Some of you may know that a few months ago, I learned that my computer had a virus and I foolishly wiped my hard drive assuming that all of my files had been safely backed up online via Mozy.com only to realize later that any project files such as those that would open with my DAW software like Sony Vegas or my sequencers (like Reason and Fruity Loops) or my notation software (Sibelius) were gone. Gone with the effing wind.
When I ultimately came around and assessed what I was missing, I felt a bit of despair, thinking that I'd never be able to start from scratch on half of those pieces. Some were just ideas that were never printed or saved in pdf form; the only form of them still in existence was hidden somewhere in my memory. Some had been finished, printed, saved in pdf, posted on the internet on sibelius.com, performed and recorded, but without the original file I couldn't edit them without having to input the entire score into Sibelius all over again. I was a bit angry, a bit sad, a bit forlorn.
But I didn't want it to get me down. A valuable lesson was to be had. One that half of you are probably going, "yeah, duh!" about. And I know. It's a lesson I've even "learned" before this. Hell, every college kid who's ever lost a term paper has gone through this. But I stopped degrading myself about it pretty early on and decided I was going to keep moving forward and accept that all I really lost were some records of ideas I had once and that my new songs would be better. I got all philosophical about it even, saying that maybe it had to happen so I'd want to write all new music and could let go of all the old ones I never finished. A kind of renaissance, if you will.
You ever have one of those moments though when you're sitting around drifting in your own thoughts and then one swims by you, a quick flash of a memory, and you say "holy shit, wait a minute! oh yeah!" It happened once when I realized, shortly after reading about the health benefits of garlic, that I had tried to cook garlic using, for the first time, a ceramic garlic baker that my brother had given me for Christmas and that said garlic was still sitting in the oven...two weeks later. Yeah, I don't bake all that often and at that time, I was baking some Brussels sprouts with caramelized onions (a favorite dish of mine). So when they came out of the oven, the garlic completely slipped my mind and hence, it ended up staying in the oven for two weeks until I had that flash and came home and checked it. Well, similarly, tonight I had a flash, a vision of a CD spindle full of data CDs. After the last virus, Windows wouldn't start up at all so I had to use a universal boot disc to get back onto my hard drive and back up my files before I reinstalled everything. I made a few backup CDs before I resorted to a backup hard drive that I had laying around. I just knew that the spindle of CDs that flashed into my memory had to still exist somewhere. I had a small moment of despair again, though, when I had yet another flash of me tossing out, err, recycling piles of stuff after moving to Brooklyn and saw CDs in that pile.
At any rate, I got home from work that morning and went through all the CD spindles I could find in my office/bedroom/creative space (they're all the same room). Nothing. Well, not nothing, but most of them were blanks. I had almost given up and, last I spoke to my dad, I half heartedly told him to keep his eyes peeled for any CD spindles I may have left at their place.
Anyway, a few days went by and this evening, I was placing my clock radio on my bookshelf away from beside my bed (the same book that was telling me about the health benefits of garlic was warning me of the dangers of electromagnetic radiation), and I saw it. A spindle full of CDs sitting on top of The Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness box set. My heart lept and, though my cousin probably thinks I'm weird, I, in a fit of excitement started dancing around the apartment, calming myself eventually to sit and thumb through them all. And wouldn't you know? On the very bottom of the stack, well two CDs from the bottom (enough suspense already!) was a CD labeled, simply, "Scores."
I haven't been this happy in a long time. Another victory dance.
I went through the disc immediately and found a lot of things that I was hoping I could revamp, a lot of things I know I might need to edit and so much more than I realized I had backed up. Of course, there are a few scores that I've made since moving up here (well one big one really, the hard copy of which is still sitting beside me as I type this), that were not on the disc because it was made in the fall of 2008. But it's enough. It was really like finding a bunch of old friends that I never thought I'd see again.
And anyway, as for that score that's sitting beside me in hard copy, I can always scan in it to get a head start on reentering it because I own this program.
So, the moral of the story? Backup your shit, backup your shit, backup your shit. Because there's nothing like being able to say, "F#$@#% you virus! Haha!"
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
The importance of clearing your head, part II
I met with the dancer today to talk over the piece, albeit slightly unprepared. Actually, to be truthful, I only felt unprepared. Once I got over the frustration of my computer's little tantrums this weekend, I decided to record myself improvising on the piano on my little hand-held digital USB Olympus recorder thingum. As well, a few days prior, when I still thought I was meeting the dancer on Sunday, I had written down a load of questions on my trusty pad of paper to help me figure out in which direction the music should go for this attempt.
So, I feel certain that, despite not having three thirty-second audio files of the first ideas I came up with last week, like I had hoped I would, I came across very put-together and professional for having all that other stuff ready. Simply knowing ahead what I needed to ask her would have been enough.
But, at any rate, I showed her the recording on my hand-held and, wouldn't you know it, I had hit the mark. What was meant simply as a representation of some of the other ideas and instrumentation I was capable of turned out to be exactly (well almost exactly) what she needed.
I think in a way, all of this scrambling around and nothing working right was just the universe pushing me to, slow down, sit down, shut up, breathe and improvise into a shitty mic and have no thoughts about producing something finished and perfect. Sometimes that's all you need to create, the desire to do so...and not the rushed, frantic, race to quickly stamp something out regardless of whether or not it's what you think the client wants to hear.
Thinking is better than doing sometimes.
On the other hand, it would be nice to actually have this box of wires and circuits do something right besides surf the internet and play mp3s. So, for the next week, I'm going to do nothing while sitting in front of this computer but make attempts at optimizing it and getting it back to its previous state of functionality or somewhere better even.
Anyway, random funny story, while I was in the coffee shop talking to her I got a bloody nose (I think from drinking cold cold iced green tea too fast...that hasn't happened in a while!) and had to go take care of it. While I was in the bathroom, another great idea occurred to me regarding instrumentation, specifically making the dominance of one instrument over another serve as a representation of the relationship between the two dancers in the dance. Sometimes you just need to get a bloody nose and go to the bathroom to spark creativity.
So, I feel certain that, despite not having three thirty-second audio files of the first ideas I came up with last week, like I had hoped I would, I came across very put-together and professional for having all that other stuff ready. Simply knowing ahead what I needed to ask her would have been enough.
But, at any rate, I showed her the recording on my hand-held and, wouldn't you know it, I had hit the mark. What was meant simply as a representation of some of the other ideas and instrumentation I was capable of turned out to be exactly (well almost exactly) what she needed.
I think in a way, all of this scrambling around and nothing working right was just the universe pushing me to, slow down, sit down, shut up, breathe and improvise into a shitty mic and have no thoughts about producing something finished and perfect. Sometimes that's all you need to create, the desire to do so...and not the rushed, frantic, race to quickly stamp something out regardless of whether or not it's what you think the client wants to hear.
Thinking is better than doing sometimes.
On the other hand, it would be nice to actually have this box of wires and circuits do something right besides surf the internet and play mp3s. So, for the next week, I'm going to do nothing while sitting in front of this computer but make attempts at optimizing it and getting it back to its previous state of functionality or somewhere better even.
Anyway, random funny story, while I was in the coffee shop talking to her I got a bloody nose (I think from drinking cold cold iced green tea too fast...that hasn't happened in a while!) and had to go take care of it. While I was in the bathroom, another great idea occurred to me regarding instrumentation, specifically making the dominance of one instrument over another serve as a representation of the relationship between the two dancers in the dance. Sometimes you just need to get a bloody nose and go to the bathroom to spark creativity.
Monday, May 3, 2010
The importance of clearing your head...
Welcoming in May and its sticky weather, I spent an afternoon with friends from the UU in Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens for the last day of the Sakura Matsuri Festival and then went over to a little pub called Franklin Park in Crown Heights. Boy was it sticky. But, for now, I'm lovin' it. Nothing like spending time outside, especially in a place like the botanical gardens. The festival was really neat too, from what we were able to experience before we all started to tire out. There were performers and people in costume everywhere and I managed to get over to see the bonsai tree collection, as well. (Note: no pictures. It's been hard to plan on taking pictures since I got the Canon. It's just too unwieldy to carry with me all the time and we went to the BBG on a whim). P.S. Whims are awesome.
Beyond that, I've been trying to get back around to working on music for the dancer again but my computer is not cooperating. The speakers are crackling whenever the CPU is overtaxed and the audio will eventually start to cut out all together. Then, at one point, I actually had a complete shut down occur.
I meant to have a couple 30 second samples of my ideas ready for the dancer at our meeting Sunday but no dice. Luckily we postponed our meeting because of my romp in the gardens and the dancer's work overload. Wednesday it is. Now I have time to actually record the ideas that, in truth, I hadn't even fully come up with when I sat down in the first place. I was more preoccupied with coming up with the sounds using my guitar processor and actually had no musical ideas in my head yet. Anyway, after doing some research, I think I may know why my computer kept crashing whenever I tried to use Guitar Rig.
Check this out. Chapter 2.5 points out the potential of wireless LAN cards to cause disturbances in audio processing. Guess I should take the damned thing out of my computer since I don't use it anymore.
That having been said, the hiatus in my creative work actually provided me with a clearer head with which to approach for a second time. Once I got angry and had to stop myself from throwing my audio interface (the most tangible thing I could find that wasn't my guitar) across the room, I walked away. Thinking I couldn't actually get anything done (at least as far as recording went), I sat down with my guitar and just goofed off a little, thought about some structural concepts for a new piece and came up with some solid ideas that, to be honest, I may not have come up with had I sat fussing with my computer all night.
Nights like this remind me that it's better sometimes not to force things to happen. Accepting that I wouldn't necessarily have a finished recording by the end of the night cleared my head enough that I could sit down and let some ideas just flow out naturally. And now when I do sit down to the computer to record things, I may actually get something done.
I'm reading a book now called Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art. The author is a violinist and the book is about creativity and improvisation. The last chapters I read were called, respectively, the Power of Limits and the Power of Mistakes. A lot of what the author has been saying is right on par with what I'm trying to learn from the recent computer disaster (and all previous ones for that matter). His main point is that accidents and limits are what shape our art. I'm feeling a lot like I've been limited lately by my computer but have also been thinking that perhaps this is pushing me in a different direction. As much as I want to experiment with new sounds, maybe I should be focusing on pitch material and structure first. My limits are forcing me to create more systematically. Also, it may come down to me having to do something else entirely that doesn't involve guitar and it may come to me out of the blue.
As for the power of mistakes, if one was to view my computer failing to operate properly a mistake, then the power in that mistake lies in its effect on my determination to make this thing work properly so that next time I start a project, I won't be so hindered. Or maybe I'll remember my frustration and will start off working on the piece away from the computer.
In all honesty, though, having the computer functional is a bit essential to me, because I prefer actually recording ideas as opposed to writing them down, especially with a piece where, since I'm performing everything myself, I probably won't be ultimately writing it down in score format. If I can't record myself riffing on ideas then I've lost productivity. And loss of productivity leads to loss of confidence and added frustration which, if I'm in the right frame of mind, hopefully, will ideally lead to further streamlining of my process and not discouragement. On the other hand maybe I should be more apt to write things down in these situations. Which is why I brought notation paper with me to work this evening.
In other family-related news, I have a new nephew as of 5:30 Sunday morning. See the pics here.
Beyond that, I've been trying to get back around to working on music for the dancer again but my computer is not cooperating. The speakers are crackling whenever the CPU is overtaxed and the audio will eventually start to cut out all together. Then, at one point, I actually had a complete shut down occur.
I meant to have a couple 30 second samples of my ideas ready for the dancer at our meeting Sunday but no dice. Luckily we postponed our meeting because of my romp in the gardens and the dancer's work overload. Wednesday it is. Now I have time to actually record the ideas that, in truth, I hadn't even fully come up with when I sat down in the first place. I was more preoccupied with coming up with the sounds using my guitar processor and actually had no musical ideas in my head yet. Anyway, after doing some research, I think I may know why my computer kept crashing whenever I tried to use Guitar Rig.
Check this out. Chapter 2.5 points out the potential of wireless LAN cards to cause disturbances in audio processing. Guess I should take the damned thing out of my computer since I don't use it anymore.
That having been said, the hiatus in my creative work actually provided me with a clearer head with which to approach for a second time. Once I got angry and had to stop myself from throwing my audio interface (the most tangible thing I could find that wasn't my guitar) across the room, I walked away. Thinking I couldn't actually get anything done (at least as far as recording went), I sat down with my guitar and just goofed off a little, thought about some structural concepts for a new piece and came up with some solid ideas that, to be honest, I may not have come up with had I sat fussing with my computer all night.
Nights like this remind me that it's better sometimes not to force things to happen. Accepting that I wouldn't necessarily have a finished recording by the end of the night cleared my head enough that I could sit down and let some ideas just flow out naturally. And now when I do sit down to the computer to record things, I may actually get something done.
I'm reading a book now called Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art. The author is a violinist and the book is about creativity and improvisation. The last chapters I read were called, respectively, the Power of Limits and the Power of Mistakes. A lot of what the author has been saying is right on par with what I'm trying to learn from the recent computer disaster (and all previous ones for that matter). His main point is that accidents and limits are what shape our art. I'm feeling a lot like I've been limited lately by my computer but have also been thinking that perhaps this is pushing me in a different direction. As much as I want to experiment with new sounds, maybe I should be focusing on pitch material and structure first. My limits are forcing me to create more systematically. Also, it may come down to me having to do something else entirely that doesn't involve guitar and it may come to me out of the blue.
As for the power of mistakes, if one was to view my computer failing to operate properly a mistake, then the power in that mistake lies in its effect on my determination to make this thing work properly so that next time I start a project, I won't be so hindered. Or maybe I'll remember my frustration and will start off working on the piece away from the computer.
In all honesty, though, having the computer functional is a bit essential to me, because I prefer actually recording ideas as opposed to writing them down, especially with a piece where, since I'm performing everything myself, I probably won't be ultimately writing it down in score format. If I can't record myself riffing on ideas then I've lost productivity. And loss of productivity leads to loss of confidence and added frustration which, if I'm in the right frame of mind, hopefully, will ideally lead to further streamlining of my process and not discouragement. On the other hand maybe I should be more apt to write things down in these situations. Which is why I brought notation paper with me to work this evening.
In other family-related news, I have a new nephew as of 5:30 Sunday morning. See the pics here.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Happy Birthday me and some musical jibber jabber...
Yes, I had to work on my birthday. But honestly, I had a great day spent with friends and I still get to celebrate on the weekend so it doesn't bother me that I had to come straight after dinner, or that I had to sleep until 3 yesterday afternoon after having worked an overnight shift the night before. Life goes on.
At any rate, I tried a fantastic gluten free restaurant on Bleecker Street called Risotteria. If you're Celiac or gluten intolerant you have to check this place out. Apparently it's pretty well known in Celiac circles and nationwide as well. The food was fantastic. Risotto was a centerpiece of the menu (I had a bowl of such with parma ham, fontina and arugula, which was on special) but they also had gluten free (and regular pizza). Oh, and these incredible gluten free breadsticks the recipe of which the waitress had no problems divulging (tapioca starch, potato flour, rice flour, sea salt, gluten free yeast, xanthan gum and tap water). Of course she didn't give us the proportions. The restaurant also has gluten free beer and a decent wine list along with gluten free baked goods (the coolest of which was a gluten free twinkie, called a winkie).
The room was small and we had a bit of a wait for a table but it was no problem at all to get the four of us seated in a timely manner. We did have to stand outside for a bit but once the bar cleared out we sat there and munched on their breadsticks.
In other news, the first take of the music for the dance piece was well received however the dancer told me she doesn't think that it's a fit for this particular work. I was preparing myself for that possibility and I'm not really surprised. The whole time I worked on it I realized certain incongruities between certain aspects of the dance and the music, mainly tempo related, but I kept going with it trying to fix some of those aspects along the way. And, sure enough, tempo was where it missed the mark. So I may need to start from scratch, which doesn't bother me at all because I still have this piece of music that at least two people have listened to and liked and that I may finish and eventually even submit to some electronic music festivals. Even more exciting is the fact that since this piece is not for anybody anymore I can tweak it to my heart's content and put things back in that I had originally thought didn't work. Here's the piece:
Interestingly enough, this afternoon while I was hanging out with my friend Lacy who came up from Philly to deliver some software to me, the topic came up of how long to work on a "work for hire" piece of music before showing it to the director/choreographer. I've had this question come up because, on film projects, I've always been worried about wasting time on an idea that was not what the director wanted. But I've also not wanted to show them something that was unfinished lest they be unimpressed or not be able to understand where I was going with an idea. I suppose the answer is that, where deadlines are more lax or nonexistent it's probably okay to bring a piece to relative completion before risking having it rejected because at least then, you have an established piece that you can do anything with. However, in a case where you have a deadline and you don't want to risk putting a lot of time and effort into an idea that misses the mark, it may be better to come up with ways of making something sound complete or at least getting the basic jist of the piece together, not worrying so much about making it perfect, before sending a sample to the director to see if you're on the mark before proceeding. But sometimes it's hard having to explain to the director that what you are sending is not finished and it may sound different, they don't always understand that. It's a bit stressful, also, when a director expects you to just know exactly what he wants after one meeting and to crank it out as though you were some kind of music factory, no questions asked. I've had first meetings with directors that will leave me with more questions or even if I don't have them right then, something always comes up later. And, those times, it's not always easy to communicate these questions through email, or by putting the phone up to your speakers. I'd be intersted to hear what other composers out there do in these situations, especially where you have a deadline and you aren't certain what you are composing is what the director wants. I suppose these things come with experience and that the main thing is getting as far inside the director's head as possible as early as possible. That might sound funny out of context.
Anyway, hope you enjoy the music. Happy that I'm able to show you what I've been working on. Stay tuned for more!
At any rate, I tried a fantastic gluten free restaurant on Bleecker Street called Risotteria. If you're Celiac or gluten intolerant you have to check this place out. Apparently it's pretty well known in Celiac circles and nationwide as well. The food was fantastic. Risotto was a centerpiece of the menu (I had a bowl of such with parma ham, fontina and arugula, which was on special) but they also had gluten free (and regular pizza). Oh, and these incredible gluten free breadsticks the recipe of which the waitress had no problems divulging (tapioca starch, potato flour, rice flour, sea salt, gluten free yeast, xanthan gum and tap water). Of course she didn't give us the proportions. The restaurant also has gluten free beer and a decent wine list along with gluten free baked goods (the coolest of which was a gluten free twinkie, called a winkie).
The room was small and we had a bit of a wait for a table but it was no problem at all to get the four of us seated in a timely manner. We did have to stand outside for a bit but once the bar cleared out we sat there and munched on their breadsticks.
In other news, the first take of the music for the dance piece was well received however the dancer told me she doesn't think that it's a fit for this particular work. I was preparing myself for that possibility and I'm not really surprised. The whole time I worked on it I realized certain incongruities between certain aspects of the dance and the music, mainly tempo related, but I kept going with it trying to fix some of those aspects along the way. And, sure enough, tempo was where it missed the mark. So I may need to start from scratch, which doesn't bother me at all because I still have this piece of music that at least two people have listened to and liked and that I may finish and eventually even submit to some electronic music festivals. Even more exciting is the fact that since this piece is not for anybody anymore I can tweak it to my heart's content and put things back in that I had originally thought didn't work. Here's the piece:
Interestingly enough, this afternoon while I was hanging out with my friend Lacy who came up from Philly to deliver some software to me, the topic came up of how long to work on a "work for hire" piece of music before showing it to the director/choreographer. I've had this question come up because, on film projects, I've always been worried about wasting time on an idea that was not what the director wanted. But I've also not wanted to show them something that was unfinished lest they be unimpressed or not be able to understand where I was going with an idea. I suppose the answer is that, where deadlines are more lax or nonexistent it's probably okay to bring a piece to relative completion before risking having it rejected because at least then, you have an established piece that you can do anything with. However, in a case where you have a deadline and you don't want to risk putting a lot of time and effort into an idea that misses the mark, it may be better to come up with ways of making something sound complete or at least getting the basic jist of the piece together, not worrying so much about making it perfect, before sending a sample to the director to see if you're on the mark before proceeding. But sometimes it's hard having to explain to the director that what you are sending is not finished and it may sound different, they don't always understand that. It's a bit stressful, also, when a director expects you to just know exactly what he wants after one meeting and to crank it out as though you were some kind of music factory, no questions asked. I've had first meetings with directors that will leave me with more questions or even if I don't have them right then, something always comes up later. And, those times, it's not always easy to communicate these questions through email, or by putting the phone up to your speakers. I'd be intersted to hear what other composers out there do in these situations, especially where you have a deadline and you aren't certain what you are composing is what the director wants. I suppose these things come with experience and that the main thing is getting as far inside the director's head as possible as early as possible. That might sound funny out of context.
Anyway, hope you enjoy the music. Happy that I'm able to show you what I've been working on. Stay tuned for more!
Monday, April 19, 2010
My musical mind and the Cloisters...
I've spent the past week working on the music for the dance piece. Sampling the piano tuning was a good idea and has provided me with a nice palette from which to draw ideas. I've composed the main ideas of the piece, strung it all together and gotten the music up to the right length and am pretty close to finishing a first cut. Still left to do is to smooth out some of the rougher parts, add some reverb and effects, do a final mixdown and master. Of course, the bulk of the remaining work lies in smoothing out those rougher parts.
The piece is ambient for the most part, meaning essentially sustained sounds that slowly change over time (most of the work I did tweaking the samples was time-stretching them, slowing them down and reversing them). However, I had an idea at the beginning of the piece to use silence (rests) in the music in between the first few sounds you hear. If it were a stand-alone piece that might have worked but I found that, introducing those rests hinted at a rhythm that is not present in the dance. Since, the music was never intended to mimic the rhythms in the dance, I knew the solution was to keep the piece completely and strictly ambient, i.e. no obvious or implied rhythms that would either have to sync up with the dancers or else not work. So, I have to go back to the beginning of the piece and rework some things.
Feeling pretty good about the way things are sounding though and I think the piece works well with the dance. It's eight minutes long. I haven't composed something this long since grad school.
Meanwhile, I spent Saturday at the Cloisters with a friend (the French girl) whom I also had to help file a police report at the Midtown police precint. She had her wallet stolen at a club last weekend and, before she could block her accounts, the thief had spent about 1000 Euros (read: many more dollars) between two of her cards, charges that didn't show up until Friday. In order to refute the charges, she needed a police report. So that was the first order of business Saturday, a trip to Times Square and about a half hour of sitting in the police precinct talking to a desk clerk and subsequently (and rather briefly) to a detective.
Afterward, we hopped the subway up to 81st Street to hit the Upper West Side Shake Shack, because I had been craving a burger and wanted to convince yet another person that Shake Shack has the best burgers in the world. I also wanted to investigate the allegation that Shake Shack has gluten free options (stupid gluten). They do. Unfortunately it was as I suspected...their solution to the gluten pollution? Have a burger without the bun. Be that as it may, you can be sure I had a bunless burger. Though it was chilly for a Saturday in April, the two of us scarfed our burgers outside while sitting on a bench across the street by the History Museum.
After that we headed all the way up to Claire's place in Washington Heights to regroup (and locate the Cloisters) before heading to our destination. Now, I had never been further north than 125th Street before but I have to say, it's another world up there. The call it Heights and they're not kidding. I thought I was in San Francisco crossed with the mountains of North Carolina or something. Check out some of the pics of Washington Heights and our long walk to the Cloisters (and of course pics of the Cloisters themselves):
The Cloisters, for those of you who don't know, are a branch of the MET Museum comprised of fragments of old Medieval and Rennaisance architectural elements, tucked away in a northern most corner of the isle of Manhattan. Complete with quiet courtyards and terraces overlooking the Hudson River and Engelwood Cliffs.
I had a great time up there. And as I sat in one of the courtyards listening to a fountain babble, meditating, I thought, "I'm never leaving this place." Not the Cloisters, because I obviously came back. I mean New York City. I have almost everything I need here. There's such a diversity of locales here in the city that I will, one, never get bored, and two, never be without a place to escape the more hectic and busy aspects of life here. And if all else fails and I really just need to get away, I can always take a train Upstate for a few days.
The piece is ambient for the most part, meaning essentially sustained sounds that slowly change over time (most of the work I did tweaking the samples was time-stretching them, slowing them down and reversing them). However, I had an idea at the beginning of the piece to use silence (rests) in the music in between the first few sounds you hear. If it were a stand-alone piece that might have worked but I found that, introducing those rests hinted at a rhythm that is not present in the dance. Since, the music was never intended to mimic the rhythms in the dance, I knew the solution was to keep the piece completely and strictly ambient, i.e. no obvious or implied rhythms that would either have to sync up with the dancers or else not work. So, I have to go back to the beginning of the piece and rework some things.
Feeling pretty good about the way things are sounding though and I think the piece works well with the dance. It's eight minutes long. I haven't composed something this long since grad school.
Meanwhile, I spent Saturday at the Cloisters with a friend (the French girl) whom I also had to help file a police report at the Midtown police precint. She had her wallet stolen at a club last weekend and, before she could block her accounts, the thief had spent about 1000 Euros (read: many more dollars) between two of her cards, charges that didn't show up until Friday. In order to refute the charges, she needed a police report. So that was the first order of business Saturday, a trip to Times Square and about a half hour of sitting in the police precinct talking to a desk clerk and subsequently (and rather briefly) to a detective.
Afterward, we hopped the subway up to 81st Street to hit the Upper West Side Shake Shack, because I had been craving a burger and wanted to convince yet another person that Shake Shack has the best burgers in the world. I also wanted to investigate the allegation that Shake Shack has gluten free options (stupid gluten). They do. Unfortunately it was as I suspected...their solution to the gluten pollution? Have a burger without the bun. Be that as it may, you can be sure I had a bunless burger. Though it was chilly for a Saturday in April, the two of us scarfed our burgers outside while sitting on a bench across the street by the History Museum.
After that we headed all the way up to Claire's place in Washington Heights to regroup (and locate the Cloisters) before heading to our destination. Now, I had never been further north than 125th Street before but I have to say, it's another world up there. The call it Heights and they're not kidding. I thought I was in San Francisco crossed with the mountains of North Carolina or something. Check out some of the pics of Washington Heights and our long walk to the Cloisters (and of course pics of the Cloisters themselves):
 |
| Best of the Cloisters |
The Cloisters, for those of you who don't know, are a branch of the MET Museum comprised of fragments of old Medieval and Rennaisance architectural elements, tucked away in a northern most corner of the isle of Manhattan. Complete with quiet courtyards and terraces overlooking the Hudson River and Engelwood Cliffs.
I had a great time up there. And as I sat in one of the courtyards listening to a fountain babble, meditating, I thought, "I'm never leaving this place." Not the Cloisters, because I obviously came back. I mean New York City. I have almost everything I need here. There's such a diversity of locales here in the city that I will, one, never get bored, and two, never be without a place to escape the more hectic and busy aspects of life here. And if all else fails and I really just need to get away, I can always take a train Upstate for a few days.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Prolific...
Okay. I admit it. I haven't been blogging as much. But I honestly prefer this to when I wasn't as busy and I would struggle to come up with something to blog about. These days, each time I do write a blog it's more than likely because I genuinely have something to report, or even better, some kind of meaningful observation about things in my life. I think it's healthy to take a step back and acknowledge things every once in a while. It's also important to come up with a more definitive and descriptive word to use besides things. And that I intend to do by means of clarifying exactly what I mean by things.
Things. Ya know? Stuff. Okay, that's enough.
Really though, I'm working a lot lately. Yesterday I did a lot of editing on the new piece. It's all recorded samples of my piano being tuned that have been processed in various ways, as I may have mentioned. So far it's been pretty rewarding and I've come up with some fantastic sounds but I'm far from done. I'm thinking I may have moved too fast from the intial editing samples phase to the actual composition phase. It's good though because I was just trying out some ideas. Ideas which begot more ideas and so on and so forth. Now, I feel like I need to go back to the raw material and come up with even more ideas.
It felt good to just dive in. I haven't had a project in what seems like a while, and to do it with a fresh start (i.e. after having reinstalled everything on my computer) was kind of nice. I even checked online on Mozy.com today to make sure that they've been backing up my project files and everything...and they are, thank god. Still heartbreaking to think of all the things I lost.
Anyway, on top of that I managed to record myself reading some practice scripts for the voice over endeavour and I'm going to be honest. It was a little disheartening but I don't think I'm hopeless. You know how you sometimes cringe when you hear your own voice? Well, add to that the fact that I may not have the right mic for my voice type. I figured a condensor mic would be good for my deep bassy voice because of the frequency response but I'm actually talking about the quality of the mic and the software, and even my preamp. I already have to do some noise reduction because my room is not the quietest.
Really though, I don't expect anything I produce at home to sound professional right away, or even at all. I'm fully prepared to do a demo elsewhere. But I really do think I need to get more comfortable in front of a mic, lose some of the dipthongs and even work on my smoothing out my accent a little. And it probably wouldn't hurt to take a little better care of my voice. Sad, that I sing in a choir and I don't.
I even got a little down hearted yesterday as a result of all of this stuff. (Not the music work from yesterday but the voice over practice). See, the industry guidebook I'm using which Edge Studios provides for free is very thorough and also very honest. There's a whole section on talking you out of doing voice over if you don't have the stuff. And it's sad really that my first reaction to hearing my voice back and not thinking it was professional enough, was to recall the brutal honesty in that particular section of the guidebook and to start getting discouraged. A lot of us do this though, I'm sure. You get your first impression about something and then you run with it instead of coming up with an alternative way of seeing the situation. But I'm talking about myself here, so I'll speak for myself when I say that I'm too hard on myself in these cases and I know it.
One thing I will say for myself though is that even though I can be so hard on myself, thanks to the experiences I've had, my therapy years back and a little bit of Buddhist wisdom thrown in on the side, it's easy for me to bounce back and have no trouble pointing out to myself that whatever thoughts I'm thinking are not necessarily reality and I don't have to accept it as such. I heard a good quote from Anais Nin tonight on a movie I was watching: "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." Could be applicable here.
Hearing my voice back after recording may have initially made me think I wasn't cut out for voice over after all, but instead, a day later, I'm thinking that all it really means is that I need practice...before I can say with any authority that I truly am not cut out for it. So let's proceed I say.
A bit exciting to be trying something new. Now it's going to be part of my routine when I can fit it in to record myself reading at least up until the seminar on the 28th of April.
Another thing I've been trying out too, in the name of organization and productivity, is to keep a word processing document of all my notes on pieces I'm writing. Starting with Jahna, the dancer's piece. It helps me between sessions to write down what I did during each session and what I think I should try to accomplish for the next one. Keeps me on point and keeps me from having one of those experiences where I sit down and wonder what the hell I was thinking the last time I worked on it, or wonder where to start. This way I'll stay focused and no ideas get lost...or rather, fewer ideas get lost.
All that having been said, I think I need to make a pact with myself not to let my shyness and the way I'm unsure of myself sometimes dictate the way I react to situations like the aforementioned. Sure, my voice on those recordings should make me realize I'm not quite ready yet but I shouldn't automatically assume that it means I'm no good at something. The same applies to music as well. I think too often over the past few years I've given up opportunities or let them pass right by because I thought I wasn't ready yet or capable. I feel like Marty McFly at the beginning of Back to the Future. "I just don't think I can handle that type of rejection," was my mantra when I'd read down the list of music festivals and competitions, commissions and whatnot. I didn't think I'd measure up or fit in with the composers submitting their compositions there.
Granted, that never kept me from composing. It just kept me (and keeps me) from ever having my work showcased or even heard by anyone except you guys, over the internet. But that's why I'm making a pact to not let thinking like that paralyze me. I've already shown that I can come up with alternative ways of thinking of my own volition and without needing anyone to talk me out of any ruts, so why not just switch it on when I start to think like that?
Watch me in the coming months, I think I might just go crazy and someone might have to use the word prolific in a sentence. On that note...
Things. Ya know? Stuff. Okay, that's enough.
Really though, I'm working a lot lately. Yesterday I did a lot of editing on the new piece. It's all recorded samples of my piano being tuned that have been processed in various ways, as I may have mentioned. So far it's been pretty rewarding and I've come up with some fantastic sounds but I'm far from done. I'm thinking I may have moved too fast from the intial editing samples phase to the actual composition phase. It's good though because I was just trying out some ideas. Ideas which begot more ideas and so on and so forth. Now, I feel like I need to go back to the raw material and come up with even more ideas.
It felt good to just dive in. I haven't had a project in what seems like a while, and to do it with a fresh start (i.e. after having reinstalled everything on my computer) was kind of nice. I even checked online on Mozy.com today to make sure that they've been backing up my project files and everything...and they are, thank god. Still heartbreaking to think of all the things I lost.
Anyway, on top of that I managed to record myself reading some practice scripts for the voice over endeavour and I'm going to be honest. It was a little disheartening but I don't think I'm hopeless. You know how you sometimes cringe when you hear your own voice? Well, add to that the fact that I may not have the right mic for my voice type. I figured a condensor mic would be good for my deep bassy voice because of the frequency response but I'm actually talking about the quality of the mic and the software, and even my preamp. I already have to do some noise reduction because my room is not the quietest.
Really though, I don't expect anything I produce at home to sound professional right away, or even at all. I'm fully prepared to do a demo elsewhere. But I really do think I need to get more comfortable in front of a mic, lose some of the dipthongs and even work on my smoothing out my accent a little. And it probably wouldn't hurt to take a little better care of my voice. Sad, that I sing in a choir and I don't.
I even got a little down hearted yesterday as a result of all of this stuff. (Not the music work from yesterday but the voice over practice). See, the industry guidebook I'm using which Edge Studios provides for free is very thorough and also very honest. There's a whole section on talking you out of doing voice over if you don't have the stuff. And it's sad really that my first reaction to hearing my voice back and not thinking it was professional enough, was to recall the brutal honesty in that particular section of the guidebook and to start getting discouraged. A lot of us do this though, I'm sure. You get your first impression about something and then you run with it instead of coming up with an alternative way of seeing the situation. But I'm talking about myself here, so I'll speak for myself when I say that I'm too hard on myself in these cases and I know it.
One thing I will say for myself though is that even though I can be so hard on myself, thanks to the experiences I've had, my therapy years back and a little bit of Buddhist wisdom thrown in on the side, it's easy for me to bounce back and have no trouble pointing out to myself that whatever thoughts I'm thinking are not necessarily reality and I don't have to accept it as such. I heard a good quote from Anais Nin tonight on a movie I was watching: "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." Could be applicable here.
Hearing my voice back after recording may have initially made me think I wasn't cut out for voice over after all, but instead, a day later, I'm thinking that all it really means is that I need practice...before I can say with any authority that I truly am not cut out for it. So let's proceed I say.
A bit exciting to be trying something new. Now it's going to be part of my routine when I can fit it in to record myself reading at least up until the seminar on the 28th of April.
Another thing I've been trying out too, in the name of organization and productivity, is to keep a word processing document of all my notes on pieces I'm writing. Starting with Jahna, the dancer's piece. It helps me between sessions to write down what I did during each session and what I think I should try to accomplish for the next one. Keeps me on point and keeps me from having one of those experiences where I sit down and wonder what the hell I was thinking the last time I worked on it, or wonder where to start. This way I'll stay focused and no ideas get lost...or rather, fewer ideas get lost.
All that having been said, I think I need to make a pact with myself not to let my shyness and the way I'm unsure of myself sometimes dictate the way I react to situations like the aforementioned. Sure, my voice on those recordings should make me realize I'm not quite ready yet but I shouldn't automatically assume that it means I'm no good at something. The same applies to music as well. I think too often over the past few years I've given up opportunities or let them pass right by because I thought I wasn't ready yet or capable. I feel like Marty McFly at the beginning of Back to the Future. "I just don't think I can handle that type of rejection," was my mantra when I'd read down the list of music festivals and competitions, commissions and whatnot. I didn't think I'd measure up or fit in with the composers submitting their compositions there.
Granted, that never kept me from composing. It just kept me (and keeps me) from ever having my work showcased or even heard by anyone except you guys, over the internet. But that's why I'm making a pact to not let thinking like that paralyze me. I've already shown that I can come up with alternative ways of thinking of my own volition and without needing anyone to talk me out of any ruts, so why not just switch it on when I start to think like that?
Watch me in the coming months, I think I might just go crazy and someone might have to use the word prolific in a sentence. On that note...
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
April...
Well into April now, my birth month...and my cousin's. So this is looking to be an exciting month because we'll be celebrating not only our respective birthdays but also throwing a housewarming party late in April. And here I'm still trying to get my room set up like I'd like it to be. The dresser should sell tomorrow and then I'll try and get a smaller desk and dresser at Ikea or on the internet...preferrably Ikea because it's so close and they could probably deliver whatever's too big to carry.
Meanwhile, in current news, the piano has been tuned. It was a long ordeal and my friend who came by to do it was kind enough to fix the F key below middle C. There was a spring dangling loose and he had to remove the entire action to get at it but it was rather a quick fix in the end, in fact reassembling the action took longer than the actual fix. Ultimately, it all took 5 hours, mainly because he had to do a double tuning...by the time he reached the upper register the middle register was out of tune again. But thankfully, with the exception of a few keys that have slipped out of tune since (he told me to expect this since it was so far out of tune), it is fairly well in tune and far more playable...he even cleaned off all the keys for me of all the gunk and dust that were clinging to them.
While he sat doing that I milled around the apartment between cleaning and reinstalling software on my computer because, yes, finally, I got the sound card working. So it's not a useless piece of shit like I had thought and with any luck it'll hold out on me long enough to take care of the first paying gig that I have gotten since moving to NYC last year! Yes, the dancer is going to pay me. I'm excited to work with her too because this is a different kind of project for me all together. I'll be doing something ambient that will not necessarily be mimicking the dancers movements but will only serve to set a tone. But I have tons of ideas. One involved sampled guitar and the other involves me taking apart and manipulating some of the samples that I recorded of the piano being tuned the other day. They were recorded on my handheld digital recorder so it all kind of hangs on how good the quality is...I've used it before but not for production level stuff. So we'll see. I've yet to listen to the raw stuff.
More news still, I'm close to finishing the new web page. Using a different host and a different template but I kept my domain name. The new site will have clips from the most recent film, Peeper, some testimonials, some added clips from Kisses and Caroms and Zero Sum Game, and more music! Quite exciting too, is that I will have the new head shots up soon as well. Chad Heird, my co worker who took the photos, should be bringing them by the next time we work together...probably Thursday. Can't wait to show those off. Chad is really talented.
Now, I'm sitting pondering my latest endeavour: voice over work. Currently pouring over the Voice Over Industry Guide Book and anticipating a 4 hour evaluation seminar that I'm signed up for the 28th of April. I've known for a while that people thought my voice would be good for it but only last year did I start to really think about it and now, after one of my co workers (incidentally, one who is on the air all the time) told me I had a million dollar voice and that I was throwing money away not following a career in voice over work, I realized it was time to do something about it.
The first session is where they tell me whether or not my voice is marketable and then I can go ahead and record a demo. And the money I spent on the session can be credited toward making the demo if I sign up for it in one week. Rock! Right?
That's what I thought. Anyhow, this is slightly longer than a blurb but probably not going to be much longer. Regrettably, I don't have any other reflections or deep thoughts for the evening. Mentally exhausted but excited about life.
Food for thought, though: I realized recently that the cause of a lot of my underlying stress is that I'm chasing after a lot of things right now and that the solution is most likely going to be an acceptance of my being incomplete.
Meanwhile, in current news, the piano has been tuned. It was a long ordeal and my friend who came by to do it was kind enough to fix the F key below middle C. There was a spring dangling loose and he had to remove the entire action to get at it but it was rather a quick fix in the end, in fact reassembling the action took longer than the actual fix. Ultimately, it all took 5 hours, mainly because he had to do a double tuning...by the time he reached the upper register the middle register was out of tune again. But thankfully, with the exception of a few keys that have slipped out of tune since (he told me to expect this since it was so far out of tune), it is fairly well in tune and far more playable...he even cleaned off all the keys for me of all the gunk and dust that were clinging to them.
While he sat doing that I milled around the apartment between cleaning and reinstalling software on my computer because, yes, finally, I got the sound card working. So it's not a useless piece of shit like I had thought and with any luck it'll hold out on me long enough to take care of the first paying gig that I have gotten since moving to NYC last year! Yes, the dancer is going to pay me. I'm excited to work with her too because this is a different kind of project for me all together. I'll be doing something ambient that will not necessarily be mimicking the dancers movements but will only serve to set a tone. But I have tons of ideas. One involved sampled guitar and the other involves me taking apart and manipulating some of the samples that I recorded of the piano being tuned the other day. They were recorded on my handheld digital recorder so it all kind of hangs on how good the quality is...I've used it before but not for production level stuff. So we'll see. I've yet to listen to the raw stuff.
More news still, I'm close to finishing the new web page. Using a different host and a different template but I kept my domain name. The new site will have clips from the most recent film, Peeper, some testimonials, some added clips from Kisses and Caroms and Zero Sum Game, and more music! Quite exciting too, is that I will have the new head shots up soon as well. Chad Heird, my co worker who took the photos, should be bringing them by the next time we work together...probably Thursday. Can't wait to show those off. Chad is really talented.
Now, I'm sitting pondering my latest endeavour: voice over work. Currently pouring over the Voice Over Industry Guide Book and anticipating a 4 hour evaluation seminar that I'm signed up for the 28th of April. I've known for a while that people thought my voice would be good for it but only last year did I start to really think about it and now, after one of my co workers (incidentally, one who is on the air all the time) told me I had a million dollar voice and that I was throwing money away not following a career in voice over work, I realized it was time to do something about it.
The first session is where they tell me whether or not my voice is marketable and then I can go ahead and record a demo. And the money I spent on the session can be credited toward making the demo if I sign up for it in one week. Rock! Right?
That's what I thought. Anyhow, this is slightly longer than a blurb but probably not going to be much longer. Regrettably, I don't have any other reflections or deep thoughts for the evening. Mentally exhausted but excited about life.
Food for thought, though: I realized recently that the cause of a lot of my underlying stress is that I'm chasing after a lot of things right now and that the solution is most likely going to be an acceptance of my being incomplete.
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