Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Give me excess of it / That surfeiting / The appetite may sicken and so die


* Sheepish disclaimer: I drafted this up around May of last year, then proceeded to forget about it until I noticed that I had a couple of blogs in my drafts box. I'm going to go ahead and post anyway since it is a snapshot of what was going on in my head then.  I've made changes to some of the text to reflect the passage of time since...

I spent the end of February and most of March 2011 writing and recording music for Messiah College's production of Twelfth Night. It's been almost a year since the show closed, so I figure a post about it is due, right? I participated in 2010's February Album Writing Month (FAWM) and verily did I succeed in its prescribed challenge of writing 14 songs in 28 days, but the work I did for Twelfth Night was much more intense: 16 songs in 14 days! Granted, 3 of those were 30 second interludes, plus I'd had concepts for about half the songs (mostly the Feste tunes) kicking around in my head just waiting to be further developed. Still 13 full length pop/rock songs written and recorded in two weeks is a personal record. I also wrote 1 additional full length tune and 1 more interlude a couple of days after, but those didn't end up getting used in the show.

I was incredibly pleased with the results. If I do say so myself, I wrote some pretty good tunes. The cast nailed the music for the most part, making just the right changes to make the songs their own. Jim Knipple, director of the show and friend o' mine, did a good job integrating the songs into the action and steering the cast, and I think a good time was, in general, had by all - if the Facebook chatter of the cast (who I'd been sort of lightly cyberstalking) is reliable.

The show marks the first time I'd:

  1. Adapted a piece of text to music,
  2. Written music for a theatrical production, and
  3. Written music to be sung by someone other than a member of The MOODS (and all the way across the country, nonetheless)
The first two weeks were the most densely packed. Every minute I wasn't at work, eating, sleeping, or taking care of little Sebbie, I was either writing or recording. I did most of the writing during the day and the laying down of tracks at night (usually after Erin and I had put Sebbie to bed). Sebbie was still sleeping in our bedroom, so I was able to use his room for recording. I holed myself up in his closet for the vocal recording.

I had used Audacity the previous year to record my FAWM album, but made a concerted effort to find a better piece of software for recording. Audacity is great for a free application, but with the time constraints of the show, I needed something that would trim and move tracks more intuitively. I'd used Sony Acid Music Studio in the past but didn't find it particularly intuitive - especially after using Garageband on my sister's Mac. I certainly wasn't in any position to drop the few hundred dollars for ProTools or Ableton, and Logic wasn't an option. So, I did a Google search for "Garageband PC" and found Mixcraft. The features list looked good and the screenshots were easy to comprehend, so I downloaded the 14-day trial and started recording as soon as the install completed. Lo and behold, I finished principal recording before the trial expired!
I did purchase the licensed version for future use (it didn't break the bank at $75), but the ease of use had me sold within the first hour of recording. With Audacity, it would've taken me two nights to record a song with lead and backing vocals, 2 guitars, 1 synth, and some light hand percussion - multiple takes and some light clean up taken into account. With Mixcraft, I was able to lay down 1 lead/2 backing vocals, 2 guitars, 1 synth, 1 bass, percussion, and drum tracks plus several effects layered over here and there. Bass and percussion were composed using the program's virtual instruments, while drums were handled via the packed-in selection of drum loops. Mixcraft's selection of built-in drum loops is actually quite good, despite being mostly geared towards electronica, hip-hop, and beat driven music. At the very least, I was able to utilize enough of the loops to adequately convey the feel of each song.
You can listen to a handful of the songs in the MUSIC section of my portfolio site.

Monday, May 3, 2010

A life is time / They teach you growing up


I'm a bit of a wreck today. I've been putting in extra work hours (in addition to my regular eight-to-five) doing some freelance work and have been staying up late working on the project. I'm hoping to be able to divulge some details later because it's quite the neat little project, but that will have to wait for another blog. I don't know if it's the exhaustion from too much compy work and not enough sleep or what, but I've been in an odd emotional place for the past couple of days.

My mind keeps drifting and thinking about divergent realities.

In particular, realities that may have diverged in the summer of 2009.

When I received the call that Erin was trapped at a hospital in Bogotá, Colombia, the first thought that came to my head was "I need to go there and be with her. I need to get her through this and home safely." She had already undergone so much, having gotten progressively ill in a foreign land over the course of couple of weeks. Even after I arrived at the Clinica de Marley in Bogotá and we were finally reunited, it was an incredibly difficult ordeal. The days following the diagnosos of her complicated Pneumonia - a condition with a 40% mortality rate - were emotionally arduous. She slipped in and out of lucidity during those couple of days after I arrived. Her body was devastatingly weak, and her mind was beginning to succumb to the weight of her condition. When we were told that there was a chance she wouldn't make it out of Bogotá alive, she was too weary to respond emotionally. It took all of her focus just to be somewhat present at the moment. I'm glad of that, in a way. I was a broken mess, but perhaps it was something of a good thing that she didn't have to shoulder that emotional burden.

The scenario is my own personal Schrodinger's Box. More frequently than I'd like, I find myself thinking about what might have been if I hadn't flown out. What if I had chosen to delay my departure? would Erin have made it? Did I collapse the wave funtion by making the choice that I did? Or is there another Jay in a parallel universe who is, at this moment, living a reality in which Erin was untimely ripped from his life? I can't stand the thought. Every time I consider the possibility, gravity intensifies. I feel my heart being pulled to the ground and my knees buckling. When I'm alone and the thought creeps up on me, I need to pause to collect myself. The idea of living without Erin is unbearable. When I'm with her and the thought slips in, the sight of her face brings a comfort I'd not ever known until we were reunited in September after she'd spent a month recovering with her parents in Western Massachusetts.

There's a crushing loneliness that overtakes me when the idea really sinks in. The possibility of what could've happened makes my heart sieze.

When I look at Erin, and when I see her beginning to show, a small portion deep inside of me says a little prayer of thanks that she's still here by my side. When I think about our child - right now no bigger than an olive - growing inside her, a little voice in my head gives a proclamation of gratitude that we're together and have not missed the opportunity to have a child with each other.

I feel blessed to no end when I wake up beside Erin or share a meal together or curl up on the couch to watch a video. I feel a bit melancholy, too, that maybe there's a world out there without her, and on that world is a hopelessly sad Jay.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

And the morning light was breaking / Slowly moving across the bed

So...
I've been a dad-to-be for about 9 weeks now. I've seen our first ultrasound.

Erin is beginning to show, her appetite is steadily growing in breadth and quanitity, and one topic has begun to regularly resurface in conversation: baby names.
Of course, at this point it's not yet possible to tell the gender of our child (bones are just now beginning to form according thebump.com), so we've been considering both boy's names, girl's names, and some gender neutral fare. Every trip to Barnes & Noble or Borders is incomplete without swinging by the parenting section to look at baby name books.
It's a bit of a tough matter though, since Erin and I want our child's name to be meaningful one and not too common. It's easier to rule out names than it is to zero in on our favorites, so here's a list of names we will most likely not be naming our child (in no particular order):
  • Super Street Fighter IV
  • Fender Telecaster
  • Hybrid
  • Samus Aran
  • Princess Peach
  • Awesome
  • Mario Kart
  • Stuart Murdoch (Erin just doesn't like the name Stuart)
  • Boss Reverb
  • Alien Ressurection
  • Spot 2
  • Crow (the superhero or the robot)
  • Shigeru Miyamoto
Link and Zelda have not yet been eliminated from the list.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Good morning starshine / The earth says hello / You twinkle above us / We twinkle below

I won't soon forget July of 2009. It feels like I aged more in a month than I had in the past few years. To be completely honest, I'm not really sure how to start this blog. How about a few words about my surroundings at this point in time?
  • It's a lovely Saturday afternoon here in Irvine, CA. The common just outside Erin's and my block of student housing is basking in a warm, welcoming sun. While Augusts in Southern California can be scorchingly intolerable, there's no sign of that today.
  • My copy of Belle and Sebastian's "The Life Pursuit" is skipping in the CD player. Drat. It's either been subject one too many plays or it's time for me to invest in a new CD player. Then again, maybe it's time to skip the CD player altogether, go 100% digital, and set up a music-streaming system. Hmmm, decisions, decisions...
  • Every chair I own is currently resting upside-down on another piece of furniture. Spot has come down with a horribly bad case of fleas, so the exterminators came into the apartment yesterday to treat our carpet. I'm actually standing at my kitchen counter typing this since our home office is currently unavailable for use.
  • I seem to be missing every tenth letter or so as I type. The weariness and stress of recent times started catching up to me about two weeks ago, and now I think that said weariness is finally making its way to my hands. I wonder if the San Miguel beer at 2:30 in the afternoon has something to do with it.
Okay, enough piddly, little details...

I've established this blog for a two reasons, the most immediate being that I want to document as much of the past month as I can before the details fade from memory. The first few entries will be for those of you who are interested in learning more about what Erin and I had gone through since the 7th of July. I've received a goodly amount of emails and Facebook messages/comments asking for details. I figure a blog entry (or two) is as good a way as any to get those details to interested parties.

My more over-arching reason for starting this blog is to keep a better account of my days. I actually maintained a blog on MySpace for a little while, but stopped updating it a few years ago when MySpace became to cumbersome to keep up. Downs and ups and all things considered, I can say that I enjoy my life very, very, VERY much. The days have been good to me for the most part, and I know that someday - when faces and events begin to slip from memory - I'll appreciate having something to remind me of a life lovingly lived.