He’s not even two yet, but Junior has mastered navigation on the iPhone and iPad. While he has pages on each of our devices for his games, one of his favorite things to do is to explore the Sesame Street videos on YouTube. Specifically, he loves to watch videos with Elmo, and videos that have music. Having not really watched Sesame Street in a number of years (at least that I’ll admit to), it’s amazing in both the talent that Sesame Street is able to bring on to the show and how clever they are crafting popular songs in to lessons for children. Here are Junior’s current favorites…
Musical Guest: Jason Mraz
Lyrics: Open up your door and then breathe free. Look at all the beauty and you’ll find that the earth and the sky is yours.
The Lesson: Turn off the TV, put down the video game controller, and go outside. I’m blessed that one of the words that Junior is proficient with is “outside”, and we have spent a lot of our time this summer outside.
Musical Guest: Will.I.Am
Lyrics: There’s nothing I can’t achieve, because in myself I believe.
The Lesson: Know that you are wonderful, beautiful, and special, and you can do anything you want to do.
The last week or so, after 70 days exploring other creative outlets, I’ve found that my focus has been drawn back to photography. I revived davidmonnerat.com, and will be posting my more of my photography-related posts on the blog over there. I’ve been reading some of the photography blogs that I used to frequent last year, finding inspiration.
As I found myself drifting deeper back in to photography, Chase Jarvis, one of the photographers from the “popular” clique that I still kept tabs on as I let most of those connections go, announced that he was doing another Chase Jarvis Live session, in which he  was going to do a photo shot for a band called We Are Augustines. I knew nothing of the band, but I know that when Chase does a photo shoot live, it’s always classy, informative, and generally mind-blowing. Chase was kind enough to link to the promo video for the band and their new album, Rise Ye Sunken Ships.
I was intrigued. And I tuned in.
The first hour or so was Chase interviewing the band, mixed with them playing some of their songs. It was a wonderful combination, and hearing some of the stories that were the inspiration for the songs on the album were, well, inspirational. It must be such a wonderful curse to be able to turn the negative, profound things that happen in one’s life in to a poem, a story, or lyrics. It’s something that I’ve not been able to do, even as the last few years have, in addition to the great joy, included much sadness for me.
Bill McCarthy, the lead singer, came across as a simple guy, sensitive, and sometimes profound. He talked about his brother, who suffered from mental illness and wound up taking his own life, and when he went in to a song, you could hear the emotion in his voice. I though on a few occasions it was as if when his mind pulled up the lyrics for him to sing, he was reliving different moments, and how painful it must still be.
I was impressed with how grateful they were of Chase’s time, and always the class act, I was equally impressed with how respectfully Chase treated them. Halfway through the live shoot, in between any of the photographic action, the cameras and the microphones captured Bill walking up to Chase and thanking him, it was…genuine. I don’t know, it’s not something you often see. In a world of egos, and celebrity, it was refreshing and inspirational to see how really, really grateful folks can be when they share a piece of themselves.
I started the day not knowing what an Augustine was, and ended the day impressed with who they were as people.
tonight, i offer you a cover of one of my favorite Ben Folds songs. it’s a favorite, because i’m pretty sure he snuck in to my brain and read my thoughts about my wife, made a song out of it, and made millions of dollars. what a jerk.
in any case, the real version of this song is beautiful, and i think Ben is a severely underrated musician. “Brick” wasn’t the only song he wrote, you know. you should check out his stuff sometime, maybe watch a video on youtube, or one of his live performances. maybe even a version of “The  Luckiest”, sung with the West Australian Symphony.
on the cover itself, it was all done on the ipad. i’ll blame the bad vocals on the microphone on the iPad, not my voice or my lack of training. the instruments (primary piano, some light accompanied acoustic guitar) are, again, smart instruments in GarageBand on autoplay; all i had to do was hit the right keys at the right time. i found two issues with doing longer songs in GarageBand on the iPad. first, i did some splitting, copying, and pasting for the piano pieces. when the song is short, there is extra space on the right side of the composition for me to tap and then hit Paste. however, once the song was up to 80 measures or so, there was no extra space on the right. i thought i had reached a limitation of the tool, but i figured out tonight that you can move your maker to the end of the song and hit record, which will extend past the 80-whatever mark. then i simply dragged the junk at the end over and made room for the copy/paste job.
second, after i added the piano and guitar, i recorded the audio. however, randomly the recording would just stop. thankfully, it actually did record, but the stop seemed very random and, therefore, unmanageable. i reboot the iPad a few times, which seemed to work for a little bit, but then it would act up again. what i wound up doing was recording a phrase or verse, then hit stop, and then start up again before the next phrase. but even then, sometimes it would stop after a few seconds. very frustrating, but made it through. still, pretty amazing to be able to put together a song with an app on an iPad.
i know, i know. all the cool kids say that these days. it’s pretty much Lady GooGoo, Ke-dollar-sign-ha, and Beethoven. wait, maybe it’s Bieber, not Beethoven. no, i’m pretty sure it’s Beethoven.
what’s not to love? his music is gorgeous (i’m listening to it right now). oh, and the fact that he composed music after he went deaf? i mean, that says something, right? you’re kind of meant to do it if, after the universe afflicts you with something that should separate you from your craft, you keep on doing it. that’s beyond just being skilled, that’s darn near divine.
sort of related was a story i heard recently of Grant Achatz, a Chicago chef specializing in molecular gastronomy (cooking with science) that was diagnosed with tongue cancer. somehow, the chemotherapy and radiation didn’t completely destroy his taste buds, and he is thankfully cancer-free and still doing crazy stuff with science and food.
seriously, though, a composer going deaf, and a chef with tongue cancer. Â Nature has a cruel sense of irony, threatening to take core tools from artists to see how they will react or adapt. perhaps these examples serve to demonstrate man’s ability to overcome obstacles, or maybe that gifts bestowed on us from a higher power are absolute.
maybe it’s about purpose. these guys were meant to do what they do, and no obstacle could stop them for their purpose. my purpose is to be a generalist and, thankfully, the biggest challenge before me is a lack of inspiration, a lack of talent, and a lack of motivation. i have my senses, and my wits, and my stunningly good looks, though i’m not sure how they apply, specifically, to any of the crafts to which i am exploring. it doesn’t hurt, though, to have those looks to get a free cookie from the cashier in the cafeteria now and again. (thanks, Brad!)
i digress, as usual.
i’ll write some other night about the plight of the generalist. tonight, though, i am inspired by people that overcome fundamental challenges to their crafts and their purpose. i’m grateful for what i have, and the perspective of knowing that whatever challenges i think i see before me exploring my many interests, that there are people out there that ran in to a mile-high brick wall and simply climbed over it. my walls aren’t nearly as high, and recognizing that, i think, is the first step in getting over them.
you can follow Grant on twitter at @Gachatz. Beethoven is not currently on the twitters.
Without music, life would be an error. Friedrich Nietzsche
i think this my second official music post, but it’s been so long that it feels like my first.
my first musical post was a cover of The Decemberists’ song Down by the Water, accompanied by my beautiful wife. that also happened to be my first post of the create365 project. we put the song together in Garageband; my first real experience with the program, but i really dug the interface and, for all the problems we had, those problems were mine, and not the software’s.
lo and behold, there is a version of Garageband for the iPad, as well. it’s certainly trimmed down but, at first glance, it looked like it was still functional for creating a song on the tablet. so, tonight, i gave it a shot. i took advantage of some of the “smart” instruments that are included and, after picking a key (E-minor), i played some simple chord progressions. i added additional instruments, trimmed, and pushed it to iTunes.
all told, this took about 30 minutes. it has an acoustic guitar, piano, and drum track.it was actually pretty simple to put together, and i’m excited to see what else it can do.
