2nd Rehearsal @ Riot

This past Thursday, Jeremy, Erich, and I all met once again at Erich's studio (Riot Atlanta) for a partial-band rehearsal. Once again, Erich was nice enough to set us up with headphone mixes, and we went through a bunch of material. Unfortunately, my voice was already wearing down by the time I was driving over there, and it kept going during rehearsal; add to this the fact that I had had a shitty week (work-related and some relationship stuff) and you had a grumpy frontman on your hands. Once I realized I wasn't doing so hot, I admitted to my inability to run the rehearsal and encouraged Jeremy to take over for me.

Overall, the rehearsal was fine, but now I realize how important it is for me to be well-rested before trying to do any serious singing that day (I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before and the talking all day from teaching that day certainly didn't help). Afterwards, we all headed over to the Vortex for some band bonding...as it turns out, this was the first time we had done so with at least three of us in the group. It's funny: at this point, a number of people haven't met or at least rehearsed with one another in the group: thus far, no one's met Emily but me, no one (including me) has met/seen Jake in years, and Erich hasn't rehearsed with Doug yet (at least, not with this group), despite the fact that Erich was recommended by Doug.

Hopefully, we'll be remedying some of this later this week by having Emily join us at a rehearsal where she'll at least meet Doug and Jeremy for the first time, but it won't be until October that we can get everyone in the same room. Crazy how slowly this all develops despite our attempts to get the ball rolling...

Ellijay Trip w/Candace '08

This is a super-old album (it happened in October of 2008), but I finally just got around to putting it up on Facebook (better late than never), so here you go:

Ellijay Trip w/Candace '08

This trip marks the first and thus-far only time I've visited Candace's dad Doug's place up in Ellijay, GA. After years of working hard as a regular employee of his family telecom company up in North Georgia, he eventually earned the right to own a sizable portion of the successful company's earnings, thus allowing him to remodel his family's already nice house and to continue building on the large property of land he owns.

Although we only stayed one night, I got an impressive tour; got to do dinner out (surprisingly, sushi!) with Doug, his wife Jenny, and their son Gabe; got to do the Ellijay Apple Festival the next day; and rounded it all out with a visit to a serious BBQ place called Colonel Poole's! Good trip.

New Keyboardist?

When I initially sent out my Facebook emails regarding recommendations for keyboard players, one of the other people that responded was my old UGA piano department friend Jake...he said he would totally love to do it, but he was still living in Eugene, Oregon and obviously wouldn't be around. Well, a couple weeks ago, I got a random call from Jake saying that he's coming back to Georgia and wanted to see if the position in the band was still open. At this point, we HAD found Emily, but since we found her first and she fit the female backup singer slot we were looking for, we weren't really considering replacing her, despite the fact that Jake is possibly a better rock pianist than both of us (definitely when it comes to classical).

It just so happens though that it was right around this point that I started realizing how nice it would be if I didn't have to be attached to my keyboard at all times during a show and could instead be running around acting like a proper frontman, so it just made sense to view Jake as a replacement for me, not Emily. Ultimately, I would still play keys when I wasn't singing, but then I would leave the parts up to Jake so I could go be as charismatic as possible (and focus on my singing).

So, Jake's not moving back to Georgia until mid-September, which is when I'll be in Europe, so we won't get a chance to audition him until the first week of October or so. In the end, the audition won't really be to see how well Jake can play (I already know he's good to go) but rather how much he's feeling the music and wants to commit to being with the group. At this point, I really hope he does, both to have another good friend in the group and also to alleviate some of my onstage responsibilities.

South Park: Season 3

I actually first watched the third season of South Park in its entirety back in early June when I was on my earlier South Park kick, but I failed to write about it afterwards, so I recently started watching the whole season online once again to better remember my favorite episodes:

Rainforest Shmainforest:
While on an extracurricular choir trip to Costa Rica to help promote rainforest preservation, the boys and their choir director (played by Jennifer Aniston) end up deciding that the rainforest sucks and isn't worth saving. The funniest bit in this whole thing was easily Mr. Mackey (who was the trip interpreter) using "muy bien" instead of his typical "um 'kay."

Jackovasaurus:
The boys discover a nearly-extinct (and extremely annoying) species called jackovasaurs, and the town responds by trying to get them to breed, which they soon decide was a bad idea. Cartman is really funny in this episode, as is Ned, who loses his voicebox and is forced to communicate via burp-talking.

Chinpokomon:
Kids all over the world become obsessed with a Pokemon-style toy brand which is actually designed to brainwash them into bombing Pearl Harbor. The real-life parody commercials for kids toys shown during the episode are awesome.

Are You There, God? It's Me, Jesus:
Cartman has a stomach virus which makes his butt bleed, but he confuses it with beginning his menstrual cycle. Meanwhile, people pressure Jesus into making a big party for Y2K, and despite God the Father's initial reluctance to do so, he makes a big appearance...turns out he's a diminutive and goofy-looking dragon monster.

Overall, this was easily the season where the show started hitting its stride. Nearly every episode is memorable, and there are plenty more faves in there that I don't have the space to mention. I guess I was lucky it was this season I had to rewatch instead of the first two...

Old Comp Department Friend

Even though I have my phone number up on my Facebook profile, as far as I can remember I've never really had anyone actually call/text me having gotten my number from the site instead of through direct communication with me. Well, that changed Saturday night when an old UGA composition department colleague of mine sent me a text saying it had been too long, that he was in town for the night, and that we should catch up over some beers at The Earl. Although I, like many other people, could have balked at this sort of opportunity due to being happy enough with my lazy plans I had made for the evening, I also value this sort of spontaneity, especially considering that although we weren't particularly close during my undergrad he still went out of his way to track me down, so I wasn't about to turn his offer down.

Sure enough, we ended up having a nice time hanging out. My buddy also invited two of his other friends from UGA, one of which I vaguely remember having met at one point or the other, and we all got along fine. Overall, even though we didn't really know each other all that well or stay in touch at all over these years (short of being friends on Facebook), I was flattered that he thought of me, and I do look forward to hopefully hanging out again in the not-too-distant future.

Good times. Hooray for spontaneity!

9th Band-Recruiting Rehearsal

Yesterday, Jeremy and I met with the fifth drummer that I've auditioned for this group. Fortunately, I think our search for a stable and capable drummer might be over. Erich, the guy we met up with, is a friend of our bassist Doug and is also technically connected to me too via our high school connection (he graduate three years before me though, and I was only peripherally aware of him).

Anyway, Erich works as a creative sound engineer at the Riot Atlanta post-production studios in town, so since we couldn't use Doug's rehearsal space while he was out of town with his cover band, we met at Riot. There, Erich set us up with headphone mixes of all our instruments, and we basically ran through everything we've been working with.

Ultimately, Erich and Brady (our third drummer to try out) are both good fits for the band in terms of performance skills, but Erich is certainly the more available of the two, as Brady most-likely will not be able to do weekend gigs, so I think we've more-or-less decided to stick with Erich.

So now we've got to get Emily (our backup singer/keyboardist) up to speed enough to run full rehearsals, and then we've got to audition a fill-in keyboard player for me (more on that later), so I'm thinking we should be in business to start doing full rehearsals and recording real demos by October (since I'll be gone for most of September). Making progress!

Bone Garden Cantina

There's this relatively well-known burger restaurant in town called The Vortex, and although they do have two locations, instead of opening a third, the people that own it got together and decided to do a highly-stylized Mexican restaurant instead called the Bone Garden Cantina. Candace and I first visited this restaurant not too long after it opened sometime over a year ago, and since then I've been wanting to go back. See, in addition to serving some really tasting gourmet tacos (although not as good as those found at Tacqueria del Sol, in my opinion), the Bone Garden has an incredibly-decorated interior, almost all of which is centered around the Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead) tradition found in Mexico. Unlike the Vortex restaurants with their cracked out junk collection, Bone Garden's designs are all done extremely tastefully in a clean minimalist fashion with bright bold colors and distinct set pieces. Big props to the people responsible for the art work for sure!

Anyway, Candace and I finally made it back there last night, this time with her future roommate Christine and her boyfriend Michael after we all spent a couple hours sampling beers at the Sweetwater Brewing Company. So, after a few drinks, I was feeling particularly adventurous and decided to get not one but two out-there tacos. First up was a chicharrón taco, which ultimately features fried pigskin. It was super crunchy and fattening, but I'm sure I would grow to love it in time. Second, I had a lengua taco, which (for those of you who aren't in the know) is a tongue taco! I basically just had to ignore the fact that I was eating a tongue, and I was alright. Honestly, it didn't taste all that radical, although the texture WAS a bit different (but not by much). Would I order these two tacos again? Probably not, but I'm glad I tried them out!

Finally, we rounded out the evening with a banana empanada for dessert, which tasted surprisingly like a churro (which I've been craving SO badly for a long time). Overall, a great evening full of good eats and beer!

Parachute Musical @ Drunken Unicorn

While seeing Today the Moon, Tomorrow the Sun's final show in Atlanta before they embark on a small tour up the East Coast, I was pleasantly surprised by the opening band, Parachute Musical. In addition to having perhaps the best mix of the evening (due partly to the transparency of their instrumentation and voicing), they had some really enjoyable songs and obviously knew how to work together as a group: the guitar, keys, and bass never seemed to get in each other's way (we're dealing with that now in my own band), the singing (including the backup vox) was clear, and the drums fit in nicely. Most impressive to me was how talented the lead singer was: not only was he a fantastic singer, but his keyboard chops were very solid, to the point that I had to talk with him afterwards to find out if he had studied classically (which he had).

Anyway, I also managed to bump into my friend Mike, Chris from Attention System, and even a promoter who might be able to help us land a gig sometime in the future (he got my number). Finally, of course, it was good seeing Today the Moon again, and I wished them all good luck on their tour, telling them I look forward to another night out at Tacqueria del Sol when they return!

1st Full Demo Complete

Although I've had a partial demo for our first song worked up for quite some time now (since early July), I've kinda delayed finishing it, but today, I actually finished fleshing out a rough demo for our second song instead! We're temporarily (and affectionately) calling this song "Pat Benetar" due to some sort of supposed resemblance to her music, but we might very well end up changing that soon.

The song is essentially a guilty-pleasure party song containing lyrics that extol how much we're going to rock your face off and such. As such, I had been nervous about writing a full-on party song, so I had planned to write a bridge and final verse/chorus that essentially laid-out for the listener that we realize we're full of it and are ultimately just a group of normal people like everyone else.

Well, today I finally took the time to write those particular lyrics, simultaneously coming up with a melody for that section, and then took to recording layered two-part harmonies on top of previously recorded material. Ultimately, while I was sort of rushed with the recording due to having to go teach right afterwards and therefore will need to go back through and clean up my diction a bit, I'm overall really happy with the lyrics/melody/energy of the new sections and am eager to hear what the rest of the group thinks.

By the way, if you're tempted to ask to hear a sample, you're just going to have to wait until we've recorded this thing properly (i.e. not with my basic home studio equipment). Until then, I'm not letting anything out publicly, as first impressions are key. No exceptions, not even for super-close friends! Sorry... =)

Tourette's Guy

So, it's been a LONG time since I've watched any of the Tourette's Guy videos, but I occasionally reference him in conversation with Evan, so I figured I would show him the video. Needless to say, just like when Andrew introduced the video to me years ago, Evan and I were quickly laughing our heads off. In fact, since it was Evan's first time, he had to sit down on the floor to cool down for a bit.

I know it's all a bit insensitive, and I'm sure the guy's son eggs him on to get those videos, but I'm pretty sure it's real, and it is kinda hard not to find funny. It's less that the guy has an uncontrollable problem and more that he comes up with some ridiculously funny phrases. "F*** salt!!!" was definitely one of our favorites...

So, if you're easily-offended, this probably isn't for you, but otherwise, check it out.

District 9

District 9 Trailer HD - For more of the funniest videos, click here

OMG...the best movie of the Summer, no question.

If you haven't heard much about Peter Jackson's new film District 9, you probably just assumed (as I did) that it was a sort of modern rip-off of Independence Day. Well, it's not. District 9 is actually an allegorical retelling of South Africa's Apartheid story, loosely substituting disenfranchised aliens for the black populace of the historical account. If this isn't enough to excite you into seeing the film, just know that it's all done with a keen eye towards script-writing, high energy action sequences, and great cinematography, so when you combine all this with a deep message that never gets particularly preachy, you've got a sci-fi legend.

Seriously, this movie is everything a good action film should be: exciting, a bit nail-biting, and having some depth. This movie is the antidote to all the Rise of Cobras and Revenge of the Fallens of the Summer, so if you're at all like me and found the Summer fare to be horribly lacking, you owe it to yourself to see this incredible film.

Good job, Peter Jackson. You've redeemed yourself from King Kong, and in style! [Note: technically he was only a producer for District 9, but still!]

Back To School

No, I'm not returning to school, but my students are, and that means my schedule has to change drastically to fit theirs. Gone are the nice Summer days (despite lack of work) where all of my lessons were done by five or six in the afternoon, thereby letting me hang out with people in the evening. No, now I'm stuck teaching Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday more-or-less from 4:00-8:00 PM (plus some time on Saturdays AND Sundays), thereby severely limiting my available time to hang out with Candace or jam with the band.

Other problems become exaggerated under these circumstances as well...for instance, Evan goes to bed around 10:30, but the internet reset box is in his room, and since our internet frequently goes out, my available time to tackle emails, blogging, and music listening all become severely limited until he wakes up (which is often four hours before I do). Add to this the fact that I can't record myself singing while Evan's asleep and that I try to get exercise one and half hours before my lessons, and you've got a situation where I'm pretty much forced to start going to bed early so I can wake up early in the morning in order to actually get some stuff done.

So, I'm now promising myself I'll go to bed around midnight every night and wake up around eight to give me both more time and a healthier amount of sleep. Not sure how long I'll be able to keep this up, but I know my current schedule of staying up until four in the morning and waking up at noon isn't going to work anymore. Ugh...responsibility.

New Mic Setup

So, as the frontman for the band, I'm having to take vocals a lot more seriously than I had in the past. For starters, I'm trying to take better care of my voice, warming up and cooling down every time I do intensive singing, and of course I'm taking vocal lessons to improve my tone, intonation, and lung capacity. In addition to all this though, I realized that I would need to invest in a high quality stage (dynamic) mic so that I was getting the warmest tone I could without using a studio recording (condenser) mic, which requires phantom power and usually isn't designed for rough usage. So the mic I went with was Shure's highest quality vocal dynamic mic, the Beta 58A, the big brother to the industry standard SM58. After perusing numerous message boards about the two mics, I decided to go with the slightly more expensive Beta since everyone seemed convinced it was worlds better than the already good SM model. Thus far, I've been very happy with my choice, and I'm even to the point that I think I like the Shure better than my Rode condenser mic, even for recording!

In addition to this, my vocal teacher recommended I get TC-Helicon's VSM-300 XT vocal monitoring amp to give me direct control over my vocal and keyboard signal while on stage, freeing me up from having to rely on the sound guy to get it right. Now, while most instruments in a band don't really have to hear the mix to be able to put on a good show, it's especially important for the vocalist, as that's the only way you can be sure you're in tune (and/or to compensate quickly). While my amp arrived the other day and I've enjoyed using it in my room, I won't really get to see how much it helps until I'm in a full band rehearsal, which will hopefully be this week.

So, being in a band is expensive, but I think this project is really going somewhere, so I'm willing to invest in it and give it all I've got. Can't wait for the day we're actually putting on a show here in town! Super excited!

2nd Interesting Music Store Experience

Not too long ago, I wrote about a strange experience I had while at Guitar Center playing some keys where some guys who were working on a hip-hop album wanted me to play keys for them (still haven't heard from them though). Well, this weekend I found something similar happening to me again, this time at Sam Ash Music. While playing some Moog-style lead lines on one of the new Roland Juno synths I was trying out for our other keyboard player, an older black man and his wife approached me asking me to play it again, whether I was in a band, and if I would be interested in playing for their church...

I wasn't really sure how to respond to this, as I need money but don't feel like I belong in a church. Still, black churches ARE way different than white churches (i.e. much hipper), and considering he liked me playing Moog-style solos, I've got to expect that it might be an interesting musical experience. Ultimately, I'm not really sure what he had in mind, but I gave him my number. So long as I don't have to sign a form asking me to proclaim my Christian beliefs, I think it should be alright. We'll see where this goes...

New Studio Setup

With all this band stuff going on lately, it occurred to me how much of an asset it would be for me to actually set up all the studio equipment I have so I could make some use of it all. So over the course of the past three days, I set about tweaking my desk space, cleaning up the clutter and setting up my old Event TR6 reference monitors and my mixing board so I could run all my synths and mics at the same time with some non-headphone amplification. This has become especially important due to the need to do some levels/EQ edits on our demos with Jeremy, allowing us both to sit here and listen to the mix to improve it.

In addition to all this, I took two music stands I used to use for my live DJing setup and have converted them into keyboard stands propped up behind my Roland XP-80 for my Alesis Micron and Behringer MIDI control surface, thereby allowing me instant access to all of my synths and the parameters controlling them. Finally, I've upgraded my mic setup recently, but I'll save this for another post soon.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this new arrangement and how much more efficient it will allow me to be. The only problem now is that I'll have to move out in 2.5 months, but whatever...

Recording Drums w/Jeremy

This has been a busy week for me with the band: Monday was the audition with Brett (on drums), Wednesday Jeremy and I met up to record some drums at his place, yesterday (Friday) we met up with Doug for a quasi full-band rehearsal, and today Jeremy and I are going to get together to do some mixing with my demo versions in Ableton.

After having discovered how appropriate Jeremy's sensibilities with the drums are for our group, we decided to have a session where we sat down and recorded his ideas for our first two songs so that we could both use these as drum tracks for our rough demos and also show the parts to potential drummers so that they might better understand what we're looking for.

Personally, I don't really have any experience with recording drums, but Jeremy set up two mics (one of which was suspended MacGyver-style) to get a more well-rounded sound. While the drums have certainly proven useful for my demo files at home, they do sound a little out of place with the studio-quality synth sounds I'm using, as there was a significant amount of natural reverb in the room where we recorded and the drums ultimately sound a bit cheap (due to the miking).

Still, it was a valuable session and certainly helped us both solidify a little more what we're looking to do with the songs, both in terms of overall energy and the drum parts themselves.

Nightmare On Elm St. 4

So Candace and I finally finished my $10 set of the first four Nightmare On Elm Street films, and overall I would still assert that the second installment is the worst of the lot by far. The third and fourth films are both tied together, having a few characters in common (most of whom die, of course), so they're pretty similar in terms of quality, but if I had to give an edge to one or the other, I would say the third was stronger. That said, there were some fairly strong gross-out moments in the fourth film, the acting might be a touch better (at least with some of the teenaged actors), and Freddy's lines are certainly funnier this time around.

Now, although it would be nice to buy the other set of four films (which feature the remaining three from the regular series plus Freddy Vs. Jason) for $10 more, I'm not sure I'm going to pick them up anytime soon, as I'm not that eager to watch them, I've already got Freddy Vs. Jason, and I would honestly rather spend that money on a new CD.

Flip Burger Boutique

For anyone out there who watched the Chicago season of Top Chef, you should be familiar with Richard Blais, the frontrunner for most of the show. Although Richard didn't end up winning, he did return home to Atlanta and continued spreading culinary goodness throughout the city. Although he's been involved with a number of restaurants in town, the first I went to while being aware of his influence was the Flip Burger Boutique.

Sure, it sounds pretentious, but it's actually pretty laid back, has cool decor, plays great indie music (a lot of which I know), and most-importantly has incredible food. In addition to numerous more-or-less traditional burgers and sides, they also offer a wide variety of unique specialty burgers including lamb, shrimp, chorizo, salmon, falafel, and veal. On top of this, they also have a beloved range of liquid nitrogen milkshakes, including KrispyKreme, Nutella w/burnt marshmallows, spicy chocolate mole, and (believe it or not) foie gras!

So, when we went the other night, I had the farm organic burger (largely because it was the first time I've been to a restaurant that offered something organic since going organic myself) and split a Nutella milkshake with Candace. Although the milkshake was incredible, the burger wasn't as mind-blowing as I had hoped for (it was still good though), so perhaps next time I go (and there will be a next time) I'll have to get a more adventurous burger.

Great food, great atmosphere, great time. Highly recommended.

7th (8th) Band-Recruiting Rehearsal

This past Saturday night, Jeremy called me to inform me that he had met a guy named Brett who was interested in trying out on drums for our group, so since Doug's co-Sublime cover band bandmate Brady was unsure of his own commitment level despite us being generally thrilled about the idea of having him in the group, we decided to give Brett a shot. So, Monday morning Jeremy, Brett, and I met at Jeremy's place to jam out with Brett using Jeremy's kit.

As you may or may not be aware, Jeremy is also a drummer himself, being the drummer for another local band I previously wrote about after seeing their show. Now, although Brett did end getting into the groove for the material and was certainly enthusiastic about his possible involvement in the group, the most-important thing I got out of this rehearsal was hearing Jeremy play drums to our songs. Naturally, I had heard him play before for his other group, but the styles were so different that I wasn't really able to assess how well he would fit in as our drummer in our yet-to-be-unnamed band.

Well, despite Jeremy's insistence that he would be a better fit for the group as our guitarist, I was pretty floored by how nicely his drum style fit in with what we're trying to do. It's possible that Brady might be a better fit than Jeremy as drummer, but if so, it's only a marginal difference. I mean, Brady WAS able to get the music pretty much straight away after only having been introduced to it moments before, but Jeremy's deep familiarity with the songs allowed him to dig a bit deeper at the onset. I'm sure Brady could get to this level too with no problem, but in some ways I really am frustrated that I can't have Jeremy play both guitar and drums in the band. Oh well...

As far as Brett is concerned, what we're probably going to do is meet up with him again in a week or two to see if the style has sunk in a little more for him, and then we'll weight our options. We've also still got one more drummer to audition left on our list, but he's not available until late August, so in the meantime, perhaps we'll keep trying things out with both Brady and Brett...

Note: I'm calling this our 7th (8th) band-recruiting because the entry titled "2nd Band Rehearsal" was actually our 7th recruiting rehearsal since it was then that we were trying out Brady for the first time.

Night at Mountasia

For awhile now, Candace and I have been tossing around the idea of visiting one of Atlanta's more prominent mini-golf places (in fact, it might be the only one...?) Mountasia, but we only recently finally made it a reality. Although mini golf seems to be scarce these days, back when I was a kid, Mountasia locations were scattered all over the city (there was even one literally next door to my church, which is only five minutes from my parents' house).

Unfortunately, we decided to go on a weekend night, which meant it was pretty crowded and involved waiting for a number of backed-up groups to finish playing each hole, but it was still fun (I barely won, but Candace beat me when we played mini-golf in Gainesville, GA visiting her mom, so we're even now). Perhaps the best part of the evening though was that for only one dollar more we could get a round of golf AND 20 tokens each to spend at the arcade there! Some of the highlights include original Pac-Man (SO awesome! why don't I have Pac-Man CE on Xbox Live?), air hockey, the Jurassic Park shooter game, a version of Street Fighter I hadn't played (with this character), and even an old arcade version of Tetris!

Fun stuff!

3rd Band Rehearsal

Last week we had our third band rehearsal (again, sans Emily)...at this point, having a weekly rehearsal is starting to become a fairly regular thing for us. It should be noted that this doesn't include the often twice-weekly rehearsals Jeremy and I have that mostly center around either refining older material on a compositional level or working on new stuff.

Anyway, last week's rehearsal was identical to that of the previous week in terms of both personnel and location, but the big differences here were that we had far less time to rehearse (Doug had to leave after about only an hour) and that it was here that Brady (Doug's drummer from his Sublime cover band) let us know how hesitant he is about committing to a new project, despite being really interested in the style and material.

The problem is that while Doug's financial investment with the cover band is largely a means towards augmenting his income from private teaching, Brady instead relies on the cover band for his entire income, which makes it much harder to put him in a position where he may have to make a choice between the two one day when our gigs conflict (which most-likely will happen, as the cover band often goes out of town for the whole weekend to play various gigs). Overall, we really like Brady as our drummer, but we're still going to keep looking at other options while maintaining the possible option of having Brady as a our main drummer with another drummer as backup for conflicts. We'll see how that turns out...

Vocal Lessons 2+3

Thus far I've had a total of three voice lessons and one evaluation, and I'm scheduled to have three more before the end of August. After that, I'll be taking off the month of September since I'll be in Europe for most of it, and then will most-likely resume in October. My first two lessons (of which I have only thus far written on the first) were essentially introductory lessons, the first going over basic vocal anatomy and breathing exercises and the second tackling warm-up and cool-down routines.

But it wasn't until my third lesson that I started realizing how important all this is, as it was the first lesson where I was really asked to sing...see, Dionne thinks it's important for me to work on opening my mouth more, but I quickly discovered that keeping it largely closed has been my subconscious method for air management all these years, leaving me out of breath when singing with my mouth wide open.

Hence, I need to start buckling down on my breathing exercises if I am to take this to the next level. It was just that over the first few weeks the exercises seemed a little bit tedious and somewhat pointless, but now I'm starting to get it. I just need to actually force myself to work on this stuff every day, and hopefully I'll see some progress sooner than later...

My 28th Birthday

As of August third (this past Monday), I am now 28. This year's festivities were actually quite chill, perhaps the most they've ever been. First off, I did dinner at One Midtown Kitchen with my parents, J+R, and Candace. The next day with Candace at the High Museum was kinda unofficially part of my birthday weekend (we also had a picnic at Piedmont Park and saw Funny People that evening), but my real birthday celebration with Candace wasn't until Monday night when she took me out to Indian. Between those two days, my parents fixed dinner at home and had a small birthday cake for me. Other than this stuff, I didn't do anything with any friends, but plenty of people wished me a happy birthday on Facebook, which is always nice (a number of them also commented on my recently-displayed photo of my moustache!).

As far as presents are concerned, J+R gave me a gift certificate on Amazon, my parents gave me a hefty sum of money to help fund my upcoming trip to Europe, Candace gave me a couple shirts and the Iron Man DVD (which we finished watching today...so good), and Dave gave me a neat graphic novel about Freddie Mercury's influence on the everyday life of the author. The present from my parents was easily the most low-key I've ever gotten from them, as it's the first time they've given me something that is consumable (i.e. I can't keep going to Europe over and over with that money) instead of music equipment or other guy-toys (read: Magic Cards, CDs, DVDs, iPods, etc...).

In the end, I certainly felt loved and appreciated on my birthday, but it just wasn't that out of the ordinary for me (I mean, you can't always be in Europe or away at college every year...). Guess it's just part of getting older.

Navy Andy

I have this friend from middle/high school named Andy Sand who, back in those days, was a HUGE cutup and a bit wild. Now, as things often turn out with friends from your childhood, Andy and I had lost contact over the years (even in high school, when we started hanging out with different crowds), and it wasn't until about a year and a half ago that we reconnected at Evan's first orchestra reunion holiday party in December of 2007. Now, although I had heard about (and been baffled by) Andy's decision to join the Navy, up until this point I had yet to have talked to him in person about it. To my surprise, Andy had grown to be a much more mature person than I assume any of us had ever imagined he would be, and we quickly became friends again in our adult lives.

Now, every time Andy gets some time off from his intelligence work in Bahrain (he went to Stanford, so there was no way they were going to make him a typical grunt of any sort), he gives me a call when he's in town, and we hang out once or twice during his stay. To my surprise, Andy was in town last week, and we hung out twice before he left. And, to make things even more interesting, after Andy had left, he told me to go pick up some old board game figurines from our middle school years over at his parents' house, whom I hadn't seen in a very long time. So, I stayed there chatting with them for about an hour, which was actually really nice.

Bottom line, it's always amazing to me how some childhood friendships (oftentimes the ones you least expect) end up turning into great friendships in your adult life years later. I'm glad Andy and I are now hanging out again, and I hope it stays that way for awhile!

Funny People

Funny People Trailer - In Theaters July 31 - Funny bloopers are a click away

Saw the new Judd Apatow film the other day. Didn't like it as much as I wanted to. Here's why:

This guy makes good movies, but now he's trying too hard. First off, I was certainly interested in this film based on the previews (and judging from the trailer above, I feel like I was justified in wanting to go)...I mean, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman..a cast like this is bound to be funny, right? (And yes, I left out Adam Sandler...because I have never thought he was funny). Well, the first big problem is that the film is nearly 2.5 hours long! Honestly, during the third act (I think...) it seemed like it was NEVER going to end. This is due largely to an attempt to make the film feel like a bunch of real-life encounters, but movies aren't reality shows, and never the twain shall they meet.

Next, the film, despite being called Funny People, wasn't very funny. Sure, it kinda is another one of Judd Apatow's dramedies, but even the jokes that were on offer here weren't that great. Maybe that was the point? Finally, the movie just ultimately wasn't all that poignant: after 2.5 hours of getting to know these characters, I'm not sure I liked them all that much, cared for their problems, and much less identified with them. This is the sort of stuff that Knocked Up and 40 Year Old Virgin were made of, but not this time around.

Oh well. They can't all be winners (or funny, evidently...).

Visit to the High Museum

As part of my birthday weekend festivities, Candace and I decided to take advantage of the High Museum's (my new keyboardist/vocalist Emily is the web designer for their site!) generous free entrance, which is offered every first weekend of the month to all Fulton County residents. This was good because there were at least a few new exhibits at the museum, but not enough to entice me to pay full admission. The four most notable (and newest) exhibits were as follows: Monet's Water Lillies, Misrach's On the Beach, a selection of architect Anthony Ames' work, and a somewhat small collection borrowed from the Louvre.

Despite being the focal point at the museum right now, the Monet collection only featured four of his paintings (on loan from NYC's MoMA), and although they were large paintings, it was hard not to feel a little misled. Richard Misrach's beach-themed photography exhibit was easily the most striking, but I'm generally not a huge fan of artistic photography, so it wasn't my favorite thing on display. That honor belongs to the Anthony Ames collection...all of which was in a sort of modernist/art deco style in Miami-style pastels (despite the fact that he's a local architect). Now, although Miami's interpretation of art deco is kinda unappetizing, I would still love to have this guy build my house someday.

Finally, the Louvre exhibit was pretty mediocre (at least with the exception of this great painting of Dante's Pandemonium), because the collection largely consisted of artifacts (in which I have no interest) and smallish etchings, so we quickly passed through. To be fair, I've been to the Louvre, and I wasn't really that into it...I'm much more into modern art museums and/or museums that only have paintings/photography (i.e. not relics and artifacts).

All in all though, I would have to say that my expectations were exceeded, but unfortunately, that's not saying a whole lot, as I've come to think of the Atlanta High Museum as one of the worst museums I've ever seen. Oh well...

Guitar Center Experience

The other day while at Guitar Center checking out synths, two things of note happened. The first (and far less interesting) thing was that I tried out a Roland V-Piano, a REALLY expensive piano emulator that was easily the most realistic piano emulation I've ever played. Sure, it costs $6000, but god it sounded good!

More interestingly, while I was looking around the store, a black guy roughly my age approached me asking me if I played keyboards, how good I was, and if I would be willing to demonstrate for him. I didn't mind, so I sat down playing some Philip Glass and some rock stuff...to which he responded positively. In fact, he told me that he was getting into producing hip-hop tracks and that I should play for his collaborative partner (who calls himself Capone), who was elsewhere in the store. So, after doing that, they were both convinced that they needed to get me to come to their home studio and lay down some tracks for them. They asked how much I charge per hour and whether or not I would be willing to drive to their studio (to use their equipment, not my own), so after saying I would be interested in checking it out, we exchanged phone numbers.

So now I have some dude named Capone's number in my address book, but I have yet to hear from the him (this only happened on Friday though). Now, although I wouldn't be surprised if this never came to anything, it's kinda neat thinking I might become a sort of local session player for all sorts of aspiring hip-hop artists...not exactly what I had in mind, but if it's fun and pays, why not...?