The Midway Point

I posted some New Year's Resolutions for 2011 at the beginning of the year, and as we're halfway through it's time to check in on them:

1) Playing music.  Mostly things have been going well.  White Mountain Murder Circus released its first album, which I wrote several songs for and played several instruments on (mostly fiddle).  I took three classes at Passim and have been progressing with my fiddle playing.  I'm still working on fundamental things like tone and the nuances of the fiddle; I still feel like a mandolin player trying to play fiddle.  I stopped working through Hot Licks; with Passim out of session for the summer I should pick it back up.

2) I'm killing this one.  My grand total for books read this year is 24, including The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft, Jim Tressel's The Winner's Manual, the twelve novels of Anthony Powell's A Dance To the Music Of Time, Red Harvest, Rework, Blood Meridian, True Grit, Popular Crime (by baseball writer Bill James), The Big Sleep, Shackleton's South, Naked Lunch, I Am Legend, Ubik.  That knocks six off my Time 100 list, bringing me to 35.  I think I can average a book a week for the year (meaning I need to read 28 more), including at least 10 Time 100 books (which will get me almost halfway to my goal).  Unexpected problem: my rapid reading rate is causing me to spend too much money on Kindle books!  I'm trying to temper this by reading some free ones, such as Edith Wharton's The Age Of Innocence.

3) I set a goal of 1.5 posts per week, which would be 39 posts so far this year.  This is my 36th post of 2011, so I'm a little behind, but I've averaged two / week over the past couple months, so there's plenty of time to get on schedule.

White Mountain Murder Circus - Murder Train

It's done.  After months spent songwriting, practicing, trying to learn fiddle, imbibing various forms of whisky, working out breaks, scrapping fiddle parts, overdubbing with various instruments we had lying around, etc., we have completed Murder Train, a 10-part bluegrass-ish rock opera.

There's a lot that I wish we could have done better, notably virtually all of fiddle breaks, but for today I'm stoked that we got it done.  On to the next project!

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White Mountain Murder Circus

I noted in my New Year's resolutions that I'm working on a musical project with some friends.  This weekend was our first recording session for an as-yet-untitled "bluegrass rock opera."  It's ten songs telling the story of a man chasing a train across the country - a train that contains a dark secret that may be related to his brother's death.  We holed up for two days and laid down most of nine of the tracks.

Recording is hard work.  We didn't do tons of takes of things, and there are some points that are pretty rough, but it still took the full two days.  Because our act is largely acoustic, we didn't do a lot of experimentation with effects; I can't imagine what the recording process is like for bands that rely heavily on effects.  We'll end up re-cutting some stuff later, like my out-of-tune fiddle breaks.  It was a ton of fun though, and I feel pretty good about what we put together.

I'll post further updates here, but our Facebook page (linked below) is the authoritative place for WMMC news.

White Mountain Murder Circus Facebook page

New Year's Resolutions 2011

New Year's Resolutions are always a bit silly. If one was really resolved to do something, one would be doing it already, no? So the best resolutions are just solidifying goals one is already pursuing. In that vein:

1) I'm working on my musical playing. I've played guitar and mandolin for a few years and have just picked up the fiddle as part of a project (White Mountain Murder Circus) with some friends and members of Free Toaster Media. We've written about 8 songs as part of a song cycle, and are planning to record at the end of the month. Moreover, I want to push my musical skill to the next level. I've just read Drive and Talent Is Overrated and so I'm focused on developing specific skills through deliberate practice. Hot Licks For Bluegrass Fiddle will help me with improvisation, licks, reading music, and general tone, rhythm, and technique, but I'm also pushing myself to transcribe music and looking into taking classes.

2) I want to read more. I just got a Kindle and I love it. Last year I set a life goal of reading all of Time Magazine's top 100 novels; I read seven last year and I'm now at 29/100. The Kindle will help me make even more progress.

3) Continue the blogging. I really focused on bluegrass music in 2010 so I'd like to continue that specialty. I averaged blogging more than once a week; I think I can average 1.5 / week in 2011.

Good luck to all of you and any resolutions you may have.