Artistic Inspiration

Today I started the third season of Boy Meets World and the first Season of Heroes.
I sort of want to be a film producer some day. I don't know how I could justify that, because movies are expensive. And the world needs a lot more useful things than just another amusing movie on their hands. However, I think the film industry has an incredibly powerful voice in the world, and I think it might be worth the risk to be part of that voice.

I would feel guilty if the major effect of my career would be to distract the upper class citizens of the world from reality, to give them mere amusement rather than entertaining inspiration. I feel like that's the only stuff that fills the cinemas these days. Amusement. Distraction-- movies that make the viewer merely want to be the characters in the movie, rather than inspiring them to do something just as daring in their own lives.
I want to be able to inspire people. Artistic inspiration. I want to give an audience something that they can keep, something that they can do something with.
I don't know exactly what I'm talking about.
Film Production...
What do you think?

I flip flopped.

So I just recently talked to my Mom and asked her if she keeps up with my blog. I know that's a terribly narcissistic thing to ask, but I was curious. She said that of course she was, but that I haven't been blogging recently. I told her that I had been blogging pretty valiantly lately. She was confused.

My mom has been reading this blog and not my other one.
I knew having two blogs was a bad idea. I knew it I knew it I knew it.
For every blog-reading intellectual, I have an announcement: This blog is closed. You may continue reading on my other blog: sohowscollegelife.blogspot.com

I might delete this blog, or if there would be a way to combine them, I might do that as well. I'm really sorry for the confusion and I apologize for my restless blogging spirit.
Thanks for reading!
Isaac

Mediocrity

So it's my first day of work and I'm severely disturbed by how bored I already am. So far I have completed Number 4 in the Scott Pilgrim Series, watched a short documentary about chocolate makers, and finished another episode of Fullmetal Alchemist. With nothing else to do, I decided it was a superb idea to blog about how bored I actually am.

However, at this point in life, I guess I can't complain. When it comes down to it, I'm getting paid to be bored.

I guess I just wanted to make a short woo-hoo for the fact that it's Summer (though the weather disagrees). For some reason in Bowling Green, whatever season it is, the weather will always disagree. It's a contestable fellow.

On another note, I learned about this guy: Jonathan Coulton.

He made more than half a million dollars last year just by selling nerdy music on the internet, a dollar a song. This is heartening. There is hope for the mediocre musician!


And in pursuit of escaping this mediocrity that is part of who I am, I have put it on my to-do list to learn cello and clarinet before August. A friend is teaching me cello in return for guitar lessons, and I'm just sort of hoping that the clarinet will work out. Two more instruments to be slightly acceptable at!

Which brings us to something else I've been thinking about. Is it better to be extremely good at just one instrument, or to be mediocre at a lot of instruments? I, for one, have fallen into the latter, and I'm not sure if I made the right choice. I start to wonder what would have happened if I had put all my energies into the bass, my first instrument. I might've been really good. I could have been known as "The Bassist" amongst my friends, could have played with random bands and could have had cool bass solos that would make all the ladies swoon...
Was picking up the guitar the worst mistake in my life?

I doubt it. If I could learn to play music all over again, I don't think I would do anything differently. Bass would definitely be my first instrument, just because it teaches you everything you need to know about the functions of songs. But I could never stick with it. It is the foundation for modern music, but there is too much in me that wants to build on top of it.

I suppose musical excellence of the highest degree might not be my calling. I like music too much for that. One instrument is boring; I need variety, or else it becomes dull.

Anyway, I think I've killed half an hour.
Thanks for reading
Isaac

Don't be sad because it's over. Smile because it happened.

By June 1st I will have lived in Bowing Green one year.
Years used to be really long to me a couple years ago. Now it's as if I'm just approaching another weekend after a really long week.
I think I've grown. My eyes aren't as wide. My mind's not as closed. I'm a little darker because of it, but it accentuates the light in me as well. I'm a bit more self-centered in some regards, and less self-centered in others. I've also learned how to be really vague.


I've tasted American culture, and don't dislike it as much as I thought I would. I think I'll stick around a little longer.

And I've learned that you can't just walk up to a building and tell it to mean something to you. It's more complicated than that. It's walking through its doors every day, sitting in its desks, learning things inside its walls, almost forgetting its relevance in your life, until one day you realize that it's your home.

The Little Prince talks about one taming the other in order for the one to be meaningful to the other. I am guilty of being tamed. Western Kentucky, Bowling Green, even other people. Friends, I guess. It's odd. I never expected this to happen.

Music itself has tamed me. I am attached to it to the point that if it were to cease existence, I would cease to be who I am.

All of this nostalgia has left me extremely hopeful for next semester. it better not let me down.
This summer will be dedicated to work, recording, and learning cello and possibly violin.

And for those that are interested, here is a list of classes I am taking next semester

Philosophy: The Good and the Beautiful
Music Theory I
Creative Writing
Group Piano
Introduction to German
Introduction to Film Studies

It's highly probable that one of these will be dropped.
I also have to live in a dorm...... I hate this idea.

This blog is just turning into an expression of narcissism.

History

School, school, school... excuse, excuse, excuse. Blah blah blah.

Anyway, while studying for a test over the Peloponesian wars between Athens and Sparta and the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and the establishment of Constantinople, I got completely sidetracked and pulled out my piano. It's so handy having a piano all to myself now... probably the best investment I've ever made. Here's a picture of it.

This is my studio! Haha. I would be embarrassed if I weren't so poor. I take pride in it.

 I still just use garageband, and the piano sounds are surprisingly beautiful.

So I recorded this in the course of forty-five minutes or so.

I'm surprised at how well everything came together for it. This is the first song I've written on the piano that actually had an express purpose of experimentation. I'll explain.

I had the melody all ready to go before sitting down at the piano. And the idea came to mind to try to have the same melody for both a minor and a major scale in the same song.  Composers do it all of the time without batting an eye, so I figured I might try my hand at it.

The song begins in the key of A minor. Well, C technically, but when the melody comes in, it comes in the key of A minor. So what I could have done, after going through the melody in A minor, is just go through the same melody with a chord progression in C major. There's not really a problem with this, other than it's just rather gutless. A minor is in the key of C major. C major is sort of the root of A minor, if you understand me. So if I were to just do the melody in the key of C major, there would be no real dramatic change, no lifting of the spirits of the song, if I may sound transcendental. 

What would be a bit more out there, a bit more gutsy, is to do a key change from A minor to A major. Completely craaaaaaaaazy. 

The way one goes about this is to find the chord that pulls itself towards the key you want to change to. In this instance, the chord is E major. This is completely convenient, because after every melody, there's a little ditty going between the keys of F major and E, where E could be either major or minor. So what I did is make the E a major chord, which then pulls us to the chord A, which turns out to be A major, if you want it to be that. I know there's probably some nifty term for such actions in music, but I don't care. I believe I understand it. At least I thought I did until I tried to express it in words.

Then to go back from the key of A major to the key of A minor, I did a dramatic change to going back to the F major, which isn't in the key of A major at all, but is in a way in the key of A minor. It all sort of works together nicely.

I wanted this all to happen without the listener really recognizing what's going on. I wanted it to flow. And I wanted to get the emotion right.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed it!

And I'm still not aloud in the music department at my college! :(

Okays bye!

Isaac

Release Date (?)

And when I said I'll probably continue blogging, I honestly did think that I would, rather than fizzling out altogether like I do with everything else.
I'm determined to avoid fizzling. It's a funny word...
Anyway, hi.
Just a few things:
I watched Paranormal Activity One and Two last night. If I were a movie reviewer for Rotten Tomato or something, I would give them both probably a seventy-something, because I really know what I'm talking about and believe that my opinion is valid on such topics....... yeah.
Things are coming together with Whalebone Records (The label with whom I'll be recording this here EP), comprised of the best musician I know, Evan Van Kirk. Plans are to spend the majority of the summer alone with my music and my art and try to refine and complete all the ideas, and then in August I'll head up to Portland, Oregon to spend two weeks laying down tracks. The next couple months or so while the mixing goes down, we'll work on band names and album artwork and hopefully by.... let's say.... October (?) we'll have ourselves an EP on the market.
Wow. A release date. Don't I sound professional.

Thanks for reading
Isaac

An Appology

I've been giving this a lot of thought, and I think I need to come right out and say what's going down.

This blog is a failure.

Not a failure as in a fizzling out sort of one, where I'm just too lazy to keep it up, and it gets swept under the rug as just one of those things that you couldn't keep up with, kinds of things. But it's more of a failure as in the very nature of the idea just doesn't work.
There are two problems with the concept of this blog and I'll tell you what they are.
1.) Music requires time and thought. I didn't know that until this blog, where I was rushed to make four songs in approximately thirty days. I realized that this made me spurt out anything I had, regardless of if I liked it or not. And after about three months I felt completely empty. At least all of the easy stuff was gone. Now I had to actually think about music, and this was hard. And it took time. And I didn't have time. At first I thought deadlines would do me good, it would get me going and actually accomplish something. And, well, it did do that, but at the same time I had no room to breathe. No room for creativity, in a way. I found myself breaking down at the keyboard in a panic because I had no ideas. Writer's block, in a way. And i had to have a nice and fresh song by the end of that night. It was destroying me more than helping me.
2.) Music, like I said in a previous blog, requires solitude. This blog made everything public. I had to please people. I had to write songs or do songs that I wanted people to like, and I forgot about if I liked the song or not. I was exposing myself, giving my music too much sunlight, in a way, and it was dying.  I felt like I was losing my identity in a way, when I made everything public. Nothing I did was for me. It was for other people.

I found myself unable to write. Too many factors were weighing down on me as I wrote for this blog, and it wasn't doing me any good. I think the most good it did do me was make me come to this realization:

 Music needs a lot of time and a lot of thought and it needs to be a personal thing first.
If music is written in ten minutes and is publicized before it is personalized, you end up with songs like Firework by Katie Perry. Tell me, Do YOU ever feel like a plastic bag floating in the wind? How lyrically creative is THAT!?

Anyway, no, I don't want this to be about bashing top forty superstars, regardless of how enjoyable that is (They think they're aaaaalll that, but they're not! Yeah...)

This blog taught me something that I would never have learned otherwise. So, no, this blog wasn't a futile effort. I'm coming out of it with a deeper knowledge than what I had before. A little wiser, I guess you'd say.

So yeah. This blog was a bad idea that taught me something timeless.
And yeah, I'm not going to be able to keep up with it for the rest of this year. You probably knew that the first day you saw this blog. You were right. But I have my own reasons, and I think they are valid.
But don't worry. I'm still going to keep this blog up and running. I'll still be doing covers and making music of my own (I can't really do anything else). But it just won't be as rushed. Inspiration will come on its own time. And on the days where I can't do anything, I'll keep silent. That's just the way I work, I guess.

I hope I didn't disappoint you. I'll still be around. I kind of like it here.
Thanks for reading
Isaac