Thursday, March 31, 2005

ctwa8

I didn't play Hurley's -- a big rehearsal with Crane Chorus -- but Coloring Time was ok. I am very tired.

10:00

• Coloring Time with Andrew
• Javelin Head
• Dripping Pilgrim
• For Play -> Science -> Member of the Real

10:30

• Crash Tinkle Tinkle -> Lapse Into Memory
• Shirt Thane
• Love Song 1
• Rat's Noon Star [premiere]

Sunday, March 27, 2005

intercourse

I've been filling my Nodal Nim myspace profile with lots of interesting people from all over, and having conversations with some who have heard my music. Here is one little conversation that I obviously had some fun with:

=

i love your vegetable song. its made me think a lot. about vegetables i've never heard of before. i think i will do a google search and learn some more about greens.
thanking you for the inspiration, ro. xxxx

=

Hi Ro,

Thanks for the appreciation! Vegetables are delicious. I especially love frying them up in peanut sauce and rosemary, basil, and thyme, and maybe some honey. Best with onions. Maybe I need a song about onions, too. Are onions a vegetable? Even if they are, they deserve their own song. I'm not sure what your opinion is on raisins, but I have a song about them, also. They're good in yogurt.

Thanks for the kind note. I'm glad you were inspired. It makes me happy. Best of luck with all things!

Maccodils,
Andrew (Nodal Nim)

Friday, March 25, 2005

first oud experience

Hey, I haven't mentioned this yet! Yesterday, I played the oud for the first time ever! Chris Witulski just so happened to have one and invited me to come over and try it out. It blew my mind! It felt so good to play! Obviously, it wouldn't be easy to play well, but it's totally incredible and inspiring. I'd very much like to get one sometime.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Hurley's and ctwa7

Hurley's open mic in Potsdam was fun tonight. I played some stuff and debuted two new songs!

• Lapse Into Memory -> Member of the Real [premiere]
• E Blue Apparatus -> Level 1
• For Play [premiere]

Coloring Time was also fun! I played only one set to accomodate a trainee. It was cool, though.

• Coloring Time with Andrew
• Vegetables You've Never Heard Of -> Retro Helplessness
• Pablo
• Stripes
• Let Me In Your Hole

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Nim on myspace

I created a music page on myspace.com today, to use as a platform for promotion. So far, so good. If you'd like to see it and/or add yourself to my "Friends" list, check out http://www.myspace.com/nodalnim.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

The Daily Grind!

An old coffee shop in Troy recently moved to a bigger location and started doing open mics on Thursdays! I went there tonight, and it was awesome! There was a lot of acoustic guitar stuff, and some of it was great, some stand-up comedy, some poetry readings, some blues, some far out world musicky kinds of stuff, some jammy stuff, lots of neat stuff! And me, I played some Nodal Nim, too. I was happy with how I played, and my stuff seemed to go over well, which makes me happy! After I played, throughout the night, I sold three of my new Nodal Nim at Hurley's CDs to some cool, appreciative people! Thanks for the support, you guys! I'm glad you enjoyed it, and when I come back for the summer, I hope I'll see you all there again!

My contact information is on the intro page to the website, but I'll give it here in case anybody is interested:

email: gtrpkt at yahoo dot com
AIM screen name: Nodal Nim
cell: (315)657-6839


My set list tonight:

• Let Me In Your Hole
• Raisins -> Wow
• Stripes


I've never been so excited by the prospect of moving back to Troy! Now I can't wait!

Electricity,
Andrew

Rock the World

I played some Nodal Nim as special guest on Teo and friends' Rock the World radio program on WRPI, and it was fun!

12:30 am

• Science [requested by Nick Borden]
• Maroon Dots -> Bodymind

1:30 am

• Boxing Day Feast [requested by Eve Burstein] -> Vegetables You've Never Heard Of

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

new songies and cdies

Hi.

Yesterday, I wrote or finished writing three Nodal Nim songs: Rat's Noon Star, Body Hex 3, and Member of the Real, and I started a song that may be called Dobbel. Today, I took a break from mandolin playing, but I made a bunch more copies of my new CD, Nodal Nim at Hurley's. Hey, you out there! Buy one! They're cheap! Six bucks!

Love,
Andrew

Sunday, March 13, 2005

Yellow Things

I finished writing a very interesting and unique Nodal Nim song tonight (relative to my other songs at least)! It's a fifteen-minute collection of sub-songs on the subject of "things that are yellow," carefully strung together for coherency and storytelling. It's almost a whole new genre of song. I'm sure other people have done this before, but I haven't, and it's very exciting for me!

It begins and ends with a poem I borrowed from a Potsdam anthropology professor's two-year-old niece. According to the story my professor told (which was intended to demonstrate the incredible creativity of human beings as compared with other animals), her niece, while gazing at the moon one night, uttered the following:

There's a yellow man
on the yellow moon
reading a yellow book
about yellow things.

I think that statement is so full of wonder and amazing ideas, and I love that a two-year-old girl came up with it! I like the image we have, of a simple place, with a simple thing happening: one man, one moon, one book, one color even! It's just beautiful!

So in my song, the yellow man reads the yellow book, and in the yellow book, there are characters and events and emotions, and you experience the yellow man's reactions to it all. At the end of the song, the yellow man falls asleep to dream of yellow things. Interesting to me is that we have a fictional character reading about fictional characters, and to us, they're all equally fictional, but to the yellow man, he and his yellow moon are real while the yellow characters in the yellow book are fictional! I'm thinking about all the stuff in this song, and I'm so proud I wrote it, and it's just an amazing feeling! I can't wait to play it for somebody!

Thursday, March 10, 2005

ctwa6

Coloring Time was a lot of fun tonight! I gave away a Nodal Nim CD to a guy who called in with a palindrome: "Dammit, I'm mad!" Scott, Marina, and Chris came by and colored, kept me company! It was delirious and neat! After (and during) the show, Scott, Marina and I were high on our own giggly juices, and before goodbye hugs, we "exchanged gifts" by sifting through our pockets and wallets for things to share, like old library cards, tic tacs, and keys to locks that no longer exist!

10:00

• Coloring Time with Andrew
• Vegetables You've Never Heard Of
• Crabnors -> Receptors & Peptides -> Magazine Chubbies [requested by Scott]
• Nimland
• E Blue Apparatus
• Alan the Duck [requested by B.J.]

11:00

• Level 1
• nimland.cjb.net
• Paperclip [requested by Marina]
• Superman Has Friends -> I Am Systems
• Docky Docky [requested by Scott]

Saturday, March 5, 2005

new concert CD: Nodal Nim at Hurley's!

Just like the song says, I've got a new CD!

I put the recording from my last Hurley's concert (along with a few songs from last semester's Hurley's concert) into CD magic and copied! So I have lots of CDR's right now just ready for the plucking! I'm going to start selling them for six dollars!

Eventually, mp3 versions of all the CD tracks will likely go on my SoundClick page. So why should you bother spending six bucks to buy a CD from me? Here's what I've come up with:

• My SoundClick page won't have these songs available for some time. Maybe it'll take just a few weeks, maybe a few months, maybe longer. I haven't decided.
• I may decide to cut out all my rambling when I make mp3s, all the times I say dumb things like, "This is a song..." "Hi, I'm Nodal Nim!" "This is a relatively new song... from my middle period, if that means anything..." "I've played that before," "Thanks for coming out!", "This is a classic old Nodal Nim song," "Yes, that's the end," and so on and so forth. So if you want the Nimbabbling, you'll want the CD!
• On the CD, the February 17 concert tracks are uncompressed audio (AIFF files), so they have a better sound quality than the mp3s that will be available online.
• CDs are more portable than computers! (But not more portable than mp3 players, of course!)
• I design each album slightly differently. The CD itself has "Nodal Nim at Hurley's" written on it with Sharpie (classy!) in a unique way, for example.
• Best of all, in my opinion, each album comes with a unique spontaneous poem and autograph hidden away on the inside of the cover! Mp3s don't come with poems or autographs!

I will not try to deceive you: another viable option for you is to find somebody who already has my CD and copy it from em. This is legally permissable, because I release all my music under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Creative Commons License. "You are free to copy, distribute, and perform the work..." etc. So go ahead and do that, I won't mind! But, I also won't mind if you buy the CD from me. It's really quite cheap, and you'll feel very special! You are special, and I want you feel that way!

If you're interesting in buying a CD, get it touch with me however you like:

email: gtrpkt at yahoo dot com
AIM screen name: Nodal Nim
cell phone: (315)657-6839

I live in Potsdam right now, but I'll be coming home to Troy for winter break soon, and I'll plan to make some deliveries while I'm there!

Love,
Andrew

Thursday, March 3, 2005

ctwa5

Fifth Coloring Time of the semester:

10:02

• Coloring Time with Andrew
• Maroon Dots -> Wow
• Send Me Up -> Javelin Head
• Princessdom
• nimland.cjb.net
• The Slippery Toad -> Bodymind
• You've Got Your Own Life
• Superman Has Friends

11:04

• Raisins
• Level 1
• A Parade, Yes. -> Vegetables You've Never Heard Of

Hurley's Open Mic = No!

Hurley's Open Mic has been cancelled for tonight, but Coloring Time with Andrew is a mos' def. Tune in to 90.3 fm the Way between 10 and midnight for coloring and mandolin fun cakes!

A guy told me today that he listens to CTWA regularly while he paints and really enjoys it! I've met this guy a few times, and consistently forgotten his name, but he's cool, and it totally rocks that he's a regular listener! He says it helps to keep him going when he's working late at night in the art studio. Yeah!

I also received a message from a girl who was at my Hurley's Feb. 17 show who said she really enjoyed it. She said that I am "awesome" and that my "square song is the man," referring to the song Wow, which I happened to start with a verse like, "Wow! The sidewalk is made of lots of squares, would you like some squares...?" etc! She also said, "all you're songs were great, and i think i want to marry you because of them," but then explained that she was "just playin (obviously)..."

Anyway, I think this constitutes "fan mail," and, as it is the first that I have received, that is very neat! Thanks, Lindsay!

Who doesn't like an ego rub from time to time? Especially on a Thursday!

I think I'm going to start producing CDs of the Hurley's show tonight, while I've got some free time...

=

In other music news, I'm singing in my voice studio next week, and I'm rather frustrated by the challenges of the songs and switching between Nodal Nim and classical style. I turned down a gig on Wednesday for the extra practice time and so Nodal Nim habits don't carry into my singing. Eric (my accompanist) and I are going to have to put in some good rehearsal between now and then, but it will definitely be worth it!

Coloring Time = Yes!

I had previously said there'd be no Coloring Time with Andrew tonight, but plans have changed, and I can do the show after all. Hooray!

Potsdammers, tune in to 90.3 fm The Way between 10 and midnight for Nodal Nim mandomagic and amazing music programming, as I spin such wonderful artists as Soul Coughing, Tom Waits, Captain Beefheart, and R.E.M.!

And if you're interested, I'm also going to do a short Nodal Nim set at open mic at Hurley's Coffee House some time after eight.


popsicle sticks,

Andrew

Wednesday, March 2, 2005

Scott's Nim movie!

I forgot to mention: a few nights ago, Scott finished his movie of the show I played a couple Thursdays back, on Feb. 17! He had footage from three cameras to utilize it putting the movie together, and I'm delighted to say that he and the camerapeople did some excellent stuff with it! Thank you so much, Scott, for the wonderful movie!

Thanks also to the camerapeople: Scott, Marina, and Dan!

Joel is working on his own movie using the same footage, which I am excited about seeing as well, when it's finished. Thanks to Joel in advance, and also for the use of his camera, which Dan operated.

Hooray!

Tuesday, March 1, 2005

TBS a success and fun! / no CTWA this week

Hi!

I just got back from the WAIH studio, where I played a half-hour set on The Brandon Show! I think I played pretty well, and I definitely had fun! Here's my set list:

• Science
• Level 1
• nimland.cjb.net
• Robots: The Card Game -> Retro Helplessness -> Sun Flies
• Alan the Duck [requested by Albynoh]
• Nobody Knows [requested by Joel] -> I Am Systems
• Stripes
• Lapse Into Memory
• Nimland
• Let Me In Your Hole

=

The other bit of information is that there will be no Coloring Time with Andrew this week! Next week, though, for sure! Tune in then!