In a Travelodge...

Candace and I are staying in Athens tonight, and due to wanting to be able to go out drinking, we're staying in a motel, specifically, a Travelodge. The main attraction for the motel was its price, as I'm sure you can imagine, and ultimately, I would say we're getting a pretty good deal when compared with hostel rates. Candace and I are splitting a $45 room, so we're each paying $22.50 or so, which is comparable to what we'd pay at a hostel. For the price though, we get a private room, private shower, a more secure place to leave our stuff, no curfew, a parking spot, a TV, an internet connection, and all the other usual stuff that you get in a hotel, so all in all, I would have to say we're getting a decent deal here...

I'll let you know how I feel about it in the morning though... =)

Rock Piano Student

Recently, my friend and fellow freelancing private music instructor Henry decided to hand me one of his piano students due to complications with his schedule (a common way I have gotten some of my gigs). Unlike my other piano students though, this guy wants to play rock piano, improvising at the keyboard by reading chord charts. Naturally, this is right up my alley, as this is the form of piano playing I excel at, so I was really excited to have our first lesson last night.

Sure enough, I had a great time teaching him. This kid basically was starting from point blank, knowing only a little about musical instruments, so I had my work cut out for me. That said, I was surprised to find that teaching someone how to play piano by using basic triadic theory and their ear produced MUCH quicker results than trying to teach them the traditional notation-based way. By the end of the lesson, my student was already playing (albeit slowly) the chord progression to Hotel California, even though he essentially didn't know anything about piano beforehand.

In the end, I'm really excited to see where this all leads and am even considering changing my approach with other students to a more popular music-based method, just like I would naturally do with guitar.

Belgian vs. American Beer

During a visit to the Brick Store Pub last night with Greg, I came to the realization that my love for Belgian beer is starting to be replaced by my new-found love for American microbrews. Granted, I'm just getting into the American stuff, but it's really growing on me. On top of this, the more I drink Belgian beer, the more I find it hard to drink. I'm starting to think I might actually like the culture around Belgian beer more than the beer itself...

Finding New Dance Music

This has become a big part of my life recently, especially since I'm trying to take this DJing thing seriously. I have a personal CD-buying allowance of one per week (more on that later, possibly), and I almost always use this by buying a dance album. For a while after returning home from Europe, I could just go to Best Buy once a week and find a CD that was fairly appropriate for DJing, but nowadays, I'm finding I've more or less exhausted the Best Buy selection in terms of good electro. So, I'm having to turn to the internet, either via Amazon, or more commonly now, iTunes.

See, I recently discovered that iTunes not only has a REALLY wide variety of dance music albums and EP's (each with numerous remixes of the given tune), but their iTunes Store homepage is actually quite good at helping you find any sort of music by genre, including electro! So, every few days or so, I spend some serious time searching through iTunes to find my next set of downloads.

This has proven to be the closest thing I've ever done to the traditional bin-diving vinyl DJs used to do to find their new tunes, especially considering that like bin-diving, I get to listen to the music before I buy, allowing me to be sure I've found something good for a gig. Unlike bin-diving though, I can't listen to the whole track, so sometimes I'll download a track based off a 30 second sample and end up being a little disappointed with it. That said, I think I've had a fairly strong success rate, so no complaints here.

Keeping Track of My Finances

Last year, while I was living in The Netherlands off of a FAFSA Stafford Loan, I decided to be more responsible and keep track of EVERYTHING I spent (yes, everything), organizing it all into categories and averaging out my daily expenditures so as to have a better idea of how much money I could afford to spend. Although this was kinda neat, all it ended up doing was making me really uptight with money and therefore less inclined to be social.

So, this time around, I'm still keeping track of my finances, but only from the other side of things: I keep VERY detailed records of how much I've earned, including how much time I've worked and all sorts of averages. My favorite recent development in these records was my realization that I could average out my students' lesson consistency percentages to give me a more accurate sense of how much money I'll probably make off the current maximum income. See, when teaching privately, I essentially get paid from gig to gig, and the downside to this is that sometimes students skip a week, which at an average of $50 p/hour hits me kinda hard, especially if a few of them do it in one week. The good news is that their consistency amounts are adding up to being about 98% of what I am expecting to earn (were they to take lessons every week without skipping). I know this may seem like a lot of math for nothing, but this is about as close to job security as I'm going to get, so I welcome it.

Chi Phi Gig!

Well, the party went REALLY well last night. Candace and my friends Scott and Amy came out to support me, and there was a decent-sized crowd of Oglethorpe students there as well. Many people were dancing, and I got lots of compliments. Best of all, I've been asked to come back as a regular at the fraternity, which is certainly about the best compliment they could give me, especially considering I'm spinning a style that isn't necessarily popular in America. The only thing about last night that was difficult was playing for 3 hours straight, literally without leaving the DJ booth. I've never done that before, and I was absolutely exhausted (and still kinda am, despite not having much to drink at all).

Anyway, some highlights for the evening include having my guests there (especially seeing them dance), a couple tunes that got really great reactions, and meeting both a French girl who said my music reminded her of home (which was also a huge compliment considering some of my favorite DJs are French) and a Dutch guy who essentially communicated the same thing (I played some Dutch trance for him, which I could tell he appreciated). And of course, I spoke as much Dutch with him as I could muster, which I'm sure you can imagine made me really happy.

Overall, an incredible evening. Can't wait to do it again!

DJ Gig Tonight

As I've been alluding to recently, I have a big DJ gig tonight, arguably the biggest I've done in my short DJing 'career' (the closest anything else has come would probably be the beach party gig in The Netherlands). Oddly enough, one of the girls who was at that beach gig, my friend Megan Campbell, is essentially the contact through whom I got tonight's gig. It just so happens that Megan, who went to the Haagse Hogeschool in Den Haag, also goes to Oglethorpe University here in Atlanta. So, when we had both returned home from our time in the NL, we started hanging out over at Oglethorpe, where she introduced me to a number of her friends there, many of which are in the fraternity I'll be DJing at tonight, Chi Phi.

But the direct connection for this party is Megan's friend Erin, whom Megan brought to my first DJ gig since I've returned home (the one at Henry's house). It was at that party that Erin decided she wanted to see if she could get me to spin for Chi Phi sometime, and after two months of thinking about it and trying to make it happen, it's all going down tonight.

Although I have no clue how many people are going to show up tonight, I'm still totally stoked. If nothing else, attendance should still be bigger here than at either of my house parties I've done since moving home, so no matter what, it should be a step up for me. I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow.

Trying a New Regimen

I'm tired of feeling moderately unproductive. Sure, I get out a lot, these days mostly with Candace, and I do work, but the rest of my day often seems to go to waste, and I'm ready for some change. Granted, it's easy to just sit around like this, so it's difficult sometimes to get going, but I'm giving it a go.

The first matter of business is giving myself more hours to work with by setting an official wake-up time of 8:00 am. Without this, I'm more disposed to waking up at 10:00 am or later, so this will at least give me a couple more hours.

The next thing was making a daily to-do list, which currently includes working out, managing my finances, sorting emails, doing something music-related, reading a book I'm working on, and yes, blogging. On top of this, on nights when I spend the night at home and not with Candace, I'm supposed to spend time practicing DJing as well as putting out flyers in neighborhoods for private teaching (both of these at night because they're much harder to do during the day).

And this is just the bare minimum for every day. I've already got a mounting list of one-off to-do's that I won't even be able to start making a dent on until I can get my lazy ass up to do the dailies first.

Anyway, I feel like this is definitely a step in the right direction. Wish me luck!

Guitar Week

This week has certainly been more about guitar than any week I've had in a long while. First off, this past Saturday I had another one of my lessons with my only guitar student (at the time), but this time we had a sort of breakthrough where things really seemed to have started to click for her. I credit this to finally getting her to learn a whole song (and one that she knows well) instead of just learning riffs from lots of different songs. She's always been a great student, but this week it was particularly exciting to see her progress.

Then, over the past two days, I've started teaching two new guitar students, my first new students since I first got my above-mentioned student months ago. All three of my guitar students are essentially beginners who are in relatively different places based on their previous experience with the instrument, other instruments, and music in general. Add to this the fact that I'm supposedly getting up to three new guitar students by the end of March, and I'm starting to become almost as much of a guitar teacher as a piano instructor, which certainly wasn't looking like the case until now.

Sounds fun to me though, as teaching guitar is rewarding in a completely different way than piano, particularly due to how nontraditional guitar can be.

Keeping In Touch With Myself

In addition to blogging, a number of other things keep me feeling in touch with myself, and some of those things have been drifting lately. Last week was such a busy week for various little reasons (with the exception of the Chattanooga Valentine's trip, which was a big reason), and it just seemed that I got really behind on a lot of details in my life. Everything from laundry, keeping my room organized, blogging, and taking care of my finances, to bigger things like exercising, music projects, and preparing for this DJ gig on Friday.

In fact, these things all added up to being enough of a stressor that it was hard for me to focus when doing things with people, whether it be Candace, my family, or possibly even with my clients. But, I've had a good bit of free time lately to try to put things in order, and although I'm sure I'll never totally have everything in order (even for a second), I'm much closer to feeling in touch with my life and having a sense of moderate control over it.

Broken Turntable...Again

One of my nice turntables is broken again, this time the other one (i.e. not the one I had sent to the repair shop, ultimately costing me WAY more than it arguably was worth). In addition to being generally unfortunate, it's kinda strange that this happened when it did, as I'm going to be DJing a party on Friday and could have really used two identical tables. See, when my other table broke, it happened to be at a similar time, just two weeks before needing to DJ a party, so I had to buy a cheaper turntable to get me by that night. I'm glad I decided to keep that turntable now instead of returning it after I had used it, because I'm obviously relying on it once again.

The good news is that the problem with my currently broken table is what appears to be a much easier to fix electrical problem as opposed to the expensive motor-oriented problem from before. Still, none of this makes me feel all that much better, as a lot of money was put into these tables, making me feel like I shouldn't have to be repairing them now...

Oh well...I'll let you know how the gig goes. More on that later.

Why I Blog...

Over the years of blogging (this is actually my fourth year of doing so), I've come to accept that very few people actually keep up with what I'm writing. And you know what? That's okay. I know that at least one person actively reads my blog (I read his as well), and if nothing else, it's good that he and I can keep in touch through the internet like this, especially considering we don't always have the time to talk on the phone.

That said, the main reason I blog is that it keeps me a little bit more objective about my life, very much like a sort of public journal. I'm not sure where I heard it, but I'm pretty sure it was some wise Asian that once said something to the effect of: "If a day goes by unrecorded, it's as if it never happened at all." Ultimately, I feel that this has a lot of truth to it...when I stop blogging, or journaling, or taking pictures, or keeping a detailed calendar, I often find myself slipping into a detached state of being, one where I kinda feel like I've lost touch with myself just that much more than usual. So, I keep blogging, despite my belief that my story these days is significantly less interesting than it was last year or even the two years before that.

Cupid!

Today, after months of searching, my parents have finally purchased and brought home a new kitty for our home! His name is cupid, and he's TINY(!) (and also really young). Like our previous cat, Kitty (whose real name was Gabriel, although we never called him that), this cat is a Persian (i.e. flat-nosed) boy cat. He's really cute and really playful, even to the point that he doesn't really let you pet him that much due to running around all the time. Anyway, I just took a photo of him sleeping, worn out from all his playing around:



I'm really excited to finally have another cat in the house after a year without one (if you kept up with my Holland blog, you might remember that Kitty died about this time last year from a freak medical problem). Cupid seems really nice...and since I'm living here for at least a few more months and will be here when my parents are at work, I should have plenty of time to get to know him! =)

Back from Chattaboogie

Well, Candace and I are back from our Valentine's trip to Chattanooga, and let me just say: this trip was kinda crazy. Nothing extraordinary happened to us, but a lot of little things managed to get messed up somehow (more on all of this later). All this said, overall I had a great time on our trip, being most likely the best Valentine's I've ever had, despite all the mishaps. Also, I took a million pictures (as Chattanooga is a very picturesque town), so although I'll certainly be posting more about our trip in the near future, I'm going to have to sort through my photos first, including making and labeling a Facebook album, so it might take a bit.

Anyway, I hope you all had a great Valentine's and managed to come out more in love than you went in! =)

Going to Chattanooga

Today, Candace and I are taking a short road trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee for Valentine's Day. We tend to go out to eat here in the Atlanta area a lot already, so we thought it would be nice to get out of the city for a day and a half and celebrate somewhere new yet close-by (it's only two hours away). So, we've got hotel and dinner reservations, and have a few things we would like to see. I'll be sure to take some pics to post when I get back.

In the meantime, Happy Valentine's everyone! =)

Staying Up REALLY Late

There are essentially two types of nights I seem to be having lately:

1.) those spent with Candace
2.) nights alone where I stay up until the sun comes up

I have ALWAYS been a procrastinator, so why would this not include going to sleep? When I don't have a good reason to go to sleep (and sometimes even when I do, like going on a big trip the next day), I find it very hard to 'concede to the night', as I like to call it. I just feel like there are so many fun things to do when you've got free time, so I have a hard time pulling the plug and getting rest.

So...lately, on many of the somewhat rare nights I end up not staying with Candace, I'll just stay up all night, not going to bed until about 7:00 am. Granted, this leaves me feeling a bit out of it the next day, but knowing that ahead of time still doesn't keep me from doing it. That said, I don't plan on doing this tonight, as I've gotta get up early tomorrow, but I suppose it could still end up happening anyway, as I never really plan this sort of thing...

Shining Force 2

After completing Shining Force 1, it was only a matter of time before I became addicted to its successor, Shining Force 2. Unfortunately, after this, there are no more Shining Force games for Genesis, so unless I want to brave the world of other games systems' emulators, I'm stuck here. Anyway, I'm about a quarter of the way through SF2 right now, and I have to report that I'm happy with the game. I had played it back when I was younger (on an actual Genesis), but unlike SF1, I never finished it (it's a bit harder and there are a few places you can get stuck - that said, these days I'm using an internet walkthrough, but whatevs...).

With SF2, you can tell the people making these games really tried their best to improve on some of the features of the last one, most notably in terms of ease of use (accessing menus, better AI, and simpler controls). Also, the world is much more interesting, the story is better, the characters are more expandable and have more options, and the level-ups are much more straightforward, thereby encouraging the player to get through the game at a more reasonable speed. There are a couple negatives though, including poorer monster appearance and an unreasonably long story, but other than these minor details, the game is overall much better.

Cincinnatti Trip Wrap-Up

Well, this is a bit overdue, but now that I've finally finished making my Facebook photo album of my Cinci trip, I figured I would share it with you:

Doctoral Interview at CCM

Between my previous blog posts and the album captions, there isn't much I've left out about my trip. Overall, it was fun, the vacation was appreciated (though not exactly needed), my interviews went well, and I had a great time seeing friends. What more could you ask for, really?

Transmigration of Souls?

Last night, Candace and I had plans to go to the Atlanta Symphony once again to see John Adams' On the Transmigration of Souls, his Pulitzer Prize-winning orchestra and tape piece dealing with the weighty subject matter of 9/11. I was pretty pumped for this concert, as the whole show promised to be fairly exceptional (also included on the program were Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, John Corigliano's Elegy for Orchestra, and Beethoven's Eroica Symphony). Overall, a really great program with mostly new music (at least in terms of number of pieces...the Eroica is quite long...).

Anyway, as you might suspect at this point, we didn't get to see the show: when we arrived and went to the box office asking about their typical student-priced tickets, they said they were too well-sold this evening to be offering discount tickets! Our only alternative was some bad seats that cost $30 a person (as opposed to the student price of $10). After talking it over, we decided the price wasn't worth it, despite the great program, and we left a little downhearted.

We were still dressed up, however, so we decided to make the most of it and spend the next hour and a half at a new cocktail bar in town, Lola, which features both martinis and Bellini's (we both tried one). After this, we met up with Jaclyn and Ryan for some comedy improv at Dad's Garage in the Inman Park area, which despite being my second time going with Candace was really fun (especially having Jaclyn and Ryan there).

In the end, the night turned out pretty well, and was ultimately much more memorable than another ASO concert would have been, so no complaints here.

Darwin's

I forgot to blog about this one: a few nights ago, I joined my friend Brian at a local blues bar for their 'jam session' evening. I wasn't really sure what I was getting myself into, but Brian was eager for me to see what kind of talent showed up for the jam session, so I decided to check it out. The evening was divided into two portions. First we caught the tail end of the house blues band (which consists of all white guys) playing a mix of originals and covers. After this they had anyone that was interested in 'jamming' get up on stage and play a handful of other blues tunes.

Overall, the night was educational but ultimately really not my thing. I say it was educational in that I got to see a bunch of older white men go nuts doing noodley blues solos, something that kinda surprised me considering how much technical skill they had in a style no one cares about (no offense if you like blues, but let's face it, white blues is less alive today that modern classical music, and that's certainly not saying much). Granted, had these guys been more in line with the black tradition of singing the blues (not just playing it), I probably would have been much more interested, but ultimately, that's not what seems to go on at Darwin's. In the end, I'm glad I went, but I don't see myself going back for a long time.

Peter Pan

Last night, Candace and I went to see the Atlanta Lyric Theatre's production of Peter Pan (the musical), which my friend Beth was in as one of the Indians. Although it was good to see Beth perform live (from my understanding, this is just another of her many one-off gigs she has had as a freelance dancer), the show itself was essentially a glorified version of a high school musical. The one thing it had that a high school theater department probably wouldn't be able to afford was the necessary rigging to allow certain characters to 'fly'. Also, the pit band was substantially better than I would have expected for even a show at this level, much less for a high school.

Still, I managed to take two primary things away from this production:

1.) It's weird seeing Beth do a non-artsy gig...I've only ever known her to be a modern dancer, and seeing her make silly faces and act goofy is kinda surreal.

2.) This play made me really appreciate the film Hook, partly because of how (relatively) great the actor who played that role in this production was, and partly just because I think the film is a rather fantastic retelling of the classic Peter Pan tale.

Making an Exam

Today I wrote up my first exam ever! This one is for my music theory class, so it covers some basic introductory material, including the four basic scales, all of the simple intervals, the four triad types and seven 7th chord types, inversions of chords, the available triads in the major and composite minor scales, and types of cadences. After that portion of the test, we'll be doing a quick example-by-example live speed quiz to determine how readily familiar the students are with the notes on the clef they don't regularly use (they're all monophonic instrumentalists) and with minor/major thirds (being the key to quickly identifying the various types of triads and 7th chords, which some of them are having difficulty with).

The grade the students receive on the quiz only serves to show me where we have more work to do, as the exam is a progress exam and there are no grades in our rather informal class. The strange thing about the test is that with the exception of the speed round, no actual staff notation will be used to answer questions on any of the above topics. I'm sure the next exam though will be quite the opposite, as we'll have moved into chord progressions and voice leading issues.

Cloverfield

Two nights ago, Greg and I went to see Cloverfield, J.J. Abrams' new Blair Witch-style gigantic-monster-taking-over-a-city movie. The hype behind this movie was huge, as it ran a successful viral advertisement campaign and was shrouded in secrecy for most of the time leading up to its release.

Overall, despite not thinking much of it upon my initial viewing, the film is growing on me. Surprisingly, I would say the best element of this film is its manner of letting us into the world of the characters, all of whom I kinda felt a bit attached to afterwards. Also, the monster itself is really cool, but I wonder how much of this assessment has to do with the fact that very little is revealed about the monster as opposed to how cool the monster itself actually is.

Fat Tuesday

I'm continuing a Tuesday theme here, trying to catch up from my recent posts-missed. As you're probably aware, yesterday was also Mardi Gras, although this fact went completely unknown by me until it was almost Wednesday. Although I don't have much to say about Mardi Gras itself, I can't help but point out the fact that I would actually be celebrating this holiday were I to still be living in The Netherlands. All of the exchange students there (which were from all over the globe, not just the States) get together every year to celebrate in the form of some sort of masquerade. Last year, I didn't really know what this was all about and decided to forego the mask itself, donning a more Halloween-ish costume as a young boy scout. Granted, my beard at the time kinda made me look more like a gay boy scout, but whatever... No one really dug my costume, but I'm still wearing the boy scout shirt on occasion here in the States. As a slight point of irony that I just realized, I somehow happened to be wearing my boy scout shirt yesterday despite not knowing that I bought it for Mardi Gras exactly one year before!

Super Tuesday

Well, the results are in, and Super Tuesday seems like it just added more fuel to the Democratic election's fire. While Hillary is still on top statistically, Obama did way better than expected, and I think Tuesday's elections serve to indicate that he now has an even better chance at winning the Democratic nomination come August. In addition to grabbing more States (Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, and Utah) than Hillary, at this moment he's only ONE pledged delegate under her, a difference that's essentially meaningless. Also, considering how well Barack did with the regular-people States (as opposed to New York and California, where Hillary got some of her biggest boosts), I think it's fair to say that with around half of the country left to vote (most of which consists of States similar to the ones Obama already proved he can win), he has a REALLY good chance of clinching a lead in the upcoming elections.

And, hot of the tails of our biggest Super Tuesday to date, we've already got elections from Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington State, Maine, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia within a week's time (with more to follow soon), combining to offer 350 delegate votes between them. All this said, the last election isn't until June, so we've got a ways to go, but overall, I'm feeling pretty good about Barack's chances to take this nomination.

Definitely a great Super Tuesday in my book...

Friends in Cinci

This trip has been chock full of friends, both from CCM AND IU. To begin with, this is my fifth time visiting this school, and all but one of those times I've hung out with some of my friends that go here, whom I met over the years. Add to that the fact that I'm staying with Tyler, who has been a good friend since we got to know one another at Music05, and you've got yourself a school that would be really easy to acclimate to socially.

But then, there are all of my Bloomington friends that either came to visit me (Dave and Andrew) or just happen to go to CCM now that they've finished their IU degrees. This last group includes my friends Eliza, Blake, and Thomas, all of whom I went to either lunch or dinner with out in the local Clifton area. And of course, my visit from Dave and Andrew last night was pretty awesome, catching up and acting stupid over some Chinese and then drinks at Christy's with Tyler.

Overall, I was anything but lonely here in Cincinnati, and even if I don't end up coming here next year, I do plan on coming back to visit at some point (in addition to hopefully coming for the Music08 Festival this summer).

Theory and Comp Interviews

Today's interviews, unlike yesterday's musical theatre outing, went really well. I had a theory exam at 8:00 am that was really hard, but somehow I managed to be one of only four people (out of about 20) that were asked to interview afterwards. The interview was split into two parts...the first, a typical theory TA interview, involved sight-reading at the piano, sight singing, a tiny bit of on-the-spot analysis, and rhythmic sight-reading while conducting. This went better than I have done in the past, and the woman interviewing me seemed pleased enough. Then came my mock teaching exercise where I was to lecture to one of the theory teachers on the Neapolitan 6th chord as if I were teaching a class on the subject. This went VERY well, as I came well-prepared and have had some good theory teaching experience over the past three months.

The other interview for the day was my composition interview, which went well. We all talked for about thirty minutes about why I want to go to school and what I'm looking for in terms of my musical career at the moment. In the end, I felt really comfortable with the faculty during the interview, and I feel like I've got a really good shot at getting in. Overall, a great day of interviews for sure!

Cincinnati Update

Quick post here, as I've gotta go to bed soon to get up VERY early for my music theory assistantship qualifying exam in the morning. Anyway, I made it here to Cincinnati just fine yesterday and have been having a great time since. I've been keeping really busy, socializing a lot, seeing two concerts, going to a comp seminar, and of course having my musical theatre audition (which went horribly...maybe more on that later though).

That said, overall, I'm having a great time, as this school feels very much like a second home to me (at least, for a school that I never attended). Tomorrow I have both my big theory assistantship interviews and my composition interview, so wish me luck! After that, Andrew and Dave are coming to visit in the evening, which should be a really nice way to end my trip. And then I'll be driving back on Sunday, definitely ready to see Candace again!

Hopefully I'll get a chance to blog some tomorrow as well.