711

711, originally uploaded by benjaminjaybaier.

The house in this picture has been a big part of my life for the last 5 years. The same week Emily and I met I auditioned for and joined H Is for Hellgate. This was the house Jamie Hellgate lived in and where we practiced. Jamie (and Mel) moved out and Keren, Emily and I moved in.

The last 4 years in this house have been amazing for me. In this time different folks have come and go. Emily and I are married now. Other couples that live in this house are on the road to marriage. There have been so many parties, birthdays, and BBQs. There was a time we had over 700 bottles of wine stocked up in the basement. There have been many rehearsals and jams with H Is for Hellgate, We Wrote the Book on Connectors, and others. It has been a place with enough space and freedom to allow us to be creative.

Today I was alone in the house and put on the first H Is for Hellgate album. It was recorded in the basement. I had a rush of memories and emotions from the last few years. I think it's exactly what I needed to prepare me for the next few months. To remember all the good (and bad) things that have happened and know that those things will always be a part of me.

That being said, it is now time to look ahead to the future and of course continue to attempt to live in the present moment without dwelling to much on the past OR future.

Emily and I will live there for another month before moving down the street to The Bucy's before moving to Portland this winter. I'm excited to begin this new chapter in our life. Let's just hope we can find a house this Rad when we get to Portland!

2010! The year of Cookbook Factory Outlet

Two awesome gifts a Theremin and a talk box. Christmas 2009, originally uploaded by benjaminjaybaier.

This will be the year of CFO! I'm sure of it! I have new songs in the works and I will release something "official" this year.
I got a Theremin from Emily for xmas and a Talk Box from Emily's dad Mike Bucy. My arsenal of awesome weird instruments is growing and will be put to good use.

We're gonna blow some minds in 2010!
Watch out!

New Beginings

Wow it's really been 2 months since I've written!? I'm still playing the childrens music with Brian Vogan and that is still fun. Sunday we played at a pumpkin patch and it was awesome. There were so many familys and kids enjoying the two sets we played.
Brian asked me to join another project with him and Kory doing more "non kids" pop music. The idea is that everybody brings songs to the table and we work on them together. This is perfect for me because I'm good at writing most of or part of a song, but lack something that helps me finish them properly. This is also perfect because Brian knows a ton about songwriting, harmony, chords and such. Kory also has a lot of knowledge on the subject. In addition to knowledge on the subject they both have such passion and enthusiasm that is infectious.

I am really excited to learn from these guys and I am feeling like this is the path I'm meant to be on. I've been thinking about going back to school possibly for songwriting or recording or some mix of the two, but right now I think this is a huge opportunity to learn about songwriting and quite possibly better for me than going to school.

And now it's up to me. I need to lock myself in my room and get to work. Luckily it's raining outside and it will be pretty much everyday until spring.

Here's a nice video from Brian Vogan's first album. We are currently in and out of the studio working on the second album.

Changes

So I've already fallen behind on this blog and my mission to improve myself as a muscician and songwriter. Well maybe I'm being hard on myself. H Is for Hellgate played our last show ever last month so that frees up some time for me to work on new projects. We Wrote the Book on Connectors is probably going to be playing less gigs so I'm thinking it's the perfect time to lock myself in the studio and work on writing, recording and studying songwriting. Speaking of WE, I will also try to help out Mike more with the We Songwriting Service. But wait, as soon as one project has sadly ended I have begun playing childrens music with Brian Vogan and two other awesome guys Kory and Jeremy. We've done a couple of gigs that have been really fun and I'm going to continue to play with them and play on Brian's second album. Playing and hanging out with these three guys has been really inspiring because they are really into not only the art of songwriting but the academic side and they love to talk about it. I fell that I can learn much from them. So I'm really excited about the possibilities I have right now. In addition to this I'm going to still be playing music with Jamie Hellgate.

So basically as soon as I thought I was not going to be busy doing a bunch of different stuff I realized I will still be doing a lot of stuff, but I need to make time for my personal development as an artist.

My first order of business will be learning how to put up songs on my blog. I will probably put ideas and songs I think are not my best (but still worth putting up somewhere) on the blog and I will save the others for putting on my website and maybe releasing an ep/album/whatever.

Which brings me to the second order of business which is making a website. Hopefully I can bribe Emily to do a lot of this for me since I have no idea how to do it. Along with this I want to update the Cookbook Factory Outlet Myspace Page as well as create a Facebook page and whatnot.

And finally the third order of business which will be to release something physical. I'm thinking I'll do a 4-5 song "ep" and do all handmade packaging. I've been inspired by some of the cd's we were making in the Hellgate Club for Musically Advanced Ladies and Gentleman and think handmade things are special.

So anyway I think we have good jumping off point here. Wish me luck.

60 Second Song #1

So a lot of times I'll sit down to work on music and feel overwhelmed by the possibilities I have. So I decided a couple of weeks ago that whenever I was feeling sort of blocked that I would just record something about a minute long. For some reason this takes the pressure off. I got this idea from The Residents' Commercial Album. The two I've done so far are just little instrumental (well, there's singing, but no words) clips. I also recently got a little flip mino video camera so I decided to combine the first "song" with some video I took on the ferry to Orcas Island the other day. I think it turned out ok. I Hopefully I will do many more of these and my goal is to make them all pretty different and better as I go.

Instead of a song...

I was hoping for my second blog post I would post a song that I had finished. Since starting this blog and realizing my goal to hone my songwriting and recording skills I have recorded one song called "We're All Gonna Die" and also 2 of what I'm calling 60 second songs which are basically an exercise to get my "creative juices" flowing. I have not mixed these yet, so instead I have this video.

He're I go again.

So everytime I start a diary or journal it usually lasts for about a week. Let's hope I do better this time. I want something to read 10 years from now to remember what was going on at this point in my life. So good luck... me.