Sorry for the break between posts, but I think I have a decent excuse this time: I moved! Mostly to get my wife a shorter drive to work, but a nice side benefit is that I now have a nice finished studio, with storage for mics, cables, and instruments, a nice view of trees in the backyard, and a potential recording booth in the unfinished section of the basement. I’ve been thinking about posting some pics, now that my studio is photo-worthy.

I’ve been here about a month, and as usual the first room I had to unpack was the studio so I could write for some projects. Unfortunately, those projects look like they’re gonna be top secret for a while so there’s not much reportable news. The latest commercials I’ve written for don’t seem to have been released yet, but I’ll post the Wizard 101 Shadow Magic one from a few months ago in the videos section.

I did recently get my trumpet out and start practicing for the first time in a long time! I think I might look for a community band to play in, or maybe a musical theater show, to get my chops back in working order again. When I’ve been away from it for awhile, I can still pick up and play, but only for a few minutes before my lips turn to mush, so I’ll probably have to work up the old stamina again.

Whenever I moved to a new city, I always joined some kind of musical group to meet people and learn about the city. In Austin, TX I joined the Austin Civic Wind Ensemble, and got to meet and play with some great people who became great friends. Through that, I was even invited to play in a brass quintet, which was something I’d never done before. When I moved to Cincinnati, OH, I tried to find a community band, but there didn’t seem to be many around, and the ones I found didn’t really need any new members. Cincinnati’s musical culture was very different than Austin’s, and 80’s music was (still!) popular, so I wound up playing keyboards in a cover band. I’d played keys in an original alternative group in Toronto, but I never would have thought I’d be playing in an intentionally cheesy cover band. But if you’re open to it, every experience can teach you something: I learned a lot about playing to an audience, and sculpting sounds for live performance. (As a keyboard player, you’re expected to play the piano, synth, horns, strings, and any other parts the guitarist can’t-or won’t- play!) And through that band, I joined other bands and met other people, and one of those people even turned out to be my wife!-)

So now that I live in a new part of the city, maybe I should be open to a new musical opportunity? I’ll let you know!