Another School Year

So I just started up another school year… still in New York, still at NYU… and, because it's my degree, still focusing a lot on Music Technology.

I'm pretty excited about a website I just put up for a company I started called, Sight, Sound, and Sentiment. I'm hoping that I can use it like a digital business card accessible to anyone who wants to see the work I do.

I've also started doing a lot more with film, like from behind the camera. I just bought a Panasonic DVX 100B and have been playing around with that. Most recently, I finished up a short film called Roaming, written by Steve Burton. Now I'm working on a short(er) teaser for it, and he is planning on submitting it in festivals.

I've also been doing some projects for myself. This summer, I entered this Tea Commercial into a contest. I didn't win, but it was fun. The handsome devil in it is my dad! I'm also finishing up a screenplay that I hope to shoot later this winter that I'm sure I'll post up here when it's done.

Still doing music as well… most of my more recent (as in, from the past few years) stuff is up on the sound page of my website. I'm hoping to continue updating that site more frequently than I remember to blog!

I'll leave you with a couple stills from Roaming…

Long time comin'…

Sooo… with the best intentions to write up here once a month, I’ve forgotten for the past few. My bad.

In any case, I’ll give a quick update. First… I’m finally happy with my abode. I brought back my electric and bass guitars to keep my acoustic company… and have been getting lovely artwork from Ellie to make me smile. So, for anyone who’s curious:



So that’s that.

I’ve been working a lot doing some audio recording and video production for online video tutorials for a company called Finney Learning Systems. The bulk of the videos I worked on are on their Excel page, and the videos all come complete with cheesy music I wrote (aesthetically guided by my boss – so don’t judge the style!). I also did some of the coding for the site but the bulk of its architecture was done by a real programmer.

Outside my work there, I’ve also been keeping busy with sound design for films/music and have even started getting to the point where I get a lot of offers for paid gigs, which is really sweet. With any luck, I'll be putting together a website with some examples of some of this sound stuff, which will, no doubt, be up here too.

As for school – I just wrapped up another semester. I took a class on music editing for film from Tim Starnes which was really fun, and am gearing up for some intense classes on live recording this summer.

I’m also going to be in the city for most of this summer (though I’ll be back on the west coast during July) so I’ll finally get to do all the fun summer things I haven’t gotten to do yet. I think it would be funny if I ran into my friend, the exotic dancer. Maybe I’ll spy her from across the way, smiling and laughing with all the new friends she made…

Aaaanyway - to continue with my commitment to including as many visuals as I can on each post - I'll leave with you with an image I did for this video production company that's starting up. I got hired on to do sound work, and then randomly got to talking about photoshop and then they asked me to make them an image… so this is it… keep an eye out for it :).

Happy Birthday Ellie!!!

Ellie turned 3-years-old yesterday! Yay for Ellie!


To celebrate, I hopped on a plane and flew from London to New York, so that I could be a little bit closer to her (and also in a country where my cell phone worked) to call and wish her a happy birthday!

Before that, I'd been in London for two weeks, taking an intensive course on Global Music Management: a class in the music business department that looked at how music companies expand internationally. The course was interesting, and we got to meet (as guest lecturers) Alan Ridgeway, the CEO of International Business at LiveNation, Julia Jones, the woman who started the (now international) BritBus tour, and Keith Jopling, a music and media consultant, currently working with Guy Hughes, CEO of the EMI record label. We even went to a few required rock shows and were given $50 gift cards to HMV so that we could get international music!

I also had a fair amount of time to sightsee (check out the pics below)… it was a really fun time… a great way to start the new year… and enough to make me think about perhaps moving out there one day (although in London, I think I’d found one of a few cities in the world that was more expensive than New York).

Happy 2008 to you all!

xo

The Crave - the best band I saw while I was out there. Going to rock shows was part of class!!!

Tower Bridge

The Eye

Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery

Inside the Windsor Castle

Stonehenge!