Posts Tagged ‘Musicianship’

Pending.

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

I haven’t posted here in a while but I guess if you’re busy, you’re living, so that’s a good sign.  I usually list these things in bullet points so I’ll do that now to see if I can remember something well enough to write a whole post about it:

  • My roommate’s birthday is coming up this weekend and we are already planning the craziness
  • Hung out with @philleum over the last weekend and we got rather far in some music software tinkering (Reason, Logic, Ableton)
  • Sad that I missed out on the Michael Harami memorial open* because of catch-up on work but I guess that’s corporate life
  • New bands in the shared rehearsal space I need to investigate!
  • Progress progress progress on my roommate’s book project (we’re getting there! eventually)
  • NEW business development in teh freelancsz!!11! Which is good, because after my car repairs, I can definitely use the cash.

I kind of expect to be out of blogger commission because modernfuckingwarfare2 just came out, left4dead 2 is coming out**, and I plan on getting both at the end of my next pay period.

Should I be spending money on video games after I’ve been pulled under financially because of paying for a new driver’s side mirror?  The answer to this is: MW2L4D2OMFG***

Ok I’m done for now.

Back soon.

____________
*That’s a long, heartbreaking story.  Won’t tell it just now.
**Which reminds me, I have an essay on post-modern narratives to offer you about video games, art, and storytelling.  Even people who aren’t as religious about video games as I am will get it.  Promise.
***= “are you fucking kidding me? OF COURSE I am getting these games.”

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Posted in Life As A Nico | 9 Comments »

Overblog?

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009


Series of Tubes
by ritingon

How many blogs is too many?

Like a lot of my peers, I'm interested in talking aimlessly and ad nauseam* on more than one subject.

Right, ok so why should that be a topic for an entire blog post? This has already been well established.

For some exposition, I already partitioned off my posts pertaining to musicianship and have placed them here, and that has turned out to be a good thing because it seems that as much as people like the idea of musicians, they don't care to hear about what it's like to be a musician -- or maybe more specifically, they don't care to hear me talk about it.  Moving my musicianship posts to a sub-blog has worked out for me surprisingly well, in that my online world got more organized but also it turns out there were listeners who didn't care to sort through my daily life to find what music I've written.

I'll probably reference musicianship here like I do since that actually is a part of my everyday life, but that's not necessarily the point of this blog. Besides, the more that I stuck with writing in this blog about life in general, or the internet in general, or general life on the internet, the more people were inclined to stick around.

Hypothesis: Talking about musicianship is niche, and writing entries that are more general can engage more people because slice-of-life stories are far more identifiable for the average blog reader than talking about how it took me hours to find a snare drum.

Moving on to talking about work: When I talk about the industry in which I work (interwebs - or specifically, social media), it sometimes interrupts the momentum of anecdotal story-telling, even if that is by and large a string of reminders to myself of what has happened in my social life amidst the fucking craziness of agency life (the kind of life where work follows you home).

The thing is, the anecdotes about working on the internet is its own set of stories, too. I chose social media as a career because it is, in fact, another thing about which I can rattle on and on for hours. However, I didn't need that to take over my entire personality, and in the same way, I probably shouldn't let it overrun this blog.

Enter the Research & Development Clippings blog.

Ah, that feels good to get out of the way. All of my career-related musings can now be found there unless I'll call it universal enough to drop in this main blog.

But this brings up a question I'd like to ask my fellow bloggers:

Do you try to keep life facets distinct from each other or do you mash it all up into one destination? And what are the other things in your life you do with enough passion to start another blog / site for it?

*Yes, that's how you spell it.

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Posted in Blogging, Life As A Nico, Musicianship, Research & Development, Social Media | 9 Comments »

Sounds Like Clouds

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

If you’re seeing this in a browser, I would also like to direct your attention to the little box in my sidebar that requests sharing music.

Music sharing–in the literal sense and not the elusive incarnation that the music industry can’t seem to figure out how to harness–just got a lot more social, which is the direction I have so desperately wanted it to move for such a long time. I am particularly interested in how SoundCloud offers listeners a chance to be a part of it and lets them COMMENT on the SONG ITSELF. Just mouse over my track above and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Where before it was kind of a pain to try to get people to listen to each others’ music, I think this SoundCloud contraption can really help to change the game. They’re not a game-changer in and of themselves, but they will definitely help move it along if enough musicians catch on.

But at this point I can’t help but feel there is one perplexing thing about me blogging this just now. The company has existed since 2007 so why hadn’t anyone told me about this earlier? Or even linked me to the SoundCloud blog which is chock full of links to useful web-based music tools? Or that SoundCloud hooks up into my other favorite social networking sites pretty easily?

In any case, it’s encouraging to see that collaboration among musicians has been getting the attention of people who are building tools to facilitate music-making. Being able to give each other listens and peer advice from all over the planet is more important than we give it credit. Sure, we’ve had YouTube musicians (which, let’s face it, are 92.4% comprised of acoustic guitars), music software message board communities, and MySpace for a long time, but I like seeing web-based tools go up in the name of music community as the primary interest and not just the after-thought. Drawing attention directly to the music makes the site feel like it has a point and a purpose instead of being just a digital web playground where artists and labels and management and venues litter flyers all over the place.

Neglecting the obvious social networks for music or musical sectors of existing social networks, I think that moving forward I’m definitely going to be using SoundCloud for musicianship and ReverbNation for promoting.

Pretty excited about this. Perhaps excited enough to be motivated to finally getting around to writing some new music.

Now, the next task is to find the right listeners.

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Posted in Life As A Nico, Music Biz, Musicianship, Social Media | 4 Comments »

Who Has The Jitters? This Guy.

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

Coffee makes me twitch.

Smattering of information! Here:

Nerdness: Remember I was talking the other day about a WP plugin that’ll let you incorporate code into posts? Turns out there is an even better one called Raw HTML, which lets you escape your code pretty easily and effectively. This means that, unlike the WP-allow tags plugin (which actually served me pretty well), this one can be evoked on a case-by-case basis and won’t apply to the entirety of the blog. Right on.

But does it work? You betcha:

Dude… why? Just… why? Not a day goes by where I really wished I had learned Hiragana. And now I may never know why these dudes are getting hit in the nuts by … what appears to be a “nut shot machine”… Why the fuck would you make a nut shot machine? I would never be on this gameshow.

Drama: I make girls cry. I didn’t mean to, really. In actuality it wasn’t my fault since I was only a messenger. I guess that doesn’t matter since I was still a bearer of bad news. I probably shouldn’t broadcast this over the internet out of respect to those this situation involved but let’s just say it has something to do with a missing automobile.

Musicianship: I know I started a musician blog already but I have to ask a question to everyone: If one writes enough sets of music in a number of different styles, are those sets still that one person or can they all count as separate solo projects? For instance, I’ve been writing an electronic shoegaze set for forever, a post-punk set only recently, and a folktronic set for ideas that wouldn’t fit into the other two. Those three styles wouldn’t make sense to release under the same name… or would they?

Corporate Life: The reason I’m so hopped up on coffee is from needing to take work home tonight. A lot of people hate being under pressure, but I am actually quite fond of it. No! Seriously, I’m not being sarcastic! I’m of the mindset that if you have too much to do, it suggests that you have a lot of opportunities to accomplish just as much.

And this is weird for me, because I was totally not an over-achievers in school. My grades prove it.

January: I realize that this is your last ditch effort to screw up my life by making it difficult for not just me but those around me, but you will not succeed if I can do anything about it.

And now I have a bloody nose. What the hell…?

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Posted in Blogging, Life As A Nico, Marketeering, Musicianship | 5 Comments »

Quick Little Notes

Monday, August 11th, 2008

Music: I’ve been thinking about just releasing my music for free.  I’m not after money with it, after all.  It’s just a hobby like blogging is.  My words and thoughts are free, maybe my music should be the same?  I’m protected with Creative Commons anyway.

Of course first I’d need evidence that anybody gives a shit before I do that.

Other things: Re-building sidebar and the menu strip to test out some PHP calls for work.  Here’s hoping I don’t break anything.  But better to break something here before I break something on a corporate blog, right?

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Posted in Random | 3 Comments »

The Unrelenting Crush of Musicianship

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

It’s entirely possible that the music I write is complete garbage.  I have no delusions that that happens to a lot of people and I may very well be one of them.

But the more I think about it, crappiness has had little to do with who wants to listen to demos or who supports it out of friendship.  From my experience as an amateur performer and from working at a venue, I think it’s more likely that there are just too many artists out there to care about the people who are making music around you.  I am also feeling that people will generally only actively consume music if that artist has something that creates a layer of distance between them and their audience.  Exempli Gratia, if it has been propped up by a label, no matter how small that label is – and in some cases, especially if it’s a small label.  And when there is that layer of distance to an artist, be it management or simply not knowing them in person, there is a sense of legitimacy.  I think this distance is required for fan-dom.  I also think it’s mostly it’s a subconcious thing.

Think about it:

(more…)

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Posted in LA Underground, Musicianship | 7 Comments »

It's All Of The Good That Won't Come Out Of Me

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

It was in a conversation over drinks last night that some friends and I were able to unearth who exactly it is I become in my alternate personality, Shadow Nicopolitan.

A shadow personality is not necessarily just the opposite of one’s default personality, contrary to what I initially believed.  I haven’t been Shadow Nicopolitan for a while, and only after establishing some distance between my shadow and myself, I’ve figured out that the shadow is more accurately defined when particular reactions complement my personality under special circumstances.

Case in point, Shadow Nicopolitan is:

  • An attention whore on the stage.  He loves it when your eyes are on him, and he will flail violently, jump around, smack his guitar like he’s trying to break it, will whip his hair around like it’s on fire, will cut himself and bleed all over the guitar pedals to make sure that you are paying attention to him.
  • Someone who can and will actually dance (!), especially if he standing next to a gigantic subwoofer at a drum n bass show.
  • Probably on drugs when he is dancing.
  • A good public speaker – he will become erudite and eloquent, will gesticulate emphatically, will smile artificially, and snap his fingers when he thinks you’re not paying attention.
  • Someone who will retaliate getting pushed into a mosh pit by giving you a shoulder check with his entire upper body, or at least a violent elbow to the chest.
  • Fantastic under pressure.
  • A bullshitter who can talk the talk, a networker who can read people, and a witty, friendly person who can work the room.

Regular Nicopolitan is just some guy with glasses and a positive disposition.  Shadow Nicopolitan is a rockstar and a badass.  He even comes out in relationships, and will probably be the first one in the relationship to say “I love you,” and he will mean it.

However, Shadow Nicopolitan also has many negative qualities.  He will speak before thinking when faced with an emotionally jarring situation, he will inadvertently raise his voice, he will guilt trip you into saying things you didn’t want to admit, he is jealous, and his defense for his insecurities are often an offense.

In my personal opinion, Shadow Nicopolitan is a weirdo.  A lot of those qualities I would say I don’t possess, even if I know I’m capable of them.  I really don’t like to dance.  I don’t enjoy being fake when I network, nor do I ever do it on purpose.  And by and large, I rarely run into having to turn into Shadow Nicopolitan while I’m in a relationship.  It weirds me out that I know that I can do these things, that I will rarely have to do these things, and that it always shocks me when I do do these things.

A shadow personality is not your opposite.  It is that portion of your id that comes out when someone shines a spotlight on you and you are compelled do something.  A shadow can only be seen when someone or something casts a light on you, and your shadow will be more defined the brighter the lights.

So I want to ask everyone:

Who is that person you have as a shadow?

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Posted in Life As A Nico | 8 Comments »

Progress! somewhat.

Monday, April 7th, 2008

Yep, progress. But unfortunately, only in the subject of musicianship, and not anything else. I’ve been being a little escapist lately. The headache that is the apartment hunt; the frustration of not being able to pull off A+ work at my day job because of roadblock after roadblock; the serious burnout and sacrificed social life that’s setting on from working at the bar on weekends. Life gets to ya.

But if you’re me, you take all that negative energy and do something else. Life hands me lemons. I make lemon splash martinis.

And I forget where I heard this, but when I witness a series of achievements I like saying that the achiever “must be butter, because s/he’s on a roll!”  It’s that kind of lame pun that makes my day.

Oh, but I am on a roll.  Check out some of the music I’m working on (to the left).  You can help by offering suggestions, which I actually take into serious consideration when I sit down to write music.

Anyways.  Back to real life for now…

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Posted in Life As A Nico, Musicianship | 3 Comments »

Let's All Be Musicians (or: The Internet Jam Session)

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

Alright, so I have been working with some melodies and beats etc., but as this time isn’t any different from any others, I find I am a way better collaborator than I am a solo artist. This may stem from my desire to see a song fleshed out as completely as possible, but when I hit a roadblock, the song just kinda doesn’t get finished.

And this is where you, dear reader, come in.

I’m posting two sketches here of songs that are currently in the works and I’d like to ask you where you’d like the songs to go – because you’ll notice they start, establish a little bit of motion, repeat a couple of times, and then… just cut off. I’m out of ideas. So help out!

Here’s what I’m talking about:

Airplanes
Connectivity

So – what do we want to hear next out of these? Lyrics? More guitars? Different instruments? Key changes? “Moods” or “ambience”? Sound effects? Transitions? Your ideas will be taken seriously and further drafts will incorporate them. Don’t be afraid to be harsh with constructive criticism, I have no ego, and after all, criticism is all for the betterment of the song(s).

BONUS: If you notice these two sketches are in the same key, you can actually play them at the same time and see that they kind of blend… kind of.

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Posted in Musicianship | 3 Comments »