Who blogs anymore?  More of us should, actually.  It has to beat posting to our generic blue and white diary right?  Since I last updated this blog (which as you may know doubles as my artist website) I was lauding Bruce Hamilton for his efforts over the years with ImprovFriday.  Since that post, however, we decided on a name change to accurately represent the online event.  You see, we felt the fact that the event carries over to Saturday and now opens Thursday didn’t match the title.  Couple that with the broader scope of music beyond improvisation and, thus, we decided a name change was in order.  Not that anything regarding the event needed change, just the name.  So now we are Sound-In.  If you remember the days of sit-ins, love-ins or even bed-ins, then you will get the gist of the name.

Secondly, I’ve been advising a new radio-show-turned-video-cast called “Words on New Music” with Paul Muller and Jim Goodin at YT.  The online broadcasts review artists from the Sound-In events in addition to all sorts of new music artists.  They also produce in-depth interviews.

Also it was nice to discover a work of mine was picked up from my Soundcloud  page called “recycled piano” and included in the fine radio show Miniature Minotaurs with Kurt Gottschalk (WFMU), 91.1 fm in New York, at 90.1 fm in the Hudson Valley.  Check out the show here.

Update:  ”Recycled Piano” was picked up by the label “Spectropol” to accompany two other works on the album “Gazing,” due out sometime in June 2013.

Steve Layton put together a four track album titled “Four Night Scenes”- for the Amaranth Sound net-label, which is an IF Event label focusing primarily on compilation projects.  My work, “Magic Theater – Entrance Not For Everybody (feat. Noyes, Sanderson, Sundström), is included.   A mixture of pieces and electronic treatment feat. Lee Noyes “punaises de lit” Richard Sanderson “Lights of the Bay” and Roger ErocNet Sundström “Verto Serpentes.”  The title is a line from Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse.

Four Night Scenes:  “A series of four interrelated mash-ups, of tracks created during the August 2-4, 2012 ImprovFriday online event. All of them share very similar material, length, and a deep ambiance, but each masher’s take on the material is distinctive and personal. The mashers are Steve Layton, J.C. Combs, and Roger Sundström; the musicians mashed are Benjamin Smith, Steve Moshier, Paul H. Muller, Lee Noyes, Richard Sanderson, Roger Sundström, Chris Vaisvil, Lydia Busler-Blais, as well as insect sound samples from lorenzosu, acclivity, and reinsamba at Freesound.org.”  – Steve Layton

I had the pleasure of working with three great musicians this week over at ImprovFriday -  Shane Cadman, Peter Thörn and Kavin Allenson.  Enjoying SC & wondering when I will run out of space.

I still haven’t made a video for “confessions” but was happy to see a new video from a work from the album on ilirlluka’s channel at YT which is described as ” about sensitive music, generally experimental and electronic compositions mixed with classical/neoclassical elements , going from ambient and minimalism to abstract and avant-garde music, in the purpose of creating personal sensorial situations and for a deep and intellectual listening.”

And so I wanted to give that channel a shout out for doing a nice service for the arts.

Just when you thought there were too many changes happening online, storage, uploading, downloading, social networking and on and on – the community of new music musicians decides they like Soundcloud.  I’ve been using it sparingly for a couple years but I decided to give in to peer pressure and give my account some attention.  I intend to use it mainly for my most experimental works and phonography.

What a pleasant surprise to see my duo, “confessions,” with the talented Lee Noyes in a wrap up year review on the pages of AoS.  Released on the netlabel “con-V,” this album is free for download in a couple locations: http://www.archive.org/details/cnv68 and http://www.con-v.org/cnv68.htm.