October 4, 2010
by Sean Armstrong
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Continue Moving

via picasaweb.google.com

It’s been tough to get back into the swing of things. While I had started out at a decent pace, today brought a level of dread and senselessness as I slipped into a fit of droning white-noise madness before coming into work.

Thankfully I snapped out of it as I remembered one of my many pieces of life-tips that I try to stick with, “You can’t worry about the things that are out of your control”– or some such thing.

I dragged myself out of bed, already late for work, and got ready for the days events. I wasn’t able to make my morning medication (espresso), but packed a solid lunch, fed the animals, gave my wife a big hug and a kiss and went on my way.

Balance is hard to find and I’m still picking through the mud slide of brain activity, looking for surviving goals and objectives to place within my landscape of “so busy”.

Reconnecting with design, code, art, and music is a big deal for me. I’m doing well enough as I try to make time for it, but I must be careful to not become completely obsessed with things. I’ve been down that road before, and the tunnel vision puts a major strain on every other aspect of my life. If I’m not careful, I will be oh-so-close to a breaking point on many fronts and something will certainly break away.

On the music front, I’ve been on overdrive as I get myself deeper into trip-hop and downtempo beats. It’s great to be back, but that means I’m squeezing myself out of other open projects. I have some pretty big decisions to make on how to present older works along side my desire to release new materials this fall.

I suspect I’m being entirely too picky about it. I sure as shit need to get the old stuff out there, if anything to be a curated piece of my history as an artist.

Posted via email from Sean Armstrong (Sliptide)

September 23, 2010
by Sean Armstrong
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Welcome Back, Armstrong.

I’m not sure where to start, so I suppose I’ll start with a small post.

Today is the fourth day back at work from the three week honeymoon adventure.  It’s certainly tough to get into the swing of things after having so much time away from the day job, but I’m manging quite nicely with plenty of stuff to keep me moving in my IT career.

Though that, of course, adds a little stress when thinking about my plans for all things art and music.  I made a few self commitments while having some relaxing time to ponder life in Europe, and so far so good.  Some of them revolve around bettering my daily life through ensuring I’m in-the-moment and getting things done that NEED to be done in order to maintain a healthy and stable living space (mental, physical, and surroundings).  The other commitments focus on my art and delivery of projects and pieces to myself, my immediate circle of friends, and the unsuspecting public, all while turning the unsuspecting public into the suspecting public (read: getting my name and art out there for people to enjoy, thus having them want to enjoy more of my work– fans!).

My side-ventures right now are ramping up on coding to begin some exercises with Android application development. What was interesting to me about reading through mobile application business model advice is how much of it applied to my lust for turning my music into a sustainable business.  From target audience advice to sales channel management, having my finger tips dance around the lip of the mobile application cookie jar is giving me a bit of a continued look (while not “fresh”, perhaps just a different “flavor”) at my music from the business perspective.

Enough about work.. I’ll post about Europe and the trip later. I have some writing to finish on it and some pictures to pull out of our library at home to accompany those posts.

It’s great to be back in a new form.

Oh, and before I forget, I’ve put a few long-standing projects back on the range and they are starting to warm up nicely. Applying some new techniques learned in the last year to older songs is yielding some interesting and tasty results. I have a lot of work to do with my own vocals, though, so that’s the next major hill climb before I can get some of these songs from 2007-2009 out the door.

Posted via email from Sean Armstrong (Sliptide)

August 18, 2010
by Sean Armstrong
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Continuing to Dance

I’m behind on journal posts. I’m behind on my website. I’m behind on projects for my wife. I’m behind on projects with friends. I’m behind with my music. I’m behind in life.

I’m a behind. I am an ass.

Here’s to moving forward. Here’s to gaining momentum. Here’s to breaking the force of static friction.

I’m considering a pay-what-you-feel model for some of my releases this year.  I have some new music that is removed from the fits of house/club music I’ve been working on, and I think it will do me well to get these out the door very quickly.

I have a honeymoon that will be the adventure of a lifetime coming up in less than two weeks. I’m so not ready, but I’ll try my damnedest to make sure we’re ready to go and are able to focus on our trip together.

Sit down. Check your head. Get a plan together. Execute it to the fullest.  Don’t look back as the dust cloud settles behind you in your wake of destruction.

Posted via email from Sean Armstrong (Sliptide)

July 20, 2010
by Sean Armstrong
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Mike Monday – Using a Sketchbook for Audio Production

I was poking around the internet, reading my usual spaces of record label websites, magazine/ezines, current favorite artists, soundcloud, blogs, etc etc, when I happened to get the usual advertising email from Om Records to my personal inbox. I checked it out, as I usually do, since I’m a big Om Records fan. Groove Armada has been kicking ass lately, and I’m in love with everything Samantha James releases. Then I noticed a blurb about Mike Monday and a new project he just launched. 10 songs in 10 weeks for his new, free-to-download-from-his-website album! Sweet!

I’m a casual fan of his quirky music because of the interesting bits and pieces of production that weave together to make his music. His songs feel, to me, as if I were standing in the Seattle Art Museum looking at a mixed-media piece with vibrant colors, shapes, sizes, texture, and depth. Some of it clashes, some of it is beautiful discord, and some of it is aesthetically tantalizing. By way of link-jumping from Om Records, I went to Mike’s main website over at http://www.mikemonday.com/ to check out his project and re-familiarize myself with his catalog. I was pleasantly surprised to find more content there than I was expecting.

Ever since I started making music w/my computer, I had always been pretty adept at organizing my files. Whether it be sample libraries, projects, templates, snippets, hand-recorded media, one-off art projects; it’s all organized in a file system that makes sense to my brain. Though, it has been awhile since I have really taken a good look at how I do things to see if there are ways that I can improve my workflow. I’m not unfamiliar with the idea of the musicians sketchbook, especially when it comes to file organization on the computer. Yet, something just clicked when I read this statement taken from Mike’s post about “Using a sketcbhook…”

Often the best plan is to forget them for a while by saving them in your sketchbook folder and deleting them from your work in progress folder. This is because seeing all your unfinished DAW files every time you turn on the computer is a sure way to reinforce self-doubt and an even surer way to kill inspiration.

via mikemonday.com

Then I get to thinking. Currently, the bulk of my heavy lifting comes from Reason. I know it well, I’m able to produce in it VERY quickly with excellent sounding results. The “problem” which is a byproduct of being able to work quickly is that I end up with a ton of “song starts” and “ideas”. I name everything with the date first (YYYYMMDD) followed by the project title (or song title if I’m that far along in the process). They all live in a project folder called “Sliptide” on my computer under my master “Audio” folder, in “Projects”.. more clearly: drive:\AudioProjectsSliptide20100714 – Getting Into Position , as an example.

This works fine for seeing the timeline of works in the file explorer, but good god– after four years of having this project folder in the flow of my various computers and back-up strategies.. I now realize that I think one of the speedbumps in my brain is the sheer size of unfinished or undesirable projects that sit in front of me every time I look for stuff to work on. I go “oh yea! that sounded awesome.. but I don’t know what to do with it yet..” or “Ah, yes.. that needs to be finished.. but I’ve got some other earworm in my head to get down into a track”… you see where this is going, yes?

So while I am very familiar with my catalog of song starts, snippets, and sketches, perhaps I should consider moving them to 1 more folder beyond my usual “in progress” thought flow. I know which songs I *want* to work on and *want* to finish soon.. the other stuff is mostly peripheral unless I need somewhere to start, or remember that I had something good going that I can come back to now that I’ve moved the current items off of my plate.

Food for thought. Thanks, Mike!

Check out Mike’s site and music

Posted via email from Sean Armstrong (Sliptide)