Happenings...

January's been a good month so far.  Filled with things.  Happenings.  Memories made. Events attended. Adventures had.  Sure, I've worked my ass off in the interest of saving for this trip of mine next month but the social gatherings and shenanigans in between have made it all worthwhile. Impromptu concerts, bar nights, a date here and there and always yoga. I tried a new gluten free beer at a meetup, made new friends there and at the yoga studio, hitting up regular classes.  I seem to wind up at Rockwood or Barbes on the regular still.

At home, I got talked into taking in not one but two kittens, mischievous balls of fur which are vastly changing my routine around the apartment (always closing my bedroom door and making sure not to leave anything breakable on the table). There's of course been some excitement with the career(s), a new demo, the chance at getting in front of some agents and casting directors and with the screening for "The Life" looming, I get called to do a commercial for the same director.

In the midst of working on the music for this commercial, we get slammed by a blizzard and I have to spend a night in the city at a hotel so I can make it to work two hours earlier than normal this morning, forcing me to take a slight hiatus from working on it.  But tomorrow I dive back in, hopefully having caught up on my sleep tonight.

I got a look at the first cut just now which was shot and edited this weekend.  I composed the initial idea this past weekend (landed on it after just two takes) after having only read the treatment.  A fun way to work, no doubt.  I like doing it this way sometimes.  I get to come up with some idea based on the raw emotions instead of immediately being preoccupied with making it fit some time constraint.  But now, my work is to extend the musical idea and work on creating an arc that aligns with the images I'm seeing in the video.

Really looking forward to this process.  The deadline is approaching.  For now, though, I'm going to head home and get that much needed sleep, without which I cannot function.

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!

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!

Creative clutter...

That's what my girlfriend calls it.  And I've actually started to embrace the amount of crap cluttering up my desk and my room in general.  I've never seen myself look so fondly upon a stack of wound up ethernet cables and bills sitting on my desk before.  What's come over me? 

I think I really just need things to happen right now and I can't spend any of my valuable time filing bills or restowing ethernet cables underneath my bed or just generally tidying up, dust be damned.  Why are there ethernet cables on my desk anyway?  Oh right, that's left over from the massive week long troubleshooting session to figure out what was wrong with my Macbook.  That's an interesting story. 

I just got it back from the Apple Store and it turns out what I had assumed was the almost worst case scenario, a fried airport card (worst would have been a fried logic board), turned out to only be a fried airport card cable.  The culprit.  Olives.  A few weeks ago, right before this wifi always cutting out and airport card not being recognized business, Alexa and I were at the Tippler eating an over large bowl of olives that we just couldn't finish.  One can only handle so many olives.  I just get thriftier around her perhaps and wasn't willing to send them back to the kitchen, though, to get trashed, so I asked if they had any kind of container I could carry them out in.  They produced, eventually, one of those plastic take out containers that you usually save because they're sturdy enough.  I mean, these things are supposed to snap tightly shut and everything.  But, no.  Olive oil leaked in my bag and some of it soaked into the neoprene case that I keep my laptop in inside my shoulder bag.  When I had the thing open the other day, I learned a little about the anatomy of the interior and located the airport card, cable and antenna.  Only the next day did it dawn on me that that was the exact corner of the laptop that was probably sitting in olive oil the whole ride home that night. 

At any rate, it only cost me $10 for the part and $40 for the labor.  And one OS reinstall that has set me back while I sit here and wait for all my files to be copied back over to my Macbook from my PC.  That's going to take all night and then I have to reinstall all of my audio software and that's going to take all day tomorrow.  With any luck by Wednesday, I'll be back at full operating status and going strong again.  And someday maybe I'll clean up this clutter...but it sort of becomes my state of mind right now. I don't need clean right now, I need focused.  But I also need, yes, sleep.  Eyes = Heavy. 

Inversions...

Been thinking a lot lately about my inversion practices in yoga class and how they relate to my life as a whole. The headstand, the hand stand, forearm stand, tripod handstand...I always feel like I'm right at the point where I could leave the support of having the wall behind me when I kick up and actually practice them in the middle of the room.  But then I start to settle in to the safety of the wall as a support and a backup and I'll spend months not advancing at all with any one particular pose.  For example, I may have gotten to where I can balance for a few seconds in a handstand but, without the wall there behind me, I can't come up without risking toppling over on my way up. In headstand I've grasped and put into practice the concept of using my core strength to lift myself up versus using momentum from kicking up but lately, though I can get up, I haven't been able to stay up for very long for fear of, once again, toppling over. Either way, with any of the poses, I always hit a wall. And I don't advance until I sit back and examine what I need to do to get to the next level.

As with music and voice over, I feel as though I get to one point and can't get any further until I fully examine the nature of my obstacles.  Regrouping and examining my methods and their results is key at these points.

Having this insight from yoga is great, too, because I can apply what that practice teaches me across the board.  Which is this:  I find that, in yoga class, and lately, especially with headstand, it's most effective for me to not feel bad if I have to come out of the pose for fear of losing my balance.  I just allow myself to make several attempts at it before accepting that I've tried hard enough for today, no matter how far I've gotten.  I also avoid looking around the room at the damn yogi rock stars that are up and balancing the whole time.  It's not about competition.  Even if the voice over and music stuff can be at times, it's still helpful to import this line of thinking into that arena.  After all, I have to acknowledge with both that I can only do so much and that there are only so many hours in a day.  The important thing is that I try and I'm not idle.  If I try something and it doesn't work, I keep going and I try the next thing. And when I've had enough: rest in child's pose. 

That having been said, I am definitely making strides with both but there's never an uninterrupted stream of progress.  I must always contend with obstacles.  Trying not to let this discourage me is the trick. 

And the amazing thing is that, with both areas of my life, I will often pass a milestone in a very noticeable way.  That feeling of weightlessness when you can balance in handstand even for a second equates with that amazing feeling when someone hears my music or my voice and likes what they hear enough to hire me and I realize that the hard work has paid off to some degree.  It's that "hey, wait.  Maybe I can do this."  feeling that's so amazing.  And it really does feel like, despite all of the slips and falls and awkward landings, I can balance, at least a little.

So I should keep it going, right?  I started this blog sitting at Barbès and typing on my phone while listening to Slavic Soul Party.  It's a Tuesday night which means it's my Friday and I wanted to cut loose a little so I headed over there after dinner with my girlfriend in the Village.  Work at NY1 has been hectic and I'm really feeling the weight of all the balls I have up in the air right now (At the moment, I'm looking for legal help with the contract from the licensing agency and have several emails out to talent agents and production companies with my voice over demos attached.) and occasionally, it gets a little frustrating waiting for them to land.  Though, I'm happy right now that I have lots of work, even if not the paid kind, just yet.  I'm finishing a ton of pieces to send off to this licensing agency once I finish looking over the contract and am satisfied.  I'm doing some pro bono work for a friend who was helping produce a short PSA and needs music.  I'm also auditioning for voice over stuff on an almost daily basis.  On top of it all, I got a little bit of a nice pay off from all the hard work I've already done this year when a director I worked with sent me a link to the finished film that I scored.  I'm a little unsure about posting it just yet because it was a password protected link but PM me if you wish to hear/see it.  It's a 13 minute Sci-fi short titled, "The Feed."  You may have heard me talk about it a good bit back in April, May and June if you read this blog at all. 

Now, I'm afraid it's time for me to go to sleep for a change.  Wish me luck with all of the above, headstands and handstands notwithstanding. 

Waiting...

I've been revisiting old tunes I haven't listened to in a while today, just in general.  This morning, I opened up a playlist I forgot I had made of songs I listened to back on the post high school Europe trip in '99.  Then, I just shuffled through all songs on my phone at random, turning up songs from the 90's and other stuff I haven't listened to since the first year I was here and even as far back as high school days.  Right now, I'm listening to a playlist on my Windows Media Player called "Bittersweet."  A Regina Spektor tune is playing.

And the weather here is finally whispering of fall, after another upturn in the temperature and humidity since my last posting. Low humidity (most importantly) and a light breeze, highs in the low 80s.  I'll take it, I thought.  Literally, a day before the change came, I swore off the awesome hat I picked up at Brooklyn Industries the other day and long sleeves, just generally, cold though it may be in the building where I work.  But then I regretted it slightly, strolling down the street in a tee-shirt and jeans and a bare pate on a cool morning a few days ago. I love it, though, when the breeze rolls in and you can smell memories of the last year and you have to stop and breathe it in.   

Anyway, I promised I'd spout some more about the McKittrick Hotel's rooftop bar.  Last Tuesday night, Alexa and I got in our 1940's get up and, after a nice dinner in Chelsea, we headed over to the Gallow Green, a separate entrance from where one would go in to see Sleep No More.  A darkened elevator, operated by a man in period dress, took us up to the floor just below the roof and there we were met by a hint of that token intricate set design one comes to expect from Emursive and Punchdrunk.  When we emerged on the roof of the building we were seated and given menus with clever cocktails with names like "Damn Spot" and "Blonde in Peril," both references to Shakespeare and Hitchcock.

There were also people in character and a live band playing.  One woman came by to tell us how she lived at the McKittrick for many years and hinted at a special appearance by someone later in the evening.  We drank our fill of cocktails and I even had an absinthe shot but no one ever showed up and unfortunately the band stopped before we could get much dancing in.  The band was then replaced by a DJ with a Macbook which sort of destroyed the atmosphere a tiny bit.  I'd certainly go again sometime with a gang of folks post show perhaps because they also offer punch bowls that serve 2-4 people or more.  These I've heard involve some presentation as well.  Sounds fun and delightful!  Plus, I got the feeling there were many details in the set design and references to the show all about but I didn't get a chance to really look.  I'll have to go back. 

Anyhow, in the week since, I've been busy with voice over work and debating another coaching session.  And meanwhile, also waiting.  For responses from the current filmmaker and the prospects.  Even also waiting for payment from the last voice over gig. Seems like waiting is a theme lately.

But I can't help but feel I'm on the verge of something all the time.  Hence, it's a pretty exciting time right now.  Regardless of the outcome of all the various things I have floating up in the air right now, it's just good to know how much better I'm doing now than I was last year at this time.

With that said, it's time to (guess what) go to bed.  Tomorrow is my only day off this week. With the Republican National Convention going on in Tampa there's extra coverage and I was working overtime today...so naturally I'm exhausted.  Most of my shifts at NY1 take place when there's not a lot going on so being there during the week with massive amounts of stimulation is a bit of a change.  Makes me want to relish my one day off so much more.  So, good night for now. 

The Time Management Ninja...

I gotta admit I was almost stumped there on how to squeeze in all the activities I had planned this week.  But my grad school time management skills have not yet failed me.  I figured out a way to go to almost every yoga class I wanted to, make up one of the two make up co-op shifts I owe before my vacation starts, pack for said vacation, stretch my remaining clean clothes until I have time to do laundry on Wednesday, fit in rehearsals with Lacy and two of the three open mics we wanted to do, a meet up with Tania about the video from Galapagos at my place Thursday morning and find some quality time with a friend I've been seeing.  Indeed I might even have time to meet another friend for drinks before she moves to Florida next week and, god willing, train my cat to stop peeing on my couch (bought some Nature's Miracle no spray spray on the way to brunch after church this morning).

And on top of it all, I have time to still work a full time job and juggle two music projects.  Regrettably, voice over is taking a break this week, but that's okay because I got another gig from the guy out in Oregon I've been voicing videos for and have finished that already.  The two music projects are the Samurai film, for which I await instruction on the next round of revisions, and a mockup for a collaboration with Marie-Christine Giordano, the dancer whom I met at the bus stop a few months back who knew Lacy from their days at Martha Graham.

That's a fun project and it'll be a nice change from all the film work I've done lately.   So far we've sat down at her studio, bounced around ideas and came up with a palette of sounds which I'm currently trying to creatively string together into something coherent.  Little by little.  It's coming along well and I'm really psyched for this project.  I love working with dancers but I also love a project where I can come in early on in the process.  More on this later.

I have an exciting week with Lacy coming up too.  We're reconnecting with the open mic scene while she simultaneously scouts locations for some potential gigs.  On Wednesday night at 7pm we hit Bar 82 in the E. Village and on Thursday we will try out a new one: Lucky Jack's on the LES.  I'm psyched for both especially the new one.  Later that night we will go see her friend Tom Tallitsch, a jazz musician she's worked with, at The Garage in the W. Village.

And all this is made more exciting by the fact, that after this Tuesday, I don't have to be back at work until the 3rd of August, a full 9 days off!  My folks will be in town Friday and we will likely do a leisurely day in Brooklyn, potentially Botanical Gardens or something else outside…perhaps even the Intrepid museum, which I discovered I can get into free with my NY1 badge.  Saturday we will head upstate for the Cousins by the Dozens family reunion.  Then Sunday we drive to Virginia to see my sister's family, Monday it's to NC to see my other sister's family and laze around by the pool.  Then Tuesday, I go see my brother in the mountains of NC, with a potential jam session still on the docket the last time I spoke with mon frère.  Then, it's back to NC for at least one more full day of lazing by the pool.  I know.  It sounds like a lot of travel.  But the pay off is I get to see everyone.  But I am going to get sick of cars.  I'll probably blog later on this week and as I'm traveling.  For now, I'm going to sleep though because this crazy week I have planned starts tomorrow morning at 8am!

Sleep no more…again...

I arrived home last night with a Venetian mask, fake blood on my shirt, a pocket full of salt, a single playing card and a locket.  And I awoke this morning with strange memories in my head.  Yes, I was at The McKittrick Hotel again last night.  Sleep no More was a total and complete blast and did not disappoint in the least.  I brought my friend Alexa with me and, after we shared shots of Absinthe at the bar, we were separated for most of the rest of the evening to go off and have our own adventures.

Can I just say that I love how everyone is in character the whole time, even the bartenders and the hotel staff?  It's really great and it makes the immersion in the environment seem complete from the beginning.

It was interesting this time, since I've been before, the way my mind operated in that place.  I was constantly trying to get back into certain scenes I remembered from last time.  But, thinking back, I had no idea at what point during the action I was entering the hotel's upper floors, so my strategy was a little hard to implement at first.  All I could do was explore until I saw some action and then latch onto any of the characters that I knew were in those scenes and follow them until those scenes played out.

I did my same maneuver as last time, getting off the elevator first, knowing that the elevator operator was going to let only me off and leave me behind as the doors shut.  However, I ended up on the psych ward just like last time and unfortunately, I wasn't alone like I had been before.  But it was okay, I immediately had a sense I could do something totally different so I didn't even bother to explore the rooms on that floor, knowing already where I was.  I flew up a flight of stairs or two (see, I completely forget what exactly happened at this point).  I was having trouble finding the actors at first, though I was immediately familiar with the space.  Knowing what transpired in that space, made me want to hang around but I felt an immediacy unlike the last time when I had no idea what was and would be happening.

I had a goal to see the scenes with Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, where they are feverishly trying to clean the blood from themselves, the scenes where Lady Macbeth is muttering to herself and "sleepwalking," of course, the Orgy scene with the witches and the goat head man, and of course, I wanted to see if I could reenact the one on one I had with the lady in red (Hecate).  I got to do almost all of those things too.

First though, I calmed down a little and began to explore the set since I wasn't finding any characters and I'm not sure I did a ton of this last time.  There's some creepy stuff between the taxidermy and the random bones hanging from ceilings and the close spaces, the medical tools and jars with strange labels.      Gotta love the candy store, though too.  I actually saw a scene play out here that I missed last time.  I decided, for the moment, that instead of trying to find scenes I had seen, to stay and watch.  There was a gentleman behind the counter in the candy store who looked as though he was closing the shop and primping himself to meet someone.  He gathered up a bouquet of dried flowers and then left the room.  I ate some candy and then followed.

These next few scenes I watched were between a woman who was not part of Macbeth but whom I'm sure was the Hitchcock character.  She was interacting with a private detective in a few of the scenes I followed her into.  Others she was by herself, once packing her suitcase, once nosing around in the detectives office and then writing a note on his desk, something about "plant a seed and it will show you…" something something (I couldn't read her tiny handwriting).  Another scene, the gentleman I had seen in the candy store with a bouquet of dried flowers was handing her the bouquet and I watched as she rejected him.  No doubt this was the same woman who, last time I saw the show, I watched cut pages from the Bible and fold them into a locket. (Different actress this time though)

I say this because I was lucky enough to have a one on one with her, involving that locket, when I came back to that floor a little later.  Before, I was in a small room with her that led to a bedroom beyond a door.  There were others around us and she went for the door but turned and extended her arm.  I went to take it but she looked beyond me to someone at the back of the room.  That person was invited in and no one else.  I left, but upon my return later on, I was luckier.  This must have been on the second run through of the play, for several scenes had played out that I've left out: the scenes with Lady Macbeth, crazed and talking to herself (at one point she turned and grabbed my shirt and spoke a few lines to me), nude in the bathtub in the psych ward (again here, something about "there was so much blood in him!"), and then trying to clean blood off of hers and Macbeth's hands in the bedroom…once I found her I stuck to her like glue because some of her scenes, especially in the bedroom with the raised bathtub, have the best dancing in the show. 

This very bedroom is incidentally, where the fake blood got on me.  As MacBeth storms into the room covered in blood he pushed past me.  When I saw who it was who had pushed me, his hands and face covered in blood (or chocolate syrup…I'm pretty sure it was chocolate syrup), I immediately, reached back and touched the back of my shirt where he had made contact with my shoulder.  Sure enough the same stickiness was on me and I reveled at my first experience of crossing the threshold into the action.

Anyway, back with the Hitchcock character, there I stood, with fewer people in the room this time, and she focused her gaze on me.  My heart jumped because I knew this had to be it, like I had unlocked some secret passageway.  I had no idea what to expect as she pulled me into the room and closed the door.  She took my hands and led me over to her dresser, spoke to me.  It's hard now to remember everything she said to me but there was a good bit about how she went to Manderley again last night and how she can only visit it in her dreams and can never go back (all lines that I now know are from the opening of Hitchcock's Rebecca).   Then she led me over to a wardrobe, removed my mask and spoke to me even more about Manderley.  I listened intently, trying to remember every word.  Then we climbed into the wardrobe, she closed the door, got very close to me and whispered in my ear, ever closer, her cheek resting on mine now, how I'd never be able to return to Manderley and kissed me on the cheek.  She then said, "take my locket, it will keep you safe" and put it around my neck.  This was indeed the same locket that contained a folded up strip of paper from the Bible that she had placed in it in a scene I knew took place earlier (because I witnessed it the first time I came).  She then put my mask back on, turned me around three times and pushed me through the back of the wardrobe.  I thought I was going to come out in Narnia.

I was riveted.  I spun around and came through a door and found myself inside a room with an old radio playing and a desk with papers on it and a book opened up.  I scanned the room for a while and then realized that there were audience members walking by and then it began to occur to me where I was.  I ran out to join the fray not sure where I was heading.  I'm regretting now not exploring the set more and looking more into where I was.  Though, I don't think it was a terribly secret room.  My friend told me she saw someone come through the wardrobe from the other side at some point during the night.

On another floor, I began to haunt the halls where scenes between Lady MacDuff and MacDuff took place.  I saw these last time and found them very intriguing.  The two characters were literally climbing the walls in some pretty stunning acrobatics.  I wanted to witness this again once I realized where I was.  Walking into the sitting room, I realized I was earlier in the action perhaps as Lady MacDuff was by herself.  I witnessed her pull another audience member into a side room and then walked off to see what else was happening on that floor.  I found myself in the graveyard just off of the room where I had watched Lacy Macbeth.  There was a man (possibly one of Duncan's sons) kneeling by a grave digging in the dirt so I stopped to watch what he was doing.  He unearthed a cloth and unraveled it to reveal what looked like a bone, but I think now that it was a letter.  He added another something to the cloth, wrapped it back up, and then put it back in the ground.  At this point, I wandered off to something else.  Now, in the telling, I realize that some of these events are out of order.  Seeing Lady MacDuff pull the audience member off for the one on one may have happened earlier on.

I ended up in that exact same scene later on because I came upon Lady MacDuff, and followed her up several flights of stairs.  Down a hall hung with different mirrors, I followed her and stopped as she peered into one of them.  Seemingly as she saw my masked face in the mirror behind her, she gasped and twisted the mirror around on the wire from which it hung and slammed it into the wall.  She walked on and I followed into the same sitting room from before.  I stood and watched her move around the room, entranced as I took in my surroundings, and then realized that she was looking directly at me, a smile on her face and wonder in her eyes, her hand extended toward me.  I took it and she led me into that side room.  I couldn't believe I was getting two one on ones in one night.  "Fortune favors the bold," said the elevator operator as he brought us up earlier.

In the small side chamber, she pulled me aside and said, "You've come."  I said, stupidly, "I have."  She said, "Let me get a better look at you," as she removed my mask.   She stroked my beard and then grabbed my shoulders, rotated me and made me kneel before an open Bible on the table.  I looked around at the other items on the table as she leaned over me and spoke about how I had always been made fun of by the other kids when I was younger and how she used to put a pinch of salt behind my ear to protect me.  She then put my hand on the Bible and her hand on mine and slowly traced her hand along my right arm.  Then she frantically ripped a page from the book, folded it into a pouch, filled it with salt, handed it to me and then, seemingly frightened, she looked toward the door and ran out.  I realized I also had salt behind my ear at this point.  It was weird but I'm sure there's some symbolism in there somewhere. It was only much later in the bar that I realized I had a pocket full of salt. 

When she left the room, I took chase because she was off rather quickly. Plus, at this point, having already seen the banquet scene play out once I knew that I was in the second run through, at least, and became frantic again to find the one last scene I wanted to witness.  The crazy naked goat head man dead baby orgy scene.   I followed a few more characters that I knew were in that scene, one of them the Hitchcock character whom I watched enact a scene with the bellhop in the hotel lobby involving a tea set and some spilled tea.  This scene was fascinating to watch because I was basically sitting right in the middle of it.  I almost sat down on the arm rest of her chair.  One of the things I love about Sleep No More is how you can sit down right in the middle of the action, or choose your vantage point from across the room.  The characters will move you out of the way casually, if you are standing too close to the action or if someone's about to come running in.  

Again, I moved on and followed a few more characters, getting more and more excited as I started to recognize what was happening.  Then, I saw two of the witches with MacBeth, and heard thumping techno music and knew right away that if I followed them, they'd lead me where I wanted to be.  A group of us followed them down a long hallway and watched as MacBeth and one of the witches lifted the other witch high in the air against the wall.  Suddenly, they took off down a side hall and I wondered how I never saw it there before (I'd been looking for it for most of the night), because this was indeed the hall that led to the room where the orgy takes place.

The lights were low and blue when I walked in and the witch in red (Hecate) stood frozen with her arms outstretched, letting out an audible exhale in time with the music, once every few seconds.  At this point, I stood about five feet away from her, waiting for what I knew would come next: a blood curdling scream, followed by another directly behind me from Macbeth who stood on a table.  Even knowing this was coming, it still gave me goose bumps.  That coupled with the fact that I was so thrilled I managed to not miss this, my favorite scene, put me on cloud nine.  Giddy like a little kid I watched the rest of the scene play out, with the strobes and the frenetic movement, the fake blood flying and lastly, the naked character in the freaky goat head mask.  I knew that the very next scene was the one that led to my original one on one with the lady in red from the time I went back in August.

A full description of that scene is in my other blog that I referenced earlier in this entry, from back in August, so I won't go into much detail here.  (Haha, I know this entire blog is basically detail!).   I watched the following scene between the Hecate and the Hitchcock women.  The lady in red was a different actress this time and she played the scene a tad more comically, pouring wine in a shot glass for both her and the other woman, but only pouring a tiny bit for herself while she poured the glass to overflowing for the other woman.  There was a moment where the Hitchcock woman made a grab for the key on a chain around the witches neck but the witch stopped her.  She began to cry and the witch did the same bit where she held the glass up to the woman's cheek to collect her tears and then she left her there at the table.  I followed swiftly. I had been looking over my shoulder at the audience members trying to gauge both how many there were and if any of them seemed like they also knew what was going to happen and would try to thwart my attempt to follow her.  It had occurred to me that some of these audience members who hung back when the other characters left the room, were probably also trying to relive their prior experiences.   I was at the front of the herd following her and she turned and look at me.  I cocked my head to the side and she did the same.  Then she grabbed my shirt and began to pull me towards her.  Sort of breaking the spell a little bit, one of the black masks who are there to sort of regulate put her hand out to stop me from following.  I realized then that the lady in red was rethinking her choice and grabbed a girl to my left and pulled her inside instead.

I have to wonder if I was too bold.  They can probably tell just by your over eager behavior that you've already done something and they probably would rather give a chance to someone else.  Fair enough.  I admit I was getting a little greedy.

I believe it was at this point, that the black masks started to corral people and I wound up walking up to the end of the banquet scene again.  At this point, I found my friend, recognizable because she had brought a book with her and I could see it sticking out of her back pocket.  I snuck up on her and asked her if she was having fun and then went on my way trying to see what else I could see before going.  I tried to visit the piano on the upper level of the banquet room but a black mask blocked my way.  Finally winding my way down to the next floor, I was allowed to enter but everywhere I went on that floor I was turned aside by the black masks.  Eventually found my way back to the Manderley Bar where I reunited with Alexa and we shared our stories.

We watched the bands and had a drink and I showed her my mementos, the locket, the page of the bible folded into a pouch…and the pocket full of salt that came with it as an unfortunate bi product.  As we sat and talked a hotel employee came over to us and offered to sell us the book they have printed up about the show, complete with photos and interviews with the production team.  I could not resist.  After all, I was told I can never return to the Estate of Manderley.

Rhythmic Movement

The show on Thursday night was a great success…and well attended.  The lead up to it was a bit stressful but the cathartic release of being on stage and performing my music made it all worth it.  This is, after all, something that Tania and I (mostly Tania) have been working on for months.  To see it all come together in a single night was a thing of beauty.  I wish some of you out of towners could have seen it.

That said, there was a professional video made and several other cameras in the house.  Some things are already on youtube.  Not my music, yet though. If more of you had shown up I might have had a guarantee that I'd at least have some pictures of my piece being performed.  As it stands all I can show you guys are post pictures and the video of the body painting. Which was a hit!

Anyway, Galapagos Art Space is a world class venue and I was so excited to be performing there.  I arrived a full 2 hours and 15 minutes before the show out of paranoia that anything could go wrong with the massive amount of technical elements we programmed into this show.  Luckily, the sound guy was so professional and efficient that I truly had nothing to worry about.  Our set up took so little time that we were almost done before Tania had even gotten there.  She arrived around 5:15 with the body painter and the model.

By then, I had a table set up with all my equipment on it, with everything plugged up to the sound system, plus the camera I borrowed from one Mohammad Maaty plugged up to the house projector, screen lowered, piano and microphone in place for Tania and tables ready for model and painter.  All we had to do was test the sound equipment and set up the camera.  All the video elements for the slideshow on the second half were with the tech guy already.

Hanging out backstage before the show was a lot of fun, too.  Tania, Derrick, the model Steffi and I had the whole place to ourselves and brought drinks from the bar back there while we waited.  I got to see the pre body painting body painting as well as watch most of the show from the wings of the stage too because I had to be there to operate the camera, which had to be panned from the model to Tania's back between pieces, and the projector, which had to have the video source switched from the stage.

The body painting to Erik Satie's music came directly after Tania's world premiere "Rhythmic Movement" and was followed by works by Ginastera, Kapustin and Vladigerov.  The body painting had to be my favorite part of the evening as far as what I experienced as an audience member.  It was really beautiful to watch Derrick being inspired to paint by Tania's performance of Satie's Gnossiennes.  And also kind of fun to watch the model trying to remain perfectly still while he essentially tickled her with a paint brush.

The intermission was brief and we moved on to even more exciting stuff.  Tania performed work by Frederico Mompou, a Spanish composer who writes in a beautiful post-impressionist style, accompanied by the work of photographer Jack Dzamba (the same who let us stay at his place in Boston).  This was great to finally see all put together because I witnessed the photo shoot and had only briefly listened to Tania rehearsing the pieces.  It's beautiful music and somewhere floating around is the artist's description of the significance of the images.  The two pieces were called "La Barca"(boat) and "Cuna" (cradle).

After this, Tania had the idea to improvise inside the piano and have me do some of the same stuff with my laptop that I'd be doing for my piece.  The potential of this exercise was endless and I found myself wishing for more time to develop the ideas.  Sampling whatever noises she made and then looping them and turning them into material that I could freely play with and then interact with what she was doing was so much fun.  Heck, it's such a fun medium to work in that I was messing around during sound check and accidentally recorded and looped a snipped of the sound of the audio guy moving the piano across the stage.  So, I played around with it and made some fantastic rhythms and tones out of essentially a loud screeching noise.

After this came Tania's interpretation of John Cage's 4'33" which involved me asking her to dance, dancing for a few seconds and then remaining completely still for the remainder of the piece while the sound of a clock ticking came from my computer.   Each of those elements lent personal significance to the piece for Tania and it all related to the show's theme of rhythmic movement.  It was also fun to get to do something different on stage that could essentially be classified as performance art.

My piece went quite well and it was so much fun to hear it through big speakers while we were performing.  We had two monitors on stage for us to hear my samples as I played them back.  One part of the piece involved me actually recording and looping Tania's performance so she could perform another part on top of it, essentially adding another piano layer to the piece.  This was the trickiest part and because if I didn't time it exactly right the loop would eventually slip out of rhythm with Tania.  It went great despite how little rehearsal time we really had with full sound.  As it was, we were rehearsing the piece with the tiny speakers on my laptop at Tania's place and Tania could barely hear the looped audio that I was playing back.

I learned a lot about the process of doing something like this, what works and what doesn't and thankfully this will not be the last time we perform this piece.  It can only get better!

Tania closed the concert with two pieces by Pancho and Alexander Vladigerov (two Bulgarian composers, father and son, respectively).  These are both pieces that I have seen Tania perform before several times and they are always crowd-pleasers and great choices to finish a show on.

After the show, we went out into the audience and greeted everyone, took photos and eventually, a smaller contingent of the group met at Superfine for some food and drinks.  Perfect, since I hadn't eaten anything substantial since my breakfast at 2pm!  Superfine is a really great restaurant that centers their menu around locally sourced ingredients from sustainable farms.  With an ever changing menu based on what ingredients are available, I happened to luck out that they had a steak au poivre on the menu (with gluten free fries…bonus!).  A pretty solid meal to celebrate our accomplishment, I think.

All day yesterday, I took it easy since a friend from Philly who had seen the concert was still in town and we spent the day jamming with my looping software and then hanging out with friends.  Then somehow I ended up at the world's douchiest bar, Turtle Bay for a happy hour with some friends.  (Notice, I did not link to it…seriously don't go here).  Today, I work until 5pm and then I'm going to a co worker's wedding in Mill Basin, Brooklyn.  So, that should be fun.  Pretty soon, I'll have pics and video from the concert posted up.

Birthday...

Third birthday in New York. By now I've built up enough friends here from various different circles that I managed a gathering of 13 friends Friday night at Heathers bar in the East Village (well 14 if you count one friend's guest).  It was a fun time.  Really.  I only paid for one drink because there was no shortage of people willing to buy them for me (heck, even the bartender bought me a beer!), the bar never got too crowded and a close friend from out of town who stayed with me paid for the cab ride home.  This is the kind of birthday celebration I was after, lots of friends, free drinks and free cab fare home.  I find myself less and less wanting gifts and often would rather have experiences for my birthday.  Stories to tell, friends to laugh with and drinks being drunk. 

When I arrived home, though, there was a bag of gluten free cookies and a Lindt dark chocolate bar with chilies sitting on the kitchen table from my cousin.  So, I did get something tangible for my birthday...tangible and edible.  And I also got something intangible but rather unforgettable...a hangover.  But mostly stories, too.  Today was a whirlwind day, sort of, but was also relaxing and fun.  And there are a few anecdotes to tell...and even pictures!

The friend who stayed over was none other than Karishma, who was visiting from LA where she now lives with her husband.  This morning we went to brunch (which, as per my earlier FB status consisted of bacon and mimosas, among other things...we joked at one point that I should have asked them to bring my side of bacon out with a birthday candle in it).   My cousin came along and we met two friends of Karishma's there at Korzo just down the block from me.  The brunch there is always good.  Hell, everything there is good.  Even the things I can't eat, so I hear.

After brunch, Karishma and I, went off on our own to Staten Island to visit Snug Harbor, a really beautiful and secluded botanical garden that is relatively unfrequented and therefore a nice spot to laze away an afternoon and feel far removed from city life.  I had been once before two years ago but didn't really explore the garden all that much.  We kind of just stayed in one area of it, and while we saw some beautiful parts of it, we didn't get the full scope of the place.  And I'm not saying I did this time either but I did wander down a little and stumble on a castle-like structure that was connected to a fenced in hedge maze leading to a secret garden.   At this point, our time to get back to the city was dwindling because I had tickets to see Mike Doughty at City Winery at 8pm (doors were at 6:30pm) and needed to touch base back at home and grab my phone charger...checking Facebook to see who's posted birthday wishes on my timeline sure runs your battery down.

Mike Doughty is one of my favorite artists these days and, though, I recently saw him at Brooklyn Bowl with some friends who also know all the words and had a great time at the show, I caught wind of the City Winery residency and had to snag up tickets.  It's an intimate venue and how cool is it that it's a winery in the city and they make their own wine and serve it on tap?! I picked table seats right next to the stage and must have bought them four months ago.  At the time I didn't have any clear idea who I'd go with.  My brother had been planning on coming to the city this weekend but that plan fell through before I could even buy the tickets but I figured, it's my birthday, I wanna do something fun for me.  So I bought two and figured I would sort out my date for the night later.  So, I ultimately invited a friend I just met a month ago the weekend that I ran into all those old Greensboro folks.  It was a good night all around, the food and wine there is amazing (I had the 10oz Ribeye because again, it's my birthday and I can) and the music was great.  Even Doughty's opener was a crowd pleaser and sort of stole the show a little.  Bobby Bare Jr. is a Nashville, TN musician with a sinister and comical edge that lit up the room and cracked us all up, singing songs about killing your loved one like "One of us has got to go." Hilarious!  Apparently, he's worked with Shel Silverstein and written songs with him, one of which he performed early on in his set.  Brilliant.

Doughty came on strong and was funny the whole night as usual.  Played just about everything I wanted to hear and heckled and poked fun at the crowd when they'd start shouting out requests.  "No, I'm not gonna play that one tonight," "Yeah, maybe later," or "I'll play this one now 'cause someone called out in the back of the room," were common retorts.  He even stopped and explained the whole Soul Coughing back story when he got tired of saying no to requests for Soul Coughing songs.   I was happy to hear "Thank you Lord for sending me the F train," among others.

I was not, however, happy to hear the douchie bridge and tunnel f@#$bags at the table behind me who were celebrating their friends' anniversary and wouldn't stop chattering through the set.  Doughty stopped before the second song and said "I'd just like reiterate my talking policy..." saying essentially that if the people around you want you out he'd have no problem bouncing you.  I wished he'd have made good on that one.  After the second time he commented on the chatter, jockie douche bag behind me was muttering something about breaking Mike Doughty's glasses, like he knows he's the one being called out.  I mean, I get it, no one likes being called out but Ooooo, it boils my blood when some ass bag starts disrespecting musicians, especially musicians I'm trying to appreciate on stage.  A guy two seats over from me with a bad Kenny G haircut even asked him to be quiet and got a nice healthy "go f@#$ yourself" out of this clown...at which point, I craned my neck around to get a good look at him.  As I suspected premium Grade A bridge and tunnel trash, only there to drink and eat expensively while being an asshole to everyone in the room.  I tried oh so hard to enjoy the rest of the show and shut out the images of the entire bar ganging up on him in the alley.

I'm sure if he'd have gotten much more belligerent, he would have gotten booted for sure.  But thankfully, he calmed down...I think he probably had a pretty disappointed or embarrassed significant other tethered to him that put a lid on the worst of it.

Anyhow, the rest of the set was gold and I really enjoyed it.  Doughty did his little routine where he says "this is the fake last song!" and then stands on stage with his back to the audience after he plays it pretending like he's not going to play another three songs...but of course, he does. 

After it was over for real, we left the bar and my date had to go to Williamsburg.  She was meeting a friend who was staying with her and didn't know his way around the city on his own.  So we parted ways and I opted to walk through Soho to Prince St.  I got maybe a block away from 6th Avenue before the rain started to pour down out of nowhere.  Rain which thankfully held off through the better part of my day outside but which soaked me to the bone at the very end of my night.  All I could do was laugh and try in vain to hail a cab but ultimately, I wound up with a soggy ride on the N train home to Park Slope where I now sit typing this.  Not too shabby a birthday all around, even with the drenching.  I'm content. 

Tomorrow I meet another set of friends for lunch and then, Tania and I are playing a concert in Times Square area to raise money for her album release at 4pm.  Wish me luck with that.  And let's hope I don't get rained on again.  Here are pics from the day today:

2012 Birthday best shots

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!

Experimental Music, Professional sports and bad cab rides...

So, it looks like I'm going to be going to Boston at the beginning of May.  Tania and I are now planning on doing a concert on May 5th at The Lily Pad in Cambridge, as a prequel to the concert on May 10th at Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO.  So, I need somewhere to stay or else I need to buy a ticket on a late train back to NYC that night.  We'll see how that goes though.

Soon, Tania and I will start rehearsing the new piece, about which I am excited, because I have some new ideas.  More on that later.

Meanwhile, I push forward on the score for the sci-fi short and await approval or rejection for the 90 minute doc.   I got some input from the director of the short tonight and made some edits before Logic decided to be a pain in the ass and crash.   Something to with running too many plugins or specifically with the Akoustik Piano plugin.  I'll figure it out in the morning, because it's right about the witching hour right now and my attention span and stamina are seriously fading.

After meeting with the director for the 90 minute doc last week, I was asked to score a short 10 minute clip to give her a feel for what I might do.  My first take wasn't quite on the mark but I resubmitted something Saturday morning.  And now I wait.  I should know something tomorrow afternoon, hopefully.  There are a few other composers they are looking at, so fingers crossed.  

This morning, I hiked up to Queens to have brunch with a friend and then go to a Mets game.  That was actually fun.  First time going to a professional New York sporting event too.  I had heard that Citifield had some gluten free food so I sought that out while I was there.  Kozy Shack there sells gluten free pudding, hot dogs and sausages as well as Redbridge beer.  The game itself was a good one, from what I understand about baseball.  The home team won; there was a decent amount of suspense, not too much downtime and it was all over in slightly less than three hours.  And it was sufficiently sunny, albeit slightly chilly to begin with.  A fun time all around.

After the game, the better part of which was spent in direct sun, I retreated back to Brooklyn, sun stroke and drowsy, ate dinner and tried to nap because I was headed next to an experimental music salon concert in someone's apartment in Prospect Heights.  That was also cool and relatively impromptu.  My cinematographer friend Steve, the same for whom I'm writing some music for his promo and narrative reel, invited me along.  I've always heard about things like this.  Lacy and Tania both have told me about the same one in Philly that always takes place at this woman's mansion.  The one I attended last night roves around from location to location.  Unfortunately, since I had to leave and go to work, I didn't get enough info about when the next one is or how to go about performing at it.

I only saw two out of the three acts that night, the first of which I did a little networking with after his piece.  He was a violin player and mentioned something earlier on when we spoke about being in a string quartet…I may need a string quartet for the documentary score if I get the job, so we exchanged information.  His piece was compelling.  He did some ambient improvisation on his violin over a sine wave drone that played back on a CD player.  The piece was long but surprisingly not repetitive for how simplistic it was.  Half of the intrigue came from watching the crowd react in such a small space.

The next piece was two performers and finally explained the pile of weird percussion instruments and toys laid out on a table in the corner.  One guy made noises with that array and the other performer had a mixer, patch cables, some kind of box and a guitar amp (later a guitar came out), all to make a ton of noise using waveforms.  I somehow missed him explaining all of his equipment and had to guess at how he had it set up.  The interplay between the two performers was probably most interesting to watch.

At about twenty minutes into their set, I started to realize that my time to make it back home and grab my stuff and lunch for work was dwindling…and I was also sort of trapped in a corner in the kitchen and would have had to walk right down the middle of the room where the performance was happening to get my jacket and get out the door.  I decided that I would not risk it and just kept thinking through contingency plans in case the music kept going on and on.  By the time the music did end, at approximately 9:20, I figured I had time to say a few quick goodbyes and run down to Grand Army Plaza to grab a cab home and then I'd have just enough time to get to work at 11pm.

I kind of wish I could have stayed a little longer and maybe seen the first act, too.  As it was, I didn't really get a good chance to get any further impressions or process what I was seeing.  Nor did I get much info on when and where the next one will be but I'm sure I can ask Steve.

After I left, I went down to Flatbush Avenue and managed to grab a cab no problem.  But I managed to get a cab driver who doesn't ask if you mean Manhattan or Brooklyn before he assumes you mean 19th Street in Manhattan and starts rocketing towards the Manhattan bridge.  I didn't realize that that was what he was doing until about the time he had passed 6th and 5th avenues and was heading toward 4th avenue at a pretty good clip.  "I meant 19th Street in Brooklyn, by the way!", I said, hoping it wasn't too late but knowing deep down he wouldn't be able to make a left turn until about Nevins Street.   He, of course, complained about my not telling him and we went back and forth about it for a bit, me telling him that I assumed he was taking 4th avenue, which is why I didn't stop him earlier.  He just kept saying he thought I meant head into the city.  Eventually, he got me back on track, but not before worrying me that he was going to try and get on the BQE.  Unfortunately, his plan to take Court St. to Hamilton Avenue backfired because the drawbridge over the Gowanus Canal was just opening when we got up to it…a drawbridge which I have never seen open. So, that took 10 minutes.  Eventually, I did get home and I managed to get here to Chelsea early.

And now I'm here at work, with 3 hours or so to go and I'm so tired.  Remember that nap I mentioned? Didn't happen.  Before I go, though, there's some VO news.  That audition I asked to resubmit?  I think they're going to hire me to do it.  Also, I got offered another gig on the site as well.  So things are finally starting to happen there.  So we'll see what tomorrow holds.  For now, it's lunch time.  Yes, lunch at 4 in the morning, 'cause that's how I roll.

Massive update...

I've neglected to post a few fun things that I've done in the past few days along with a few general updates so I thought I'd write something.  The weekend was a busy one, between work, working on the score for the sci-fi short I'm doing, and a tiny bit of socializing, but also, Sunday was jam packed with musical stuff. 

While I did not sing for the Brooklyn Unitarian's Palm Sunday service, I did attend and it was well worth waking up early.  They sang selections from Handel's messiah with a full string orchestra, trumpets, tympani and harpsichord (played by my multi-talented choir director Bill Peek).  The piece, while known for being performed in religious settings was actually conceived as an oratorio.  Written in under a month the piece consists of three movements and, interestingly, was composed for a small ensemble at first and only later adapted for the large orchestras we're so accustomed to hearing perform the piece.  So Sunday's performance seemed fitting as it was a small choir and a small instrumental ensemble.  But the piece still moved me and felt powerful enough.  Sidebar, I'm not really religious in the traditional sense, so I can't say it was the subject matter of the piece.  The Hallelujah Chorus from the end of the second movement, though it's probably one of the most recognized choral works in the traditional repertoire, is still profound.  I think hearing it with such a small ensemble in such an intimate setting makes a difference too. 

On top of all of this, I'm proud of the Unitarian Church's choir, because they sounded amazing.  It's times like this that I wish I had all the time in the world to do everything.  I wanted to be up there singing with them.  To me, music is definitely a serious career but indeed, it is also a hobby.  And I wish I could always have opportunities to treat it as such.  Getting paid to write music is an amazing feeling and I've worked hard to achieve it.  But, rehearsing with an ensemble and performing beautiful music for the sake of it is something that I always will need and want in my life. 

After leaving church, I was headed to the Village to catch the extremely talented Tania Stavreva in a production of The Tempest put on by the Onomatopoeia Theater Company and my friend Thomas Gordon.  A friend from church was headed that way as well and agreed to have lunch with me.  She even suggested a place that happened to be right next to the Player's Theater where the performance was taking place.  It was called the Olive Tree Cafe. A great place with really great art on the walls, silent films being projected (Charlie Chaplin while I was eating there), and tables that could be drawn on with chalk.  Mostly Mediterranean food but it was good and it was good catching up with my friend before the play.  Since it was right next door, too, I was able to take my time with lunch.   

The performance incorporated modern elements (most notably casual nods to the setting, an office instead of a desert island, complete with references to the king of Mahattan and the Duchess of Brooklyn instead of Naples and Milan respectively) and music, performed by Tania Stavreva (some of it composed by her as well).  It was a lot of fun and the cast was great. 

Incidentally, as I was settling into my seat and the play was starting, someone popped into the door of the tiny theater room that I did not expect to see at all.  An old friend from graduate school, Rachel, who lives in Washington Heights now and whom I hardly ever get to see.  She knew someone in the play apparently.  So, that was really great getting to catch up with her after the show.

Part of the reason I came to the show was to finally give Tania the score to my new piece that we will be performing on May 10th at Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO at this show.  I'm incredibly psyched about that but also somewhat nervous.  It's going to be a logistical nightmare but if we can pull it off it should be rewarding.  As I may or may not have mentioned, there's going to be some pretty complex electronics for the piece.  Complex only logistically speaking.  I'm going to be looping Tania and she's going to play over top of herself.  In addition, I'm going to be performing triggering samples of her earlier performance, which I decided to capture at a rehearsal and not during the actual performance.  This will give me time to edit the samples and morph them however I see fit and then map them to my MIDI keyboard.  There's a program called Max/MSP that I used in graduate school that I could probably use to achieve these ends while performing live but I'd either have to program a patch myself or borrow someone else's patch.  For a later performance of the piece I may go this route.  God knows it'd be fun to delve back into Max/MSP, considering I haven't used it since the graduate school days.  Even then, I could barely program using it and was borrowing patches here and there.  I have a program by Native Instruments called Reaktor that is sort of similar, at least in some of its functionality and interfacing but in fact, very different, that I could also use but, to be honest, I've been so slammed lately that I've barely had time to learn how to use the latest piece of MIDI equipment I've bought, the FCB1010 MIDI footswitch.  I'm even writing a blog for the main webpage about the damn thing and I still haven't even finished that!

So, it's becoming clear to me that I need about 6 more hours in every day to fit in all the things I want to do with my life and my career.  Meanwhile, I've been plugging away at the score for the sci-fi short, having just finished the first set of ideas to pitch to the director to see if he likes where I'm going.  That means I get a little respite this evening because there's no point in working anymore until he's responded and let me know I'm either on the right track or way off.  I'm also meeting with the documentary filmmaker who's asked me to score her 90 minute documentary on trailblazing nuns.  That's tomorrow at 6pm. 

And on one final note, related to voice over, I finally got some more attention from voice123.com.  Someone asked me today to resubmit one of the auditions that I sent in yesterday.  They were looking for two more takes because the first, while they thought it was a good read, was a little flat to them.  Now I wait for their response to my resubmission.  Wish me luck with that.

When this is all over at the end of May and I have a little extra money in my pocket, I'm seriously buying a new desk chair because the one I'm currently sitting in as I type this causes me to slouch something awful and I have to deliberately tell myself to sit up every five minutes.  I'll leave you with this, though, the most recent fruits of my labor, the official Youtube release of the opening scene of the pilot episode of "The Life," complete with music by yours truly.  Good night for now!