Seriously wiped out by crushing cicadas on the ground

The title of this post doesn't mean what you may think it means but if you continue reading all will become clear. But before I do that, here are a couple of updates about some items from my last entry.

First off, the Fantasy Factory episode is now online. You can view it by clicking this link. My cue begins at around the 17:10 mark in the episode.

Second, the "Writer's Detour" that I was suffering from finally went away and I was able to meet my deadlines. Barely, but I met them. And now thanks to the detour, I've got a few new tracks to finish in some new styles for me. And now on to the new updates since my last entry...

April showers bring...

One of first things I had to learn when I decided to try for a career in the Film and TV music business was just how patient you have to be when it comes to getting paid. Take the title of this entry for example - "April showers bring..." - Most of you would probably complete that phrase by adding "May flowers." But to give you a better idea of what I'm talking about, let me change it up a bit and say it this way... April 2010 placements bring December 2010 royalties... So as you can see, patience is a necessity in this business. That's one of the aspects of this "glamorous" business that I end up having to explain the most to my non-music biz friends.

And speaking of April placements... For the first time ever, I know about a placement in advance of the show actually airing! I'm not sure which specific track is being used, but during Act 3 of tonight's episode of Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory, I have a 20 second cue being used. I'm fairly certain it'll be an uptempo hard rock/metal cue. The show airs at 9:30pm Eastern. Check it out!

March Madness!

I don't think I could have come up with a more appropriate title for this entry. As many of you know, I'm a huge Kentucky basketball fan and (most) every year during the month of March they compete in a little basketball tournament affectionately known as March Madness. Well, they're not the only ones dealing with madness this month. I'll get to that in a minute but first I've got a quite a few items to update everyone on.

Let's start with where I left off, and that's with the film score project. In spite of the fact that my main studio computer was down for over half of the project ( It was a power supply issue, and after a poor job by the 2nd service tech that HP sent, I was able to get the machine back up and running by myself later that night), I was able to meet my March 1st deadline.

I can share more about the film now as well. It's a faith-based movie called Decision and it stars Natalie Grant and Billy Dean. I'm not exactly sure when it's going to air but the latest I heard was they expected it to be on TV sometime near the mid/end of April. Once I know more, I'll be sure to let everyone know. It was a great experience working on the film. The production company is planning on shooting more films this year and I've already been told to expect a phone call from them in the upcoming months about scoring those as well. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited about that.

About 15 minutes after I found out that that every cue had been accepted and I was finished with the score, I got a postcard from our water company stating that our usage for the past month was higher than normal. This is where the madness begins...

Quick Update

While the studio computer is booting up, I wanted to post a quick update on what the last two weeks have been like. First off, my new studio computer is still down. The new motherboard got installed on Monday but it didn't solve the problem. They now think it's the power supply. The replacement part arrived today and the service tech is scheduled for tomorrow. So HOPEFULLY I'll be back up and running on the new machine by tomorrow night.

In the meantime, my old machine is doing the job. I've submitted 11 cues so far for the film score. I've been getting some positive feedback from the director so that's very encouraging. I've started to get into a bit of a groove and I think I've got a pretty good sense of what the director is looking for score-wise. I've still got quite a bit of music left to write, but not a whole lot of time left to do it in.

Speaking of which, gotta get back to it, that March 1st deadline is coming up quick!!!! But before I go, I just got to give a "shout out" to my awesome wife who is being so extremely supportive and encouraging through this "stressful" couple of weeks. I love you honey!

-Big Blue

The Best Laid Plans...

Ever have one of those days when the one thing that you absolutely could not afford to go wrong does? That was today for me.

I awoke this morning to find that my studio computer had decided to engage itself with a game of tag. But instead of chasing someone around and slapping them, it decided to turn itself off, wait a second, turn itself back on, but within a second or two before it could even get booted up, it would turn itself off again. This vicious cycle could only be stopped by disconnecting the power cable.

Obviously, there is never a good time to encounter this kind of computer problem. But when you're on a deadline of basically 3 weeks to compose a film score for a full-length film, well, that just makes matters worse.

Fortunately, for me, I still have my previous studio computer so I'm not at a total loss. But I did spend the entire day just installing two pieces of software (around 100GB each) just so I'd be able to keep working while I wait for my machine to get repaired. It is under warranty, but this is the second time I've had to have it fixed for basically the same issue. The last time they replaced the processor. This time they're replacing the motherboard. If it happens again, they'll be replacing a customer ;-)

Well, it looks as if the software is done installing so I better wrap this up and see if I can get anything done tonight.

- Big Blue