Archive for 2010

Where some of the music is hiding

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

And where inspiration is sometimes found.

Okay, I admit it: I had a lot of open time this week to accomplish a gazillion things on my apparently-never-ending-until-I’m-pushing-up-daisies to-do list.
And far too few of them have been accomplished thus far. Except, perhaps, something rather important: sanity. Calm. Peace. Exhaling.
I think I need those things, in order to do any of the others halfway decently.

If you use slightly less than three minutes of your life to watch this very amateur video I spontaneously shot this evening from the deck of my studio when I sat outside to stop working and just exist aimlessly for a moment, you, too, may find a little inspiration for whatever’s on your to-do list.
Or at least you’ll exhale, even if you get absolutely nothing done.

Don’t get excited: absolutely nothing astonishing happens in this clip.
Unless you are constantly astonished that you stand on a rock that is constantly moving. I am.
One person’s slow, dull footage is another’s action-adventure movie. Mine!

The adventures of Net Girl

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

[IMAGE] Ferry net

…click to listen:

…about the music

A fine collaboration over the net.

As I bumble happily along in my career, one of the things I seem to have become a little bit known for is my web presence. Click and ye shall find me. Between my professional dot-org existence (more about me than anyone could possibly ever wish to know; I apologize in advance), this pixelsonic bloglet you’re currently viewing, MyFace, SpaceBook, LinkedIn, ReverbNation, YouTube, the occasional tweet and a multitude of other enpixelated mirages of my being-ness, I’m burning annoyingly bright pixels into someone’s eyes 24/7 somewhere or another on this rotating marble of a planet.

I’ve written [hopefully] helpful articles like this one about using the net for career-building, I’ve traveled the country speaking to composer colleagues about the groovy power of the web, and I’ve testified to the FCC about the importance of broadband access for all. I’ve temporarily abandoned my first life to spend a few hours here and there appearing as a guest composer on several shows for the Second Life Cable Network, where my avatar got to wear clothes that my corporeal self might not have had the guts to don in public. Why be virtuous in a virtual world?

[IMAGE] Kingfisher

Reflecting the mystical vortex (my own Holy Trinity) of serendipity, preparedness, and initiative, four of my most significant recent commissions like this one have come to me out of the blue from clients who just happened to click on my name, as well as an amazing classical music cruise for which I’ve just been booked as Composer-in-Flotation-Residence, a way-cool gig that came from my having simply posted an innocuous comment on Drew McManus’s blog about attracting audiences to orchestra concerts. Look to the right of this sentence: that’s the ad for the cruise. It’s going to be faaaaabulous.

Heck, I even met my husband on the internet way back in 1999, when we all thought ax murderers and folks who could never get a date in real life were the only saps trolling for love online. Yup, that was me! And it goes without saying that, being a chick who neither enjoys shopping nor has the time for it, I’ve perfected many surgical strike techniques when Googling my way to doorstep delivery Nirvana for every item imaginable. From Malibu to Friday Harbor, the nice folks at UPS and FedEx know my front porch and my often barely-dressed groggy morning self waaaay too well. I’m amazed the sight of me in my rather deranged-looking UnaBomberComposer state hasn’t scared ’em off by now.

[IMAGE] Bald eagles

As if all this is not enough to convince your grandmother to finally get DSL, I’ve even profited in the most post-modern, Escher-esque and unexpected of manners from being a cewebrity, a term I unintentionally coined over dinner conversation a few years ago. Before we even finished the main course, aforementioned pixel-hubby and I popped for the 8 bucks to register the URL for cewebrity.com, since it was so dang cute (nuttin’ to see there yet, folks, move along). Two years later we giddily accepted an impressive offer to sell it, and that has kept our cats in the very, very highest grade of kitty chow ever since.

And so, in the wake of over a decade of being Net Girl (surely there’s an action figure for this), I find it ironic that I, the one who tirelessly touts All Things Online, have finally become so busy that I am having a tough time practicing what I preach in a timely manner. Witness the three week gaping space between my last kelpy post and this one. Pathetic insecurities raise their ugly little iHeads: in a globally connected world, if I do something cool and only people who were actually there in the room know about it, does it count? If I fail to post, do I cease to exist? If an MP3 is ripped in a forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?

Stay tuned for the continuing adventures of Net Girl! Upcoming episodes from just this June alone include:

• Her stunning new studio location on the sea: now, with more kelp!
• Her 30th high school reunion in New York City: reuniting with the first boy she ever kissed!
• Tales of an enthusiastic yet dreadful chick singer in a rock ‘n roll band: Net Girl’s continued NY jams with Last Mechanical Rites
• The premiere and filming of Paper Cut: a long-winded article about a short wind band piece
• The Attack of Sloth Girl: An extended walk down many San Francisco hills and a quick cab ride back up all of them
• Action Composer: The removal of a boa constrictor fang from Net Girl’s index finger after 25 years (pic for the brave)
• A lovely local premiere of her trio, Elegiac
• California’s Music in the Mountains Festival, and a hike along the Yuba River with cuddly, adorable pet mosquitos
• Immersed in Immersion, Net Girl’s watery summer consortium electracoustic concert wind band commission
• Waxing ecstatic: ear cleaning!

Being Net Girl ain’t always a pretty job, but someone’s gotta do it.
Don’t touch that dial!

[IMAGE] view from my desk

One of these things is not like the other

Monday, June 7th, 2010

[IMAGE] llama and cows

…click to listen:

…about the music

¿Cómo se llama?

The first time I saw geese gliding along on salt water, I was surprised. I had only thought of them in the context of lakes and the like. The first time I saw deer balancing on the damp rocks of a tide pool, I was surprised. I had only thought of them in the context of grassy meadows and the like. And here, another moment of my surprise, when I first saw a llama hanging out in a field of cows. Those familiar with the island know…

[IMAGE] llamas and cows

…that there are actually two llamas on this bucolic property.

Until seeing this, I had only thought of llamas in the context of other llamas and the like.
In South America!
Camelids and Bovines, together in harmony.
Didn’t Rodney King plead, “Can’t we all just getta llama?”

All lined up

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

[IMAGE] goose family outing

[IMAGE] cormorants

…click to listen:

…about the music

Honk if you like music.

Well, a few posts back I showed you my ducks in a row, so it’s only fair that I now share my latest feathery water visitors and their excellent sense of alignment. The cormorants tend to stand guard at many of the ferry terminals and closely watch (or, ignore entirely) the large, car-laden vessels as they pull in and out of the dock. These guys were perched in Anacortes last week.

The brand new goose family glided past me in one direction earlier today, and then returned on the same path in the early evening. Maybe they’re teaching the kids about the commuting life, in the hopes that they’ll find a good paying job somewhere.

Between my home and my studio, I’m finding the commuting life quite rewarding, and will write much about it very soon on this spot of pixels. This new pattern appears to help me keep my ducks, geese, cormorants, and any other water fowl in a row nicely and delineate my manic-in-happy-kinda-way work life with my home life (one which is definitely not manic but nonetheless quite happy). In fact, there’s so much new stuff to show you kelphistos out there, that I guarantee you will be overloaded (and possibly overwhelmed, in the best of ways) by some upcoming posts and pix. Posts that have yet to be written, of course, because I’m in the middle of three pieces, two upcoming trips, and a bunch of other general life stuff that has precluded my blogging time. Not for long– there’s too much to share, and one thing I never seem to have trouble with is finding time to pick up my camera and point it at something. I’m just a regular quackpot photographer.

Life in the slow lane

Sunday, May 9th, 2010

[IMAGE] Goats!

…click to listen:

…about the music

Herd any good music lately?

I’ve been a baaaaaaaad blogger, and it’s been too long since my last post. Well, until I have something pithy to offer, here’s a snapshot from a day in the life of this island composer: my drive home yesterday behind some most adorable cargo[at].

Looking up

Friday, April 30th, 2010

[IMAGE] bald eagle

[IMAGE] bald eagle

…click to listen:

…about the music

Music to glide by.

I’m pretty sure that if anyone watched me just outside my studio, they would have no idea that I’m a musician, and instead assume that I’m a photog for National Geographic or something. I am almost never without my Big Camera With The Long Ass Zoom Lens; a paparazzi lying in wait for feathered and pawed celebs that lurk in my ‘hood.

Of course, much as those of us with honkin’ digital project studios are always jonesing for the newest, latest hardware and software, well, now I can add to my addiction: I am seriously wanting a Bigger and Even More Long Ass zoom lens. This is just too much fun, especially because I have no clue whatsoever what I’m doing. I liken myself to a dog dancing on its hind legs: it’s not that it does it well, but that it can do it at all.

[IMAGE] bald eagle

These are certainly not great shots. I ain’t gettin’ no naturalist photo gigs out of this point-and-shoot portfolio. But the pleasure I get from stepping outside to the deck or shoreline many times a day and shifting my concentration from all the sonic chaos in my head, to the visual serenity that surrounds me, is the most amazing “second job” I could wish for.

[IMAGE] bald eagle

[IMAGE] bald eagle

Busy as a B. And possibly a K and a Q, too.

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

[IMAGE] bees

[IMAGE] bee backside

…click to listen:

…about the music

Music for insects on the go.

Since returning from my most recent trip to New York, I’ve had a productive month of composing and living on this gorgeous floating rock that holds many more animals than people. I’ve been mesmerized watching spring become a verb through the actions of each tree, bird, and newborn lamb or foal surrounding me, and that vision inspired my muses as I wrote the electroacoustic band piece for which I had my first, really fun rehearsal today. I can’t wait to see these kids again; they’re a delight. And even more of a delight than they were just yesterday before they heard the piece, since they like the music I wrote them and called it “awesome.” High, high praise from a 13 year old, and I’m grateful.

In the early morning, I leave once again for a place that holds many more people than animals. And, far more composers than here, too: southern California. I’ve got a very full, word-and-idea-and composer-intensive week ahead, beginning with two ASCAP Composer Career Workshops: one in San Diego, and the next in Hollywood. I’ll be joined by three distinguished colleagues, and we’ll share whatever we’ve learned about this wacky music life with our peers, who, just like us, are trying to learn more about this wacky music life. Then I’ll speak on a panel for the ASCAP I Create Music EXPO about this wacky music life and lot of ways to make it even more rewarding if you think outside the taco shell. Somewhere in there I’ll do a few mentoring sessions at the EXPO with composers seeking further info about this wacky music life (hey, ya want wacky, I’m your gal), and finally, because apparently I just will not have talked enough, I’ll moderate a Los Angeles Composers Salon, featuring even more composers, most if not all of whom are a tad wacky.

This will be “old home week” for me, as I’m immersed in a happy world of colleagues who are every bit as passionate about what they do as I am. Many of them became good friends during the years that L.A., not some funny little island, was my address. While I don’t miss much about that city in terms of daily life, I always love being amidst large groups of my amiable composer pals. They are every bit as inspiring as the springtime. And, nearly as wacky as I. Thank goodness.

[IMAGE] yellow jacket

Prehistoric

Monday, April 12th, 2010

[IMAGE] Great Blue Heron

[IMAGE] Great Blue Heron

…click to listen:

…about the music

Older, in a suite way.

I think I love pelicans and herons so much because in flight, they look like ancient pterodactyls. And, after a phone interview I gave to a very pleasant college student yesterday, I suspect my affinity toward them must be because they feel like immediate family. The composition student asked excellent questions for his report, and wisely focused on things like “what advice to you have for getting started as a professional composer,” and, “what would you do differently if you were beginning your career now?”. To the latter query, I’d say, “arrange to be born twenty years later.” Because as I answered the former, I suddenly realized that virtually none of the tools on which I currently rely for my work and which I ardently teach students and peers to use, existed in 1983 when I left Manhattan School of Music for the great big composing world out there. None.

Well, almost none: the year before, I had received a new invention of something called a Telephone Answering Machine as a gift from a boyfriend (he must have liked me at least enough to want to leave messages for future date plans). It was new technology, and of course one had to offer instructions on the outgoing message as to just what the heck the unsuspecting caller should do upon hearing the mysterious beep. Twenty eight years later, I remain amused by people’s messages with the same, plodding instructions. C’mon, folks, I think we know how to work it now.

So, geez, as I talked to this budding 19 year old composer, did I feel old all of a sudden. I immediately realized that my start in the music business would have been about a hundred times faster, had I had the computer and internet connection he and his classmates take for granted. My first computer, an adorable Macintosh SE/30, followed me home in 1989. It was nearly as good looking as that boyfriend. Soon after, I set up my first real project studio, having had the semblance of one, sans computer but mit Yamaha DX7 and four-track cassette tape, since 1984. Life was good. Intricate home recording via MIDI was the new frontier, and I was an avid cowgirl.

But despite the fact that we now cannot imagine a moment of our lives without them, the inter-tubes did not enter our daily existence until the mid-nineties. And that newest frontier changed everything. With social networking, endless personal web presences and tons of opportunities to instantly become a known quantity by participating in the online communities of our choice, building a career from scratch became a lot more possible. I’m proof: I shifted mine across the deep abyss from film and TV scoring to concert music in 1999, and my ability to successfully do so as a complete unknown in that part of the music world, was almost entirely because of those intertubes.

But I emphasize almost. Because the most important part of the music business, and probably of any business, is building relationships. Whether one does that in person or in pixels, without them, we’re down the tubes, and soon to be extinct ancient history. Squawk!

Humming along

Friday, April 9th, 2010

[IMAGE] Hummingbird
[IMAGE] Hummingbird

…click to listen:

…about the music

Please hum.

Yes, it’s me with the birds again. In a moment of harmonic stultification this afternoon, when I realized that my ears were so overloaded with chords and notes and rhythms that they could no longer hear straight, I grabbed a popsicle and sat on the waterside deck in the sunshine for a little break. But an amateur, shutter-addicted, photog’s work is never done, and surrounded by so many lovely things buzzing and flying around me, from flower-drugged bumble bees to cutely-mugged chickadees, once the popsicle was out of my hands, my camera was back in them.

It was a welcome contrast, from the thick sounds of the electroacoustic band piece I’m finishing up in my headphones, to those of bird calls and wings flapping around my head. I steadied the camera on my knees and laid in waiting, motionless, on my visual hunt for a hummer in process. And, I captured him.

[IMAGE] Hummingbird

Getting my ducks in a… ?

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

[IMAGE] right side up

[IMAGE] upside down

…click to listen:

…about the music

Things are going swimmingly.

I often say that composing is a faith-based activity. I can go for quite a while under deadline without managing to come up with anything. I don’t mean anything I like. I mean, anything at all. I am the Queen of the Procrasti Nation, and being pretty busy, there’s plenty to procrastinate with. But despite the impending, career-denting doom that could occur, I never fret (well, okay, I fret, but I don’t take it that seriously). Why? Because after 32 years of composing music under the stress of deadlines, I’ve never failed to meet my delivery date with something I’m not embarrassed by (hmm… it’s possible that my standards are far too low). Once you’ve done this sort of thing that many times, you just have faith that you can, and will, do it again (in other words, this is not a technique I recommend to someone with their very first pro gig). Now watch; having had the hubris to type this, something will screw up next week that will have me in a real bind.

So here I am, nearing my deadline, and just about done with a really fun electroacoustic wind band piece for the American Composers Forum’s BandQuest series that’s funded by the NEA, and I appear to have my ducks in a row. And like the guys in the photos above right outside my studio, sometimes that can be in some rather creative positions.

Action shots

Sunday, April 4th, 2010

[IMAGE] roof hail

[IMAGE] roof hail

[IMAGE] deck hail

…click to listen:

…about the music

Lights… roll film… action!

It takes a woman with a very boring life to not only post photos of hail in its gerund form, but to even shoot them in the first place. Nonetheless, I share my ditzy joy with you: yesterday morning’s very intense and long hail storm that left almost an inch of the stuff glistening everywhere for half the day. It was dramatic! It looked like a blizzard coming down… a very LOUD blizzard.

HEAR the repetitive thudding on the metal roof! SEE the powerful flow of pea-sized ice pellets pouring down! SENSE the chill in the otherwise springtime air! WATCH as my property turns into an early April winter wonderland!
Wait… there’s something not right about that…

Oh, and EXPERIENCE the edge-of-their-chair excitement of Moses and Smudge through it all:

[IMAGE] cat nap

All hail the unflappable kitties! Who needs lithium, when you can just glance at these guys?

I was looking at the hummer and then I saw this guy

Saturday, March 27th, 2010

[IMAGE] heron

[IMAGE] heron

…click to listen:

…about the music

From above, looking below.

Ok, an electronic wink goes to the first person who “gets” the title of this post.

And it’s quite accurate. I was seeking ways to procrastinate from composing, and it was so warm and sunny that I had to step outside this afternoon. Having recently outgrown the space of my studio at my wooded home a very short walk from the sand, when looking for larger business quarters for Shapiro Note Alignment Industries, Ltd., a few months ago (aka, SNAIL, since that’s about the pace I feel like I’m writing sometimes), I opted for a waterfront location for my commute to work. And indeed I procured one, in the form of a fabulous rental that’s only yards from the edge of a dramatic inlet that morphs daily from lapping saltwater, to a sprawling mud flat, and back. More pix of this soon; I’ve been taking plenty. So “stepping outside” in this case means walking two feet from my workstation onto the seaside deck. Ahhhhhh.

But back to the birds. I grabbed my Larger, Better Camera and positioned it to focus on the hummingbird feeder I just put out yesterday after spotting spring’s first fluttering diabetic-in-training. I waited patiently for an especially cute newcomer to return (just look at those tiny feet in the photo below!), and glanced up just as a Great Blue Heron was coming in for a landing, alighting directly in front of me. What a lovely surprise visit.

Working next to the water means having a lot of company throughout the day. Apart from the occasional deer, fox, or neighbor’s goofy Labrador, it’s an endless parade of avian beauty: seafarers like herons, ducks, geese and gulls, seed-farers like chickadees, nuthatches, finches and flickers, and most strikingly, the see-everything bald eagles who circle gracefully above my head every day (possibly sizing me up to see if I’m a candidate for lunch). It’s so distracting, it’s amazing I can get any work done at all. Ahhhhhh.

[IMAGE] Hummingbird

[IMAGE] Hummingbird