NEW PROJECT!
So a couple months ago I met this dude at BarFly. I told him who I was and what I was trying to do. Turns out he was in a Folk band and was interested in recording some music.
Long story short Me and my two assistant Engineers Tyler Matlock and Kollin Christofferson will be tracking with them this sunday. I don’t have much stuff to tell you about the session other than they are a newly formed band out of the St. Paul/Minneapolis area that are trying to get heard.
Check in soon and see what we get!
The advantages of using social networking
Twitter is a great way to, flat out, get your ideas, music, material, etc. out there. by simply tweeting a short blog about what your band is doing or what kinds of art you may be trying to sell. It is also a wonderful way to “follow” your favorite artist or band and see what they may be up to at any given time. It’s also very helpful because you can include a hyperlink to any site that you want your followers to check out.
Flickr on the other hand is pretty limited in the fact that you can only upload photos. This wouldn’t be very helpful to me since I mostly deal with music and videos. I most likely won’t use this site at all.
I already created a YouTube account prior to this assignment but only have uploaded one video. You may have checked this video out if you have been following my blogs. It’s the one where we’re tracking drums for POI. This is a very helpful tool although my views have been stuck at 304 for about 2 weeks now and I’m not very happy with that. I’ve heard of this happening before and you would think that they could find a way to fix the problem.
Vimeo seems like a pretty cool idea with the 720p resolution and 500mb of storage per week although I think I would rather just use YouTube for the small amount of video I post.
Either way all of the available online media networks are just another way to spread the news about what you are trying to do so they could all potentially be beneficial. By posting on each individual site you are also multiplying the chance that someone out there is going to stumble across your stuff and hopefully dig it.
Working with Perception of Intent
So just this past Saturday I had the privilege of working with a local Minneapolis/St. Paul band that goes by the name of Perception of Intent. They are a Metal band, influenced by bands such as Killswitch Engage, White Chapel, and such. We tracked drums for one of their originals “Threads of Humanity.” We also tracked drums for a cover of Rose of Sharyn by Killswitch Engage. The session was quite a party involving two recording artists, five engineers, a cameraman, and one bystander. Xander Moser took the roll of Engineer as the rest of us, Kollin Christopherson, Brett Schaan, Tyler Matlock, and myself, Austin Yoder, helped whenever needed with such things as mic placement, loading and unloading equipment, and other small tasks. Matt Jacbosen documented the session with his trusty camera. Since the session was going to be sent to Texas where vocals would be tracked, we weren’t involved with any editing, just a rough mix. Perception of Intent’s most recent show was January 8th at Station 4 for the Slave to the Metal Music Festival.
Below is a video compilation of the session.
For updates, media, and shows regarding Perception of Intent check out their MySpace at
Project Xanadu
Ted Nelson proposed a giant electronic library in satellites that would be available to any terminal on earth connected by radio and telephone lines. He named it Xanadu after the mythical country. It would serve as a global database. Hypertext eventually made this idea reality.
Ted Nelson
Some of the premises of the Xanadu model are:
Documents are often connected side by side in parallel and need to be viewed that way
Links should be to content, independently of where that content moves to among versions and documents
Many simultaneous links may be on the same content
Identities should be kept track of automatically (transclusion)
The Structure of the Xanadu model is as follows:
Actual data content is in permascrolls
All data has permanently assigned addresses
All use of this data is referential or simulates referential usage
Manipulation of data is only by pointers
When the data moves among machines, the apparatus of referential use moves with it
Links are to the permaddresses of the content
A document is all the versions with the same name and owner, or some subset of versions designated by the owner
Documents have arbitrary structure which is not necessarily hierarchical, may have overlapping contents
For more information check out the original site by clicking Design Overview below
Above is an overview of the basic concept of Project Xanadu
Gavin Harrison: Giving credit where credit is due
In this world full of musicians there is a vast array of people to learn from and to inspire you to get to that next level. I am an aspiring drummer and have never felt like I’ve made it to a point where I’m happy with my skill. I though that this would be a great opportunity to spread the word about one of my idols, Gavin Harrison. He is most widely known for drumming in the band, Porcupine Tree, although he has been in other bands such as Renaissance, King Crimson, and OSI. People consider him a progressive rock drummer, but he doesn’t like to put a label on it. He says he’s just a drummer. His styles are everything from Jazz to compound meter double bass awesomeness!
Over a course of 10 years he wrote 2 instruction drum books, Rhythmic Illusions and Rhythmic Perspectives and produced his own instructional DVDs entitled, Rhythmic Visions and Rhythmic Horizons. He was also awarded Modern Drummer magazine readers’ poll 3 consecutive times in 2007, 2008, and 2009.
He has appeared at many PASIC drum showcases and each performance is stunning. A lot of his material is actually on YouTube and very accessible. If you are an advanced drummer looking for some interesting new techniques I suggest you check this guy out.
Gavin Harrison at PASIC performing Slippin’ Away
Interesting Things 