the quiet north

another video from geographies #1, the first in a series of...

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:35:00 -0400

another video from geographies #1, the first in a series of percussion-concert-zines. this one features music composed and performed by me, with dance by counterfeit madison, eve hermann, nicole garlando, zachariah baird, karen mozingo, michael morris, and scott kaltenbaugh.

i finally got my hands on footage from geographies #1, which...

Thu, 09 May 2013 07:30:18 -0400

i finally got my hands on footage from geographies #1, which happened back in february. here is one piece from the performance. it feels a little strange to put it here without the context of the whole show, but i guess that’s how it goes.

i’m playing vibes, counterfeit madison is dancing. we’re at feverhead in february 2013.

It’s hard to find anything to say about life without immersing yourself in the world, but it’s also just about impossible to figure out what it might be, or how best to say it, without getting the hell out of it again."

Wed, 01 May 2013 07:18:57 -0400

It’s hard to find anything to say about life without immersing yourself in the world, but it’s also just about impossible to figure out what it might be, or how best to say it, without getting the hell out of it again.":

The “crazy busy” existence so many of us complain about is almost entirely self-imposed.

I’ve been having fun making music out of these recordings...

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:12:23 -0400

I’ve been having fun making music out of these recordings of Lisa McLymont’s metal sculptures. Here’s another. All of the titles are the same as the titles of the sculptures.

On Monday nights, I teach a drumming class for adult beginners...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 22:24:15 -0400

On Monday nights, I teach a drumming class for adult beginners at Feverhead. We work on technique and then we improvise on buckets, washing machine drums, cooking pots, coffee cans, and whatever else we can find. It’s a lot of fun, so you should join us.

Another piece using recordings of Lisa McLymont’s...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 22:49:00 -0400

Another piece using recordings of Lisa McLymont’s sculpture of the same title. Find her at lisamclymont.com.

When I first sat down to work on this, I felt like the title was pushing me toward a sense of solitude, inner peace, and calm, but I had a hard time finding any in the recording that we made, even after putting the sounds through all manner of pitch and speed manipulation in Audacity.

I finally just decided to let the recording say what it wanted to, and in doing so, came up with something that turned out to be more authentic to my own “alone with the stars” tendencies. In stillness, it becomes harder for me to ignore the constant thoughts that are swirling around in my head, fighting for attention. I think some of that struggle ended up coming through here.

I suppose the irony of that is that “artistic expression” seems like it should be this very deliberate thing, but I find that the most “expressive” things I make tend to come out of my most haphazard processes. Hmm.

Lisa McLymont is a fantastic visual artist in Columbus, and last...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 23:14:00 -0400

Lisa McLymont is a fantastic visual artist in Columbus, and last weekend, she let me record some of her sculptures, which are up in a solo gallery show right now. Here’s the first experiment.

Inspired by Available Light Theatre’s production of John...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 15:09:00 -0400

Inspired by Available Light Theatre’s production of John Cage 101 last night and a trip to Impero Coffee this morning.

I saw the Breeders in Cincinnati on Wednesday night and realized...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 17:59:00 -0400

I saw the Breeders in Cincinnati on Wednesday night and realized where my penchant for guitar doodling came from, so I made a little recording.

i’m trying to get back into the habit of making at least a...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 23:04:00 -0400

i’m trying to get back into the habit of making at least a little recording every day. it’s not the same without a vibraphone in the house, but it’s fun to try and push myself to do it without my usual tools.

a tiny percussion improvisation inspired by too many numbers.

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 23:45:00 -0400

a tiny percussion improvisation inspired by too many numbers.

assorted metals, oddly-timed loops, and something in my eye.

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 21:35:00 -0400

assorted metals, oddly-timed loops, and something in my eye.

i want to be writing music, but it’s not coming. instead,...

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 22:31:00 -0400

i want to be writing music, but it’s not coming. instead, i do this to grease the wheels; it’s better to be writing nothing than to not write anything at all. and even though i know that making work is less about magical flashes of inspiration than about regular, persistent work, sometimes i forget….so it’s good to have this to come back to.

i haven’t done any impromptu recording in awhile, but here’s a...

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 21:21:00 -0400

i haven’t done any impromptu recording in awhile, but here’s a little to get started again.

why i compose.

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 23:34:00 -0500

i was just perusing Anti-Social Music’s submission guidelines, falling madly in love, and thinking about what i would say if i wrote a haiku about why i compose. there are many reasons of varying seriousness, but the main one is this:

growing up a classically-trained percussionist, and then going to college and graduate school for music, i was led to believe that composers were magical dead white guys or music theory aces, and since i wasn’t either one of those, i could not write music.

then i got a job teaching at an arts school for misfit teenagers who were all more interested in playing rock music, and they didn’t know anything about notes on the staff, or guitar technique, but they could all stumble their way around some instrument or another, and they wrote music of their own because nobody ever told them they couldn’t. i should have remembered this from my days as a high school garage band rocker, but somewhere along the way, i guess i forgot.

in teaching those kids, though, i remembered.

and i realized that if they could do it, then i certainly could do it too.

“Not just in wartime but especially in wartime, and not just in hard economic times but especially...

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:39:13 -0500

“Not just in wartime but especially in wartime, and not just in hard economic times but especially in hard economic times, the arts get dismissed as ‘sissy’. Dance gets dismissed as craft, creativity gets dismissed as inessential, to the detriment of our country. And so when we fight for dance, when we buy art that’s made by living American artists, when we say that even when you cut education to the bone, you do not cut arts and music education, because arts and music education IS bone, it is structural, it is essential; you are, in [Jacob’s Pillow founder] Ted Shawn’s words, you are preserving the way of life that we are supposedly fighting for and it’s worth being proud of.” -Rachel Maddow

Rachel Maddow is so dreamy.

Anywhere I can listen to Geographies?

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 14:02:24 -0500

at the moment, no, but i have plans to make a recording to accompany the zine for those who couldn’t be at the performance. in the meantime, you can find my music on SoundCloud; there’s some similar sounding stuff.

tonight and tomorrow night. see you there, columbus?

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 08:21:28 -0500

tonight and tomorrow night. see you there, columbus?

zines and percussion.

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 20:50:07 -0500

zine pages are coming off the printer again. come get yourself a copy and see the concert that goes with it.

“everyone’s got their own version of the same...

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 17:32:00 -0500

“everyone’s got their own version of the same story.”