Wednesday, October 10th, 2007

... will forever be the day that things finally went official for me. For better or worse, success or failure, I'm finally putting myself out there. No use beating around the bush then:

• The name of the band is Nonagon.
  
• The MySpace page for Nonagon is here.
  

Of course I'll continue to update this blog as (ir)regularly as ever- no changes there. But for now I'm going to keep it "insiders only" and let MySpace be the public front for my music.

But that's not all! I'm also proud to announce the release of a brand new track, hot-off-the-cpu: (updated 10/31/07)

Undelayed By Reflection

Notable about this one: it's the first song I've composed start-to-finish in OS X. Not that notable, I know, but I had to say something about it, and as usual I'm not in much of a mood to go into great (or even shallow) detail about the compositional process at the moment. I guess I will at least say that I'm proud of the way this one turned out. Oh, and I'm going to give it a day or two before pushing this one onto MySpace- gotta let it age a little. =)

I'll leave it at that for now, but since I've finally settled on a name there are plenty of things to look forward to here, including (but not limited to): logo design and artwork solicitations for YOU, demo tracklist ponderings, label submission musings, etc. Stay tuned!

What's In A Name? (Pt. A Bazillion And One)

The search for the perfect artist name continues... ad nauseum.

New contenders (all "available" as far as I can tell):

Ganzfeld Collective

Cipher Test

Gyre

Sable Sanctuary

Nonagon

Theban

... or some combination of these or other words.  Thoughts?

What's In A Name? (Pt. A Bazillion)

During our recent stay in New Mexico, Jess' dad showed me a little fan-produced written history of Nine Inch Nails and the making of Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral that he'd picked up some time ago.  Inside was a section on the origin of the band name (spoiler: no true significance revealed) that resonated strongly with me primarily for its declaration that choosing an appropriate artist name is one of the hardest things a musician is faced with.  Apparently Mr. Reznor went through literally hundreds of possibilities over a period of years before settling on NIN.  His criteria included the usual suspects: memorability, imagery, spellability- holy crap, sorry: I think I just invented a new genre!

[Scene: Art Gallery Basement, 3AM]

A pair of bespectacled, heavily tattooed greaser-types stand hunched in the dim light behind a worn conference room table.  Barely visible among the tangle of wires and electronics paraphernalia splayed before them are the vaguely familiar contours of at least a dozen red Speak-n-Spells, now heavily bent.  Otherworldly and entirely atonal bleeps burst from a pair of PA speakers at the far corners of the room, only to meet their end against the massed and motionless crowd gathered in the shadows just out of view.

A torn one-sheet by the entrance to the room reads: "First Annual Spell-A-Billy Showdown"

Yeah, that's right: Spell-A-Billy.  Holy shit I'm brilliant!

Anway... OK, I got a little sidetracked there.  The original point of all of this was:

1) To recap that choosing a name is hard, and

2) to list a couple more options to consider.

...which are:

Caesar Cipher

Shale

I kinda dig the sound of the former, though I don't know how I feel about the implications of nobility and power.

Band-name associationists- have at it!

On A Related Note

... how about "Mr. Veil"? Too nuptual?

It came to me as I was falling asleep last night and the high school connotations were just too bizzare to let slide*.

* Don't worry, that won't make any sense unless you attended NHHS around the time I did.

How About...

... "A Gossamer Veil"?

First name so far that's connected with me, and it doesn't appear to be taken.

Thoughts?

It's Showtime... Almost

With the completion of last week's posted track, I think I've got enough decent music under my belt to warrant a Myspace Music page. The problem is, I really have to come up with an "artist name" before I can do that. And inventing artist names appears to be the hardest damn thing in the world! So I'm throwing myself on the mercy of the few readers of this blog to please please please help me come up with something decent. I'd rather not use my name for now, but I'll consider pretty much any other option.

Go nuts! Make me a name by any means necessary. Free CD (whenever the hell that happens) and eternal gratitude for the winner... and probably for anyone else who actually listens to my stuff, but that's another story.

I'm really itching to move on to step three (profit), so let's do this!

He's Alive, or "What's in a name?"

Fancy meeting me here, huh!? The project was delayed but not forgotten- I had a ten day visit from a special someone (that'd be Jess for the uninitiated), followed by a somewhat impromptu trip to Southern Mexico with Nick and Oliver that ended with our triumphant(ly bug bitten) return this Monday night. I'm just now getting back into the swing of things, but I think the break did me good; I feel energized and ready to get back to work! Music work, that is.

Quite a few new projects in the works right now, and even a finished track! Though that one was for a special occasion (Jess' birthday), so maybe it doesn't really count. I'm reconsidering the whole "secret respository" thing- might just throw up a myspace page with some rotating tracks to make things easier. But if I were to do that, I'd probably need...

A name.

I've struggled for a long time with the idea of an artist name- part of me likes the idea of having an alias that I can assume, but another part feels like that'd be the equivalent of a five year old playing dress up. Or even worse, a self-absorbed twenty-something who thinks he's way cooler than he is. You know, like those kids that start calling themselves "DJ Awesome!" before UPS has even delivered their shitty new belt drive turntables. Hmm, maybe I'm being too harsh- that came off sounding a little jealous didn't it? Not very mature of me to judge others, even if they're named DJ Awesome!. On second thought I kinda even like that name. Ahhh! Now you see what a struggle this whole question has been for me.

So, any suggestions? One caveat though: I'm really not interested in a "DJ" name, since I don't consider myself a DJ. At least not for this project. If you're not convinced, here's a little six-minute impromptu "DJ set" I recorded God knows how long ago, found on my computer this afternoon. If that's not party-rockin', I don't know what is! So we'll leave the "DJ" prefix out for now I think.

All your favorite club hits!

More soon, I promise!