Hey there! Welcome to my blog. I want to introduce myself and the types of things that we’ll be covering throughout its lifetime. I decided that I had a lot of things to write about and say that would do better in the blog format than on social media, and I got tired of social media after it started making me depressed and wasting a lot of my time. At least, when I write a blog post, I engage with writing for a meaningful length of time. But 140 character posts by a nobody that inspire conflict just seem so boring to me. I don’t know who they are, and how many meaningful ideas can be adequately communicated in such a small amount of space? And, should the ideas have some kind of value, the discourse around them will be limited by whatever is popular at the moment. The defense of the argument is not provided adequately, so people are conditioned to just take reasons as they are instead of really thinking about them.

I love blogs, honestly. They’re longer, so you have a little more time to discuss things and get into the details. I can control how the blog looks. It’s easy to read without obtrusive ads or big brother’s penetrating gaze following the mouse cursor around getting in the way of enjoying content.

Ok, so who am I, and why does my opinion matter? I’m a professional musician currently based in Denver. This means I can pay my way with music, even though most of the work is about things that would not occur to people outside of the profession, and the demands of music are impossible to meet for those without a solid mastery of the craft of music and a subsequent refinement of the soul. Some musicians may have refined technique, but their souls are brusque and misshapen, while others have beautiful souls who are unable to channel that beauty into music that other people enjoy and pay for. I won’t continue to write about these ideas here. But, if you think these ideas are interesting to think about, like I do, keep following my blog for future posts!

I’m about as multi-disciplinary as you can get. My education was a strange journey filled with egotistical teachers and students, hostile work environments, commuting, deadlines, and transcription. When I look back at college, I see myself through two phases. The first phase was the party phase. This was the phase that I will not devote a lot of time to talking about outside of this post, at least may not here publicly, because it contains a lot of information that could incriminate my friends or other people. In that period, I was in a jamband where we played four or more shows in a month for crowds of varying sizes. Most of these shows were performed on Wednesdays or Tuesdays in a house-turned-venue kind of place all around the parts of Denver where these things happen. The parts where, during the daytime, there were younger guys in tank-tops drinking tallboys in the front porches with their bulldogs, wearing large necklaces, and covered with tattoos that shared forgotten dreams or symbolized moments of time…moments that come to be and pass away in the dream world who is accessed sleeping or through another kind of sleep. Anyways, these kind of areas are harder to find nowadays that Denver is generally more affluent, but, should you have the right temperament or desires, they will find you.

I dropped out of music school. Like many parts of my life, this is filled with a special kind of irony considering how much work I’m currently involved in and how much I still loved music. But, the decision to drop out was a combination of internal and external factors. With the exception of the “party” years, I practiced a solid two hours or more of piano a day in addition to the compositions and random accompanying work I did. But, a lot of teachers at the school did not like me. I did not get along with most of the students, either. I found that my soul lacked a lot of refinement. While I’ve always been a strong player, I think my behavior was off putting. I was not a sensitive communicator at times. And, most importantly, I quickly realized the education I received in high school simply was not enough information to make in the world. I think that is a byproduct of growing up in Boulder in the 2000s. While people in previous generations learned Latin and Greek, how to produce and analyze syllogisms, history before 1850, and more languages by the time they entered a university, I knew none of these things. What I thought passed for knowledge was hardly knowledge at all, only summaries and images instead of something higher. There is still so much that I do not know. There are libraries filled with things I don’t know, and even after doing all that transcription and taking classes I feel as if I have a child’s understanding of the great works.  

I decided that being involved in this part of my life was detrimental to my academics, and I found my classes generally interesting, so, after some stern warnings from the university threatening expulsion, it was time to take my studies more seriously. So, the second part of my education was spent in the library, classroom, or computer lab. I read, I took notes on everything that happened around me, and I spent countless hours in the computer lab writing and transcribing the works of those who came before me. I have hundreds of pages of quotes gathered from novels, academic journals, academic books, all written out. I am a firm believer in the power of transcription because it brings you to the same place that the authors were when they wrote the text. I also think that this applies to music, too, so I spent a lot of time transcribing, memorizing, and learning the music of the great composers that I enjoyed.

So, after all this, I hope that you enjoy reading my blog. I have several content series planned out that will be regularly published throughout the upcoming years.

Here’s what I will cover

Repertoire Quarterly

Every quarter, I’ll post the repertoire I learned and the work that I’m currently involved in. This way, my website can serve as a dynamic CV that reflects what I’m currently doing in a pleasant format.

I will also cover the following topics. Each bullet point represents a post that will be 1000 words about each subject. We’re going to have updates every first and third Monday, starting on July 22nd.

Practice Strategies:

• Creating and using practice calendars
• Tear and Glue
• Maintaining playing consistency
• How to divide up your time
• How to know when you’re focused
• Sight reading strategies
• Playing versus Practicing
• Using time versus wasting time

Points of Frustration for Musicians:

• Drug abuse and the musician’s lifestyle
• Getting hired
• Getting paid, how much, and how often
• Promoters vs Musicians
• Venues vs Musicians
• Musicians vs Musicians
• Teachers vs Musicians

Production Strategies:

• Audio tips that got me banned from forums
• Seeking criticism
• Giving criticism
• Understanding criticism
• Branding versus content
• Version control strategies
• Backup Schemes for Producers

Show-business Ethics

• The Art of Stealing
• Negotiating
• Financial Realities

Composition Strategies

• Sketching using multiple piano staves
• Staging ideas
• Theme and variation
• Importance of transcription

Philosophy Series

These bullets may span many posts because these issues are significantly more complex and interesting than the other subjects.

• Issues with music and classification
• Man and machine
• Man and the gods
• Music and the Daemon ( δαίμων )
• The Invisible World: Sexuality and how we see each other
• On education
• On drug use
• Planes of Existence/Being
• Considering Forms
• Forms and Existence
• Issues with Academic Philosophy
• Issues with Christian Theology
• Language and Reality
• Religious Experience
• Mystical Apprehension
• What constitutes the Soul
• Relativism in regards to Colonialism
• Virtue as an American