Filed Under (blog, general) by Sean on August-24-2016
This summer I opted out of the fifty songs in 90 days 50/90 challenge to focus on practicing the heck out of my instruments using yousician.com, and to start pre-production on my long time coming, and still a long time to come next album, with my friend Nick Howell, who is just about to release a brilliant debut album.
While my own album remains mired in procrastinati… — I mean pre-production, I keep showing up on other people’s projects. My FAWM 2015 co-write with Daniel Jun Kim, Search For Spock, is on his Pop Mythology and Friends album.
Earlier this year, I had a co-write with Stephen Wordsmith on his delightfully eclectic album, Tinnitus.
It has been a summer filled with music. Â Earlier this summer, my family went to an annual favorite, The Canturbury Folk Festival in Ingersoll. Â Later my mind was blown by a screening of the Frank Zappa documentary, Eat that Question at the TIFF theater.
We have just returned from a 2 week east coast vacation. Â Amongst the great scenery, the seafood, and the good times, we took in some amazing music. Â Highlights included the Lunenberg Kitchen Party, where I played a couple tunes and Old Home Week in Charlottetown which featured a nightly showcase of PEI musicians organized by the amazing Eddy Quinn.
A personal musical highlight came half unexpectedly at the Hank Snow museum, in the old train station in Liverpool NS.  As expected, the museum houses a retrospective of the life and career of Hank Snow, but also is home to the Nova Scotia Country Music Hall of Fame.  I recorded 2 versions of Hank Snow’s Fool Such as I in liverpool, one in front of the hank snow museum, but the wind noise is overpowering.  The other, on the shore turned out much better.
We capped the holiday off in Kingston with 25000 people for the telecast of the last Tragically Hip concert.
Each January, about 40 friends rent Wildfire Outdoor Education Centre in Wyevale Ontario for a DIY musicians getaway weekend of great food, music, and workshops presented by the participants. Â Here is my DIY workshop on how February Album Writing Month and Nanowrimo changed my creative process.
Song skirmish– someone suggests a skirmish at a certain time. At the given time, they post a title. Then you have one hour to write, record and post a song
Feedback on the site is invaluable. Usually within an hour of posting you will get a couple or more comments from other writers.
Collaboration: some writers are pure lyricists and will post –‘ needs music’ to invite people to set their song to music.
Strong culture of sharing your music and providing constructive feedback to others.
Premise: Write a novel in 30 days from Nov 1 to Nov 30.
Supposed to be a new novel project– not one in progress 1667 words a day– 50000 words minimum. You will not write a novel in 30 days, but if you succeed you will have a very good start on a first draft.
I finished nanowrimo as did my daughter and niece.
Culture of Nanowrimo: Local events and write-ins, online chatrooms and forums,
Word wars– timed writing against others.
Culture of not sharing writing in progress. Would be too time consuming– interfere with people’s ability to write 1667 words daily.
Saturday Songwriters at the MCC. Third Saturday morning of the month at 11am in the Roxy Cafe at the Midland Cultural Centre. For FAWM we will meet Jan 18 then every Saturday in February 1,8,15,22 and March 1.
Time to Write: Song Skirmish Title: Polar Vortex, Snow Day, Do It Yourself
We had 4 writers in the group and here is our finished song.
Do It Yourself
Listen Here
(DIY 2014  Jan 11, 2014)  (c) Mary  Marcolin, Ed Winacott, Sean McGaughey,  Chris Johnston
Filed Under (general, music) by Sean on February-13-2013
 After 13 days of February Album Writing Month, I have completed 11 songs towards my goal of 14 songs in 28 days. Right now, I am tentatively titling the collection “Forevuary”, but that may change. You can follow my profile on the FAWM website, or listen below as I post new songs.  And check out some of the other great songwriters while you are there.  As of today there is over 1-1/2 weeks of music written in February in all kinds of musical styles and genres.
Nova Scotia Songwriter, Dave Gunning was in town last week for a few days working in schools courtesy of Stellula Music in the Schools. Dave Gunning singer-songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist and session player. He will be releasing his eighth album this spring. He received two 2008 East Coast Music Awards for Male Artist of the Year and Folk Recording of the Year for his sixth recording, “House For Sale.” You can purchase his albums through his website at davegunning.com.
You can leave comments on the blog, send me an email to ductapeguy at hotmail dot com, send me a voice feedback at 206-337-0611, or join the For The Sake of the Song Podcast group on Facebook.
For the Sake of The Song is fast approaching its 100th episode. Join us for a live recording celebrating this milestone on Friday June 5, 2009 at 7pm EDT at the Rye Cafe in Midland, Ontario.  My guests for the evening will be Marlon Gibbons, Jennifer Ives and Ken Allen. We will be recording one or two live episodes of For the Sake of the Song followed by musical performances by each of us. We will also be streaming the event live over ustream. Stay tuned to ductapeguy.net for more details. There is no cover charge for this event, but we will be accepting donations for Stellula Music in the Schools.
So my sister has started up a cool concert series in Toronto called Rockin’ The Cradle, the last Sunday of every month, at the Tranzac Club in Toronto. They are billing it as an event for people aged 0 to 100. They lower the volume, have activities and a dance space for the kids and book family friendly indie rock acts (and others).
I’ll let my sister explain it from her blog.
I’m just a regular music loving mama who loves being a parent, but misses going to and playing live music, so I decided to organize rock shows for parents that kids can come to and enjoy. These are all age shows that are appropriate for babes in arms, toddlers, children, teenagers, parents, grandparents, etc. etc. The only people who shouldn’t come are those who dislike children (there will be a lot of children in attendance)!
This month’s concert is on February 22 from 1-3 pm at the Tranzac Club (292 Brunswick Avenue) features Bry Webb from the Constantines and a group called Positive Thinking Seminar (at least I think they are a band 🙂 ). The event is pay as you can and families are encouraged to come out. Apparently the Tranzac also serves a yummy Sunday brunch at that time.
I’ll be booting over there right after Podcamp Toronto wraps up and spending some time with my family listening to some great music.
Tomorrow is April K27 and it’s on a weekend, woohoo.
This week there are a few initiatives on the Net you may wish to comment upon.
1) In some sad news, Ross from the Dry Shave podcast has had a heart attack. Mark Blevis has organized a campaign to send Ross funny get well cards. For more information, you can check out Mark’s post at http://www.markblevis.com/humourous-get-well-cards-for-ross/ .
Please send your humourous get well cards by May 5 to:
Zee
c/o Mark Blevis
PO Box 4813, Station E
Ottawa, ON K1S 5H9
Canada
Mark will forward them on to Ross to enjoy.
2) Mike the Birdman Dodd of This Week in Geek has organized a campaign to help his friend, classmate and podcasting partner, Pierce Derks. In short: Pierce is an American Citizen applying for Canadian Residency and the process is stalled. This is putting his education at Niagara College in jeopardy unless he can come up with about $10000 for International student tuition fees. You can find out more at http://www.savepierce.org.
3) Congratulations to Dave Fleet ( http://davefleet.com ) for completing the Boston Marathon, and for using his marathon run to raise $2315 for cancer research.
That’s all for me today
Take some time tomorrow to send some feedback to a podcast and continue the conversation.
There is a wonderful music store in Downtown Midland, Johnstone’s Music Land which has been run by 3 generations of the same family. It is a funky small town music store which has over the years sold musical instruments, stereos, rented rehearsal space, sold records, then tapes, then CDs, and rented PA equipment. They also were great about having a rack in front of the store for recordings by local musicians. In short, it is much like any other small town music store. I pop in there when I need strings for my guitar or just to shoot the breeze. When I went in the other day to chat, I noticed that the CD racks have been replaced by shelves and shelves of sheet music and more floor space for instruments. I asked Steve if they had gotten out of CD sales. He said that it was no longer profitable for a small business to stock and sell CDs. It’s been many years since I bought a mainstream CD, so I asked when they had had gotten rid of the CDs. He said that it was 2 years ago. I hadn’t even noticed. It was the only retail store where you could buy my CD. Ouch.
I also noticed a couple weeks ago that the gigantic Music World in a mall in Barrie has closed down and has not been replaced. I guess the world really has moved to digital.
