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!

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!

 

Turning anything around...

The remix project almost ate my brain last night.  I have been working on mainly VO things for a few days and, as such, it had been a while since I really took a listen to every track to see where I am with them.  So, last night I did just that while in my last hour of work at NY1 and had a minor freak out because nothing was sounding like I remember it sounding.  I needed that experience to happen though because it made me realize I may have been cutting some corners and making concessions.

This morning, instead of going to yoga, I opted to stay in and work before mine and Lacy's rehearsal.  I pounded my way through every track with a mind to taking a realistic look at what needed to be done on each to bring it to completion (or at least to get them ready for mastering).  There was one track in particular that was just in shambles yesterday night.  Moving MIDI and audio over from Fruity Loops to Logic so I could use new instruments and drum samples was giving me discrepancies between the project tempo and the tempo of the actual files.  Logic was reading them at 138.somethingsomethingsomething when they were bounced out of Fruity Loops at 140 BPM.  I wasn't liking the bass sound, I wasn't liking the new parts I had written on guitar, and I was getting ready to scrap the whole track and leave it for a later offering to the agency.

But something happened this morning.  Something about my mindset when I was composing.  I was already tidying up a little around the apartment and trying to set up my guitar amp to use it during rehearsal instead of using my desktop monitors so I think my mind was a little more organized in general.  I got up at around 8am to begin all of this, had a shower and a nice breakfast of scrambled eggs, arugula salad and gluten free toast and a cup of gunpowder green tea, so I was fresh and clear-headed.

Now, I'm listening to the result of all the extra tracks and the tweaks to the placement of the bass notes and even a little cleverly placed break in the drum track and it sounds AWESOME!  I can't wait to post up the new version.  This one and the others.

I also had an epiphany about one of the songs.  The mix on a song called "Song for the Awakened," that's been written and finished for years now, was really really muddy and I couldn't place it.  Really, I hadn't even begun to start ruthlessly dropping instruments out of the mix and, after showing it to Lacy, I finally just muted this one part (a secondary guitar part), and everything sounded so much clearer.  I had also had three different synths playing basically the same part, but several days ago I had decided to just use one keyboard sound that encompassed all the sounds I had been trying to achieve.  Now, the only thing left is that the bass line is a bit busy and overwhelms in parts.  So, there may be some rewriting to be done in there.

And that's just the thing.  I wasn't keen on rewriting any of it because I'm in a rush to get these songs in to the agency.  And why?  No reason.  They even told me to take my time.  So, I should, right?  I want these to be good.  I want people to want to use them.  So I'm not going to submit shit so I can say I was prompt about it.  No.  So why not take the time to craft something really good instead of saying I don't want to rewrite or re record things because it'll take time.  I should be taking time.

Hell, taking another stab at rewriting the track I was talking about earlier "Sleepwalking With You" (an older version is on my soundcloud page), turned out to be so satisfying today, I'm thinking about just not worrying if these aren't all done by the end of the week.  I had envisioned getting them all finished so that Lacy and I could listen to them on the ride to NC this weekend.  Now, I'll just see what I can get done.

I'm just glad I was able to clear my mind and turn it all around in just a few focused hours this morning.  Before I was freaking out a tiny bit about the quality of my work and whether or not I should even be submitting half these songs.  But I don't need to go down that road.  That'd be wholly unproductive to listen to those voices.

With that said, I'm going to get back to it and see what else I can get done tonight.