7 AM on Monday Morning - A Solid Way to Start the Week

I woke up this morning.. really early this morning if you count when the nearly-full moon outside poured through the window and began to feed my soul with its gentle light... and found myself ready for the week.

It has been quite awhile that I have picked myself up out of bed and been ready for the week. Maybe it's because the gears have been turning a lot more for music, or maybe it was because I have been getting a bit more sleep at night, or maybe it's the significantly less stressful position I now hold at work.

It's 7:39. I have been at work for 39 minutes, and enjoying it.. ^_^

I don't live for my day job. It pays well, I enjoy doing what I do, and I definitely love learning all of the cool stuff I get to learn (all falling under the category of geek habits and nerdery). I most certainly can drive this into a lifetime career with plenty of glory and healthy development/investment.

Let me say again that I don't live for my day job. My passions have always lied with the "small"-er things in life.

I live for spending time with loved ones and those who are close to me (I know.. I have a funny way of showing that given in the past year I haven't really done that.. It will change.)

I live for the spring through autumn hiking season.

I live for bike rides.. I live for driving my truck to the coast with some friends.. I live for making music.. making music with my friends..

I live to enjoy my life doing the things that I absolutely love to do. Of course there is balance with doing the things that I only 'sorta' enjoy, and the things that are necessary but I do not enjoy at all (who hates laundry, or mowing wet grass? raise your hands!).

That's the key though.. the balance. It has always been about balance for me.. and I can't believe that so long ago I lost majority of my balance and sight (in-, far- and hind-). I'm fucking stoked for the rest of the year, that's for certain.

/end rambling.

I have some Trip-Hop songs in the works, along with a few more snippets of everything from house to breaks that may see the light of day if I take them up into full production.

A road map for equipment is being worked on. With the economy going to shit I'm trying to decide if/when to pick up majority of the things I need to take my music to a live audience.. it may require a small personal loan ^_^.

I hope everyone has had a great January so far. Can you believe it's already been 21 days of 2008?!

New Music & New Website for the New Year!!!

Well, if you are reading this you either have me on RSS feeds, have my blog bookmarked, or (and more importantly) you have found the "blog" link on the new Sliptide.com website!!

I am no longer pointing the sliptide.com domain to this blog. I have finally put together a very simple website to present my music. The front page will contain recent songs and uploads to the internet. I also put together a comprehensive discography section, which includes all of my works (even though the older stuff is very garish and unpolished) without any shame ;)

Also, in an effort to ring in the new year with a bang, I have uploaded the recent few tracks I had completed in the fall season.

"On Approach" is a song that I wanted to make for awhile, melding the droning and building elements of late-night techno sessions with some more ambient/floating 'structures'. It came out well, and paired with the next song makes for a decent treat for any late night adventures.

"Striking the Ocean" was actually started before the previous, but wrapped up production after I had transformed the song into a follow up. The two have quite literal and up-front ideas in feeling and thoughts that the names will provoke, and I hope that the tones, forms, sounds, and feelings of the music put forth a multitude of things to the listener.

The other two songs posted are:

"Everything That We Love": An 'indie electronic' song of sorts. I wanted to get into making something with a more organic feel to it, yet retain a lot of the properties of my chillout and downtempo beats. This was the first song that came to light and I have enjoyed the simplicity quite a bit.

"Spying", which as the name suggests, is a somewhat somber and curious song. Using more of the ambient textures as underlying melody and trying to keep a more organic feel again, this song is a bit of my own internal reflection poured out into audio format.

I hope everyone enjoys the new tracks, the new website, and offers up any feedback. As always, word of mouth is a powerful thing, so tell your friends and family about any music of mine that you enjoy! I'm open to questions via the comments on this blog, facebook, ilike, garageband, or you can head over to the new Google Groups Sliptide Fan Club.

As far as my other happenings go: Applied & Computational (Jeff) and myself got together for some awesome jamming last Saturday. We have started a great song that we will hopefully be able to get out the door by the end of January. We are in need of some new equipment to incorporate some live instrumentation, but that should materialize hopefully soon.

Happy New Year everyone!

-Slip

New Song, "Always"

I started this particular song in June earlier this year. It was really the first hurah back into music after quite a long rut and having my music habit only on the fringe of my brain. After putting myself back in line and stepping into the musical realm again, "Always" takes some of the trance synth-wash sounds from my earlier days and applies them to a more relaxed song. Building and certainly motivated by joy. I hope you dig it.

You can stream the track from iLike, Facebook, or Garageband.

Check out my iLike page right here.

Mt Rainier - Paradise / Skyline trip #2

To the Next Big Thing

I'm here at my empty desk listening to my own music, some new some old, pondering the past few years of my career (including a portion of my college career). I am about to move on to learning a whole ton of new geeky IT goodness. I am excited to be moving away from Application Support into a System Administration role. My stress levels will inherently drop as will the amount of hours I spend firefighting in my off-hours. This is a great opportunity I managed to seize for my career skill set, pay, benefits... you name it.. the whole package has been bumped up to a new level.

I'm very fortunate to have been going down the path I am. I still wonder where the next big thing is for me though. Working IT is going to get consistently better the longer I stay in it. I can now see myself moving towards the upper echelon of employees here in the long haul. While I can envision myself having a long term and successful career with my current company, I still have a part of me that is smoldering with desire for turning my hobbies into more lucrative business opportunities. I think with the new position I am moving into I will have a lot more brain power and idle time available to me to work on my (currently hobby status) projects and perhaps set some serious long term goals with my music, my business ideas, etc. I haven't arrived at the next big thing yet, but I am well on my way.

I have completed another trance-like song that I am very fond of. There are a few things to iron out before I make it available to download (not to mention I still have to get my website posted properly on sliptide.com so I can begin promoting the music).

I signed up for a Garageband.com account since they are now putting music onto Facebook. That is an invaluable marketing tool that should come in handy next year.

Alrighty, time to get ready for my last meeting of the day. After that, it's a free lunch in celebration of my departure from this department (and partly in honor of my birthday), then some afternoon beer and pool action at the bar across the street from work... then tonight Matt and I are going to see Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers (Roger used to be the front man for The Refreshments).

Latah.

3 New Tracks, 0 New Websites

I have managed to complete three of the 5 pertinent new songs from this and last month. Unfortunately, I haven't taken the time to get the new website up on the new host ;)

I suppose I should start getting that taken care of while I'm wrapping up 2 more songs and getting the dust off of City Shadows vol.1 and posted on iTunes.

Other aspects of my life are continuing to do well. I've been going to the gym 3 times a week for a few months now and I have to say that I feel *awesome*. Not only am I in better shape and my (already high) endurance is heightened, I'm seeing results from eating well (not dieting) and exercising regularly.. it's great!

Work is going well. All-be-it stressful from the high work load and short staffing and some of the unrealistic expectations placed upon us from the business-- the company put their money where there mouth is.. well.. I guess I should say they put there money where *MY* mouth is and gave me the mid-year equity adjustment I asked for. In the 2.5 years I have been here I have seen a substantial increase in my salary... something I didn't expect to see when I first started working in the IT industry. Putting in the hard work really is rewarding, go figure!

I have opportunities along different avanues now-- we'll see what happens with it all. I apologize for being so vague but I absolutely cannot give details within my blog ^_^ Any of you tech-savvy folk know exactly what I am talking about.

Moving Right Along.

It looks like I will be getting some decent web hosting again. That means a new site is on the way.. this blog will take a back seat again and www.sliptide.com will be home to everything involving my music.

Apple announced the price drop for the iPhone. I have to say.. there was only a little buzz around the office today-- but we can imagine that all of those poor AT&T customers who scrambled to pay top dollar (retail or above) are now extremely pissed that they are out $200. Ouch! That would really make me bitter after spending my hard earned bones for a piece of technology that apparently doesn't hold its value. *thumbs up* Thanks, Apple! With T-Mobile signing deals for iPhone in Germany, it's only a matter of time before it is available for T-Mobile in the states (don't get me wrong though: I'm not excited, and I'm not about to retire my Pearl 8100).

I've been on a World of WarCraft kick again.. amongst diving head long into other glorious games such as Sim City 4, finishing up games like F.E.A.R. and S.T.A.L.K.E.R... it had been so long since I really sat down to play a game that I forgot how much I <3 video games! I think I'm going to be back on my quest to pick a few things up like a Sega Saturn (so I can play my copy of Guardian Heroes!) and hook up the Dreamcast.. mmm... yea.. it's going to be a vidiot's winter for sure.