Update on the whole website thing

Just wanted to give a tiny update - while I haven't gone through the process of migrating the blog away from Blogger to a new format, this blog, however, is now reachable at patrickmauro.net/blog as well as the usual mauruslair.blogspot.com.

In addition, I've got a slightly more professional-looking temp page up, with links to my SoundCloud and LinkedIn pages and everything. Cool stuff.

That's all for now, carry on!

I now own patrickmauro.net!

Yup, it's true. Check it out for yourself.

As of this post I've only got a temporary "parked" page up (which is really just this image here), but I will begin working on developing a full personal website that will include a general bio, my qualifications (and perhaps my resume), a portfolio of project examples, and links to my SoundCloud and LinkedIn pages.

What I'm also probably going to do is migrate this entire blog over to a private subdomain of this site (when I say "private," I really just mean I won't include a link to it on my home page, but it will probably be accessible at /blog). Since the blog has sometimes dealt with personal issues, I would rather not have it easily available from the same location "official stuff" like my resume and portfolio are at. But, I can at least take advantage of having the domain and move it elsewhere so that I'll no longer have to rely on Blogger/Blogspot, which I've grown kind of tired with (sorry guys, you've been great but it's time for me to move on).

Stay tuned! :)

Kuusisto returns!

Those who follow my blog (does anyone follow my blog? I actually have no idea) will remember my music piece Kuusisto. Working on Kuusisto was kind of a big milestone for me. Believe it or not, it sort of changed the way I thought about music, and it really helped pave the way for the rest of my stuff. Mentally, I even separate my stuff as pre- and post-Kuusisto.

So some might have been surprised when I launched my SoundCloud account and did not feature Kuusisto. Well, the problem is it hadn't aged very gracefully, and I no longer felt like it represented the quality of the music I was working on.

Since then I actually had been tinkering with it in the background, trying to figure out what direction I wanted to go with it, but never actively. I'd been doing the same with a lot of my older pieces, actually. But a big turning point was when I received my brand new Yeti microphone this winter. Having that kind of recording quality meant I could now work with more live elements, and fast-track reworkings of earlier projects.

Of course, I was busy finishing up my senior year, so I didn't have that kind of time - but recently I had the opportunity to participate in a game enthusiasts' music festival called D'nipalooza, which gave me an excuse to brush up some of my music. As a result, I was finally able to put that new coat of paint on Kuusisto - which I've now retitled The Blind Scholar to make it a little more accessible.

I'm still calling it a work in progress, though, because I don't quite consider it done. The new drumkit soundfonts are much better than what I had before, but they still sound pretty terrible in a few spots. I'd really like to replace the drum track, as well as the bass track, with live recordings if at all possible. I also think something seems a little off about the piano part in this version, so I may want to adjust that a little.

The Blind Scholar, as well as new versions of Over the Fence and Bottles, can be seen on my SoundCloud page. Together with The Champion, they make up my set from D'nipalooza - which I'll share below.

I am now on SoundCloud!

My friend and I picked up composer Tarik O'Regan from
the local train station the other day.
It was a good day.

After being strongly urged to join SoundCloud, I finally did it. I think it was a good choice ultimately, because it will allow me to network with other composer friends I know. I hope choosing SC will allow me to expand my horizons a bit composing-wise.

I've changed the Music page on this blog so it now just shows a big ol' SC widget rather than my tracks with the description on them - so it's a lot, lot cleaner looking, actually, However, I realized after I changed the page that I have some explaining to do, because almost All the content I uploaded is brand-new, and most of the content I had on the site is gone.

To clarify: no, I have not reposted Oedipus Rex*, Salley Gardens, Ver Frigidus**, Organized Insanity**, the whole dang Ordo ab Chao suite**, A Distracted Isolation, Ver Calidus*, Kuusisto*, Beyond the Barrier, Over the Fence*, The Beat of my Own Drummer, An Sléibhte na hÉireann, or Searching for Sight.*

Instead, I am happy to first introduce two new revisions of the Over the Fence Theme and Searching for Sight, both featuring actual guitar and stuff. I'm particularly proud of the OTF Theme revision (which is pretty robust), it's a lot of fun and I think you'll enjoy it too.

I'd also like to introduce a bunch of new tracks, some of which I had been intending on posting to this blog: Dragons in the Sky, Seven Billion, Bottles, Battle! Champion Maurus, and Passing on the Right, which as of now is still in the W-I-P phase.

Dragons and Seven Billion are two tracks I had wanted to announce under a "Music 219" post, the reason being that they had both been produced in my class MUSIC-219, Electronic Music. They're both considered "tape music" or "musique concrète," in that they're made with synthesizers and/or synthesized source audio and compiled together. Of the two, Seven Billion is the more "experimental," however; Dragons has a more noticeable groove to it.

Bottles is quite a different piece - I usually do music that's a bit heavier, but instead I just wanted to make more of a "fun" song. And a song in which I sing in. There are some prog elements to be sure, but it's a lot easier on the ears than some of my other work is. I want to make some more songs like this in the future. However, I don't quite consider it done yet, as there's quite a bit of work I still feel needs to get done on this track, not the least of which are recording a live drum track and re-recording the vocals and guitar parts.

Battle! Champion Maurus came about because I was playing Pokémon White over Summer 2012, and I was reminded of an idea I had to create a Pokémon-inspired track. Plus, I was teaching myself guitar, so it was a good outlet. As you can imagine, it is essentially an homage to the music of the Pokémon games, for the most part composed by Junichi Masuda, and there are more than a few nods to some of the music from the games. Like "Bottles" and "OTF," I was really surprised by how fun a track I could make. Hopefully I will make more "fun" music like this in the future.

Finally, "Passing on the Right" is a brand-new track, only a few days old as of this posting. It's based on an idea that has been rattling around in my head for a while now, and while I'm not 100% comfortable with this cut (it is again a work-in-progress), I'm glad to have finally gotten it down. It is inspired by road rage, and is heavily influenced by the King Crimson albums THRAK, The ConstruKction of Light, and The Power to Believe.

So why did I get rid of so much of the music? A few reasons, actually - one being that SoundCloud has an upload limit, so it's in my best interests not to upload all of my music, but the perhaps more important reason being that I simply don't feel a lot of the tracks accurately represent my current skill level, and I don't feel comfortable having them represent me by putting them online, even if I were to label them as only "works in progress."

 That being said, there are a few tracks I hope to make revised versions of, including both of the Ver's, Organized Insanity (and let's be honest, a revision has been a LONG time coming), Kuusisto, The Beat of my Own Drummer, and An Sléibhte na hÉireann. Most of these are just matters of re-arranging, lengthening, and actually recording with live instruments (Sléibhte is an example of a track that just doesn't sound good unless it's live), but I don't want to put them up in their current forms.

As for the rest, well, I'm not re-doing some of the older stuff because I don't think there's a point (though I may post some of my EVEN OLDER tracks), the vocal stuff I don't feel comfortable posting because I've matured so much since then that the tracks sound frankly bad to me now, and the whole Ordo ab Chao situation is... complicated. Pt. 3 is pretty solid, but Pt. 1's a mess, and I've been working on a new Pt. 2 since 2011 and have never produced a result I felt happy with. So we'll see, but don't get your hopes up.

Anyway, that's the situation with my music. I'm fortunate to be in a period of high creative energy right now. Vassar just had its annual ModFest, a celebration of modern art, and I got to speak with many very intelligent contemporary composers whom I have a lot of respect for.

I've also started a new YouTube channel, with the hope of eventually making some new quality content, so stay tuned: Both my new YouTube channel and my SoundCloud page are "MaurusMultimedia," a name I thought much more suitable than my previous internet alias "MaurusRehMahrntahn."

You'll be hearing from me!

RETROACTIVE EDIT:
* - A new version of this track has since been posted.
** - A new version of this track is being worked on.