year is chase things like that down instead of this sitting around and waiting for them to come to me. Obviously, that's going to require a different approach and perhaps some outside encouragement.

So, what else happened during this fine year of 2015? Well besides a lot of traveling and a new job, I now have a partner in crime who just moved in with me back in November. And that's been real nice. No more roommates, I says.  And guess what else? We get to travel together, beyond going to see relatives.  Next stop is Guadeloupe this March.  A French speaking Caribbean nation...with an active volcano. Sounds right up my alley.

Another thing, I plan on doing next year is writing more in the blog...which requires having more things to write about, so look out for that.

A Sea Change...

At the end of my work week here and I'm trying to accept that it's not all productivity and milestones.  But then I'm also constantly trying to remind myself, when I'm sitting here idle, at a slow moment in the work evening, that I did accomplish a lot earlier today (voice over auditions and work on re-editing one of my demos...oh, and rock star yoga class at noon before work) and that it's no big deal, as awful as it feels, that I'm getting nothing else done today.   It's just too distracting right now at work and so many of the things I have to do, I need to be in the home office/studio to be doing them.

I'm on at least 5 major tasks right now that are preoccupying my time:
Working on the remix project which is due Feburary 8th
Submitting VO auditions on an almost daily basis if I can
Rehearsing for the upcoming CD release parties with Lacy
Networking with filmmakers to try and get another film scoring job
Revamping some of my voice over demos and creating a promo demo so I can ultimately start soliciting agents

...and I think that's it...maybe I can count trying to clean up my apartment on a grand scale.  Right now I'm on the donating clothes leg of that race.

So, you see, very few of these things can be done at work.  I guess I can be researching filmmakers and writing emails right now but everything else needs to be done at home.  I'm in a phase with the remix contest where I really can't be doing anything in headphones.  I need my monitors.  I could be doing research on agents, too, I guess.  

But all this comes with the sinking feeling that, with a potential change in my work schedule here, I may have fewer chances to get any of my work done during the day unless I adjust my routines.  I've always been good at that though.  A while back, I lost the overnight shifts, sorry, got rid of the overnight shifts and while it is nice to be rid of them, I did get a staggering amount of work done there.  During the weekdays here it gets far too busy for me to have my laptop out and, lately, I haven't even been getting breaks because of how short staffed we are.  Having more seniority when we finally get our new hires in here, I stand to completely lose all weekend and late evening shifts, which would be nice...I mean it'd be effing great!  but the notion of doing any kind of work other than administrative stuff, and sending emails would be all but gone.  Maybe I could get away with the occasional mixing and editing of music tracks on my break, or voicing auditions in edit bays, something I haven't done in a while.

Ultimately, depending on what my new shift is, I'm going to have to figure out when during the day I can do things like submit to VO auditions and compose and mix audio.  Shutting the door to my room works but sometimes it's still too distracting when Katrina and I are home at the same time, which could happen, say, if I get a 10am - 6pm shift.  Don't get me wrong it be a rock star shift and I'd eat it up.  Imagine!  Being able to get off work at dinner time and go home and cook dinner and eat it right away instead of this shit where I make three portions of the same meal and carry it all to work, risk spilling it in my bag (happened yesterday with chicken soup), then have to microwave it later so that the vast majority of dinners I eat have been reheated.   Imagine, getting up at the same time every day and going to yoga at the same time and then having weekends off so I can hang out with people who have 9-5 Monday through Friday jobs.  I've been on horrible dates that were my weekend night but the other person's middle of the week or vice versa (worse in my opinion).

But I digress.  This blog is about my own productivity.  I see it as a challenge that, with all the things that could potentially change with my schedule, I may have to do my freelance work at less optimal times of day.  So far, I've actually enjoyed and actively benefited from working nights.  I wake up fresh, go to yoga, then come home and work my face off and then go to work my night job feeling accomplished and in a good mood, get off work, maybe have one drink and sleep and do it all over again.

I suppose I'm getting a tiny bit wistful but, ya know, one door closes another opens, yadda yadda.  I guess I'm going to post this blog and then get to doing my research.  Later on!

 

Blind Barber...

I was walking down 10th Street in Alphabet City in search of a bar called the Blind Barber last night.  Stupidly, I assumed that the actual old school looking barber shop couldn't have been it and passed right by it and the adjacent store front that had no sign in front of it.  I turned the corner on B and glanced up the block aways before turning back and deciding to investigate further.  Lacy had told me in her last text to me that I was in for a surprise.  We were meeting at a party for the PR company she's working with which had an open bar and where we were supposed to meet a ton of music folks.  

I walked more slowly toward where the address should have been and then spotted a store front constructed of old looking wood with an over large iron pair of scissors hanging on the wall.  There was a door with no handle but a slender window in it and, of course, music coming from inside that I had no idea how I had missed before.  Thinking this was maybe some kind of speakeasy, I knocked, like an idiot before turning my head to the left and noticing a gentleman with an eye patch (seriously, not kidding) checking IDs in front of the barber shop.  This was all starting to make sense.  

In the back of an actual two-chair barber shop, where two people were getting actual haircuts, was a sliding door which led to the bar I was looking for.  And the party was in full swing.  

I connected with Lacy shortly after and took advantage of the open bar for a mere ten minutes before we had to start buying drinks.  The crowd was great and everyone was really nice.  Lacy first introduced me to the PR people she's working directly with and then we met a few people who were musicians in bands and just talked the night away.   Dancing was hinted at in the invite but I saw immediately that this was not the kind of party where I'd be trying out my moves from Sunday.  

Did I mention, by the way, that I went to the coolest yoga workshop on Sunday and learned some breakdancing moves?  One of the yoga teachers at Yoga Works Soho that I've been taking class from teaches a breakdancing inspired yoga workshop...or was it a yoga inspired breakdancing class?  She herself got started breakdancing when she was just a teenager and then came to yoga years later and was looking for a way to incorporate the two.  I heard about it from taking her class and got really excited because I've always wanted to learn more about breakdancing and it was a few years ago that I started to notice all the similarities between the two insofar as the kind of strength required for the poses and the moves, etc.  The class was so much fun.  

She got us started with a flow sequence of her design that echoed breakdancing moves, then as the class goes on she got us more comfortable being on our hands and doing inversions.  By the end of it she had us learn a sequence of break dancing moves and stitch them together to do a routine.  The problem is I have been out of yoga classes for a few weeks now, just practicing at home because one of my memberships is suspended and the other doesn't start back up until January.  So I was and am a little sore.  

Anyway, the remixing project is pushing forward now that I have my new software and I'm inches away from calling it done.  Hoping to be sending all this off by the end of the year.  There are 7 songs now I believe ranging from a minute and a half to 4 minutes or so in length.  All of them electronic, some incorporating guitar and bass.  I'm psyched to have them done and out there.  

Right now, I'm waiting to hear back from an opportunity that I won't say much about but that it's big.  Even if I don't get it, I hope to be saying that a lot in the new year.  Wish me luck!

Oh What a Night...

I've got a good feeling about 2013.  I keep hearing myself say that.  I just got back from the 2012 New York Voice Over Mixer tonight where I met and reconnected with a ton of really great people.  Though I didn't win any of the raffle prizes, it was a really great night all around.  Besides getting to chat with my current coach and hear more great advice and praise from her on my progress, I reconnected with an old coach, met up with a voice over narrator or two that I met last year and made all kinds of new VO friends and got some great insight from them.  I even met a handful of producers and casting agents.  One, who was a film composer as well, I ended the night chatting with at the after party.  Great guy.  And not the only composer in the house either.  I met another fellow who has been doing voice over as long as I have right about and also composing.

Kinda cool to spend a night schmoozing with my contemporaries and having great conversations with people doing what I'm doing.  This year I seemed to have more direct questions for these people as well, so I feel, in general, like I got much more out of it than last year and may have forged some lasting relationships with these people.  Last year, I did meet some folks but I had to leave early for Tania's birthday concert (something I've attended for the last two years) and thus missed out on most of the event. 

This year Tania's concert and the voice over mixer fall on different days, so I'll be able to make it to that as well tomorrow.  In fact, Lacy and I are planning on performing there when I get off work tomorrow night.  So, that should be great fun.  She and I are gearing up for CD release parties coming up in February, as I had mentioned.  Now that she's here in Brooklyn, we're rehearsing a lot more and today, in fact, I actually went to her place to rehearse for a change (she's always been coming here to rehearse).  So that was nice and convenient.
 
Tomorrow night we play one tune from the new album and potentially two from the old.  It's late now and I've got a long day tomorrow between church choir, work and the concert afterward, so I may have to call it quits tonight after I finish my tea.  So, good night and stay tuned for more updates. 


    

Being solo, Music work, Music fun...

I can't get my mind off a weekday day trip to the beach these days. It's just something that occurred to me the other day and, with the weather as pleasant as it's been, it almost seems a shame to not be taking advantage of the proximity and plenitude of beaches here.  So, I've got my eye set on one and, unless I find a friend who's off during the week like me, I think I'm just going to go.  Lately, I've been doing things like that, not waiting until I have someone to go with and just going.  Sometimes it's even better to go alone.  You meet people, you can leave when you want and you don't have to worry about whether you enjoy someone's company enough to spend an entire evening/day with them.

I met a new friend at Marie Christine Giordano's dance performance on Saturday night, for example, a dancer who had just moved to the city, and we went out for a beer after the show.  And of course, I went to that networking event solo and made a ton of new acquaintances there.


And MCG's dance was spectacular, by the way.  She collaborated with a visual artist who built a light sculpture, a spherical object made from tubes of, I'm guessing neon, lit up blue, as well as an amazing lighting designer and a composer, Al Comet who worked with samples.  All of it was amazing and I'm glad I made it.  MC and I may collaborate soon too, for one of her open rehearsals.  We met for lunch this Wednesday and discussed me coming by and seeing her rehearsal space next week.

On top of that, I was asked to score another film by a filmmaker that my current director is working with.  Ben, my director, recommended me to this guy and he emailed me earlier in the week.  This is the second such out of the blue recommendation in recent weeks, so it's kind of cool.  This fellow is based in Italy right now and has put together a 23 minute short Samurai flick.  It plays really well and I'm going to have fun scoring it with some traditional Japanese style instruments but it's going to be a challenge.  As with Sides of the Track, learning about the instruments and/or digging deep to recover the tiny bit of knowledge I still have about them, as well as finding people to perform them, is going to be the bulk of the work for this film.

And I still have the Sundance cut of "The Life," the Ballerina scene from "The Life" and any last tweaks to Ben's score that may crop up in the next few days.  It's good to be busy.

Most of my blogs lately have been on the subject of how much work I've been doing, which is a good theme.  I think I like it.  It's not all work though...it is all music though, for the most part (with some voice over thrown in...got another direct invite the other day and submitted a pretty kick ass audition but now I wait...as per usual).  There has been some recreational music based activities as well.  Today I jammed with a new friend from work who is a drummer, and a pretty good one at that.  Murat is moving to NYC from Philly this week and as soon as we all sort out practice space/storage space for all of our equipment, we're all three going to be starting a band.  Lacy and I are still preparing for gigging in the fall as well.  So, it just keeps getting better.

And top all of the above off with the fact that I'm finally on a more human shift.  I just finished my first week of it and here I am chilling on my second full day off in a row after having actually slept, during the night on both Sunday and Monday nights..didn't have to stay up all night, nor sleep during the day.  And, can I tell you? It was amazing to do that after two and a half years of that crap.

So, anyway, been thinking about how much better my life is now compared to, say six years ago, because of how much music is in it.  I'd be languishing if I hadn't come up here to pursue this career.  I was in a rut before I decided to go back to grad school and depressed to boot, couldn't see a way out of it.  And what I have now seemed a million miles away.  A complete impossibility, a vague dream I had.  And now, here I am, not exactly making it, but at least surviving and doing what I love.  All because I stood up one day and realized that the only way I was going to achieve anything was by taking the initiative and doing something about it.  I knew what I wanted to do and I knew that I needed some experience if I was going to do it.  So I put myself in a position to gain that experience, accepted that it would take years, lost a relationship over it but then decided that since I was free, I could really do anything I wanted.  It was a powerful epiphany and after that the rest just fell into place.  I knew there'd be jobs up here, I knew I'd always wanted to live in a big city, I knew that NYC was high on that list of places and I knew that if I didn't throw myself out there that I'd never know if I could have done it.

Now, here I am talking like I've arrived.  I admit there's still a long way to go but in the context of looking back to see how far I've climbed (clumb?), I think it's okay to give a nod to my achievements.  Just a random assessment, as I take note of the fact that music is all around me now, the way I wanted my life to be all those years ago when for a period of time I was too afraid to follow that dream.  Boy am I glad I wised up and got off my ass.

Barbès, the film score and the upcoming premiere...

I can't seem to get enough of these guys.  Slavic Soul Party was playing at Barbès as they do every Tuesday night and I just got back.  Despite needing to finish a few cues for the film score and start another one, I decided to go to Barbès after yoga because a new friend I just met said she'd be there. I love how this kind of stuff happens in NYC.  After Monday's 4pm yoga class that I usually take, I stopped by my friend Paige's apartment in DUMBO to chat and help her with some stuff on her computer.  While there I met a subletter that is currently staying with her, a piano player from Israel via London.  We hit it off and got talking about music and it turned out she was heading to Barbès tonight to see Slavic Soul Party.  She had been turned on to them because a friend of hers from Finland was doing some acrobatics during their set.   The Finland friend herself had connected with the band via YouTube.  When they announced her they mentioned they had been anticipating her performing with them for over a year.  Another great story of musicians connected across vast distances.  And apparently, one of the friends she introduced me to at the bar tonight is also a composer. So, that was cool to connect and chat with a fellow composer.

And of course, I shamelessly plugged the show coming up in a few weeks at Galapagos Art Space, about which I am exceedingly excited.  It's going to be freaking amazing and tons of fun.  I have been spending every spare second I'm not working on the film score working on making sure the logistics of recording and looping Tania do not destroy me.  I'm using this program called Mobius and am currently deciding whether or not to use it as a standalone or through Mainstage, a program designed for live performance of various instruments (both live and MIDI).   I currently use Mainstage to perform Moon, Tides, Cycles and blog about that here.  For the new piece, I am planning on looping Tania's performance during one part of the piece and having her play against herself but, in addition, I'm looking for a way to sample her performance (or her rehearsal depending on my ambition) so I can use those sounds to create a palette of sound to use during the second half of the piece.  I think I'm zeroing in on the most efficient way to do so.  But if you want to see the end result you have to come to the show.  And really please do.  The link to buy tickets is here.  I know $20 advanced seems like a lot but think of the fact that we have to essentially rent the venue to be able to perform and get oursleves heard.  It's hard being a musician sometimes.  :-/  Plus add in the fact that this is a world premiere of a new piece, the performance of which is going to be an outstanding achievement if it goes over well.  Piano and electronics is harder than it sounds. 


Anyway, at the moment I'm working off of a nice mixture of my current favorite elixirs, a glass of Côte du Rhone, a glass of Pernod, and a Dry Blackthorn Cider.  Good thing it's my Saturday night.  Tomorrow, I have to get a cavity filled and then I'm going back to Learning Ally for the first time in three weeks to volunteer.  Afterward, it's all film score all day long if I can help it.   

Meanwhile, I have my birthday coming up this weekend...which is why it's ever so important I get something done on the film score.  I'm going to want to spend the entire day Saturday just celebrating that I've survived not just another year, my 31st, but that I survived another year in NYC.  For now, Good night!

NC and Brooklyn, again...

I've been meaning to post about this since last weekend since it's sort of a follow up to the previous post about the Greensboro (in this case NC in general, specifically Winston-Salem) - Brooklyn connection.  I went to a party with my friend Steve, a cinematographer/director for whom I've been writing music, somewhere in Greenpoint at his friend's audio mastering studio where they were having a fourth anniversary party. 

I arrived later than I had intended because the L train wasn't running all weekend, so when I got there all the alcohol was pretty much gone except a few liquor bottles and I knew no one except Steve.  I hung around though and we went to a bodega to pick up some booze and brought it back.  As the party started to dwindle and people left, I started to think it was going to be a bust.  I had been hoping to meet a lot of new people, and some of them industry people but I had only really had a chance to speak to a few of them...one of them the girlfriend of some drunk jealous hipster.  When the party was down to about 10 people and everyone seemed to be engaging someone else, I got talking to a guy named Amos, who offhandedly mentioned something about North Carolina.  When I asked him if he was from NC, he mentioned Winston Salem and having attended the NC School of the Arts, a program I had auditioned for some 11 years ago.  Incidentally, he also auditioned for my Alma Mater, UNCG.  Funny, if things had been differently, we might have gone to school together.  He studied music as well, was a clarinet player.

So, I've made another musician connection and another NC-Brooklyn connection connection.  Incidentally, when he sent me a friend request on Facebook, I checked it right away on my phone as we were all walking from the party to the G train.  We had 6 mutual Facebook friends, most of them old dorm mates of mine from freshman year that he went to high school with. Small world. 

Anyhow, beyond serendipitous run-ins, the world of the composer is still humming with much activity.  I'm still technically on retainer for "The Life" and there's a chance I may have to write some more to the cues that I've already submitted.  Steve's music is nearing completion on my end, hopefully.  Both the promo and the music for the narrative reel.  I'm enjoying both processes as always.  There's yet another exciting film music opportunity potentially on the horizon but I don't want to say too much about it yet.  It's not certain yet. 

And beyond those projects, still, I have to complete composition on the piece that Tania and I will be performing on May 10th at Galapagos Art Space. This is going to be the toughest because not only do I have to complete the piece I have to work out logistics for performing it but I think I know what I'm going to do.  I'm going to test out the viability of sampling her during the performance and then if it doesn't work, I'm going to save recordings from our rehearsal and use those as material for the performance.  To catch you up, my plan is to use recorded samples of her performance, cut into chunks and manipulated, as material for the second half of the piece...where things are going to get interesting.  Sorry, that's all the preview you get for now. 

Meanwhile, the voice over career has not seen anymore excitement since the Aereo project but I've been submitting to voice123.com feverishly every chance I get and even working out ways that I can submit auditions while on the go, as long as I can find time in one of the edit bays at work and I have my laptop.  Also, currently trying to figure out how to install Windows on my Mac so I can use Sound Forge anywhere. It's a Windows only program but it has the easiest to use noise reduction plugin that I can find anywhere.  If I am at work and I get an audition that I can submit to on my break or before I clock in, it would help me immensely to have Sound Forge at my fingertips since I've already created the best workflow with it here at home.  And back here in my home studio, I've streamlined my process even more to the point where I can submit as many as two auditions in under thirty minutes.  Most of that is because of being able to leave things half setup but also, it comes from years of using this software and equipment. 


For now, I'm going to get going.  Lacy should be here in a bit and we'll be rehearsing all afternoon.  We're performing at Pete's Candy Store's open mic tonight in Williamsburg.  Come if you can, it starts at 6, I believe. 

Disaster not averted...

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.

Freddy's bar open mic...

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!

The night...

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!

Teletextile...

Did I mention I've been busy? Yes, of course I have. Of all the projects on my plate, one that I didn't mention last time and one that is starting to take precedence over everything is that I'm currently doing some arranging for one Pamela Martinez and her band Teletextile. It's been a fun project so far, mainly arranging her background vocals for her rehearsals. Her recordings are well produced and rich with instrumentation and harmony so she's been looking for a way to get that translated to the live show. On November 20th at 8pm, the band is playing at Pianos on the LES, so if you're in New York you should try to come see it.

Excitingly, and as previously mentioned, that same weekend on Sunday morning, Bill Peek will be playing a piano sketch of mine titled, "The Way We Dream" as a prelude to the morning service at the First Unitarian Church in Brooklyn. Service starts at 11am sharp for those interested in coming just to hear the piece.

This morning I'm working the second to last overnight shift before I go back into my regular schedule. And I'm lacking a great deal of sleep right now but I feel pretty alive nonetheless. Quite surprised actually to not be rubbing my eyes as I type this. It's been a struggle to manage my time over the past few weeks but I must say that I'm coming out on top of that struggle. All thanks to the sense of routine that my yoga practice has instilled in me. It's remarkable how dedicated you can find yourself to something if you're paying for it...and here I was avoiding getting a gym membership thinking I didn't want to pay for something I wasn't sure I'd find the time for. Then I realized that simply making time for something that grounds me in some kind of routine helped everything else to fall into place.

Now, I don't know how much I've said about the Anusara Yoga studio in DUMBO that I've been a member of for almost two months, but it's a great place and all the teachers are really nice and experienced too. The location is nice too (I can gaze out at the Manhattan skyline from the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges on up to the Empire State Building and the rest of midtown from the wide windows on two sides of the studio). I've been deepening my practice as well and finding out I can do things I never imagined I could do...like Wheel Pose or Urdhva Dhanurasana for example. The first time I got up into that pose, I just felt this incredible rush and I was so aware of my body when I came out of it. Also, learning about proper alignment in these poses has really helped me get around problems I've been having with my knee. I'm finding that it's the best form of exercise for me, much better than running or lifting weights or even doing yoga on my own at home.

Another part of my routine is the Park Slope Food Co-op, catering to my need to be environmentally conscious and at the same time, not pay too much for organic groceries. It's not too far out of my way, in fact, closer than Trader Joe's and much more convenient to post yoga class grocery trips. I've worked two shifts there so far stocking and processing produce in the basement and enjoyed it both times, despite being so out of it the last time from having just woken up that I knocked over a box of mushrooms and spilled an entire crate of hot peppers within the first hour of my shift. Yikes, right?

So, my new routine has certainly helped with productivity and I've even had some great networking opportunities in the past week alone. On Sunday, my friend Anne, the co-owner of Tate Street Coffee House in Greensboro, NC, came to the city to run the NYC Marathon and later took a bunch of old coffee house employees out to dinner in the East Village. At the dinner I met the wife of one former employee who is an actor/dancer and we chatted for a long time and exchanged cards.

On Monday, I went with a friend to a silent auction for Forward Motion Theater and met another UNCG Alum who is a choreographer. Also exchanged cards.

And working with Pamela's band I've met some talented musicians too. I'm excited because any number of these connections could be beneficial and I can see new projects popping up everywhere.

Anyway, tomorrow morning, er, afternoon, when I wake up, I'm going to jump right into finishing the background vocal arrangement for Pamela and will probably meet with her at some point to go over some things. For now, I get back to work. And sleep is thankfully not far off either.

Scroll down past the computer talk unless you care...

I need a break from trying to work on this scene. My computer's been acting up recently and I'm a little disheartened by it. I put so much time and energy into building this computer last year and it was supposed to be a brick. It was supposed to be able to handle all of this software I'm using on it and not crash on me. And yet, I'm just having so many problems lately. And I hardly have the time to trouble shoot them so I've just been dealing with it.

Here are the specs for those who care and know a little about it: Asus M2N-MX SE Plus mother board, 4 GB of RAM, a 2.61Ghz AMD Athalon 64 bit dual core processor, and I'm running Windows XP 64 bit. I also have a Creative SB Audigy Soundblaster sound card.

I've been having problems where I'll occasionally hear a crackling in the speakers on start up and sometimes when running audio programs that use a lot of processing power. I thought I had a conflict between the sound card on the mother board and the one I installed in the PCI slot but I don't want to go messing around in the Bios to try and shut down the one on the mother board if I'm not entirely sure that's the problem. It could be anything else. I seemed to somehow have resolved it by getting rid of a component that was opening on startup, something called Realtek HD Audio, which I know came packaged with the sound card I installed (I got it years ago for another computer and just moved it to this one and updated the drivers). But occasionally, I still hear it. Mainly when the processor gets really taxed. (I should also mention that I run the audio from my audio and synth software through my Tascam US-122L Audio/MIDI interface to cut down on latency from the MIDI software especially...I still run Windows Media and system audio through the sound card though).

Now, the main problem is that this new software I have sometimes is pretty processor intensive but I was under the impression that my processor could handle it. But I've been having crashes lately when I try to edit while the program is playing back audio and sometimes just whenever I try to run video in Sony Vegas, which I never had big problems with before. Now, the obvious first thing to check is that I don't have other background programs running that might also be taxing the processor simultaneously. I can't see that there are. Maybe I had Firefox open and Windows Media and for a bit there my task manager showed that something related to google talk was using up a chunk of RAM.

But I'm at a loss. I guess this is the life of a PC. Occasionally you have these idiopathic things that don't happen often enough to really indicate what the big problem might be. They only occur long enough to annoy you and then the thing runs great for a period of time.

At any rate, I do have other things on my mind besides the health of one of my investments. I found out today (and this was my suspicion all along) that CNN really is too good to be true. My boss informed me that I'd be coming in on an as-needed basis and that they didn't have any freelance work right now. I had half-expected that because it's just what one gets when one boasts a little about something and I'm not going to lie. I did a little boasting...or maybe it was just a little well deserved patting on the back. Either way, I let my guard down and relaxed for a second and got a little ahead of myself, counted my chickens before they hatched, as it were.

At any rate, as I've mentioned before (in so many words), there's nothing like a long stretch with nothing to do but think (like a train ride...or a long day at work with a lot of down time) to set your mind right. I decided I'm not going to do the easy conventional thing and lie down and start being negative about it. That's comfortable and sort of a cop out. I need to get creative. Then something occurred to me that's right under my nose. I've succeeded in taking advantage of connections up here more than I realize and there's no shortage of those. I should worry more about making as many connections as I can now while I'm actively seeking jobs because that can only serve to help me down the line, should I ever become unemployed again. And it's always nice to be able to pass on connections to friends, too. Besides, as much as I'd like to have a full time job and security, my mother said it best, this schedule lets me work on my music a lot more, and it allows me the leeway to work a bunch of different jobs (where they're available) and make a lot of different connections. Besides a foot in the door is a foot in the door no matter in what capacity I'm working there.

So, I'm slightly crestfallen, but not defeated. No, never defeated. The funny thing about accomplishing your goals is that the more of them you have under your belt, the less likely you are to give up the rest of them in the face of adversity. You can more easily tell yourself that, hey, you've done it before, why not again?

So there's your pep talk for the evening. I gotta get some rest, one more shift at CNN tomorrow and then it's a whole lot of uncertainty about when I will work there again. We shall see. I leave you with a Bela Fleck and the Flecktones tune that is running through my head and kind of fits the situation.

Trouble and Strife

Networking and not working...

I went to that photo shoot in Greenpoint yesterday. Soon, I'll post some of the photos. They came out pretty well and I'm satisfied that I got a good deal...seeing as how I only had to pay the guy for the media (which was $10, so I'm sure I was paying for a little more than the media...the electric bill maybe, but whatever). He was a pretty nice fellow, an older immigrant from, I think Austria or Germany. Very much a people person. When I arrived at the building, on a back road in an industrial part of the neighborhood, Tony was already outside photographing two other people who had come for the test shoot. He greeted me warmly and immediately introduced me to Austin, another composer/musician who had come for the free photos, and said we should network. So we did.

I've noticed that it's getting loads easier to meet the people I want to meet, music and film types, but that not everyone is so keen on meeting yet another New York musician trying to "make it." Now, for my part, I'm not so much trying to make it in the sense that people most often think about. No, I've grown out of that and I think I'll be content if "making it" just means eating every day and having a comfortable apartment and a network of friends. When I mentioned that I was eventually going to start a band, his wry response was, "You and every other white kid in this town." Thanks, buddy.

I've decided a long time ago how I'm going to respond to this sentiment. After years of people telling me, "It ain't easy, kid," I've learned to respond, "I'm not doing it because it's easy." If I wanted something easy, I'd have stayed in Raleigh working in television.

Last night anyway, I went to Cobble Hill to hang out with an old high school friend, Mike E., for his birthday. One, I love that neighborhood and two, Mike has got some much nicer more humble friends. I met a guy who is a composer/jazz musician and we got talking about scoring because he's getting into that himself. I'd much rather associate with people like that who understand that it doesn't have to be so cut throat and you don't have to look at every new musician in town as someone infringing on your turf, like this is some kind of drug war.

Continuing on, I met a friend of Karishma's the other night at the Juilliard. This one works with a human rights media outlet that develops documentary content about human rights issues. Karishma and I were going there to meet her for an Indian art house movie but we both ended up being late and couldn't get in. So we romped around the Lincoln Center and surrounding areas just chatting about life until the movie was to get out. There we waited until her friend left the theater. Karishma and her friend talked for about ten minutes straight catching up on Mumbai connections and everything and then we started to head back to the train. On the platform I casually dropped that I was composer and we exchanged info. She said sometimes they need composers but it's all pro bono work. This is the kind of thing I would not mind having my name associated with at all so I told her I could totally work pro bono.

I'm going back to work after several days off of feeling useless and wishing I were making money with my time. I did do some job hunting while off and I have some good ideas about how to get in touch with this job as a Tape Operator at Deluxe Post Production. They are located literally right around the corner from Technicolor and it occurred to me they might either compete with or do business with Technicolor. Therefore, I might have a connection already. We'll see.

Spring has sprung...

It's already hot as hell here...in my opinion, at least. 80 degrees is hot enough. Tomorrow, accuweather.com is saying that it's going to be 89 degrees. Then Wednesday it's going to be 65 and raining. See, we never get a real transitional period, at least not a pleasant one, like the ones I remember from my childhood. It's always just slightly warmer, but rainier and still too cold to put away the jacket and then, you get one day where the weather is perfect and then, suddenly, it's hot, and everywhere you go, you sweat.

It sounds an awful lot like I'm complaining. The weather, heat aside, yesterday was amazing. It's not even just the weather itself but what the weather precipitates: Hoards of people out enjoying the weather. The city felt alive this weekend. Bands in every square, people in sandals, girls in bikinis, ice cream, people laying in the grass, people sleeping in the grass. I enjoyed myself. I did have to work on Saturday but hung out with friends in Cobble Hill in the evening and played poker. Afterward, we went to a bar down the street with a terrace. In fact, the entire bar was a terrace. It was pretty cool.

It's slowly starting to creep in how cool it is, this city. I mean, I have this thought in my head that goes something like, "It's cool to live in New York City in the summer," but now I actually understand what that means. Sorry, can't really put it into words though.

On another less abstract note, I've met a filmmaker at work who knows a lot of musicians and filmmaker types and has sent me a list of people to get to know through myspace and facebook. It's pretty cool to be finally meeting people. One of them works with us as well, a girl in engineering who also plays the bass. We're talking about getting together and playing some, which should be cool. Now I have to contact these others and see what they're about. Oh, and it's laundry day.