All of my Piano Musings are podsafe, which means that podcasters can grab them and use them as background music for their podcasts, as long as I'm credited, etc.
There is a site called Podsafe Audio that specializes in categorizing this kind of music. I just created a page specifically for the piano musings, and you can find it here.
I've also created a page for myself on last.fm and you can find it here. It has cool embeddable players of my music that you can post into your own blog or myspace page. Here's an example:
I got that by going to the track page for that song, and highlighting the code for "Embed This Track". Feel free to embed my songs on any pages you control.
I've been collaborating with Quoting Napoleon as their sometimes-keyboardist lately. They already have a cd released, and also have their songs available through snocap, which I think is a pretty cool system. You can browse clips of their songs here and then buy them for full downloads. These are the songs they came up with before I started playing with them more regularly, although I am working out some subtle keyboard parts for these songs, too.
In 2006, I had plans to go home for Christmas. I go to Colorado just about every year to see my parents and my sister's family, including my two nieces.
That year, there was a huge blizzard in Denver that snowed out the airport and canceled all sorts of Denver flights. My flight got canceled before it took off. I never made it to Colorado.
I spent Christmas at home in Portland that year, in an undecorated house and without many backup plans. On Christmas Eve I got the idea to try and work up a couple of recordings of Christmas tunes for my family back home. I hadn't done much recording of myself at that point so I wasn't sure how well it would work.
I found two to work on - one from a fakebook, and one just from scrounging up a guitar tab online. I managed to work up arrangements and learn how to sing and play them and record them and email them off to my family by Christmas morning.
I'm making them available here - I didn't write them, obviously, but I'm not releasing them for commercial purposes. Enjoy.
iLike is spreading, and has now launched on Bebo. This means that I also now have a Bebo artist page, for those of you on Bebo. I also have a member page there now but don't appear to have any friends, so if any of you are on there, you could be the first person to add me.
My friend Lisa Albinger, a full-time artist and recent new resident of Portland, is working on a painting inspired by My Favorite Clown. She has some pictures up of the work in progress. What fun! I'll post a picture of the finished work here when it's completed.
I have a new facebook page up that is a little more professional. You can hear music, tell the recommendation system that you like my music ("click to iLike this artist"), etc. I'll mainly be using that site to reach out to fans that aren't already hooked up here, but every "iLike" signup helps because it gets my music out there more.
That was a fun little gig I had last night. My bass-playing friend Steve works at a Starbucks and they were having something of a Christmas party - open to the public, and with coloring books. So Steve asked if I'd be willing to play piano if he played bass, and I said sure - fine with me that it was for no pay since I didn't have any time to prepare for a real gig. It was a bit haphazard, we knew that one gal had designs on singing a couple of Christmas tunes, but no one could supply any music, either.
So, Steve ended up buying a fakebook of Christmas tunes and brought it along. I brought my M-Audio keyboard (the $200 one), my amp, and a microphone. I didn't really have any idea of what to expect. It turned out there were about 15-20 people there (it's a small Starbucks on Barnes and Miller in SW), and when it was time for us to start, everyone kind of turned and looked at us. Not quite background music!
So, we started with Frosty The Snowman, and all the cute barista girls started singing along, and it basically went from there.
Pretty fun overall. I'm glad I wasn't paid, honestly, because there was no preparation, and lead sheets for Christmas tunes aren't exactly the most creative. But I got thrown to the wolves a bit, always a good thing, the attention was very much focused on me and Steve, I did some singing and some crowd interaction stuff which I hadn't really planned on at all, and it turned out that it felt quite comfortable.
Who says I don't play out? I'm playing at a Starbucks tonight in SW with Steve Morgan. It was kind of a last minute thing - Christmas music that I haven't ever seen before, nor rehearsed. Going in truly cold. Should be interesting! I haven't publicized it because it sounds totally low-key and casual, plus... like I said, I haven't rehearsed.
