Hot For Teacher

I got a jeerrrrrbbbbb!

Teaching guitar and bass is ultimately more rewarding than I expected it to be. I currently have 3 (well, 4) students: the 50 year old dad who yearns to be a rock star, the 13 year old who just started playing bass and the 2 Indian children who's father probably forced them into it, as well as math camp, science camp, camp, camp, camp campcampcampcamp.

The kids are quite humorous; the way their lesson is structured, I teach the younger one for 20 minutes, and then the older one for 40 (allows the dad to save that 5 extra dollars by not giving them 2 half hour lessons). My first lesson with them was Saturday. I typically like to start off new students who have been taking lessons with the last thing they've worked on, just so I can get a feel for their skill level. The first one comes in, I do my whole teacher schtick (still perfecting it) and have him play this musical passage he's been working on for what seems like a couple of weeks.

For the sake of this post, let's say it's like this:

"Ok, play through the piece."

"Ok, not bad...let's work on left hand technique. I want you to press down on the frets this time."



"...alright. One more time."




"...ok, that was...work on that this week."

I know I can't expect them to shred the guitar up after a few lessons, but you can definitely tell when kids have the talent to actually get good at the instrument. And this one does not have it.

His brother was better, thankfully; we rocked out a jerky version of Eye Of The Tiger and a couple of other things. I was breaking down his practice schedule for him, and asked, "so, how often do you practice guitar?"

"Oh, Mondays and Fridays, usually."

"...how long do you practice for on those days?

"5 minutes."

Yesterday I went in for my bass student's lesson, who I had previously had on Friday, so I wasn't expecting him to have made much progress, given the level of skill of the other guitar students. It was only his second bass lesson, after all. I had him run through the stuff I'd given him (chromatic scales and a bit of a blues progression).

Wait.

He actually practiced and sounded better?

HELL YEAH!

By the end of his second lesson, this kid could already almost play an entire blues progression and didn't sound half bad, especially considering he only had 2 LESSONS. That's when you know somebody has raw talent, or is at least willing to sit down and actually work for it.

I'm so proud *sniff*.

Don't Wanna Be an American Idiot (except I do)

I'm gonna take a little break from my favorite subject to blog about on this blog (me) and focus on someone different for a minute. But only a minute.

Sadly, not her. It's never about how I got to meet her.

I'm assuming you all know Leila Hegazy. If not, you're doing yourself a serious disservice. Wonderful friend of mine, and probably one of the best singers I've had the pleasure of working with. She's a pretty damn good songwriter too, and is working on releasing her first full length album this summer. Of course, that means Kickstarter! I wholeheartedly support Kickstarter (having gotten paid extra numerous times because my clients have overfunded their projects) and think it's an awesome tool for those of us who have to provide our own hype and pay for our own projects.

Again I go with my opinions, blah blah blah. Fact of the matter is, Leila's stupid talented and deserves much more than the paltry $2800 she's asking for, and YOU, dear readers, can make that happen. But let her tell you that, not me:

Ok, back to me.

In the ever-increasing frenzy to find a job so I don't stay broke forever, some interesting ideas have turned up. The first being, auditioning for a gig on a cruise ship. 6 month contract, $1900 a month, free room and board (shared, of course)... what's not to like? Granted, there's totally strings attached, like how they don't mention they're an agency and will take a decent portion of what I get paid, but that's better than nothing. The second (and most attainable) option: teaching guitar. I've already gotten a call back from a place in Rye about the possibility of joining the staff, and hopefully a meeting gets schedule that will lead to that. What's that line again? "If you can't do, teach."

The third, most exciting, hardest to achieve option: guitar for American Idiot's second tour.

I got my audition material through the email already (along with the 138952458348 other guitarists I'm sure applied) and hopefully can find a film major kind enough to make a professional looking video for me. Who knows? I could be on the road in 4 weeks, touring around the country.

It's the longest shot ever, but ain't gonna stop me from tryin'.

Carston Früm, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Write Ambient Music

Hope you're all staying cool on the hottest day New York has had in a long time. I've never been so happy to be sitting at the desk answering phones at my internship; free air conditioning! When I'm in the city I share a room the size of a closet with no A/C, so fat guy + A/C = I'll do whatever you need, so long as I can keep my rolls cool.

Last week I put out an EP of music I'd started during my last week of college. Bear with me, it's sort of a big deal. One, because I'm actually selling it (which I never do with my music). Of course, there's still the option to download it for free; nobody has any money anymore, and I'd rather have people listening to it and spreading it around and not making any money off of it than them not getting it because of some set arbitrary amount (originally, I tried a $2 minimum, which lasted all of 15 minutes).

Two (and this reason's actually kinda cool), it's the first time I sat down every day and forced myself to commit an idea to "paper". Each song minus the bonus track was started in a succession of days, and was finished once the impending doom of graduation was dealt with. As such, some of the music is tense, uncertain, sorrowful, what have you. The regular gamut of emotions one runs through right before starting the rest of their life. 

I talk too much. The music's my take on ambient (so, ambient film score, sort of) with fittingly Swedish band name to match. The name was born out of the idea to have our names pronounced entirely wrong with what was written. Carston Früm was a take on Christian Frahme, one of my housemates; of course, it helps that it looks like Sigur Rós.

http://carstonfrum.bandcamp.com/
^My personal favorite track, and the one that started the whole project.

Download, listen, spread, enjoy, and if you like it enough give me money! That gives me more incentive to do these types of things, or at least lets me buy things to do them better.

One last thought before I go: caught Prometheus on Tuesday. Apart from a rather refreshing take on film score in a major release, I'm still trying to decipher why the film was made. It looked incredible, sure (possibly cause of the Imax 3D and all of the subwoofer), but I didn't see the point. Between all the mouthfucking aliens and Charlize Theron's bodysuit (admittedly awesome), it seems like Ridley Scott missed the whole idea of a movie: it has to have a point. Which I feel Prometheus did not.

Though it did allow me to whisper "Spaaaaaace" at every possible moment.

Pictured: Space. And robot Michael Fassbender.

I'm done.

Post-Graduate Crankiness

I suppose I don't blog as often as I should. Considering I'm interning at a place that requires me to put in anywhere from 2 to 5 hours sitting in front of a phone waiting for it to ring, I should have time to update. Said time is usually spent reading and re-reading Cracked articles, and now with the recent acquisition of Netflix, watching mind-numbing TV shows.

Too much time wasted.

Being an intern 4 days a week isn't really where I envisioned my life going. We all have these lofty aspirations to be hired straight out of college, touring the world or scoring that big budget Hollywood movie and walking down the red carpet to the Oscars (hey, I can dream). Reality sets in soon afterwards when you realize how few and far between music jobs appear. All the musicians I graduated with are still jobless and I know more than a few are contemplating other career paths.

Yes, I'm well aware that I only graduated from college less than a month ago (a point that's hurled at me every time I complain about working for $10 a day), but the future's scary. I spent enough time working at a snack bar over the past few summers to know that it's absolutely miserable, and I don't want to have to stoop that low again just to get by.

Bitch, moan, bitch, complain, bitch, etc.

On a couple sidenotes: I took a stab at writing "ambient" music where I started a track a day right before graduation. Those 5 tracks will be out soon, once I get the artwork for the album. I'm also involved in an upcoming webseries called "Mock Justice", whose 5 minute pilot is set to be completed this weekend and entered into competitions next weekend. I'll have updates for both of these next posting cycle (which hopefully won't be like the last update, 2 months ago).

In the meantime, I'm going to see Amanda Palmer in 2 weeks, where I paid far too much for StubHubbed tickets but don't really care, because it's Amanda Fucking Palmer. Watch this video (still one of my favorites),.

Welcome Back Kotter

Hi again, blog world.

It's me.

A whole lot's happened since July 7th, 2011; much too much to go into detail on here, especially at 1 in the morning when I've been writing charts since I woke up at 11. Let's just say it was equal parts business, laziness, craziness and time.

But I'm back. For how long, I'm not sure. Is it because I currently only have 1 and a half hours of class a week? Perhaps. Am I trying to promote the crap out of an original musical? A valid point. Freaked out about my future as a freelance musician? You better fucking believe it. It's high time to vent to something, to provide another output for my creation, and really, just to write because it feels like it's time to write.

So for at least until showtime, if not more, Composing While Colorblind returns.

And as always, there will be music. Lots of it.

A Word is Worth a Thousand Notes

Work has been continuously chugging along on Alice Unraveled for the past week or so. It appears I found my muse in an in-progress cover of "Cannibal" by Ke$ha. Sometimes all it takes is the realization that you had the first chord of the chorus confused to spark ALL of your work to completion. The latest arrangement brought to the party borrows heavily from Phil Spector produced groups, namely The Rhonettes and is my take on that 60s girl-pop sound. It's somewhat hard to convey with my sample set, but hopefully the idea gets across well. James Perrella was kind enough to quick-mix it, and it's not indicative of his actual mixing prowess at all. But he's a much better mixer than I, so even a couple of hours put into it equals days of me trying to mix it. Lots of problems with this rendition, but hey, it's a first draft. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.
Who Are You? by Michael Hart

And as always, pimp my music out!

Really, though, I wanted to share an insight with you that happened upon me just last night. All throughout my life, and musical career, I never put much value into lyrics. If they were good or bad, sure, I'd take notice and be able to determine if they were good or bad. But it wouldn't affect my interest in the song at all. It's played a small part in how my music has turned out (hey, there's no lyrics in film scores; I'm an awful lyricist), and when asked to do arrangements I'd keep them in mind but ultimately not pay too terribly much attention to them.

Kelly Izzo and I hit a few mishaps during this whole process of arranging for Alice Unraveled, where she approaches things from a very simple, very minimalist point of view and I... well, do not. I love my bombast. I was re-listening to the demo tracks last night to try and get arrangement ideas and I hit the title track of the musical. Which, if you haven't heard it, is absolutely phenomenal. So I was listening, blah de blah, it finished, I had an idea when something changed. Something resonated in my head.

"Something was lost, when I couldn't see/with the lights turned off".

I don't know why it struck such a chord, but I listened to the song again. And really listened to the words this time. By the end of the song I was shaking. It finally all fell into perspective; here's a musical about a girl who's thrown into an awful situation by herself and lays her heart out for the whole world to see, only to have no one care. It was an incredibly moving moment.

Again I go back to this point I've made before, but this time with a new perspective: for all of our mass produced, synthesized, hugely arranged pop, electronica, anything with a club kick... does it matter what they say? Hell, even singer-songwriters do it too, drowning the message in washes of guitar layers and strings. Far too many are concerned with a pristine sounding record, how loud it gets, how deep the bass is, whether or not it'll move a million units.

Valid points? Sure.

The only points? Fuck that.

Sometimes it only takes a girl with a guitar, recording into a Macbook camera mic, to make you realize how vulnerable you really are.

I'm still in awe.

Really, All You Need Is Björk

It starts with a link.

http://disconaivete.com/post/6899643048

And ends with you listening to it.

Really, I have nothing more to say other than forget Volta, forget that weird thing she did with Thom Yorke, forget that weirder thing she did with Dirty Projectors (though that wasn't as bad). This is the Björk we know and love.

Just listen, fuckers.

Time Travel (Not The Fun Kind)

Last night I had the realization that I own a lot of CDs. They're currently overflowing from my meager CD rack. From the beginning of middle school till around the first or second semester of college, I bought CDs on a fairly consistent basis, around 1 every two weeks if I could afford it. Looking back, I have no idea how I DID afford it, but I somehow ended up with a huge collection of them.

Upon closer inspection, there were quite a few that I hadn't listened to since middle school. Not remembering what they sounded like, I spent last night and the most of today reliving middle school. Musically, at least. I don't think anyone in their right mind has fond memories of middle school; I certainly didn't. The only kids who were less popular than me were the ones that had mental breakdowns during class, or... well, that was about it.

But music. I liked a LOT of shitty music during high school. Lots of rap-rock/metal, nü-metal and alt-rock. Here's a short sampling of what I've been revisiting:

Crazy Town - Darkhorse

I think there were two categories of angsty white preteens in my high school: those who listened to rap, and those who listened to nü-metal. Me being in the latter category, I was of course in love with Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory. Apparently a lot of bands were as well, because the amount of CDs trying to be Hybrid Theory I found was astonishing. This was one of them. Crazy Town were most famous for that awful piece of trash "Butterfly". You know. "Come my lady, come come my lady" blah de fucking BLAH. There's really no redeeming qualities in this CD too; it's bland, boring rap/rock with awful lyrics, awful vocal performances and uninspired songwriting. It was mildly aggressive and had curses on it though, which 12 year old Mike latched onto immediately (the edited version, at least; Mommy didn't want me listening to so called "explicit" music). NEXT.

Greenwheel - Soma Holiday

My father bought this for me on one of his trips to Japan, I think. Nobody I've talked to has heard a single thing about this band; Wikipedia says this was their only album and they toured with bands like Injected and Hoobastank and all those other bad post-grunge alt rocky bands that tried to be Bush but had no charisma or songwriting skill. In all fairness to Greenwheel, this album isn't BAD. It's just incredibly generic. It legitimately sounds like a bunch of Bush B-sides. Given as how I hadn't heard of Bush when I was this age, though, this was the next best thing.

Aerosmith - Just Push Play

I fully expected this to be one of the worst of the lot I listened to, but honestly, there's some absolutely INCREDIBLE material on here. Mainly, I still can't get over how awesome the opener "Beyond Beautiful" is. Yeah, it's got sitar in there trying to make it all "exotic" and shit, but it's incredibly out there for a classic rock band, not least the one that wrote "Dream On". Productionwise, this album slays too. Thick and beefy yet still pristinely clear guitars abound everywhere. There's a whole lot of filler, but the first three tracks are all sweet, most importantly "Beyond Beautiful". Damn.

System Of A Down

I still listen to SOAD, but these two albums fell by the wayside once I hit high school. The self-titled suffers from rather muddy production and Steal This Album! suffers from filler syndrome again, but they're both great and ended up back in listening rotation. The self titled in particular has some great, great songwriting. It's angsty and heavy enough for preteens, but the writing is so spastically great that any shortcomings get overlooked.

3rd Strike - Lost Angel

The minute I popped this one in, overwhelming waves of nostalgia rolled over me. It was like I was back in middle school, but with the added wisdom that I have now. I'm listening to it now actually, as I type this, and the jury's out. Vocals suck. Plain and simple. Songwriting's nothing special, but there's some awesome guitar licks and plenty of crunch. Actually, a LOT of crunch. Maybe that's why I liked it so much and never really realized it.

And then there's the honorable mentions, which I've either not listened to yet, still listen to or don't give two shits about in any conceivable manner. Maybe I'll do another one of these posts in the coming future.

Default - The Fallout
The Buzzhorn - Disconnected
Course Of Nature - Superkala
Mad At Gravity - Resonance
The Used - The Used
And plenty of things from Disturbed, Creed, Korn, Slipknot, Seether... holy shit the list goes on. I'm definitely doing another of these posts.

As for now, I'm gonna go back under into nostalgia and laugh at my preteen self. Also, Deconstruction and Ghost by The Devin Townsend Project come out today (being Tuesday, at this point). Pick them up. I've yet to hear Ghost, but Deconstruction  quite possibly eclipses Scurrilous as most over the top absurdly awesome metal album to come out this year.

Two Opposite Extremes

I've slumped. It happens to the best of us.

Summer's been an interesting period for me musically so far; I haven't really had the motivation to do much of anything, to be perfectly honest. The feeling of un-inspiration, if you will, hits every musician from time to time, and I've found myself... well, not being able to write. Which is hard, considering there's still deadlines for this musical. Luckily, a few things I've been listening to recently may have sparked my creative juices again.

The first being something I don't usually enjoy: SHOW TUNES!

Longtime buddy ol' friend and collaborator Andrew Fox has been working a show recently titled The Best Is Yet To Come: The Music of Cy Coleman. I called him up to shoot the shit, and he mentioned the show and offered me a comp ticket. Not being one to turn down free things that are offered to me (hey, I'm a fuckin' composer; my entire life is based on handouts) and not having anything else to do, I agreed.

Let me tell you: I'm not a big fan of Broadway songs, but I'll be damned if the band wasn't the tightest I've heard in a long time. Through 85 minutes of nonstop music they didn't drop a note, the sound was incredible and filled the entire tiny theater, and they served to liven up all the music to a degree where it was almost like being back in Coleman's times, albeit with many more microphones. The singers all performed admirably too, with my favorite being Lillias White (she was the crowd favorite too, singing about being a prostitute and ripping off her wig halfway through the show), but hats off to the band and Billy Stritch's arrangements. Wonderful.

The other is something completely different. One of my favorite bands, Unexpect, released their latest album at the end of May and it's currently been in heavy rotation in my car. Fables of the Sleepless Empire is equal parts heavy, technical, bizarre, unexpected (forgive the pun) and really hammers home the fact that the band is made up of French Canadians.

Whereas previous album In a Flesh Aquarium was as about as oddball as an album could get, Fables seems to be the natural progression of the band's sound. Off kilter rhythms and melodies still abound, as well as hairpin changes, but it's a much more focused effort. As opposed to being weird for weird's sake, the album's bizarre nature serves a purpose to the songwriting, and even if the album drags in its last moments, the beginning is more than worth the price of admission. The first two tracks in particular are some of the best in the band's catalog, with opener "Unsolved Ideas of a Distorted Guest" being my far and away favorite. It opens with bowed cymbals and those giant metal MREEEEOOOWWWWSSSS that horror composers love so much before launching into an absolutely incredible 9 string bass slap part.  And then proceeds to go all over the place. But it never loses focus even for a second, which in and of itself is astounding considering how many fucking ideas are being thrown around.

Honestly, just go buy the album. Considering you can get it digital for 9 dollars Canadian, it's a steal. Me, I prefer albums I really like in CD form (I'm an old fogey like that), but to each his own.

Coming soon: more musical work (hopefully) and a 3 song pop/punk EP being written with Mark Wudtke of The Bearing. That one might be entertaining.

Bor(ing)n This Way

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past year, it's impossible not to have heard all the hype surrounding Lady Gaga's new album. The woman's a genius. Her extra-musical activities have served to solidify that, no matter how her album sounds, it would be the next biggest thing since... well, her last album. Between her last effort The Fame Monster and her newest album, she's become the champion of the misunderstood, the bullied, the underdog. The majority of the gay community regards her as some sort of leather clad Jesus with the rallying cry "Be yourself!" With over 10 million followers on Twitter and 35 million hanging on her every word on Facebook, the album was destined to be a resounding success saleswise, especially considering the concept of the album is nearly dead. Projected album sales for the week were expected to break 800,000; I'll get a finite number once those details are released.

Good for her. There's only one problem though:

The album FUCKING SUCKS.

Pardon the language, but seriously. There's absolutely no redeeming qualities on here whatsoever. It's a damn shame too, since The Fame Monster was not only her best output, but one of the best pop albums released in the past 10 years. She kept her trademark weirdness and refusal to adhere to societal norms, but backed it up with music that actually had some SERIOUSLY incredible writing. Listen to "Bad Romance" or "Telephone" again and don't tell me that they're not still stuck in your head days later. They were catchy, memorable, incredibly dancy and helped propel her into the upper echelon of pop stars who weren't only popular, but GOOD too. Which is a rarity in today's day and age.

Born This Way trades in all aspects of good writing for a collection of 17 insipid, bland, generic fist pumping anthems solely written for Gaga's "little monsters". And I'm sure all of them, in their "misunderstood" lives, will find this album the greatest ever written and will sing its praises until the day they die. Or the day they grow up, at least. As for the rest of us, her more casual fans, we've been thrown to the wayside. The album sounds great, no doubt about it; the production is fat, the beats pounding and driving, the synths huge, larger than life and Gaga's voice right in front of it all.

The writing, however? Entirely unmemorable. The only tune that holds any weight as a contender for a legitimate song is second single "Judas", largely due in part to the fact it's a near carbon copy of Bad Romance with slightly dirtier synths.

Listen to this:


And then try to convince me it's not a sped up, grittier version of this:


Other tracks on the album try to replicate former successes as well. "Americano" tries and fails far too hard to be "Alejandro", leaving the listener with one of the worst tracks on the album, first single "Born This Way" has been proven time and time again to be ripped off from Madonna's "Express Yourself" and "You And I" is a poor man's version of "Speechless". The biggest problem is nothing has any personality to it. While The Fame Monster was still very much a dance-pop album, you could tell serious effort was put into making the songs stand out, if only a little bit, from the rest of the trite on the radio. Born This Way has all those 4 on the floor kicks and side chained off beat synthesizer work that's been oh so prevalent the past 2 years. It sounds like everything else.


"Hair" succeeds as a mindless dance song with a halfway catchy chorus hook and an admittedly awesome sounding second verse, even if it contains an absolutely awful intro and far too much 80s saxophone for its own good. "Government Hooker" and "Schiebe", if combined into one song, would be the best on the album; both have an underlying industrial vibe that I may be biased towards and rather amusing premises. That's what... 3 total songs that have only a little appeal? Out of seventeen?

Unacceptable.

Next time, Gaga, PLEASE remember that there's more than just the sad, misunderstood fucks out there. Us normal folk like to listen to you to. Or did, at any rate. And if you're going to take cues from the 80s, at least pull them from good artists.



I rest my case.

And We Return

It seems I'm always apologizing for not posting enough. The past three weeks have been a whirlwind of activity, let me tell you... scoring three movies in as many weeks, if not less, takes its toll on the psyche. And then there's the fun of moving an entire apartment's worth of stuff home. Maybe I should've been an accountant. There's a lot less shit to lug around.

But this year brought some of the best memories related to composing that I've had so far. And even though I complain incessantly about everything I work on (which finally got me into trouble with a client; I should watch myself), everything I've done this year has been an absolute pleasure to do. I'm incredibly proud of the three movies I've scored, I finally got Salvation Denied to play some legitimate gigs, I started working on a musical, and I'd like to think I've grown leaps and bounds as a composer.

A lot of that growth I owe to you all. So thank you. I'm constantly bouncing ideas off of people, refining things here and there and all of the feedback I receive I genuinely take to heart. Not to mention, everything that's happened this year has had a profound impact on my life and finally let me write how I felt.

From the bottom of my heart, to everyone who's ever listened, critiqued, aided and abetted or hated my music; you guys help make me who I am. A thousand thanks.

Goals this summer: MUSICAL. Finally upgrading my computer. Aaaaaaand I think I may invest in some DJ gear and learn how to do it. So if y'all need a DJ for a party next year, hit me up.

I leave you with footage of my recital (yeah, I know, it was way back in March), finally on Youtube.

See you fairly soon. Now that I have much more free time, I can blog more.

No Shit, I Score Movies (Now With Examples!)

I think it's finally time to let you all in on what I've been working on the past 3 or 4 weeks, and will continue to work on until my fingers and ears fall off.

A quick recap:

Merry Christmas, Eve

"Merry Christmas, Eve" Trailer from Alyssa Codamon on Vimeo.
A slice of life piece about 3 twentysomethings out of college, living their lives to the best of their abilities. The director, Alyssa, wanted something very similar to an M83 song that I'm forgetting the name of at the moment for the title sequence: big, wide, slow, dreamy synthesizers. This cue's still very much a baby and will probably get fleshed out much more once I receive a final cut of the film, but the general idea is there.
Merry Christmas, Eve (Title Sequence) by Michael Hart

Welcome To Willard

Welcome To Willard is a documentary about a mental institution and the patients it had. While the beginning and end of the film are documentary styled, with an interview with a living patient from the institution, the majority of the film is about 3 patients in the facility and their experiences. Told through voiceovers, its quite dark, really, but still wonderful. This was an early build of the music I had over the opening sequence of the film, which Nicole liked, but not in its state as it appears here. Perhaps this version will appear over the credits.
Welcome To Willard Opening by Michael Hart

And for something completely different, this is a cue I did for our fake movie for my film scoring class. My teacher wanted something sort of "elevator music" esque. Cheesy, happy, bubbly, all that shit.

I said fuck it, and produced this:
A Recipe For Tastelessness by Michael Hart
Needless to say, my teacher was shocked. But in a good way!

And now, back to work. I can't wait for next Wednesday. Everything will be done by then.

And All That Jazz (Not Really)

Busy.

Busy busy busy.

But hey, Salvation Denied is playing a show in Manhattan on Saturday!

To elaborate a bit:

Downtown Cabaret is a concert put on by a collaborative effort between many of the arts programs here at SUNY Purchase. My program (Studio Composition... but if you read this blog, that should be beaten into your head by now) has the biggest stake in the show; we have performances from 8 to around midnight, usually. There's a TON of fantastic performers playing, including longtime collaborator Kelly Izzo, my good friend Leila, my new favorite Purchase band The Bearing (who my housemate has been mixing for the past month, and who've been stuck in my head since then) and too many others to list.

We perform at 9:30 PM Saturday night. Should have a 25 minute set, give or take; Downtown Cab is still finalizing all of the scheduling issues. For complete schedules Friday and Saturday, click here and here, respectively.

Forgive if updates are a bit spotty for the next couple of weeks. I'm in the thick of film scoring now. Receiver,  Merry Christmas Eve, and the newest project I just got, Welcome To Willard, directed by Nicole Favale, will be occupying every waking hour from here until the first or second week in May. I'm incredibly pleased to be working with such talented directors; I like to complain about my work sometimes, but these three in particular are a blast. I'll have audio very soon.

You know what? Fuck it. I'm closing this blog post with The Bearing's newest single, lest you're too lazy to click on the link above. I hope you enjoy it (though they don't want to admit it, I totally helped mix it a little bit. Boosting guitars is my idea. But this time it WORKED)

Got $leazy, Swore, and Shook

Apologies for this not being posted earlier. Life likes to intervene in my blogging schedule. You know how it goes: somebody hands you a movie, and the next thing you know it's 5 days later and you haven't moved in roughly as much time from your keyboard. Though I'm happy to say, Merry Christmas Eve is coming along quite smoothly. I'll have themes for y'all next blog post.

Today's post, though, is all about live shows, of which there have been many this past week (fuck yeah, absurd sentence structure).

First, for those of you who don't attend Purchase, Culture Shock was this weekend. Culture Shock is our annual 2 day music festival, usually showcasing a wide variety of different acts. Key word being "usually". This year's festival drew a lot of criticism for its lack of diversity, which I wholeheartedly agree with. The vast majority of the bands fell into either the "let's all smoke weed and be happy with lots of clean delayed guitar tones and clean delayed vocals" indie category or the "WE'RE LOUD AND ABRASIVE BUT NOT SLOPPY, IT'S A VIBE THING" indie category.

Not that I have a problem with indie music. It has to be done right though. See Sufjan Stevens, or Stereolab.

One band stuck out this festival though. I'd had the pleasure of seeing them once before, and they never cease to be awesome. Enter Swear And Shake.

A quartet comprised of bass, drums, electric and acoustic guitar and male/female vocal interplay, the group writes wonderful singer songwriter-esque music, but without all of the pitfalls the genre encounters. Vocalists Kari Spieler and Adam McHeffey intertwine with a mastery of those twice their age and experience, the arrangements are well thought out without ever being overwhelming, and the group isn't afraid to drop bars at (pardon) the drop of a hat. Recommended listening? "Johnnie". Or anything off of their recently released EP, honestly.

Last Wednesday saw me finally going to see Ke$ha live. And let me tell you.

IT. WAS. INCREDIBLE.

I think part of the reason I enjoyed myself so much was, much as I love Ke$ha, I was expecting it to suck. Let's be real for a minute; the girl has so much polish on her recordings, would you honestly expect her to be able to replicate it all live?

The funny thing is she CAN. And did. The show got off to a REALLY shaky start with Sleazy. The mix was off, the vocal performance terrible and the dancing stilted and awkward. Once she hit her stride, though,  the girl could do no wrong in my eyes. The biggest shocker? Almost all of the show was live. Drums, synths, guitar, backing vocals, all were handled masterfully by her backing band. Apparently Ke$ha is a much more talented musician than most people give her credit for as well. Throughout the set she played guitar, synthesizer, drums on occasion... and even theremin.

Fucking THEREMIN. Let that sink in.

Highlights of the show:

- This is how it started. Those glasses were awesome. It's a shame Sleazy wasn't better.

- Right before "Grow A Pear" she asked the audience, "Now... what man wants to be abused onstage by me?" Of course, the crowd went wild. She deliberated for a while before pulling up a young gay man dressed to the nines. Cheetah print top, boyshorts, ripped leggings, heels, glitter everywhere, you name it. He broke down and started sobbing onstage, he was so happy.

Then, of course, he got saran wrapped to a chair and beat in the face with a giant stuffed penis. So classy.

- The whole stage setup and presentation was awesome. Her roadies built up the stage so that everyone got their own section to screw around in, the lighting design was awesome, and all of the costumes looked like they were ripped out of rejected Combichrist designs.

- Of course, the setlist. All of her hits, plus a couple of songs that were made a LOT better by a live band. "Dinosaur" sucks. But was really cool live.

So, if you get a chance to go see her in a standing room venue, DO IT. Definitely worth the thousands of shrieking preteens and their disgruntled parents.

Madness Is Quiet

Not 5 minutes before I started writing this blog post, I was made aware of some very upsetting news. One of my favorite live bands, RX Bandits, just announced that their upcoming summer tour would be their last. If you aren't aware of who RX Bandits are, you're doing yourself an incredible disservice. The Bandits started off as your run of the mill ska band, but gradually warped into something rather unclassifiable. Equal parts rock, psychedelic, progressive, reggae and a whole host of other genres mashed together in one large melting pot, the group has a habit of recording all of their albums live, with a minimal amount of overdubs. Which, if you haven't done before, takes an extreme degree of talent to pull off at the level that they can.

I've seen them at least once every year since my sophomore or junior year of high school (it's been a while) and they're by far one of the best live shows I've seen. High energy, the entire crowd sings along, and the band never stops for a second. It's sad to see them go, but I'm sure their final string of shows will be among the best.



Onto happier news:

Kelly and I recently completed another rough arrangement from Alice Unraveled, entitled "Rose Petals". In the musical, it details the main character coming home from the party where she was just assaulted, and her slow descent into madness and Wonderland as she attempts to cope with what just happened. It's dark, yet oddly beautiful and poignant.

Kelly's original scratch track was in E minor and much slower than it is here. I decided to speed it up a bit, roughly 15 bpm, and changed the key to F minor. F minor is much darker sounding, contributing to the vibe we were going for. The BPM change happened in order to provide more variety to the arrangement; the original repeated the same arpeggiating pattern over and over, whereas the new alternates between quarter note and 8th note grids.

Laryngitis while recording a scratch vocal track was an issue for Kelly, but she still managed to turn in quite a beautiful performance. We left her voice bone dry, in some contrast to the rest of the arrangement, and it sits wonderfully in the scope of the mix: right in front of your eyes and backed by a harp, string trio and an assortment of electronic noises and drum hits.

The arrangement's still not finalized yet; the end in particular needs some work, when the electronic elements kick in full force, and the large drum hits we agreed on are far too big for the scope of the song. However, I think it's a pretty good representation of the final product, and I can't wait until we can put together an ensemble and hear how it sounds on all live instruments.

Rose Petals by Michael Hart

The rest of my week is taken up by scoring Merry Christmas Eve, of which I just received a rough cut. It's a monster at the moment with a 45 minute runtime, but Alyssa's going to be trimming, trimming, trimming over the next week or two. I have some great ideas for the score already, some involving my favorite 30 second decay reverb patch. AMBIENCE.

I'll update you all again at some point this week; it contains our school's biggest festival of the year, Culture Shock, and Ke$ha live in concert for me tomorrow. I'm incredibly excited.

This Place About To...

It's Friday, Friday!



Boy, THAT sure lasted a while, didn't it? Though I'm amazed it somehow managed to get over 72 million views. Even still, looks like her 15 minutes of fame are up.

No, today, with my drink in my hand and in my stomach, I figured I'd pay tribute to Ke$ha's newest outputs: her video for "Blow", which apparently released much earlier than I expected, and her latest album, a remix jaunt entitled I Am The Dance Commander + I Command You To Dance: The Remix Album.



"Blow" was far and away my favorite song off of Cannibal, and I totally called it to be the next single. Go me.  As for the video... Miss Ke$ha seems to be taking a page out of Lady Gaga's playbook. Unicorn heads on human forms? Subtle romantic cues? Absurdist lines such as "edible lactose gold"? All here. However, while Gaga has a flair for being able to take something out of the ordinary and run with it, Ke$ha falls flat. Too much of the video is focused on her, as opposed to her surroundings. Yes, it's a pop video, she's the star, yada yada yada... but look at the video for "Bad Romance" (if you don't check the links, its up there). The focus is on the pop star, but it's done in such a way that you notice the surroundings, and you notice how bizarre the whole thing is. The appeal is enhanced tenfold.

Ke$ha, on the other hand, spends too much time prancing around backlit trying to act all sexylike. We get the schtick already. By the time we hit the climax of the video, where Ke$ha and her male counterpart, so lovingly referred to as "James Vanderdouche", start fighting each other with guns that shoot rainbow bullets, injuring/slaughtering many of the unicorn/human hybrids frequenting the establishment, its too little too late. Interest has been lost. Though the end is kind of incredible in a psychotic kind of way, the rest of the video pales in comparison.

Song's great though. Awesome beat, catchy as hell melody, good use of pop form... it's an obvious single.

As for the remix album?

Forgettable.

Except for the "Blow" remix. Listen to that.

Now, off to a grunge thesis. Enjoy your FRIIIIDAAAAYYYY.

Bye Bye Birdie... Hello, Sanity

Thankfully, the middle school production of Bye Bye Birdie ended Sunday, netting me an extra 400 dollars. AND A ROSE!

Happiness not included

Nah, I feel like I come down too hard on musicals. As much as I rag on it every year, it is a legitimately fun experience. The band's usually quite adept, and more often than not the kids are hysterical. Dumbing down musicals to be appropriate for middle school often results in some incredibly stupid, incredibly funny substitutions. Like "orgy" being pronounced "oar-ghee". Or Coke (the drink, not the drug) being substituted for beer. Exciting.

It went off without a hitch. There were a few mishaps here and there, the most egregious one being an accidental curtain open during a scene in front of the curtain. The main characters are all interacting in front of the curtain while stage crew sets up the next scene behind it. But whoever was manning the curtain accidentally opened it after the scene was set, BEFORE the scene in front of it was finished. Trying to get 50+ middle schoolers to stay still for at least 3 minutes, if not more, is a terrifying prospect. Though I must say, they handled it pretty well.

I wish I could've taken my own pictures, but the whole dealing with underage kids and consent forms and such didn't allow me to. It's much easier to grab pictures from local publications as opposed to taking my own, and God forbid having a touchy Clarkstown parent wind up on this blog somehow and get me in serious trouble. Clarkstown (my town) is very big on the whole child safety thing, often to the detriment of those who just want some photo evidence for our blogs.

But I digress. Thanks to New City Patch, I can post pictures!

The 2 leads. I wish I knew their real life names, but both were actually very good at what they did. The girl in particular had quite a good voice for being in middle school, and they played off of each other well.

The namesake of the musical, Conrad Birdie and his harem of jailbait. Which gets alluded to in the script. Hysterical. His clothing never ceased to produce laughter.

The "twin" sisters of the family in the musical, the Macafees. Only on performance night did I realize they weren't actually twins in real life.

More of Birdie and his number one fan, Ursula. Who, I have to say, nearly blew out my eardrums. When you have 50 middle school girls on stage, screaming like they're at a Justin Bieber concert, and you're only 5 feet away from them, it's fucking painful.

Bows. Oh, the bows. We ran the bows music for the first time ever opening night. My God. That was a feat in and of itself, especially considering we had to continually loop it since there were so many kids who needed to get on stage. Second night we played a completely different song for the bows, and the final performance we made changes yet again. I don't think we ever really settled on the right choice, but it worked regardless.




And so ends another round of musical. Next up this week: MORE musical. Kelly Izzo's, that is. I should have a new arrangement up for you all at some point in the coming days.

Merry Christmas Eve

Sadly, it's not ACTUALLY Christmas Eve. If it was, I wouldn't be able to type because every part of my body would be stuffed with delicious, delicious food and cookies. No, Merry Christmas Eve is actually the title of a brand new movie I was tasked to score.

Written and directed by SUNY Purchase film major Alyssa Codamon, Merry Christmas Eve tells the story of three young post-college adults, living together in the same house and doing what recent college graduates do best: dicking around. Though I haven't gotten a rough cut of the film yet, Alyssa was kind enough to show me a couple of scenes to get a feel for what I'd be scoring, and it's definitely something that's worth watching. It's a rather poignant piece, but not without its fair share of laughter. It's very... human, shall we say.

As for scoring approach? I hate to bring it up again, but Reznor/Ross and The Social Network are the main influences I'm drawing from throughout this process. It's the atmosphere, man. Alyssa wanted something that undercut the dialogue and boosted the emotions of the scenes while moving them along, and that score is one of the best examples of recent scoring that does such a thing. I'm also thinking I finally get to use a guitar in a score that's NOT for a Caleb Foss film. By which I mean, some sort of actual enhancement value as opposed to awful heavy metal while actors vomit on each other.



Hopefully I'll have a cut of Alyssa's film post spring break, upon which I'll lock myself in my room and not see the sun for a good month or so. Film majors have a habit of giving me everything all at once, at the same time, with only a maximum of 2 weeks to do everything. Stressful to the max, yes, but I've found I work much better under pressure. Forcing scores out, oddly enough, makes them better.

For now, watch the trailer. It's PRETTY. And bright. Good for me and my colorblindness.


"Merry Christmas, Eve" Trailer from Alyssa Codamon on Vimeo.

As for my spring break? Work, work, work. I'm currently playing guitar for a middle school production of Bye Bye Birdie. Let me tell you, watching a hundred middle schoolers put on a production of ANY musical is a terrifying experience. It pays well, though, and the changes they have to make in order for it to be appropriate for a middle school are really funny. I'm bringing my camera tonight for the first performance, so I'll have pictures of that tomorrow.

That's done on Sunday, upon which I have to continue orchestrating Alice Unraveled, since I won't have time after break because of the sheer volume of movies that will be thrust upon me.

I'll sleep when I'm dead, I suppose.

Alice, Slowly Unraveling

I told y'all I'd be back this week.

Before I get into my blog post, though, have you witnessed "Friday" by Rebecca Black yet? I'm sure it's been beaten to death in the past 5 or so days, but in case you didn't know, the video's a production of the Ark Music Factory, which as far as I can tell is solely designed to separate extremely rich parents from their money in the hopes that their young daughter will become a pop star.

Good. Fucking. Luck.



Now, onto music that really matters.

In my previous post, I detailed an arrangement of Cole Porter's "Love For Sale" that Kelly Izzo and I did recently, and I thought I'd share it with you all. It's... an interesting treatment, to say the least. Thankfully Kelly liked it, and was even keen on the idea of translating the color palette used in the arrangement to her upcoming musical I'm orchestrating, Alice Unraveled.

Love For Sale Arrangement by Michael Hart

But in ADDITION to that, she gave me the OK to post a scratch arrangement of the opening song I did. The song's called "Space And Time", and admittedly, this was the throwaway arrangement. Our independent study teacher who's working closely with us on the project asked me to create two arrangements for the song. The first I worked my heart out on, crafting a guitar driven arrangement with string quartet (actually, more like string orchestra... I love my big string patches, ok?), tubular bells, distorted drums, the whole nine yards. It was big, it was bombastic, I thought it worked really well as an opener to a musical.

The day before I have to present the arrangement comes, and I realize that I still had the entire other one to do. I had spent much more time crafting the first arrangement, I completely forgot about the second! In my haste, I decided to go an entirely different route. Removing the guitars entirely, I decided to make the piece spacious, with a small palette of instruments. Held synth chords, a lead reminiscent of a clarinet, glockenspiel, and eventually bass synth, drums and an extra synth pad painted a picture DRASTICALLY different than my first arrangement.

Of course, my teacher and Kelly liked the second one better. And after listening through again, I'm inclined to agree. It's still very much a work in progress; the glockenspiel gets painful and piercing at points, and the wedge form of the arrangement clashed with Kelly's original interpretation of the song. She thinks the ending is still too big. Personally, I like it, but I agree in the context of the musical it's entirely wrong. We're going back to the drawing board relatively soon to finish this up and dig into the rest of the musical, so I'll have updates as they come.

Space And Time by Michael Hart

I also have details about a new movie I've been tasked to score. At least, I think I have. More on that in the coming weeks.

Enjoy FREE MUSIC!

Music I've Been Listening to Recently: A Study in Eclecticism

I'm sorry that it's been over a week since I've posted here. I wanted to have an enormous post with tons and tons of pictures and video and everything from my recital, but none of my visual people have gotten anything to me yet. In time, dear readers, in time. I'm going to hound them all this week. As for everyone who came to watch it... from the bottom of my heart, thank you so very much. It went off incredibly well, you were all dancing like it was keeping you alive, and it was one of the most rewarding experiences thus far that I've done. You guys (and gals) fucking rock.

As for this past week and a half? There's been a few releases kicking around that I've been enjoying, the main one being Protest The Hero's new album, Scurrilous.

Yes, it sounds like the unholy bastard child that would be created if Queen, Yngwie Malmsteen and a prog-metal demon could somehow procreate with each other all at once, but fuck if it doesn't SHRED. The album's entirely over the top in delivery and composition, and there's roughly zero subtlety to be found here. It never seems self-indulgent though. Pretentious, maybe, if you don't get the band's sense of humor. For me, at least, it sounds like a band displaying a big middle finger to everyone who's ever had anything negative to say about their sound, which is essentially what they did on this album; they took all the elements that people said they didn't like and did them tenfold. Nary a second goes by without some lead line noodling around in the left ear, time changes and off-kilter riffs abound, and the vocal delivery is the epitome of balls out, cock flapping in the breeze bombastic-ness; and yet, it all comes together in a cohesive, entirely enjoyable package. Detractors of this band decry this album because there's almost no screaming on it; fuck them. This album doesn't need it. For standout tracks, check out "Hair-Trigger", "Tandem", "Tapestry" and for the hilarity of it all, "Sex Tapes", which includes one of my new favorite lyrical lines: "The Jonas generation's got rings wrapped round their dicks". Nobody said they didn't have a sense of humor.

Exhibit A: Sense of humor.


On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Avril Lavigne's new album Goodbye Lullaby released on March 2nd and immediately started fights between those who miss her woe-is-me so called "introspective, healing" songwriting and those who, yknow, AREN'T stuck in the early 2000s when it was ok to wear a tie over scene clothing.

Ok, maybe it's the grumpy music major in me, or the brainwashing our program does to make us think that Ke$ha is a legitimate artist, but Avril's lead single "What The Hell" is fucking great. I mean, sure, it's a little bit asinine in terms of lyrical content and it's as subtle as that scene from Inception where a train comes barreling down the road from nowhere (non-subtle seems to be a theme of this post). However, the hooks are catchy as all hell, the backing track is impossible to NOT bop your head along to and it arcs and flows like every other pop song, but still works. It's refreshing to hear a pop tune that's not done entirely out of a synthesizer for once.

Then there's the rest of the album. Our old friend I-V-vi-IV shows up in OVER HALF of the compositions (for those of you who don't speak composer, these lads do a good job of describing it) and there's generally nothing that sticks out as a good song. "Smile" perhaps has a bit of saving grace, but that could be more in part of Max Martin's writing contribution than anything else. Actually, scratch that, "Smile" is awesome. The rest? Nothing sticks out at all. "Push" tries too hard to be Alanis Morissette and once we get past "I Love You" (again saved somewhat by Martin) the album blends together with that damn chord progression and arrangements that don't do enough to distinguish one tune from another. Avril dropped the ball again, it seems. Damn shame. If the rest of the album was like "What The Hell" we could've had a more angsty Kelly Clarkson on our hands, which is never a bad thing.

Finally, Sunday night saw Deerhoof playing at SUNY Purchase, which was actually the first show Purchase put on I was able to attend that I was actually excited about (still pissed I missed Caspian), save for perhaps seeing Des Ark the previous Sunday. Deerhoof was fun, if incredibly inconsistent with songs that they played, but their support band was phenomenal.

They're called Buke And Gass, and they blew me away. With only 2 members and a whole lot of octave pedals, they crafted a wonderful set that, while still steeped in indie traditions, broke the mold a bit and actually had some interesting compositions to be heard. I'm currently making my way through my first listen of their debut album, Riposte, and it's great. Definitely pick it up. I was very happy that they turned out to be a great live time, after Thursday's disappointment with the Dropkick Murphys.

Not that I don't still enjoy them, they put on a great live show... but maybe 3 times in 3 years is enough for a while.

Since I've been silent for too long, I promise to post at least once more this week, probably on Wednesday. Perhaps twice if I have enough to say and get my recital footage and pictures. I'll have more new compositions for you too! Kelly Izzo and I were tasked to do a version of Cole Porter's "Love For Sale" that I'm sure you'll all be interested in hearing. I'll put it this way: we weren't allowed to listen to it, and she sent me just a vocal melody. No chords, no harmonic information, not even to click. It's coming out incredibly weird... imagine Cole Porter reimagined as Shadows Of The Sun era Ulver.



Happy reading.