Travis Conrad

So, it’s about that time again…

That’s right, I have another new workout routine. Let’s see how long this one lasts. The previous one survived, what, three months? Probably less. ANYWAY!

Here’s the skinny. Follow along closely children.
1. I set three alarms on my phone. Each alarm should be a good 4-6 hours apart depending on your daily routine. I chose 9:30 AM, 2:30 PM and 7:30 PM.

2. When each alarm goes off, my phone says “20 push-ups”. And so (obviously) I do 20 push-ups. I can adjust the alarm to tell me to do less or more depending on how it goes.

3. The alarms go off every-day. Naturally there will be times when I can’t do it (like if I’m working) but for the most part if my phone tells me to do something I do it.

4. Depending on how the muscle groups react, I might switch one of the alarms to tell me to do something else (like bicycle crunches).

I think this idea is brilliant (naturally) for a couple of reasons. First off, it’s low impact but not LOW impact. There’s constant use everyday so it’s more of a gradual break-down rather than a huge wearing out at the gym. I chose push-ups because they work a wide variety of muscles (pecs, bi-ceps, tri-ceps, abs). Secondly, it can be easily adjusted if it ends up being too strenuous or not strenuous enough. And thirdly it’s all automated. I don’t have to worry about forgetting or slacking.

So, wish me luck! We’ll see how this goes. I’ll keep you posted if it ends up working.

In other news, I’ve been tweaking my rendition of O Canada for string quartet over the past couple days and accordingly updating the mp3 file in the previous post every time. I added a short 4 bar intro which I feel really adds a lot. Also, my good double-bass playing friend Dan Wheeler who’s in music at Western gave me some constructive criticism on the piece which made sense to me, so accordingly I broke up the constant motion of 8th notes by throwing in some 16th notes which help keep it exciting and less droning. I really appreciate good criticism, as long as it is constructive and not just someone trying to be a douche. If you don’t like something, say why. And if it’s just because you don’t like the style, then say that, but even if you don’t like it, you can still comment on the quality and form. That’s why I’m so lucky I have the friends I do, cause they get that.

I finished A Voicemail, Charlotte’s big solo number after her second run in with Kim. I’m about 97% satisfied with it. 1% is for the intro which needs more work and the 2% is for part of the verse music which I want to fiddle around with just a little bit. I really hope one of my leads on a female singer comes through soon to help me record it, so if you know anyone in London that might be interested, tell them to give me a shout.

-Travis Conrad

Happy birthday Canada!

In honour of Canada’s 142nd birthday, I arranged O Canada for string quartet. I like to think of it as a birthday present to our great country. The idea came to me out of the blue on my way home from work and it was more or less fully formed upon arrival. Over the last couple days I’ve been getting it all down before it gets forgotten, or worse, tarnished in memory. My good friend Darcy Blinch and his string quartet will hopefully help me make a recording of this for me to share, in the mean time you’ll have to settle for the computer generated version. If anyone is interested in the sheet music just send me a heads up at travis at travisconrad dot com.

Enjoy your Canada Day everyone (and hopefully my arrangement :D ).

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-Travis Conrad

PS Guess who got Twitter! Some bastard took TravisConrad so I had to settle for TravisOfConrad. It’s the best name that was still available, trust me.

When life to starts to fail ya then head to Australia. :]

Have fun sis! Seeya in a year. Punch a roo for me.

-Travis Conrad

I stumbled upon this magnificent piece on youtube today. Libertango by Ástor Piazzolla. It floods me with so many emotions. It’s funky, it’s jazzy, it’s got a Bond feel to it, it’s latin, it’s epic, it’s freeing. Holy sheeeet. I love the wood blocks in the beginning, the strings that carry the tempo and that bandolin that weaves in and out. And that ending, holy shit, that’s how you end a song. I looked up Ástor on wikipedia and his story is actually quite fascinating. He won a grant to go study with legendary French composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. This is his recounting of their meeting.

When I met her, I showed her my kilos of symphonies and sonatas. She started to read them and suddenly came out with a horrible sentence: “It’s very well written.” And stopped, with a big period, round like a soccer ball. After a long while, she said: “Here you are like Stravinsky, like Bartók, like Ravel, but you know what happens? I can’t find Piazzolla in this.” And she began to investigate my private life: what I did, what I did and did not play, if I was single, married, or living with someone, she was like an FBI agent! And I was very ashamed to tell her that I was a tango musician. Finally I said, “I play in a night club.” I didn’t want to say cabaret. And she answered, “Night club, mais oui, but that is a cabaret, isn’t it?” “Yes,” I answered, and thought, “I’ll hit this woman in the head with a radio….” It wasn’t easy to lie to her.

She kept asking: “You say that you are not pianist. What instrument do you play, then?” And I didn’t want to tell her that I was a bandoneon player, because I thought, “Then she will throw me from the fourth floor.” Finally, I confessed and she asked me to play some bars of a tango of my own. She suddenly opened her eyes, took my hand and told me: “You idiot, that’s Piazzolla!” And I took all the music I composed, ten years of my life, and sent it to hell in two seconds.

—Astor Piazzolla, A Memoir

I hope my memoirs are filled with stories like that someday.

-Travis Conrad

I personally hate video game achievements. I recall playing Fable 2 and having those stupid xbox achievements pop up every now and then. There just seemed to be no point to them, and that’s probably where my distaste for them arose.

However.

I stumbled upon this game today and couldn’t help but play it to the very end (which is rare for me and flash games). It’s all about the achievements, and personally, I found it incredibly rewarding. Had a good laugh too.

Finally, warmth and sunshine have returned to London. I’m hoping we’ve entered into Canadian warm season (sometimes refered to as ’summer’), but the chances are that this is all a fluke and we’ll end up getting a blizzard on Tuesday. I swear we only have two seasons: Nuclear Winter and Sweatyourballsoff Summer, with a brief transitional period between the two usually involving high winds, slush and a lack of motivation to continue living.

ON THAT NOTE, I’m gonna grab a beer and work on my tan I thinks.

-(the hopefully not sunburnt) Travis Conrad

The eleventh song of the musical is now finished! And what an emotional ride it’s been (musical speaking anyway). The song’s called Guys Always Disappoint: The Plan, and it involves Kim, Justin and Natalie plotting a way to break up Cam and his new girl, as well as them just ranting about guys in general. It’s a very busy song, and it has to be since it’s so far into the musical.

The songs that make up the middle chunk of the musical (After Dinner with Kim, After Dinner with Cam, Charlotte’s Monologue and So Much) are mostly slower songs, especially So Much, and while slow songs are important, too many of them can make a musical seem to drag on. Now that we’re in the second half of the musical, shit is hitting the fan and the audience needs to get stimulated with punchy melodies and exciting tempos.

The pattern in the first bar below (Quarter note/Eighth note/Quarter note/Eighth note/Quarter note) is repeated throughout the song, and if you can pick it out, you’ll see how it has an exciting effect to it. Also, if you notice the bass notes in the third bar, they follow the same pattern (Quarter/Eighth/Quarter/Eighth/Quarter). The punchiness of it is just freakin’ awesome and I’m thrilled with how I wove it in throughout the song.

Tempo and Melody example. Note the staccato used for extra punchiness

Another thing I should note about this song is the segment about three quarters in. I switched the playback instrument to a celesta to help me visualize (figuratively, of course) the sound better. I wanted that part to have a sinister yet haunting feel to it, something I couldn’t manage quite right with just a piano. Kim is pissed to the high hells and she’s not fooling around here, and I imagined her as like a witch in the forest. She’s planning revenge on the obstacles in her path, the key word here being planning. That’s one of Kim’s defining features, her ability to plan and problem solve, and this part of the song is meant to show how serious she takes the whole thing. Sure sometimes her foresight is utter shit, but her planning skills are always top notch. She knows what she wants and she plans a way to get it, that’s what Kim does, that’s who she is, and that’s why the celesta part works so well, because it’s so serious and dark that you know she’s not messing around.

I’m pretty pleased with the lyrics here. There’s one line I still need to rephrase, but other than that  I think most lines are bang on. The great thing about collaborating with someone is you get a second opinion, and you know it’s going to be earnest. Sean (the playwright) wants this to succeed as much as I do, and so I know he’s not going to sugar-coat his constructive criticisms like friends would, just like I in turn did with the script. He pointed out the line that I’m going to rephrase because he said it was confusing/unclear, and after a strenuous amount of effort on both our parts I came to understand what he meant. The outcome: a better song.

11. Guys Always Disappoint: The Plan

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Kim:

I’ve tried lying. And persuasion. I even tried TRUTH on a desperate occasion.
I’m not just gonna sit here and daunt.
I’m Kimberly Young and I get what I want!

Justin and Natalie:

What’s the plan Kim? What’s the plan?
How are you gonna get back your man?

Kim:

She doesn’t know who she’s messin’ with so I’ll have to teach her a lesson.
And keep her guessin’.
She doesn’t know the one thing you can count on men to do.

Send me your feedback if you love me! Gotta go! Desperate Housewives is on.

-Travis Conrad

So I’m a little bit obsessed with this song at the moment.

Don’t even say it. I’m just as disappointed as the rest of the you. It’s just so good though!

-Travis Conrad, Mothafucka

Guess who just finished a song for a musical called Dysfunction? Wow. That was lame. I’m far too lazy and tired right now to delete it though and think of something wittier to write. Moving on….

I finished the song entitled Kim tonight, after several weeks of tweaking and hammering and fiddling with chords and rhymes and designers name. I’m pretty happy with the final product. The song started out as a 3/4 waltz, then spent some time as a 6/8 waltz, experimented briefly in 5/4 time (that was messy) and finally settled down in 4/4 common time BUT with a mean tango-esque rhythm. This is the first song where I’ve actually written the music independent from the vocals. Everything else I’ve done has been mostly derived from the vocals, something I’ve been wanting to get away from, and this time it just worked out really well. I can imagine this arranged for some heavy strings with a piano playing the upbeat sections, maybe even with a little snare drum too. Oh yes, a snare drum would be exquisite.

This song features Kim (Cameron’s ex-girlfriend) and her two best friends Justin and Natalie. This is where Justin really gets a chance to shine, granted that the actor playing him can act AND sing at the same time. If he can’t, well, then it’s just going to feel dark and out of place. Halfway through Kim takes over, and at the end she has a little reflection moment alone. The melody shifts notes but the beat stays the same and I think the effect turned out sharp, although I’m still finding sometimes I’ll write some music and it turns out different from what I envision but still awesome. There’s also the first couple lyrics included below. Let me know what you think!

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J: First we’ll get you out of the dumps.

K: I’m not in the dumps!

N: It looks like you are.

J: We’ll get you back in your Gucci pumps.

K: Okay, fine, I’m in.

N: You’ll look like a star!

J: Rather than looking like Courtney Love, you’ll be our Kim who’s worthy of the dresses and purses from Guess and Lacoste that you’d die if you lost!

Hehehehehe, yes, the whole song is like that. I tried my best here to emulate the banter and one-liners Sean’s written for the characters in the script. And I like it cause they’re not HAHA one-liners, but rather aha or hoho.

No word back on the job interview yet, but here’s hoping. Tomorrow I start on Guys Always Disappoint: The Plan. Yes I’m aware most song names don’t have colons in them but I’M THE GOD-DAMNED COMPOSER, I’LL NAME MY SONG Albatross ^_^: 81[The Final Seabird] IF I WANT TO…. ok that looks a little bad, convention and I are really getting along at the moment. Gotta go make pasta k bye!

-Travis Conrad the Maladjusted? lol. Malnourished maybe.

I found a couple incredibly awesome new comics within the past month, my favourite of which is definitely Hark! A Vagrant, by fellow Canadian Kate Beaton. Mostly about history, I find them incredibly fresh, which is rare in a webcomic.

Other new delights I’ve stumbled upon include the maelstrom of cynicism that is The Fart Party, an actually humourous gamer comic called Fanboys and the curious experiment called Slow Wave, a comic made of real dreams that people submit to the artist, who then draws them.

I apologize for the remarkably horrendous job I’ve been doing updating, but you know, such and such excuse etc. etc.

On the plus side, I have a job interview coming up and have almost finished the scintillating Our Kim for Dysfunction. It’s a humourous tango-esque song with an underbite of dissatisfaction for living a life made up of expensive labels and a polished exterior. Should have more to post on it soon!

-Travis Conrad

Aha, February is upon us. FINALLY. The last of month of what I consider Canadian winter is also (thank god) the shortest, and so before we know it March will be here and we’ll be living in a world of slush. Wait, what’s so good about that….. Anyway, I realized most of you probably feel neglected so I made myself a delicious citrusy cup of Coronation Street Green tea and decided to write a new blog post.

A couple days ago I wrapped up what is more or less Dysfunction’s love song, mind you the song isn’t about love at all. Budding romance would be a more fitting term I suppose. It’s called So Much, and it comes immediately after Charlotte’s Monologue. It’s a song about fresh romance and possibility, “So much to see, and so much to do”.

I’m really happy with the music for it, it’s easily my favourite song so far (which is saying a lot). After this my favourite is probably Charlotte My Dear Love (forget it) Confident you know what, I don’t think I can choose. This means Dysfunction is ALL-MOST-DONE. Be excited. There’s not much left at all (hence the title of this post).

So here it is, just with piano. Instead of the normal synth voices I used synth strings to do the vocal notes, I think it sounds better in the this case.

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- Travis Conrad