Continuity

Wow, what a weekend we had with MME this last week. We played to a pretty big crowd at the breezeway and our most faitful fans from the campus stopped into see how we were doing. The next night we went over to an underground producers house to play (His name's nathan day but he also goes by badger). I think it's the most fun I've had playing a show in what seems like a lifetime. I didn't know a lot of the people in the crowd personally but I felt like they were really into what we were doing. Some of them even heeded to my request and danced as much as possible during the songs.

It's the rush I live for, standing up there playing those songs, and I appreciate it to no end when some one is willing to give up any small amount of time and money to listen to us play. I never want to be a celebrity, but I don't know that I could live without the rush of performance. Looking into some one's eyes, or finding that one person you really hoped made it to the show can make the biggest difference in the world.

Despite this little quarter-life crises I seem to be trying to wedge myself through I'm finding a lot of help along the way. As always my incredible parents are still supporting me in my confusion, and I've been wanting to give back to them more and more lately. I guess it's all part of this getting older thing, learning how I can show them my appreciation without buying things. I have to get over some of the things I thought were entirely institutionalized when I was a kid.

Like I said, I'm having brief existential moments daily for some reason but I'm still planning on going ahead with my RPM. It's looking to be in the same style as last year's, with synth style drums, bass and rhythms but plastered with electric guitar and raw vocals to give it that actual wall of sound effect. I'm debating as to whether or not I'm going to try to feature a lot of people this year, but I suppose I'll figure that out as time progresses. Twinkee and Pricey are going head long into an RPM of their own, but I'll most definitely be recruiting their help when it comes to the sometimes tedious recording process.

If anyone was hoping for some of my usual beat down angst stuff you may be disappointed, I've been writing most of my lyrics during the day, and I'm specifically trying to counteract the predominant winter blues. Hopefully I'll get a couple of video blogs put together soon so some of you can hear some samples, but I'm definitely a lot more comfortable writing about it, so everyone make sure to keep stopping in to read the update!

I'll be seeing you soon,
Jeff

Musically Inclined

Newfoundland's doing something that I didn't think could happen. They're challenging people all across the province to try to create an entire album within the month of february.

OPPURTUNITY!

It's sort of the motivation I've been trying to find to actually start writing music again. The challenge is writing and recording an entire album in 28 days, it has to be fourteen songs long. If you do the math, that leaves about two days per song. A challenge if I ever did hear one, however I've teamed up with an incredible musician and I think this can go really smoothly if I pick up my pen and paper and start churning out ideas like I used to.

Guitar Pro, here I come!! (I'll be posting some of the general ideas that I write in guitar pro on here so that you guys can check them out and give me some input. Download link for the program will be at the bottom of the post!)

Alright, so it's going to be tough, but with encouragement I think it's going to go really well.

Other big news. I decided that my song Echoes (downloadable in the sidebar aswell!) is probably my best work (aside from my panda farm work) and because of this, I think I'm going to try to start writing some more really mellow ambient sort of stuff. The kind of thing one might see in a movie somewhere. If there are any indie film writers out there who need a sountrack written, e-mail me a script and I'll get to work! FOR FREE! :)

I'm not sure how well I'll do at it, but after some practice and criticism I'm sure I'll improve enough and maybe some day find myself in the position of bands like Explosions in the Sky or Daniel Lanois, y'know the generic sort of soundtracky bands. If ANYONE has any ideas for me, please comment and let me know, I'd love to here.

I'll be putting my CD reviews on hold, and production of my own solo stuff until the competition's over some time in march, and I'm sure it'll be worth it.

I'm off.

Cheers.

Guitar Pro 5.2 - download torrent here!

p.s. - If you don't know how to use torrents yet, I wrote a tutorial on it here.