- The first time I'm unemployed since I was around 15 years old could be when I graduate from college (hooray for irony).
- I'm going to have a whole host of expenses coming my way here pretty soon and not a lot of cash to pay for those.
- I should look for the beauty of God aesthetically - especially while I'm here on the island.
- Going running is refreshing.
- I have a gazillion interests but almost all of them relate to directly to the field of technology.
- I am overly excited to see Kelly in 23 days.
- I am going to read an actual book until I finish it rather than approximately 30 online articles a day.
- I have a ton of work to do with both of the artists I am engineering for, due a week from today.
- I do not know a lot of places to look for music business jobs.
- I do not know if I want to pursue music business.
- Marketing and Music Engineering are two of the most intriguing things to think about/do.
- Protestant's are about to officially become a minority for the first time in America's history (51% claim to be Protestant now, compared to 65% in the 80's - World News).
- I am trying to learn tons of new software - photoshop, illustrator, about 5 different video editing softwares, garage band, VLC, azureus, limewire, switch, iDVD, iPhoto, and all the other goodness on my Mac.
- I think I may borderline worship Steve Jobs.
- I don't think patriotic songs should be sung in churches.
- I am a Republican with no one to vote for.
- I've learned more from Kel than anyone besides my parents (often through just processing).
- Communication must be focused and concise (Big lesson here).
- I like watching films analytically and not just for pleasure.
- I listen to way too much music of way too many genres.
- I don't listen to as much music as I want to.
- I miss my friends from Geneva and want to call them, as well as high school friends, but never make the time to.
- Kelly is wonderful and I take her love for granted sometimes.
- God has blessed my relationship with her beyond belief this semester.
- I recommend renting the movie "Once" and listening to the soundtrack over and over again.
- I don’t know where I want to live in a few months (this should probably be a whole separate blog – ha)
- I love being organized and having a schedule.
- I need to figure out what to write on my different resumes.
- I need to actually spend time looking for jobs.
- I say "I" too much (Philippians 2:3-4).
Monday, February 25, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
This May Help Describe Some of My Thoughts...
“…through foolishness they, the people, deceived themselves into thinking that there was no right or wrong in music, that it was to be judged good or bad by the pleasure it gave…a spirit of law breaking.”
-Plato
“Music directly represents the passions or states of the soul – gentleness, anger, courage, temperance…if one listens to the wrong kind of music he will become the wrong kind of person…”
-Aristotle
"It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception."
-Albert Einstein (When asked about his theory of relativity)
"Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life."
-Ludwig van Beethoven
“[Music has the uncanny power to] ‘…trigger a flood of human emotions and images that have the ability to instantaneously produce very powerful changes in emotional states’.”
–Brain specialist, Dr. Richard Pellegrino
“Take it from a brain guy. In 25 years of working with the brain, I still cannot affect a person’s state of mind the way that one simple song can.”
–Brain specialist, Dr. Richard Pellegrino
“the lyrics become a philosophy of life, a religion”
“Music seems to be the most immediate of all the arts…Music possesses us…it really is as if some ‘other’ has entered not just our bodies, but our intentions, taking us over.”
-Robert Jordain, Science writer and composer of Music, the Brain and Ecstacy
“Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
-Berthold Auerbach
“I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.”
-George Eliot (1819 - 1880)
“My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.”
-Martin Luther (1483 - 1546)
Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 - 1894)
"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
-Decca Recording Company rejecting the Beatles, 1962
"Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard."
-Warren G. Bennis
"Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable."
-Leonard Bernstein
"Music is well said to be the speech of angels."
-Thomas Carlyle
"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be."
-Abraham Maslow
"Without music life would be a mistake."
-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
“A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.”
-Henry Giles
-Plato
“Music directly represents the passions or states of the soul – gentleness, anger, courage, temperance…if one listens to the wrong kind of music he will become the wrong kind of person…”
-Aristotle
"It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception."
-Albert Einstein (When asked about his theory of relativity)
"Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life."
-Ludwig van Beethoven
“[Music has the uncanny power to] ‘…trigger a flood of human emotions and images that have the ability to instantaneously produce very powerful changes in emotional states’.”
–Brain specialist, Dr. Richard Pellegrino
“Take it from a brain guy. In 25 years of working with the brain, I still cannot affect a person’s state of mind the way that one simple song can.”
–Brain specialist, Dr. Richard Pellegrino
“the lyrics become a philosophy of life, a religion”
“Music seems to be the most immediate of all the arts…Music possesses us…it really is as if some ‘other’ has entered not just our bodies, but our intentions, taking us over.”
-Robert Jordain, Science writer and composer of Music, the Brain and Ecstacy
“Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
-Berthold Auerbach
“I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.”
-George Eliot (1819 - 1880)
“My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.”
-Martin Luther (1483 - 1546)
Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 - 1894)
"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
-Decca Recording Company rejecting the Beatles, 1962
"Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard."
-Warren G. Bennis
"Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable."
-Leonard Bernstein
"Music is well said to be the speech of angels."
-Thomas Carlyle
"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be."
-Abraham Maslow
"Without music life would be a mistake."
-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
“A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.”
-Henry Giles
Monday, February 11, 2008
Another 5 a.m. Night...
Yes its true. I was in the studio until 5 a.m. last night. It was ridiculous, but I loved every second of it. I was engineering my artist, Tirzah, from the 1 - 4 a.m. slot in the main studio. Now normally the manager never engineers for their own artist, but we are really short on engineers after we had to have 3 quit because of being too busy. So now instead of engineering for one artist, I have two - Tirzah and Jon Li. Jon is a good kid - plays piano rock. He is improving vocally, but he is an unbelievable keyboard player. If you ask him to play any song he has heard even once, he will whip it out - Christian to Mainstream, Folk to Rap.
But back to last night, we were still tracking (meaning recording the tracks) at 3:50a.m. Now normally after you track, you spend hours editing, mixing, getting your levels right, tweaking stuff, eliminating noises, EQing every instrument, putting reverb on everything, tune up the vocals, etc etc. Basically, there is just a ton to be done, and we had to be out in 10 minutes (including saving the file which takes a few minutes to convert to a playable file). Luckily, while I was recording Tirzah I was adjusting all these things since I knew we would be tight on time. We ended up running about 10 minutes over into the next people's time (the 4a.m. to 9a.m. slot!) but got it done. I only got to listen to the song one time through to adjust levels and delete stuff before we mixed down.
So during our 9:30a.m. class, all the artists have to play their songs for the whole class, as well as the two directors (Tom and Warren), Danara from Columbia Records, and Will Gray who is an incredible musician/lyricist. The four faculty were lined up American Idol style and just posted instant messages in real time to the projector in our cafe. Their comments ripped apart our songs - from vocals to too much bass to saying "this has potential but right now it sucks bad". So...needless to say, the artists and engineers got their reality check on the day after working so hard on all these songs. With the three engineers having to quit, I ended up mixing/editing 3 artists songs. Josh's was a harder rock song, Jon did a piano rock tune, and Tirzah did a vocal/piano lead soft rock song. I liked all the songs, which was cool, but they all turned out at different levels of quality. I messed up on some panning stuff for Josh and the EQ was off for some of Jon's song (and both had some poorly recorded vocals not done by me). However, Tirzah's recording, who I spent by FAR the least amount of time on, everyone loved! Tom later told Tirzah that it was the "song of the day" - so we were really excited.
Turns out those late nights can be worth it! I am going to Boston with everyone this weekend and can't wait. I think it will be good to get a break from here, but I still love it. In a half an hour we are watching the movie "Spinal Tap" which I guess is both of my professor's favorite movie. Tomorrow morning we will talk about it.
Check out Tirzah's performance at her featured CMC Live performance at a quick website I made for her at:
www.virb.com/tirzah
That's all.
But back to last night, we were still tracking (meaning recording the tracks) at 3:50a.m. Now normally after you track, you spend hours editing, mixing, getting your levels right, tweaking stuff, eliminating noises, EQing every instrument, putting reverb on everything, tune up the vocals, etc etc. Basically, there is just a ton to be done, and we had to be out in 10 minutes (including saving the file which takes a few minutes to convert to a playable file). Luckily, while I was recording Tirzah I was adjusting all these things since I knew we would be tight on time. We ended up running about 10 minutes over into the next people's time (the 4a.m. to 9a.m. slot!) but got it done. I only got to listen to the song one time through to adjust levels and delete stuff before we mixed down.
So during our 9:30a.m. class, all the artists have to play their songs for the whole class, as well as the two directors (Tom and Warren), Danara from Columbia Records, and Will Gray who is an incredible musician/lyricist. The four faculty were lined up American Idol style and just posted instant messages in real time to the projector in our cafe. Their comments ripped apart our songs - from vocals to too much bass to saying "this has potential but right now it sucks bad". So...needless to say, the artists and engineers got their reality check on the day after working so hard on all these songs. With the three engineers having to quit, I ended up mixing/editing 3 artists songs. Josh's was a harder rock song, Jon did a piano rock tune, and Tirzah did a vocal/piano lead soft rock song. I liked all the songs, which was cool, but they all turned out at different levels of quality. I messed up on some panning stuff for Josh and the EQ was off for some of Jon's song (and both had some poorly recorded vocals not done by me). However, Tirzah's recording, who I spent by FAR the least amount of time on, everyone loved! Tom later told Tirzah that it was the "song of the day" - so we were really excited.
Turns out those late nights can be worth it! I am going to Boston with everyone this weekend and can't wait. I think it will be good to get a break from here, but I still love it. In a half an hour we are watching the movie "Spinal Tap" which I guess is both of my professor's favorite movie. Tomorrow morning we will talk about it.
Check out Tirzah's performance at her featured CMC Live performance at a quick website I made for her at:
www.virb.com/tirzah
That's all.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
What's New...
Hello.
I thought I would give a lil update as to what I was doing on the island. First off, I will say that I am having a wonderful time. The people are much different than those at Geneva, but great. I am managing an artist and her name is Tirzah Lemmens. You should probably stop reading this nonsense and check out one of her older songs at www.myspace.com/tirzahlemmens. She is one of the best artists here in the program and is therefore sought after by the other artists for shows and recordings. I keep track of her schedule and help in any other way I can as well. Often times I go to her rehearsals and give feedback as to a better sound or trying new things. We have a solid friendship and it seems to be working so far.
I also am training daily on ProTools to learn how to do sound engineering. We usually train for about an hour and a half a day (4 days a week) and learn everything from how to mic things properly to how to record tracks to how to mix them once they are recorded. This part is awesome. It is optional if you want to do the engineering because it comes with a lot of time. It includes around 6 hours a week of recording an artist's songs plus at least one late-night session which is either from 1am-4am or 4am-9am. Those are rough because we have class from 9:30-12 and then 1-2:30 during the day. However, it still is really awesome. I also work in the kitchen, setting up/cleaning up breakfast every weekday from 8:15am-9:30am when class starts.
Class. Class is very awesome. It is different everyday of the week. Our first class at 9:30 is usually more of a lecture style and ranges from a movie discussion (we have to watch a movie every Monday night) to a short article discussion to experiences in the industry. The songwriting teacher (Will Gray - www.myspace.com/willgraymusic) and director (Tom Willett - www.tomwillett.com) is coming back from a week in L.A. and is going to tell us stories of meeting with top producers like Dr. Dre and T Bone Burnett. If you don't know who those two guys are, you should find out. Will is trying to get a contract and supposedly has some cool offers, as well as some real bogus ones.
A couple of days ago, an alumni came to teach us for the next couple of months. Her name is Danara Schurch and she is a marketing manager at Columbia Records. I was pretty intimidated by this title and her stor. As all the record labels keep firing people and downsizing, Danara was telling them that she did not want to live in New York and wanted to work from home...and the company told her to do what she wanted. So, now she is living on the island and will be interrupted periodically in class by a top Columbia director or P.O.D. will be IMing her. It's pretty crazy to me. She works on marketing a lot of the non-traditional Christian bands and has her own company (KDR group) that Columbia subs out its market research-type work to. That way she is needed by both companies and makes tons of money doing it. Genius. She is 25 or 26...
Yesterday she gave us an assignment to market the new "The Afters" video called "MySpace Girl". Personally, I'm not the biggest fan of their pop music, but marketing it...now that is fun. We have to figure out how to get middle school and high school girls (and guys too) to come and watch this "viral video". I will wait to post my groups plan for sake of confidentiality for Columbia Records, but the ideas us executives came up with, the label will actually be using! I will talk more about this once the video is released on February 13th. You can check out their site at www.myspace.com/theafters.
In case you were wondering, I'm currently listening to: Falling Up - "Captiva". I give it 3.4 stars out of 4.
That's all for now my peeps.
I thought I would give a lil update as to what I was doing on the island. First off, I will say that I am having a wonderful time. The people are much different than those at Geneva, but great. I am managing an artist and her name is Tirzah Lemmens. You should probably stop reading this nonsense and check out one of her older songs at www.myspace.com/tirzahlemmens. She is one of the best artists here in the program and is therefore sought after by the other artists for shows and recordings. I keep track of her schedule and help in any other way I can as well. Often times I go to her rehearsals and give feedback as to a better sound or trying new things. We have a solid friendship and it seems to be working so far.
I also am training daily on ProTools to learn how to do sound engineering. We usually train for about an hour and a half a day (4 days a week) and learn everything from how to mic things properly to how to record tracks to how to mix them once they are recorded. This part is awesome. It is optional if you want to do the engineering because it comes with a lot of time. It includes around 6 hours a week of recording an artist's songs plus at least one late-night session which is either from 1am-4am or 4am-9am. Those are rough because we have class from 9:30-12 and then 1-2:30 during the day. However, it still is really awesome. I also work in the kitchen, setting up/cleaning up breakfast every weekday from 8:15am-9:30am when class starts.
Class. Class is very awesome. It is different everyday of the week. Our first class at 9:30 is usually more of a lecture style and ranges from a movie discussion (we have to watch a movie every Monday night) to a short article discussion to experiences in the industry. The songwriting teacher (Will Gray - www.myspace.com/willgraymusic) and director (Tom Willett - www.tomwillett.com) is coming back from a week in L.A. and is going to tell us stories of meeting with top producers like Dr. Dre and T Bone Burnett. If you don't know who those two guys are, you should find out. Will is trying to get a contract and supposedly has some cool offers, as well as some real bogus ones.
A couple of days ago, an alumni came to teach us for the next couple of months. Her name is Danara Schurch and she is a marketing manager at Columbia Records. I was pretty intimidated by this title and her stor. As all the record labels keep firing people and downsizing, Danara was telling them that she did not want to live in New York and wanted to work from home...and the company told her to do what she wanted. So, now she is living on the island and will be interrupted periodically in class by a top Columbia director or P.O.D. will be IMing her. It's pretty crazy to me. She works on marketing a lot of the non-traditional Christian bands and has her own company (KDR group) that Columbia subs out its market research-type work to. That way she is needed by both companies and makes tons of money doing it. Genius. She is 25 or 26...
Yesterday she gave us an assignment to market the new "The Afters" video called "MySpace Girl". Personally, I'm not the biggest fan of their pop music, but marketing it...now that is fun. We have to figure out how to get middle school and high school girls (and guys too) to come and watch this "viral video". I will wait to post my groups plan for sake of confidentiality for Columbia Records, but the ideas us executives came up with, the label will actually be using! I will talk more about this once the video is released on February 13th. You can check out their site at www.myspace.com/theafters.
In case you were wondering, I'm currently listening to: Falling Up - "Captiva". I give it 3.4 stars out of 4.
That's all for now my peeps.
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