I gave a music industry podcast a try today with some interesting results. Going into it my head was at even if it doesn't apply to me, I should really know about things. After one episode, I can't tell if I should keep listening to it or not. The two people talking were bringing up some things I hadn't thought/cared about. I even started to get sucked in for a second.

Then I realized at a point that they both weren't saying any of my personal keywords for why I play music. The web designer side of me wanted to take notes, the punk/indie drummer side of me wanted to change to another podcast.

I am going to try some other episodes to see if it was just the guest this week that was rubbing me the wrong way. If you want to know the podcast, send me a message dave@frozen-octopus.com.

I got to the end of all the 1950s Blue Note albums today. Each morning I’d start with an album.

It was an awesome way to start the day but I am a little fried on that era for a while. Once you get past the famous names, there is a lot of cool stuff that I never heard before that I am stoked to revisit someday.

Time to find a new morning ritual. That one was a good one.

I made a new shortcut in Apple Shortcuts to help me get on top of posting our shows online. We have about ten spots we need to update with each show.

With the shortcut, I answer a series of questions about the event. the shortcut then sets up to dos in Things 3 for each spot I need to post on.

It sets multiple to-dos actually. For a show, I am going with a post two weeks before, one week before, three days before,
day before, and day of.

It rules having a steal post schedule and getting all of that out of my mind.
The next step will be to start writing basic content in advance. ay It will be super basic content with room to customize it.

Show tomorrow and I have a setlist to write. I was trying to think of a way to describe my setlist pacing philosophy and then realized there is an emoji for it.

✨📈✨

I am supposed to be promoting our show on Saturday. Don't know why but I'm just not feeling talkative or creative this week. Add to that three more shows coming up in three weeks. It's daunting (for me).

It might be the multiple spots to post on. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least nine places that I need to post show info.

Not posting is not an option so I am trying to brainstorm a way that will make doing all this feel like more magical. Clearly some sort of automation is needed.

I got a count working on the tags for the genres and labels happening this morning. As I add an album I listen to the genres and labels automatically sort themselves.

It isn't a contest to see which genre or label is winning. For me it's the opposite actually. When I see a genre or label in "last place", it makes me want to bump it up in the list. Kind of like music guide rails.

[example at bottom of the page]

I got myself a book called The Art of Bop Drumming because I have heard it referenced by at least three drummers on Youtube in the last year.

Brought it to the rehearsal studio and after about an hour, I had a beat going that sounded like an amateur jazz drummer.

I was hanging on for dear life but got it to new born deer trying to walk level. Very fun!

Also fun was taking the jazz pattern and flattening it to punk. Stoked to next 1000s of cats rehearsal.

I was searching around to see if someone has already come up with a text file based way to do music notation before I start to mess around with a way to do it in Text Expander or Shortcuts.

While I was looking around I found Lilypond. It's an open source text based way to write sheet music. It's a little bit more than I need but I got it setup on my laptop for the future. It's going to be very cool if I need to make some drum tabs in the future.

It's very nerdy but very powerful. After ten minutes of playing around with it, I decided to put it away because I need to get drums practiced.

TL;DR: Discovered music at a Denny's and found sushi I need to try.

1. I saw someone with a Chris & Cosey shirt on at the local Denny’s yesterday. The name sounded familiar so I made a note. Turns out they are members of Throbbing Gristle after they split up. Stoked to add it to the MusicBox app which has become a staple app in the last month.
2. We were watching 孤独のグルメ (Kodoku no Gourmet or Solitary Gourmet) and the protagonist of the show ordered some sushi the shop ran out of. As an apology gift, the chef gave him a special roll with saba and gari (pickled ginger). Now I am obsessed with trying it.

Listening to an album is different than having an album on. I can have albums playing 24 hours a day but my maximum for fully listening to an album is about three lately. Fully taking in each song and thinking about what's happening.

The fourth album starts to drift into background music.