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It has been two and a half years since my life drastically changed forever. October the 26th in the year of two thousand and seven. Yeah, that was the day. I can't help but remember the date because some mathematical events make it so easily memorable. I have had many many nights before falling asleep, quiet drives in the car, drunken states of mind, and conversations with good listeners to analyze what happened, and perhaps is still happening, to me. I am not so ignorant to think that all the events of these couple years were a direct result from one person or event. My redirecting and personally created challenges were the result of a blessing. As a kid I more or less followed the rules. In this day and age and culture, the kids go to school in a structured system for 13 years. This first chunk of your life has a lot of prescribed paths. I was under the impression, from the world around me, that I would build my life like how most of my family had. Finish school, go to college, meet the girl for me there, get a M-F day job career started, get married like the year after college is finished, and buy a house. You eventually have kids and guide them to do the same thing all over again. Thank God I broke the damn cycle and didn't graduate.
I had like 90 credit hours or so at NKU and I quit. Yeah, I forget about that a lot. This act has been hard for me and it is one of those decisions I was pretty sure was the right one. But I would need time to justify it.
I took piano lessons for most of my childhood. I dunno, maybe like 9 years or so. I spent two semesters with no major, one as a piano major, one as a math major, four more as a percussion major and I couldn't take it anymore. My curriculum was so crazy I would need another 3-4 semester as a music student to complete their program. College students can only put up with so much shit. So, it was Summer of 2008. I had a bit of a meltdown in my birthday month of July because I realized that I was another year older and I felt like I had just wasted one of my limited years on earth all depressed, feeling sorry for myself, and hoping things would go back to normal. Nine months prior, the woman I promised to love for the rest of my life would throw us away. I felt like I had been divided by zero. Sorting out feeling mad, sad, or glad had become one of my biggest hobbies. So, I called a fellow music student friend at the end of July and asked him to join me for a beer at the Pub. We sat in the corner booth secluded from the world and I asked him to take a musical adventure with me. Perhaps, together the world will not be as scary.
As the rhythm section for a gigging steel drum band we help create the previous year, Nick and I had experience playing together. Realizing how easily we played in the pocket, we declared, since he was finished with school and I announced that I would not be returning, that we wanted to play music. We loved every second of our experience in the steel band so much that we expressed how much we would love to play most nights of the week also. Rooted in good ol' rock and roll, we chose to create a pop/rock "cover band" which would provide us the next best opportunity to grow as musicians: to learn about band business, the gigging lifestyle, how to run PA equipment, networking with musicians etc. We had spent, AND STILL SPEND countless hours having meetings, doing research, sending e-mails and making phone calls everyday. We were entering a world we knew nothing about so we did our homework and prepared and grew to the best of our ability...so we could jump in and take this thing as far as we could. Be it luck or God's will or whatever you want to call it, we auditioned two of the best musicians around and impressed them enough to have created a top notch band with already around 70 gigs under our belt after only playing out for about 15 months. We've been creating some of the most memorable evenings for people through the sharing of greatly played music. I love it. I fucking love it!
There has been MUCH behind the scenes stuff going on besides the highlights of our successes. I've worked shitty part time jobs that insult my intelligence and potential. My free time involves reading articles about sound physics or researching equipment for my rig or any of the other guys in the band. We go to guitar center or order stuff online to improve/modify our PA. We go watch other bands for networking, comparison, and inspiration. This new lifestyle has been consuming everything about me. My hanging out with friends has changed too because I want to talk about music and sound and tell music jokes or hear gig stories. It is all I do and I want to do more.
I'm working on getting a third band put together now and also a modified version of the first one. Ultimately, I would love to gig 4-5 nights a week. Why? It pushes me to grow faster which provides more and better musical opportunities. Being a musician is funny. The more you learn and know, the more you realize is still out there for you to discover. I've been uncovering Passion in my life. For as much as I loved her, that could only be replaced with something this huge.
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Many people do not know what it is that I do these days. I think I'll spend the next entry(s) going into some detail. During these past few years I have encountered much life. I have beat unbelievable odds, plummeted huge depths, and every time I find love in some new thing in my life, I am forced at some point, to look elsewhere. I've transformed from one who dreams to one that does. I am louder and quieter than I ever was. My opinions about things have solidified more, but I'm also understanding that some understandings are not meant to apply to everyone. I still love Skyline. Hell, I even worked at one for a while. I have and still do fight much pain physically and emotionally. For someone my age, I have entered some of the most amazing opportunities imaginable, and at the same time suffer detrimental personal habits and fluctuating self esteem. I once, was madly in love with a woman, the world, my family, my friends, my health, my future... and I poured into it all. The difficulty I did not mind for I was dedicated and I found joy in the world as a result of my sharing life. These days, I work hard and I notice amazing results. However, the further away I get from the blinding world, the more I realize that I've only distracted myself for a long time. By becoming so involved with the rest of the world and everyone's lives, I ignored my own life. I lost myself along the way and have still, to this day, been struggling to define myself. I realized at some point that a pursuit of happiness was necessary to find myself. In the next entry I'll talk about what specific things have been happening in my life as I've been making the hard decisions that have led me to this point. Feelin':  lonely
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I realize that I have not said much in this ol' journal in the past few weeks. I have started getting phone calls from a couple people to make sure that I'm still around. So, I guess that I will say a thing or two while waiting for Shinya to call me.
I'll start with the pirate party.
So, finding out 3 weeks ahead of time about Anna's "pirate vs. ninja" event led me to growing out the beard. I have trimmed it up since the party but still kept it growing. I think it has almost peaked for length and I'm considering a trim or a complete shave. I can grow the beard back later if I want. I think for the hot days ahead, it might be in my best interest to shave.
So, I went to the party with ambitions towards kickin' up the ol' lady situation as things had been dry for a little while. With original plans to
----
time out
my dad just called me dude.....again!
I think he's been doing that a lot recently
...
cool!
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So, I went to the party with ambitions towards kickin' up the ol' lady situation as things had been dry for a little while. My original plans were to somehow get my foot in the door with that Anna girl. Turns out, as I had somewhat secretly anticipated, that things kicked up with Anna's friend Kelly instead. Well, I went back down to visit the next two weekends and she came up here this weekend. I'm not sure yet what to say about all of this. We like each other to different degrees but things are going rather slow and I think I can handle that for the time being. Why's that you ask?
Well, in case you don't know, the band finalized on the name "Paradigm." For the past couple weeks we've been busy recording. Drums one day, bass another, guitars and keyboards intermittently, and sound effects and added ambient noises last. Yeah, I know, you're wondering about the singing. Me too!
So, say for one guitar solo--the one that's kickin' Shinya's ass--the three songs are basically finished except for the singing. Of course all the lyrics and melodies have been written and performed by Richard but we've realized that his voice isn't going to push us up to that level. Being so close to finishing the CD, it pains me to inform everyone that it will be on about a month delay as Shinya is leaving for Japan tomorrow for an unusually long 4 week trip. When he gets back we'll take vocals and then do the gruesome task of mixing and mastering the sound. The next two steps will include getting the copyright and choosing between our options of CD duplication, and finalizing the band logo and band picture(s). Soon after, you'll see our website with links in myspace, facebook, lj, and other various sites.
So, while he's gone I'll probably be a little more available as musical adventures and late night rocking will not consume my free time as much. I will, however, be spending some of this time searching for a singer. Preferably, we want a trained male voice with a somewhat high range and performance experience on the college level. So, I think I'll be getting in contact with some vocal majors in the area these next few weeks with audition hopes.
Gigging is the least of our worries. We know that we've a guaranteed venue or two up north and with the quality sound this demo has become doubt doesn't exist. Although, we realize that there are not as many places as close to where Shinya and I live so gathering a crowd of our local friends might be tricky because we don't expect them to drive an hour north. There are bars around this area but those types of gigs typically prefer lots of covers and we're promoting primarily our stuff. This however, brings me to the interactive part of this entry. If anyone would like to make a cover song suggestion do so here and I can run it by the council. Songs must be hard pop rock or something from the 80's.
So, rock is slowly taking over our lives and I'm okay with that. Now, if I can just convince the other guys to grow their hair out!
Check this out:
I was just informed that Shinya has been contacted by three different small time companies about his techno. This is a mere glimpse of his growing internet fame. Ranked in Japan's Keyboard magazine as a top musical arranger/creator, and growing publicity may add to a larger fan base than we had originally anticipated. As the days go by more and more opportunities are appearing for a label and stuff. Jason is getting his foot in the door with a hot hip hop artist who's uncle is a producer in NY. Shinya enters more musical contests. Richard gives us free yummy pizza and strong lyrics.
When I was a boy I dreamed/knew that one day I might find fame. The older I got the more I feared that it might come true. Perhaps, I realized that it would either destroy me or make the most out of me. I prayed for the second option.
I don't know how all of this is going to end. I've been looking at it from the beginning of my musical adventures. Piano, choir, Shinya, francisville four, fair(Dark Eternity appearance), choir piece, music at nku, steel band, the switch to bass, meeting Richard, Jason, the exposure to the LTE's, the Indy gig.
So yeah, the rock is great and the lady situation isn't that happening. But I'm content.
Oh yeah, Will drove his car into mine this weekend.
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