Happy, um, late January! / 2023 recap
Well, I definitely missed the boat on my usual year-end newsletter, but hope 2024 is off to a good start for you and yours.
Things are good here. Nicole and I hit the 9 year mark last fall, for one :) Also, she recently went from full-time to 4 days/week at her day job, and is thrilled to have more time for art, knitting, and general work/life balance.
I've been enjoying a Kurosawa kick, and have at long last returned to a daily music practice in the form of jazz piano lessons (shout out Open Studio). As much as I love computers, man it feels great to practice a non-virtual instrument. And there's some bonus synergy going on: jazz is such an unabashedly geeky genre in the music theory department I feel it's a cheat code for songwriting/composing/etc. in any style. I'm reminded of my first venture into jazz piano at the University of Iowa; the first time I realized practicing scales could be actually useful!
Career-wise, 2023 was mostly about leveling up: exciting new gear, intensive "cable management", and lots of learning. In addition to the piano, I've continued honing my mixing skills (perma-shout out Griffin Rodriguez). I did just finish another long-coming art pop EP but it'll probably take me a while to navigate the road of releasing and promoting the thing (how do I say the opposite of "my forte"?)
Anyway, some photo highlights from the year are below.
♥
Carl
Built my first portable recording rig, with my first pair of 1073 preamps (many recording engineers consider these their "desert island" pick!)
Got the piano tuned up (shout out David Mann) and did some recording tests — I'm lucky to have such a beautiful instrument (passed down from my Grandma Mary, and thanks to my parents for being kind enough to ship it to LA once I actually had room)
Sold/donated some of my earliest gear, like my first synth: the Alesis QS6.1; here I am playing it in 2006 with DIY electrified pants (mayyybe not the safest idea I’ve ever had)
Became a multi-hatphenate