Tonight was fun. Instead of staying home stuck in my room working all day, I went on set at Dobson High School to help my friend, Ryan Gaumont, on his movie short for Scottsdale Community College. It was nice to get out and work on a film again. It’s been ages. Simon Navarro, aside from the parental advice he gave me about college, played a convict in the prison talent show who makes balloon animals. For this standing ovation act, he won 1st place and his freedom, granted by the governor and Ryan’s dad, Emil Gaumont. Mrs. Gaumont supplied the pizza. Mike Decamp showed up to be an extra in the audience. All in all, a fun night. Too bad we don’t do it more often…

Thursday night, Michael Fan came over and we mixed down his piano tracks for college applications. His performance included selections from Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, Liszt and even Copland. Among these works was Liszt’s Transcendental Etude No. 10. I think he left a little blood on the piano when he was done…

Last night was an exhausting night! I’m still feeling the ache in my arms from carrying heavy recording equipment up and down stairs. Dan and I recorded just a totally cool group last night made up of some the percussion guys we know there (Joe, Aaron, etc…). The group, led by Dom Moio, was smokin’ and we recorded all of it with a new set up Dan put together. Now we can do up to 16 inputs (we used all of them) and record a good 12 hours straight in Hidef quality. You can’t get much better than that!

Here’s the band:
Ioannis Goudelis, piano
Esteban Estrada, bass
Bob Powers, guitar
Josh Carro, drums
Joe Goglia, percussion
Dan Mock, percussion
Jesse Parker, vibes, percussion
Aaron Morales, percussion, steel drum

I’ve just posted a PDF of Shadow Rituals. Take a look~

Wikipedia, what don’t you know?

Today was a beautiful day. The sky was overcast, the air smelled of crisp October air, I slept in until 2. But there was a muck reaking most foul! I sent in Shadow Rituals to be printed at the Staples Copy and Print Center. Why? Because they’re less than a mile from my house. Why not Alphagraphics, the Almighty Printer who always does a Perfect Job? Because they’re about 8 miles away AND closed on the weekends. So I figure, “Hey! They’ve done okay jobs before.” So I whistle a tune and dance a jig over there this afternoon to pick up my band piece, which has plagued me with mediocrity and bad titles since day one. “Well, isn’t this peculiar” I say, “The pages seem to go from rightside up to wrongside down all the live long day!” “Hmm” the clerk replies, “I’m sorry. I’ll have to fix that” he says. “It’s alright. No problem. I’ll be back” I say. A wonderful hour later, he calls me, “I think they’re right this time!” “Be there in 10 minutes I say.” 4 minutes later, I’m there. “Oh, you wanted those binded, too?” he questions. “Duh” I think. “I’ll go look around for a while.” Half an hour later, they’re done. I look at the first of 3 scores. Looks good. I am pleased. I wait for the rest of my order. “Ring me up” I say. “$60″ he says. “MOTHER#%%FS$#$CKA!!” I think to myself. Fine. I just want to go home. I have midterms tomorrow. I get home. The other scores HAVEN’T been fixed. Rightside up, leftside down. Stupid moron. I guess that’s where community college gets you. At least one score was right…

Moral of the story: Don’t let Staples do a job you need done right.

PS. This isn’t the first time they’ve screwed up… They’ve got about a 30% accuracy rate with my projects…

After long debate, I think I may have found a title that suits that band piece somewhat appropriately. It took a lot of mixing and matching Gomez and my words but I kinda dig this:

“Shadow Rituals”

At least, it should work fine for the MBM competition.

Now then, time for midterms!

Linh and Loan and I had lunch at Olive Garden today. We’ve been having a craving for their salad for a long while. I had the cheese ravioli and they had the minestrone soup and salad combo. All in all, a very vegetarian meal (not that I am).

Later this afternoon, I began making the final changes to the new band piece whose title has been giving me a huge headache. Nothing seems to fit. Like I’ve said before, it’s a grade 4. Some might argue it’s a grade 5 (it’s not). There’s a couple of opportunities for it, though. In addition to the MBM competition, I will also be submitting this along with joyride for consideration in some concerto competition (I’m not sure of the details) ASU is holding. The winner will have his or her work performed by one of the groups here at Arizona State. That would be way cool. So, we’ll have to see what happens. And if you have suggestions for titles, post a comment!