A new blog

Just checking in. I haven't done so in a while. I've been very busy, unfortunately a bit too busy to work much on music. I guess I'm making up for February.

In the meantime, I started up a new blog, CarpenBlog, which focuses on songwriting and its theory. It's here: …

Forward March

Okay.

It's spring now. It's been the better part of a month since the RPM thing. I've had sufficient time to recuperate, I think. Back to thinking about the Very Us Artists. VUA started out as my friend John's passion project, and he got me excited about it, but …

Ordering the Songs

So I finished my recording and did my mixes yesterday. I probably won't have much of a chance to redo things, so that is likely to be it. I may end up doing some slight retinkering, but really, I don't have much time. I posted everything on my site: …

The Eight Year War

This is the new title for my album. It has been eight years since I last burned music of my own onto a CD, and I've been warring with myself internally about my identity as a composer for most of that time, hence the name. I am not a big fan of putting too much thought …

Marathon

Well, I'm most of the way through February, and most of the way through recording my album. I've managed to scrap any idea of having some sort of theme. It's just whatever comes to me now. I feel a bit like I'm running a marathon, alternately getting burned out and …

RPM Begins

So, I've taken the RPM challenge, which is to record an album's worth of material (10 songs or 35 minutes) entirely during the month of February. Today I got started with the process.

I recorded a song called "My Sanctuary". I'd written the basis of it already, but …

Heat Death

Heat death is one possible ultimate end to the universe, one in which all energy has been expended. All matter has been swallowed up by black holes, and the black holes themselves have disintegrated. Life and motion are impossible. Only darkness and emptiness remain. …

Learning to Say Goodbye

Over the past half year or so, I have gradually come back to a point where I can think of myself as a composer/songwriter again and not feel like I'm stretching the definition. What I'm sort of realizing now is that I have some nagging past issues regarding my music …

Art versus Commerce

My primary motivation for creating music has always been a very basic inner drive to do so, to communicate with others in a way that goes beyond words. However, I often find myself getting caught up in thoughts of its potential profitability. I think every …

Music and politics

The argument was recently made to me that one should not mix music with politics, especially in the current political climate of the US, for two reasons. One, musicians generally don't know enough about politics and often oversimplify things, making themselves sound …

Self-promotion for a non-performing act

Everyone knows that they best way for a band or musician to promote his- or herself is to perform live. But what if your music doesn't translate well to a live show, you don't really get any joy out of live performance, and your life operates in such a way that you …

About the psycho photo

I've gotten a couple of comments about my somewhat scary-looking profile photo in the short time since I uploaded it, so I figured I'd explain it a bit.

It is indeed a picture of me, but I did my best to make the most psychotic face I could, then turned up the …

All About Me

Well, I finally got around to making myself a Virb account. I think it's a good idea, given the recent launch of the Very Us Artists with my friend and co-conspirator John LaSala and the hopefully wider exposure my music could get from it.

For those of you who don't …