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Evidently my track Silhouettes is becoming quite popular as a soundtrack. Here are some of the more interesting videos that are using it. Quite a wide selection, and glad you guys chose my music.

Austria Up&Down&Cold from Christian Schneider on Vimeo.

Demo 2011 from Amco Mertens on Vimeo.

??? ???? x Shoes of Prey from Yasuyuki Kubota ????? on Vimeo.

A DOGs Video — Malteser and Bijou from Martin Lachmair on Vimeo.

out 4 the weekend from miguel ferreira on Vimeo.

Time Lapse Curitiba from Igor Neves on Vimeo.

Time lapse adventure Dover – BTS from Wesley Versteeg, VIP3Rmedia on Vimeo.

Kaleid (like the Longfellow poem with it, too).

Kaleid from Kaleid on Vimeo.

Zion National Park Tour by Jensend60

It’s really heartening to see that my music is being used for such diverse projects.

I have done quite a few collaborations in the past, many of which are improvisatory in nature. Playing with lots of different musicians has taught me a few things about collaborating and improvising with other people. As a whole, collaboration can be rewarding, but only if you are willing to be flexible. There’s nothing more satisfying when a group of musicians comes together musically and creates a wonderful spontaneous moment.

However, these moments require some preparation. Much of it is not musical preparation, but a willingness to give and take space from others. Here are a few tips that may make your collaborations more successful.

Listen, listen, listen. Do as much listening as playing. Avoid feeling like you have to ‘fill the space’ – you are crowding the musical space by doing so, and not letting other people bring their ideas to the table. You don’t have to play all the time.

Don’t get wedded to an idea too early. Be willing to throw things away and admit when they aren’t working. Some ideas seem like good ones, but can’t be executed. I’ve played with people who have insisted on playing the same musical phrase over and over again, when they could have moved on

How to prepare for improvising. Yes, scales can help, but you need to get to the point at which you can think out loud on your instrument. I have found that playing by ear helps your muscles learn the instrument by leaps and bounds. Play along with a different song every day. You’ll soon learn quite a lot about your instrument that you couldn’t have learned from an etude book.

Be willing to provide and take feedback. Part of building a cohesive group is to be encouraging of others, especially specific encouragement. Things like “I really liked what you did over that last vamp” really helps the group dynamics, as is being willing to take such feedback. Try and be positive, and less critical.

Record yourself all the time. Oftentimes, the best moments of musical improvisation are fleeting and can’t be recreated. Besides, how are you going to improve if you don’t listen to yourself?

Let the Rules Change. Let everyone have their moment in the spotlight – and try not to settle into musical roles. The best songs are emergent properties from a group dynamic.

Try, try again. Making mistakes is natural, and it’s going to sound like crap at first. Be persistent. Art is trying many things and seeing what sticks.

I hope someone out there finds these tips useful. Anyone have any other tips on collaboration you’d like to share?

I’m proud to announce that my Winterborne EP is freshly mastered (by the very capable John McCaig at PanicStudios) and now available as high quality mp3s/lossless formats. Price is pay as you like, (which includes free, by the way). This is the first release from my netlabel Waveguide Audio, which will include some freebies in the future.

More info can be found on the Waveguide Recordings site.

Note that I’ve decided to change the title to Winterborne from Winterdrone as I wanted to avoid confusing this EP with Talking Makes No Sense’s release “The Winter Drones” (which is also an excellent album and also available on bandcamp).

Marc Wiedenbaum quipped about hoping that I would stay depressed in a post about my piece “A Savage Exhibition“. Joking aside, at the time I posted about my depression, I was going through a bit of a crisis about why I make art.

We live in an amazing era in which music has been democratized to a large extent. What took Brian Eno huge amounts of studio time can easily be done in a couple hours by anyone with dedication and a laptop. What was once scarce is now plentiful; in many ways, it’s difficult for newer artists to get noticed what with the extent of free music.

One thing I have noticed about art on the internet is that most of the successful pieces are extroverted. That is, their idea/schtick/premise is apparent in the first five seconds. While this is a recipe for generating lots of click-throughs, it makes many internet pieces that much more ephemeral. That is, because there is not an investment of time and consideration in the piece by a listener/viewer, there are very few repeat listens/viewings. Such is the nature of producing art in a sea of endless bounty.

I do miss the days when I had to spend hard cash (which was a scarcity) on an album, and for that reason, even if I didn’t immediately like the album, I would invest more time in listening to it. I can think of many albums that didn’t immediately grab me, but have enriched my life, such as Lush’s masterpiece “Split”, Wire’s “154″, or Swans’ “The Great Annihilator”. There is a compelling core to all of these that rewards repeat listens, but they also have unbearable thorns, such as the epic (and mopey) “Desire Lines”. I admire that kind of honesty in art; not all art is immediately appealing.

My work, like it or not, is fairly introverted in nature. It doesn’t have an immediate appeal like much internet art, and perhaps this is a failing of mine. But I have always viewed live looping as a process where I slowly expose people to the pleasures of a harmonic structure; there is pleasure in the development of an idea to its full extent. I can only hope that my pieces do reward the listener for repeat listens as well.

I guess that this post is a long apologia for why I do what I do and a committment to soldier on.

I almost decided not to post anything this year about my progress in my cello studies – I was feeling depressed and pretty much unaccomplished and discouraged. So far to go. But then I remembered that this is my yearly inventory and way to remind myself why I started learning Cello three years ago on my birthday.

So, yes, three years of studying cello. In terms of pieces, I realize that I have progressed further, and have been learning a few ‘real’ pieces by modern composers. One of the pieces that I have been most proud of learning is Messaien’s “Louange a l’Eternitie de Jesus” from his Quartet at the End of Time – such a slow, longing lyrical piece that haunts me every time I hear it. It’s one of the slowest pieces in the repetoire – Messaien specifies a 16th note to be 44 bpm – so it’s a challenge to stretch each bow stroke out to the fullest. But it swells and sings and is such a wonderful piece. (Here’s a great performance of the Louange so you can hear what I’m talking about.)

What else have I accomplished? I’ve learned the third movement of the Hindemith Solo Sonata for Cello, which is witty and wonderful, learned a Piattagorsky transcription of a Haydn Divertimento, worked on Bach’s Prelude from the 2nd suite (which is still not to my liking), Sarabandes from the 2nd and 5th Suites, the Allemande from the 3rd suite, learning Rachmaninoff’s slow movement from his Sonata for Cello and Piano, and played lots of duets. I feel my playing is finally becoming much more expressive and working towards the fluidity of expression.

My album Magnifications got released this year and I made visuals and a video to go with…I am also proud to announce I’ve reached 30 tracks so far in my Track of the Week project. I am hoping at least to reach 50 and issue some sort of EP/album of the best of these. These have really been a fun opportunity to do an audio lab of experiments with cello and fx. One of the things that is most exciting about this is using less fx on the cello, something that was a little bit of a crutch for me. I have been playing with an intelligent harmonizer which has been exciting, and forcing me to explore tonality more.

There’s still a lot of work to do. I wish I were more fluid in my phrasing and reading of music on the page, and more comfortable with transcribing my ideas on paper. I’m still learning my intervals and I really hope to buckle down and start transcribing music. And I’m sitting on an album right now that I don’t know what to do with yet…so I guess I better get started with all of that.

Thanks all for the support. I don’t think I’d have gotten as far as I have without your encouragement.

Another short track this week, simple cello with atmospheric touches.

Download Magnifications now!

[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/luv022/01_Slow_Motion_Death_Scene.mp3, http://www.archive.org/download/luv022/02_Milky_Live.mp3, http://www.archive.org/download/luv022/03_Eagre.mp3, http://www.archive.org/download/luv022/04_If_We_Are_not_Blind.mp3, http://www.archive.org/download/luv022/05_Boat_is_Drunk_Remix_for_Adcbicycle.mp3, http://www.archive.org/download/luv022/06_Angostura.mp3, http://www.archive.org/download/luv022/07_Sfumato_Live.mp3, http://www.archive.org/download/luv022/08_Downtown_Pajama.mp3]

My full length album, Magnifications, is finally out on Luvsound! A big thanks to Erik and Kev (luvsound label heads) for making this all happen. This album is the culmination of lots and lots of experimentation and improvisation (much like the tracks of the week I’ve been posting) and I’m extremely chuffed and proud that it’s been released.

This is both a digital and limited edition CD-R release. The handmade CD-R contains some really nice extras, including a remastered live set and liner notes from Disquiet‘s Marc Weidenbaum. Mastering was done by the awesome John McCaig of panicStudios.

If you enjoy this release, I’d love to hear from you.

Here are two really good recent releases from acquaintances of mine that might be of interest.

Khoral’s Broken Sails EP is lush synth-pop whose arrangements remind me of Gary Numan crossed with Jeremy Enigk’s album ‘Return of the Frog Queen’. All the songs are about sailing and abandoned ships and the sea. Has a great feel overall, with the vocals oozing weariness and regret. I can’t stop listening to this one.

He can jog’s Etudes are three lengthy improvs which stretch the limits of field recording and sine waves. Very enjoyable.

Wonderful, inspiring talk by Ben Burtt on how he did the sound design for Wall-E (thanks jdg).

I thought this was a great read about how art remakes itself in times of economic hardship. For example, the NY Downtown boom happened in a time of deep economic downturn, giving rise to artists such as Basquiat and musical forms such as hip-hop and the short-lived (but influential) no-wave scene. When the old channels of distribution die, artists are innovative enough to come up with new ways to show their art (and no, it’s not all about the internet…sigh).