Wow! It has been a while. This semester has been a whirlwind. Finishing my dissertation, carrying 17 credit hours in a concurrent masters program, teaching at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and doing enough contract composition work to pay my bills was so overwhelming that I just had to put my head down and keep working.

An overview of the last few months:

1. Finished and defended my dissertation for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition. I will walk for the degree next week.

2. Completed 17 hours towards my second masters degree, a Master of Science in Recording Arts, at the University of Colorado, Denver

• This included a project in Audio for Post Production – a complete soundtrack for a three minute segment of film including all dialog and effects (backgrounds, foley, and cut FX).
• Recorded Sins of Babylon, a local metal band
• Recorded Nataniel Rateliff and the Wheel as part of their pre-production work for their upcoming Rounder release.
• Recorded New Ancient Astronauts
• Recorded the Metro State Orchestra  on several occasions and did a project comparing stereo microphone techniques for large ensemble
• Did my first remix project using Logic
• Master class on studio design with John Storyk
• Master class on virtual production with Sandy Hoover
• Master class on acoustics and concert hall design with Robert Mahoney

3. Continued contract composition work for Mentormeter Media, LLC.

• Boca-Motion for Alto Saxophone Wind Ensemble with J.S. Abramowitz
• WIP wind ensemble piece
• Arrangements of several tunes for a synagogue

4. Taught several composition majors at CU-Boulder

5. I will likely be working on an audio post project for UCD next semester as part of a scholarship opportunity.

6. Started the academic job search process again

7. Re-arranged the home studio. Since I am really only editing and mixing at home, I moved my control room back in the larger room. It is more comfortable and makes more sense for me now. I also bought a new Mac and upgraded to Pro Tool 8.

Gotta run. To be continued…

The final re-release of the Free Love Ensemble stuff is done. It is currently available at the Mystery Cabal store (Go>).

One final re-release from the archival stuff: Ground –  Powder.

1. Did another ambient work with processed organillo for the film music series.
2. Continued work for Mentormeter Media ”band-”strating the viola piece.
3. Finished a pass on the remix of Powder. Not quite ready for re-release yet.
4. Packaged some promo CDs.

1. Finally a breakthrough: New Ground track. Planning a new album. It owes a lot to Joe Preston, as I think he is a fraking genius. It is posted in the WIP album here
2. Work for Mentormeter Media.
3. Straightened out confusion about Comp Project 2. That and Dissertation Project 4 should be in the books soon.
4. Started a jazz guitar practice routine. I never really had any inclination to learn to play jazz on guitar until quite recently. Not sure where it will go, but it is fun.
5. Finishing a new Ground track seems to have helped break through the creative glacier I’ve been stuck in. I’m working on the wind ensemble arrangement of Song & Dance. Also doing an arrangement of Abramowitz’s viola piece for sax/wind ensemble. I feel inspired for the first time in a few months.
6. Made a few tweaks to the Prospectus for the research doc based on Jeremy Smith’s advice.
7. Discovered that I can likely finish the MSRA program in a year. That would be nice.

Been a few weeks since the last post:

1. FLE Vol. I Nos. 2 and 4 are up on the Mystery Cabal site. Almost done with all of the reissues.
2. Continued confusion about Composition Project 2.
3. Prospectus for research doc submitted to committee.
4. Submitted abstract for a conference next fall.
5. Finished all teaching responsibilities for the year.
6. Accepted admission to the MSRA program at University of Colorado – Denver.
7. Work for Mentormeter Media.
8. Large rework on the coding for the brandonvaccaromusic.com website. Trimmed the size down by about 40%.
9. Added artists websites for mysterycabal.com – Free Love Ensemble, Kallisti, Coefficient of Friction, S. Lyn Goeringer and Brandon Vaccaro, and Ground.
10. Sketched a bit, but I am still unbelievably unmotivated to compose right now. Frustrated, broke, hungry, and depressed.

1. Finished the remix of FLE Vol. I No. 4. It is up on the FLE site here. It will be the May release. I must admit I’m beginning to feel weird about spending all of my time on music from my past, but it is nice to have less things from the past hanging over my head. All of that stuff was mixed in the old Lamont studio – bad room, bad monitors, bad off-board gear. The plan was to redo it all under better conditions later. The ongoing desire to just move on to the next project left a stack abandoned works. It has also been nice to revisit a lot of work from the last 15 years as I’ve been preparing the dissertation portfolio.

2. Continued work on prospectus for research project.

3. Minor website edits.

5. Taxes

6. Audio post work for the Playground/Conrad Kehn

News in the last two weeks:

1. Job interview – quite a bit of prep work and travel.

2. Completed the submission version of Comp music project and submitted it to Carter.

3. Started the prospectus for the research doc.

4. Released ICQ: Codes & Cyphers on Tuesday.

5. Did some audio work for The Playground. They had a recording that they needed cleaned up.

7. Got into the MSRA program at UCD for next year.

8. Actually started thinking about what I’ll do next musically. I have almost dug myself out of the backlog of music from the past. I feel free to tread some new ground once all of the music of the past is finished, available, and in the past.

Alright, this one goes off the map a bit. . .

I think that the most interesting aspect of existing as a consciousness separated from the other conscious entities that surround me (to the extent that I engage in such a reality) is that we all have different tastes. It is conceivable that humanity, taken as a whole, actually likes ALL of the music.

But somehow, I can’t help but think that there might some special magical piece of music that NO ONE likes. I want to find that music and listen to its fundamental un-likableness.

First, this should be feeding to my MySpace and Facebook pages. That is cool and exciting. I assume that increases the likelihood of people outside of Germany reading this (why people from Germany read my blog is a mystery to me, but I consistently get a dozen hits a day.)

Second, I finished the submission material for composition project 2 of my dissertation. This includes most of the collaberations from my doctoral years. In the process of working on this (as previously mentioned) I did some audio work on the two live recordings of Wave Clouds like Hands, and I remixed the Star Ruby 2.0 performance with Tara Davison.I figured out a clever way to deal with the 8.1-to-stereo problem that maintains most of the motion of the 8.1. It isn’t something that would work on a lot of downmixes, but it worked with the specific 2-d motions of this.

Third, continued research on the major document. It is starting to get some focus.

Fourth, I started prep work on my teaching material for an interview at the end of the month.

Finally, I finished the first leg of promotion for The Passage. I’ll start more uphill battles next week.

Other than that, this week was much the same: eat, teach, work, sleep. Repeat.

To little fanfare, The Passage was released on MP3 this week.

Buy it here.

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/thepassagealbum

My page.

Finished and satisfied with it.