I needed an upgrade on my banjo, so I headed over to Mandolin Brothers on Staten Island (Staten Island – not the first place you’d imagine a folk instrument store to be). After a few hours of trying banjos, I … Continue reading →

The head of the design team at Topspin mentioned that there happened to be an exhibition of August Sander’s ‘People of the Twentieth Century’ at the Getty, so I spent the majority of my Saturday wandering around rediscovering the project. … Continue reading →

On May 17th, Scotty O’Toole and I spent about 11 hours editing and mixing Jamboree. Disclaimer – I did my best to document the experience as accurately as possible, but in the intervening time between mixdown and writing my journal … Continue reading →

So this isn’t the first time I’ve attempted some type of graphical notation.  I had designs on this in my last project, and developed a type of compositional shorthand to represent different instrumentation ideas.  I was into it partly for … Continue reading →

Now let’s look at some examples.  First off, we should note that the idea of music as being typically represented on a five-line staff is a pretty Western generalization – several wildly different systems of notation developed independently in other … Continue reading →

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the best ways to rehearse.  I’m fortunate to be playing with a group of musicians whose technical skills are far superior to mine – so when I enter a situation, if I can … Continue reading →