Helping rebuild a small school in Thailand after the 2004 tsunami.

It’s one thing to see these dramatic videos and images coming out of Japan. They’re insane, and I think it would make anybody with any emotions stop for a minute and evaluate how lucky we are to have everything we take for granted.

It’s another thing to see the aftermath of something like this first hand. It’s something that can’t be articulated, it’s a feeling I will never forget, something that has made me appreciate life in a way that I never would be able to had I not had those experiences.

I have to admit, when I signed up to go to Thailand with a group called Religious Youth Services to go help with the relief efforts, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. My naivety was quickly replaced with reality. I knew it would be hard and that it would require a lot from me not only physically, but mentally. I just never could’ve forseen the lasting impact seeing that kind of situation first hand, would have on me.

One instance that really sticks out in my mind was visiting a small storefront that was actually part of a family’s house. I was there to buy a soda, or some candy; something completely unnecessary, buy hey, I was in Thailand.

While I don’t know a lick of Thai, and this elderly woman working there couldn’t speak a word of English, for the few minutes I was in the store, I was strongly connected with her. As I approached the counter with my small meaningless items, she reached for a small photo album that was on the shelf behind her.

She opened the first page to me, showing me a photo of a beach in Ao Nang, near where we were staying in Phukhet. I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on until she flipped to the second photo.

It was another shot of the beach, littered with dead bodies. Blood, body parts, shoes and sandals everywhere. Photo after photo, there was death and destruction in a way I had never been so close to.

Many of these people already had next to nothing: no electricity, no running water; but they stayed optimistic and led their lives in a simpler manner, but seemed like they were content. Their lives and worlds were turned upside down by this disaster that nobody has any control over.

To see this type of pain within this old woman, with no words being exchanged, really had a big impact on my experiences both there and back home. Life is way too fragile and precious to treat it the way we do, especially in this country. We take all of the basics for granted—food, clean water, shelter—and spend our time complaining about the luxuries we could go without, or debating who’s running back will pick up more yards next season.

I guess my point is that when this type of tragedy strikes, maybe it’s a good opportunity for those of us who are more fortunate to recalibrate the way we think about life. I’m the first to admit that I get stuck in these same pitfalls, and take all of the blessings life has given me as something I should expect rather than a privilege.

I’ve made it a point today to stop and think about what’s going on around me. Life really is what you make it, and I want to make something great of mine, something that can resonate with others, something that makes a difference.

While what that will be has yet to be determined, I know one day I’ll get there. Hopefully with people I love around me, and nothing but positive energy; something the world could definitely use a lot of nowadays.

Peace.

A party was held at the school before we all headed home, here's me "swimming"

The amount of awesomeness happening this weekend is incredible. The “schemedule” is on their website includes a lot of details about the events.

I’ll be posting which sessions I plan on going to later, but for now you can catch me volunteering at WYPR on Saturday for How to Score in Radio with Lawrence Lanahan & Bruce Wallace and on Sunday for Parachute Dance with Sharlene Leurig & Thomas Deuel

“Chad has these punk roots and he comes at it from a very organic feel and wanted to capture the live sound of the band … and I think he did a good job of accomplishing that [by] recording us in a more of a group setting. Albums these days sometimes are made in pieces and this was a little less like that.”

No Second Troy’s keyboardist Mike Beach says he doesn’t think the new album will “set the blogosphere on fire” but that the band is very happy with the way it turned out, and it is the type of production they were going for. You can download a free .mp3 titled “Black and White Movie” from their website.

DJ Blak Majik rocking the crowd at Tigerfest 2010 (Photo by Josh Flynn)

DJ Blak Majik is a graduating senior at Towson, and joined the label after interning with them in late 2008.

“I know from the work I’ve done personally, which is minimal compared to everybody else, there is just so much effort that has gone into this. There is going to be so much great music on the album, I can’t wait for the release to hear how awesome the final product is.”

To promote the full-length release, Mania has posted a 9-track mixtape online called Welcome to the Soundcheck, which can be downloaded in a multitude of formats for free.

“I would say I have 75% of these two albums finished, and I plan on writing the other 25% in the studio. I’ve always treated the studio as an afterthought and am always kind of rushing the process. It’ll be really nice to just record at my own pace and finally be able to use the studio as an instrument to compose with/in, rather than as just a tool. I think it’ll really help this work stand out from my previous releases.”

As I’ve said before, this transition into musicians taking the recording process into their own creative control is something that would have been unheard of a few decades ago, but nowadays you can do a 16 track mix right from your iPhone. Something those in the music industry really need to consider as the situation continues to morph into an industry where dwindling jobs may become even more rare.

“Bossman claims he spent almost a calendar year, ’10 hours a day, five days a week,’ in the studio crafting it, which may explain why the Dec. 21 release has moved so quickly that it is next to impossible to track down in local stores.”

Bossman is currently working on his next album set to come out this year and is putting up a series of videos on his MySpace Music page that attempts to give an insider’s look into the life the rapper.

Since then Beach House has toured internationally to showcase their unique sound, and recently returned to Charm City and stopped by WTMD for Morning Sessions. Scally commented on why he loves Baltimore so much.

“No other city on the East Coast is like it. What I feel like when I’m in Baltimore is that nobody cares what they think of them.”

On a side note, not crazy about the lead from the Boston Globe article. When are outsiders going to stop using “The Wire” comparison, the analogy is overdone and played out. While The Wire is a great series, it gives the wrong impression to the naive and for him to say there are “few places in the U.S. less dreamy”, come on; you know you could do better than that. Clever title.

Evan Kornblum at work

As far as the rest of his studio setup, “My main thing is my Focusrite ISA-428, it’s a four channel mic pre. Just a great sounding mic pre, it’s pretty much the flagship piece of my studio.” He runs Pro Tools on a Digi-003 rack, and has a decent amount of plugins, like one of his current favorites, the Joe Meek Compressor. He also really likes the Digidesign built-in compressor with its intuitive metering,

“I use it a lot on snares and vocals, I just find it to be a very transparent compressor. The soft knee function is great and I feel like it just makes for a really clean sounding compressor.”

To support himself while getting the studio off the ground, Kornblum works full time at the Fell’s Point corporate headquarters of the Connections Academy, an online public school as an enrollment advisor. He has to wear the classic telemarketer headset and says it’s “mentally fatiguing, you never know when you’re going to be connected to somebody.”

“The whole going-to-record-with-one-of-my-heroes deal got dropped in our laps about a month ago,” he said. “We thought we’d just go record somewhere in Lawrence and put out our next record like we put out our first record, but all this stuff just kind of fell out of the sky.”

The Rooftop Vigilantes came to Baltimore so they could have J. Robbins engineer the project at his Magpie Cage Studios, who has an extensive resume and seemed to be the perfect fit for the Vigilantes’ project. Seth Wiese, and Oscar Allen Guinn?? and Hannah Hyde round out the indie rock quartet. Music takes a lot of dedication in every stage to be successful, the Rooftop Vigilantes are lucky that Robbins let them crash for a few days, and to pull 12 hour days with them. I bet there are a lot of producers out there that wouldn’t be as accommodating; but it’s nice to see something like this in Baltimore.

D-Command in RSTUDM

So, I work for the Department of Music at Towson doing recordings for their student and faculty recitals, and on certain occasions recordings in the RSTUDM (The Recording Studio of the Towson University Department of Music). Recently, I was scheduled to do a session with Towson faculty member and Trumpeter/Composer Dave Ballou and a Towson alumnus, Ellery Eskelin who was coming to town and wanted to try some different mics out. When we tried to run the session, first the displays were not working properly. We got one screen to display Pro Tools ,we normally run two; but we were just going to go with it.

The next, and more detrimental issue, was that we weren’t able to hear playback from the monitors, which was necessary for us to compare the different microphone pairs. We checked the I/O on both the software, and in the patch bay, and we thought that everything was plugged in correctly. I had not been in the studio since I was taking a class in the spring semester of 2009, so it was hard to recall troubleshooting techniques when dealing with signal flow. The musicians waited patiently for about 30 minutes while we went over the details trying to get sound to come out of any of the three sets that are in the studio; nothing. We later found out that the new instructor likes to run the studio a little differently, and had change a few things. Neither my coworker or I knew how to change it back to the way we were taught, so we were out of luck. That being said, it was an issue that could have been fixed in the patch bay, we just didn’t catch it.

When I introduced myself to the Saxophonist, Ellery, I thought the name sounded familiar. It turned out I had just seen an article about him in City Paper, but had not made the connection until after I had left the studio (and he was also on an episode of This American Life, a show you should already listen to). Eskelin has put out 20 jazz albums and is “garnered critical acclaim” in the international jazz community. A heartbreaking lesson in knowing exactly where you’re signal is going at every step of the process, from the musician’s mind all the way to your eardrums. A great opportunity missed, my apologies to Ellery and Dave; thanks for the patience guys.