Manlio Rules

I’ve been a musician for over 2/3 of my life. I’ve switched around instruments, and at one time or another have had a basic to moderate proficiency in the cello, guitar, piano, bass, and i can even sing a little bit.

About 10 years ago, when i was living in Philadelphia, i decided i wanted to start playing the drums. I got my brother’s old kit from high school and moved it to my basement in center city. I even got pretty good. But i was only in Philly for 4-5 months, and when i moved to NY there was no place for it, so i handed it over to my mom, went back to bass guitar, and sort of forgot about it.

When I moved to San Francisco 4 years ago, somewhat devoid of social contacts, i took up the drums again. I bought an electronic kit, put it in my room, and started practicing. Even took maybe 5-6 lessons from a guy out in the sunset. over 2-3 months, i regained my previous skills and got a bit better, but as i had more of a social life, drums once again fell back.

And, about two months ago, after doing a few gigs with my rudimentary drum skills, i decided to get serious about it. I began taking lessons two days a week, bought a kit for the rehearsal space, and i play drums maybe 3-4 days a week, either for band practice or by myself.

the odd thing is that while i always liked playing drums, this time I’m really enjoying myself. I feel myself connected to the music in a way that i haven’t felt on the guitar since i left new york. I leave my lessons and i keep tapping out beats. I work on my rudiments when i’m sitting on the bus. It’s quite awesome.

I”m not sure what the lesson learned here is, other than I’ve found that focusing on drums and only drums has been a key part of the learning process. Though I enjoy being a generalist, i think that there’s something to be said for high intensity immersion in a skill, especially when starting out. It’s very rewarding to watch myself get noticeably better in a short period of time, and while i know that a plateau will occur eventually, it’s great to be on the upward curve for now.

so, if there’s something you want to do, find a month or two, clear your schedule and do it.

I have been thinking for awhile about doing a music project where i see what kinds of sounds i can get out of different objects, try to create songs using nothing but just the sounds from an item. it’s not a particularly new idea, but it still appeals to me. I’ll be posting them as I make them and hopefully by the end i’ll have a full album which people can download. these are generally intended to be quick sketches, i think this one took me maybe an hour of recording and writing time. enjoy!

bottlesong

I am currently trying to fill a role for a illustrator for my company. I posted an ad on craigslist and received a ton of resumes and portfolios. well, not a ton, maybe like 15 in the first day. His my advice to job seekers based on these resumes.

1. don’t just send me your resume with a link to the job description. at least say hello and introduce yourself.
2. I don’t care what format your resume is in, but Rich Text Fomat? Really?
3. If you send me a .pdf of your work samples, something under 50mb would be nice.
4. Your portfolio should have a title. it goes in the “title” tag in the header. Acceptable titles include: your name, “portfolio”, “your name’s portfolio”, some other random site name you made up like “3superwebvision”, or some combination of the above. Unacceptable titles include: “index”, “index2″, “mysite.html”, or “this site created by microsoft FrontPage”.
5. If i’m looking for a Flash designer, and Flash Designer is in both the title of the position and mentioned as the number one software requirement, please don’t send me a portfolio with NO FLASH SAMPLES.

Less obnoxious but still

1. If you send me a link to your flash portfolio, try and make sure that there aren’t a ton of scripting errors on it, causing my debugger to pop up repeatedly. I should admit that i may have some of these on my site, and i sure see them a lot on professional websites, so i’m sympathetic to this one, but still.
2. Try to mention the company name at least once in your email or show me some sign that you read the job description and maybe even went to the web page. i know it’s tough when you’re applying to a ton of jobs but still.
3. If you do mention the company name, double check to make sure you spelled it right.

Seriously I like nothing about the life of the business traveler. I don’t like to fly, I don’t like talking to random people at hotel bars, I get easily confused in rental cars and all things being equal I would take my own bed and a 10am wakeup time over a freshly made hotel bed and an alarm for 6. And this seems pretty obvious to me. The one thing I love about business travel is the corporate card. Colleagues drive free, expenses get paid, and I can feel like a big shot expensing hotel Internet so I can set up the demo before bed and check into my flight.

Over the past four winters, I have driven over 10000 miles back and forth to lake tahoe. Here are some things I’ve learned:

1. Everyone just wants to get there safely, except for the people in huge pickup trucks, who just want to get there as fast as possible and give you the finger if you drop below 50mph, even in a blizzard.

2. When in doubt, chain up.

3. Make sure the first time you put the chains on isn’t also the first time you need them. In other words, practice.

4. white smoke out the exhaust is bad. Stop immediately and find a shop.

5. Traffic on the way? Bad. Traffic on the way back? Unbearable.

6. Tahoe is tough on cars. If you love your car and can’t bear a scratch on it, rent one you care less about.

7. If your car gets stuck in the snow, put it in a low gear, get outside, and gently rock it back and forth, only pushing the gas when the car is going forward. This is easier with more people.

8. Which reminds me, don’t drive alone in bad weather on mountains.

9. If you get a chance in a snow filled empty parking lot, practice quick turns and stops. Useful AND fun.

1. Snowboarding
2. Warm weather in the city
3. New year means new changes
4. Lent.
5. Spring training.

Also fantasy baseball, even if I don’t play anymore

http://misadigital.com/index.html

My obsession in life is to have a midi guitar. There, I said it. I have always been obsessed with using my chosen musical platform (guitar) to make sounds commonly not found with guitars (pads, horns, violins). Waaay back in 2001 I owned a roland divided pickup for my fender strat, along with the accoutrements needed to play. It wasn’t a bad tool but it had a few annoying habits, most commonly triggering notes that i didn’t play. I will admit to being a “loose” guitar player (sloppy) so it’s not uncommon for me to hit strings i don’t mean. on the guitar this isn’t a huge deal since i can instantly mute them, but the roland would still trigger those notes, often quite loudly. This was not ideal

In a case of really terrible timing, i sold this guitar right before I started graduate school, where i spent my first year learning… wait for it… all about midi software! brilliant. My first semester of my second year i actually went so far as to BUILD a midi guitar. It was called “midi guitar”. it had about 20 buttons, a few knobs, and it caught on fire one time during the ITP show. Also, Vernon Davis from Living Colour played it! But i don’t think he liked it very much.

About a year ago i bought a yamaha ez-eg “teaching” guitar which also happens to function as a midi guitar. on the plus side, it was very affordable ($300). On the minus side, the damn thing just loves to play notes. All the time! Right notes, wrong notes, any notes it can think of. It can’t get enough of triggering notes. So i started using it less and less, since i found that even my stupid fingers could play a keyboard with more reliability than this thing.

But now, now we have something. This guy in sydney has apparently built a touch screen midi guitar that’s also a linux computer. I don’t know how much it’s going to cost, but my price willingness for such a thing is embarrassingly high.

And yes, i realize that if i had just spent the last 7 years learning keyboards I wouldn’t be having this problem.

I’ve spend the last year without a car (thank you transmission failure!). San Francisco is a strange place to be without a car. sometimes it’s refreshingly awesome to not have to think in the back of my mind: “where am I parked? when is street cleaning? Is tomorrow considered the fifth monday of the month, and if so, do i have to move the car? what color is the curb? what the hell does that mean?”

and other times it’s remarkably frustrating, like when i’m trying to get from SOMA to the Marina and there are no buses that get me there before a half hour, even though the walking time is probably less than that.

I’ve been using zipcar, and i get a lot of people asking me: “how is that”. this is what i think:

Pros:

1. sometimes cars are right near you! for example, i have a lot across the street, and 4 more lots within 2-3 blocks. this is awesome.

2. gas and insurance and parking included in the price, which is sweet

3. you can park anywhere else that zipcars live! actually that’s a lie, you can’t do that, and i would never do such a thing. ever.

4. the cars are generally in pretty good shape, except for the mazda on lombard and polk with the battery that died on me.

5. i can’t speak more about not having to deal with street parking when i’m done with driving. just a relief.

Cons:

1. if you need to use the car more than one full day a week, it’s VERY expensive. like, easily $500 – $600 a month assuming 2 full days a week of use. eek.

2. if you don’t plan well or live in a place that isn’t near a lot of cars, it’s a pain. i had to walk a half mile to get to a car one time, carrying like 4 bags. not ideal.

3. more often than i’d like, the cars are either not where they’re supposed to be, or the gas has been left too close to empty

4. it is hard to learn how to drive a new car every few days. i find that i’m a less confident driver if every time i get behind the wheel, it’s a different car.

all things considered, if i didn’t have access to my girlfriends car most of the time (moochy moochy). i would probably not still be doing zipcar, unless i lived and worked in the city.

i keep thinking about doing a much smaller “car share”. like, get 4-5 people, split the cost of a used car and parking, and then find a way to insure it and share the time usage. i’m not sure how much this would cost but it may be cheaper than the monthly zipcar cost. everyone would need to live pretty close together, which makes it a little bit trickier.

one other good thing i will say is that for trips to tahoe, the larger zipcars are competitive price wise to renting an awd car from the normal rental channels, when you consider that insurance and gas are included with the zipcar. for tahoe trips that’s a lifesaver, especially if you can split the cost with someone else.