Here’s another quick post. I’m rehearsing for my online show coming up this Halloween, and I’m trying out a new DJ software (appropriately named “djay”). If you want to see the show (it’s free, by the way), go to jwhitmanmusic.com for all the details.

Sam and Tim, by Amanda

Last night we had a full rehearsal at Simon’s for this Thursday’s Release Party of the Half a Dino Compilation album.

The band will feature:
Sam on guitar / vocals
Jake on guitar / bass
Amanda on bass / vocals
Daniel on drums
Tim Glasgow on keyboards
Sara Froese on vocals

We ran through the set a bunch of times and figured out a fun arrangement of “Love Like A River.” (The girls’ harmonies are WICKED!)

If you haven’t already, consider this your last chance to learn the words to sing along tomorrow night!

A highlight of the rehearsal for me took place as we were setting up. I was messing around with a kind of shuffle on guitar from C down to Am and Daniel came and said, “I know that song. What are you playing?” I didn’t think I was playing anything in particular, in fact I thought that millions of songs must use that chord progression. Daniel told me to keep playing it and began singing into my mic over it. It was really neat. Sara jumped in on drums (with her fingers!) and Jake on bass. Later he told us it was R. Kelly’s “I’m the World’s Greatest.” — we played it over a country shuffle.

Amanda took some photos.

Tim and Jake, by Amanda

Sara, Sam and Tim, by Amanda

Tim, Jake and Daniel, by Amanda

ps. did I mention that I’m also sitting in with The Mountain, The Forest, The Earth on bass!? (we’re on at 8:30! THE WHOLE SHOW STARTS AT 7PM!!!)

Last week Half a Dino released their compilation album to the world to stream through Bandcamp. Jump over there now and listen while you read…

The compilation is an eclectic mix of the London indie-music scene and represents many different angles of it. I am very happy and flattered to be a part of such a great mix! Each song brings something different to the table, which makes for a pretty interesting listen start to finish.

To add to the excitement, the album is being released at APK Live this Thursday at a show celebrating the local scene. Ten of the twelve acts featured on the album will be performing for a full out feast for the ears (and lets face it, eyes too). This show is a GREAT opportunity to check out some awesome music from London and is also a GREAT chance to introduce yourself to the London scene. The whole thing kicks off (early) with EVAN at 7pm. We’re on at 9:50pm. This thing’ll have to run like clockwork, with each band getting a short set. So get there early.

More on this to come… see you Thursday,
-Sam.

ps. have a listen to our song and let me know what you think! Also, did you guess right before? We recorded ‘Love Like A River’.

As you can see, I have been drawing a little, I’m still rehearsing so be nice ;D

XOXO

Basically, we had a small issue where one of our actors took issue with another one of the actors saying something stupid about him which caused him to say something not very nice about the other actor which caused the other actor to leave and say that he wasn’t going to act in the movie anymore. This all transpired when we were hanging out in the house late at night joking about the movie and other things, with one of the jokes crossing a line.

The good thing is that in dealing with such drama, these are guys who I’ve known for a long time, and since we’re all friends, it blew over in a day and everyone is back on board to shoot the movie. It definitely gave me a bit of a scare for the night and something to sleep on, but I’m glad that it did and I’m glad that we got something like that out of the way, even though the proximity of us shooting the scenes with them on Saturday makes such a situation a bit sketchy.

Above all, it made me believe more in what we’re doing and why I’m directing this movie the way that I am. I talk a lot about putting the power in the hands of the actors, all local kids who understand their roles/characters better than I ever will. By giving them the ability to control their characters and their dialogue, everything ends up being much more natural than the word “rehearse” would indicate.

In that case of last night, it’s a huge risk. If one of the actors, who has been rehearsing with us for weeks and even providing important props for us in the movie, were to leave, we’d be in a hard spot to find a new actor for that important part, especially one that can, in a short time, replace the personal touch that the other actor has already put on the role. If a Nicaraguan actor has enough power to halt the production of a movie I can’t imagine what it must be like dealing with Charlie Sheen or Lindsey Lohan on a movie.

On the other hand, with such a risk comes great reward. I think the actors realize the importance of the job they’ve taken on in helping with this film so the risk was nullified pretty quickly; the actor who said he was leaving assured me that he was back on board. And I have every notion based on our rehearsals that the reward will be great.

That means a lot to me because all of my friends who are acting aren’t exactly acting for the money; a lot of them don’t even know I’m paying them a small amount for their parts. So it’s nice to know that they’re all helping out because they want to, and that they’re doing that because they care about what we’re trying to do with this movie. Most of all, we’re all in it because we’re friends with one another and because this is an exciting and fun project.

When I started the photo club here in Cusmapa, I was a bit worried that the students wouldn’t take care of the cameras or wouldn’t bring them back or something stupid like that. But my friend Walder, who grew up here, reassured me that kids here take responsibility SERIOUS. And it’s true. When you give a relatively underprivelaged kid a bit of responsibility and put your confidence in them, they’re going to repay that confidence.

It’s weird talking about all this like that, because all these guys and every other person I know in Cusmapa are all really good friends of mine now despite us having all grown up in totally different worlds. I can go to them for friend advice just like I could anyone else, and vice versa. Part of that is language and part is realizing that we’re all pretty similar people round the world no matter where we’re from.

I realized a long time ago that all the socioeconomic and language barriers that separate all of us in the world are complete and total bullshit, and that I was going to treat them that way. That’s not to say we aren’t all different people, but it is to say that there’s nothing that should stop, for example, a Wall Street executive from relating to a Nicaraguan street merchant. That’s probably the biggest lesson we’ll be able to show by bringing together a movie crew from LA and a group of actors from the middle-of-nowhere Nicaragua to make a movie together.

Everyone always asks me, “Why do you want to make a movie in Nicaragua of all places?”

There’s a simple answer to that which is: “because I’ve made lots of friends here over the years who have important stories to tell the world.”

But I’d really like to respond to that question with, “What’s stopping you?”

During my time with the Kent Youth choirs I have met some brilliant people; supervisors, students and musical staff alike – and I have made some dear friends as well as receiving excellent vocal tuition.  For now I shall remain a member of the Kent Youth Chamber Choir.  Hopefully I shall continue to sing with the Kent Youth Barbershop, though with a gradual change occurring with a new generation joining, I imagine it shall only be a year or so before I call it a day.

I plan to stay in the Chamber Choir as long as I can, and once the day finally dawns that I must leave I sincerely hope to return to Kent Music in some capacity – perhaps as a supervisor.  Even more so, I would love to assist in the promotion of Kent Music’s junior and youth choirs - it really is a fabulous institution and I owe well over a decade of wonderful friends, experiences and education to them and I just hope it ain’t over yet!

lhd

This weekend was a pretty radical weekend, even though I ended up being stuck in the house all by myself since Elena and Luis were gone for the weekend.

On Friday morning I had a reunion for the high school photo club here in the Fabretto center in Cusmapa. We’ve now got 3 new members, Arlen, Davinia and Tony. Our lesson for the day consisted of teaching photo editing and getting all the students to set up a Flickr account, where they’ll be able to share all their photos with me, other members of the group, and the world. It’s a bit rough at the moment, but here’s the link to the group page right here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/2007073@N24/

Here are a collection of awesome photos by some of the old and new members of the club:

This weekend, we did a lot of rehearsing for the movie. It was mostly for the parts that we’ll be filming in Somoto, which we’ll be shooting this coming Saturday. The rehearsals went a lot better than I expected, and all the actors really embraced my idea of improvisation that I’m trying to instil in them.

Remarkably, when I took the scripts away from them, they all delivered their lines in order, while keeping the major points in the script intact and improvising enough to where you couldn’t tell they were rehearsing a movie script. NATURAL. That’s the best way to describe it. Even Junior, the younger cousin of one of our actors (who we’ve brought in last minute to fill in an previously uncast character) ended up delivering some of the best dialogue, all consistent with the major points in the script. The kid had only read the script that evening, and even though he only had 2 small scenes to act in, he rocked the part without flinching once.

Literally any doubt I could have had about the quality of our acting in this film, or at least for these actors in these particular scenes, was cast away this weekend. Looks like we’ll be nice and prepared for Sweatpants Media to show up later this week to get us off and running.

My teacher for week 2, Mr. Huebner and Me backstage after Friday night’s amazing faculty concert.

Hi Folks!

This last weekend marked the halfway point here at Foulger.  The Friday night Foulger Virtuosi concert was fabulous.  Saturday night was the Young Performers concert.  I was so happy that my Brahms sextet got the opportunity to perform our second movement.  It was a very long concert, which is not always the greatest situation to perform your best.  Sitting around and waiting so long to go on stage can be difficult because you can either wear yourself out from overly warming-up or be too cold from sitting too long.  These kinds of situations are beneficial however because you can learn a lot about what your body needs in order to be ready to perform.  My sextet had a fun time running through our piece a couple of times though in different ways other than what was notated.  We sang it once, played in seconds, recomposed it in major…  I’m not sure how helpful all of this was once it came time to go out on stage, but at least we had fun as a group.

Sunday was a rest day for the festival.  Most everyone went into the city, but I stayed behind to catch up on my repertoire for the last half of festival that I hadn’t got much of a chance to practice during the first half.  For this second half I will be playing with two very good groups.  The first will be the Schumann Piano Quintet (which I’ve always wanted to play) and the Mendelssohn Octet (another piece I’ve always wanted to play).  I’m really excited about these two works, but they’re starting to get a little jumbled together in my head.  For each, we are focusing on the last two movements, so each is very fast and staccato-y.  Both of these works are in E-flat, so that’s also messing with my brain a wee bit.  I keep getting confused about which piece I’m actually playing in the moment.  This is either due to fatigue or old-timers disease. Maybe a combination of the two.  Sunday I also found a pull-up bar on campus.  I haven’t done any pull-ups since before arriving at Foulger, and now my arms are really sore, which didn’t prove helpful for all the rehearsals of fast music that I had lined up today.

As far as pull-up bars go, they are not the greatest, but at least they’re something!

And… in case you forgot how to do a pull-up, they included a sign with detailed instructions.  Thanks, City of New Jersey!!!

How to do a chin-up!

This week is also special because it is chamber orchestra week!  On Friday, we will be accompanying various faculty (my awesome teacher included) in concertos and finishing the evening with Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings (yet another piece that includes a number of fast and staccato-y sections).  I’m thrilled and scared to be sitting principal viola.  I always feel so judged sitting in that position, but it is fun and I appreciate the honor.  I hope I don’t let the section down!

With all of my chamber groups, the chamber orchestra, and three lessons, I know that this week will be filled to the brim, but I’m hoping that it will be really rewarding.  I keep having to remind myself that it is a lot of work, but I never get these experiences when I’m at home, so now’s the time to pack them in!

Here are a couple of interesting articles from last week (Yes. I realize they are both Olympics related.  I’m very excited for the Olympics!):

Is the London 2012 Olympics exploiting musicians?
An interesting insight into the music planning for the Olympic games, where musicians are being asked to play for free.  This is a challenge that musicians face in the US, too.  Many times I’ve been asked to play an event for free, but that it would at least be good exposure.  These gigs rarely are good enough exposure to bring in more work.  I don’t blame the UK musicians for arguing for a wage.

Marlen Esparza: Going the Distance
This is non-music related, but is an article about Marlen Esparza, an American boxer, who is the favorite to win gold this year.  I’m really looking forward to seeing Olympic women’s boxing because it is completely new sport to the Olympics.  She has such drive and dedication.  It’s really inspiring.

My teacher arrives tomorrow.  I’m so excited.  I’m off to practice!

Cheers!!!

Backstage on Tuesday Night!

Hi Everybody!

Since my last post on Tuesday, I had the opportunity to perform in two concerts.  Tuesday night, we performed the first movement of the Britten quartet.  Despite little fumbles here and there, I felt that it went very well.  I always find it’s best to have a short memory when performing.  It’s unreasonable to dwell on little mistakes and letting that effect your overall performance.  It was such a pleasure to perform with these ladies and I really wish that we got to play more together, but I think we are going to get together a few more times through the rest of the festival to read some quartets.  It’s not often that you get a chance to play with such wonderful players/people, so it’s best to take full advantage of it when it does happen.  :)  I also have to add that our coach Scott Kluksdahl was amazing.  He didn’t know the Britten quartet when we first started coachings with him, but he was so supportive and had such terrific ideas musically and technically.

Britten Quartet: Christine Chen, Coach Scott Kluksdahl, Alice Hong, Tara Lynn Ramsey, and Me

Last night, the Brahms Sextet performed.  It went really well, especially considering that we didn’t know until 3:30 that afternoon that we had been signed up to perform.  We played the first movement, and I’m so happy that tomorrow night we are going to perform the second movement.  Viola Power!!!  I’m so proud of everyone in the group for overcoming the last minute-ness of the situation and doing their best to play beautifully and have a good time.  These ladies and gentleman, were also a pleasure to play with.  It’s been a wonderful first two weeks getting to work with such amazing players.  The best part is that everyone is so easy to get along with that rehearsing is a real joy.

Brahms Sextet: Jessica Sharkey, Me, Manling Wang, Amos Lee, Jung Tsai, and Hsiao-Hsuan Huang.

In other news, I had the brilliant idea to buy myself a cup at Starbucks, so that I could make my own ice coffee in the mornings.  Man do I love ice coffee.  I’m not a huge fan of hot coffee, so I’m very pleased with myself for hatching such a brilliant plan.  Muwhahaha!  Anyway, here is my beautiful beverage:

Nectar of the Gods!

I’m currently preparing for my first my first lesson with Christof Huebner, which will take place this afternoon.  I’m planning to play Hindemith’s 11/4 Sonata for him with piano.  Staff accompanist, Han-Wen, is absolutely amazing.  It’s such a difficult piano part and she’s never played it before, but in our first rehearsal on Wednesday we only had to stop once in the entire 17-minute piece.  Woot!

Tonight is the second Foulger Virtuosi Concert of the festival.  I’m super excited to hear Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht.   It’s one of my all time favorite chamber pieces.  You, too, can enjoy the concert in the comfort of your own home by tuning into the concert here.  Off to practice more!

Cheers!

A decade back, actor Jackie Shroff carried out an advert shoot to create the awareness for Polio. However behind the scenes, he abuses a lot while rehearsing.

Tonight Amanda and I will be playing our first show together since she went away to South-East Asia in January.

It’s duo set at the Blackshire Pub in London.

I’ll be using Tim Glasgow’s guitar!

In other news, Simon and his Sugar Shack studio were in the paper today…

-Sam.

This seems like such an obvious thing, but we researchers often poo-poo dry runs and rehearsals. In big studies, it is common to run large pilot studies to get the kinks out of an experiment design before running the experiment with a large number of participants.

But I’ve been getting the feeling that we general research practitioners are afraid of rehearsals. One researcher I know told me that he doesn’t do dry runs or pilot sessions because he fears that makes it look to his team like he doesn’t know what he is doing. Well, guess what. The first “real” session ends up being your rehearsal, whether you like it or not. Because you actually don’t know exactly what you’re doing — yet. If it goes well, you were lucky and you have good, valid, reliable data. But if it didn’t go well, you just wasted a lot of time and probably some money.

The other thing I hear is that researchers are pressured for time. In an Agile team, for example, everyone feels like they just have to keep moving forward all the time. This is an application development methodology in desperate want of thinking time, of just practicing craft. The person doing the research this week has finite time. The participants are only available at certain times. The window for considering the findings closes soon. So why waste it rehearsing what you want to do in the research session?

Conducting dry runs, practice sessions, pilots, and rehearsals — call them whatever works in your team — gives you the superpower of confidence. That confidence gives you focus and relaxation in the session so you can open your mind and perception to what is happening with the user rather than focusing on managing the session. And who doesn’t want the super power of control? Or of deep insight? These things don’t come without preparation, practice, and poking at improving the protocol.

You can’t get that deep insight in situ if you’re worried about things like how to transfer the control of the mouse to someone else in a remote session. Or whether the observers are going to say something embarrassing at just the wrong time. Or how you’re going to ask that one really important question without leading or priming the participant.

The way to get to be one with the experience of observing the user’s experience is to practice the protocol ahead of time.

There are 4 levels of rehearsal that I use. I usually do all of them for every study or usability test.

• Script read-through. You’ve written the script, probably, but have you actually read it? Read it aloud to yourself. Read it aloud to your team. Get feedback about whether you’re describing the session accurately in the introduction for the participant. Tweak interview questions so they feel natural. Make sure that the task scenarios cover all the issues you want to explore. Draft follow-up questions.
• Dry run with a confederate. Pretending is not a good thing in a real session. But having someone act as your participant while you go through the script or protocol or checklist can give you initial feedback about whether the things you’re saying and asking are understandable. It’s the first indication of whether you’ll get the data you are looking for.
• Rehearsal with a team member. Do a full rehearsal on all the parts. First, do a technical rehearsal. Does the prototype work? Do you know what you’re doing in the recording software? Does the camera on the mobile sled hold together? If there will remote observers, make sure whatever feed you want to use will work for them by going through every step. When everything feels comfortable on the technical side, get a team member to be the participant and go through every word of the script. If you run into something that doesn’t seem to be working, change it in the script right now.
• Pilot session with a real participant. This looks a lot like the rehearsal with the team member except for 3 things. First, the participant is not a team member, but a user or customer who was purposely selected for this session. Second, you will have refined the script after your experience of running a session using it with a team member. Third, you will now have been through the script at least 3 other times before this, so you should be comfortable with what the team is trying to learn and with the best way to ask about it. How many times have you run a usability test only to get to the 5th session and hear in your mind, ‘huh, now I know what this test is about’? It happens.

All this rehearsal? As the moderator of a research session, you’re not the star — the participant is. But if you aren’t comfortable with what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, the participant won’t be comfortable and relaxed. either. And you won’t get the most out of the session. But after you get into the habit of rehearsing, when it comes game time, you can concentrate on what is happening with the participant. Instead, those rehearsal steps become ways to test the test, rather than testing you.

There’s a lot of truth to “practice makes perfect.” When it comes to conducting user research sessions, that practice can make all the difference in getting valid data and useful insights. As Yogi Bera said, “In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”

taken straight in to the sun at 100 asa 1/200sec at F5.6 on 70-200mm 2.8 at 180mm exposed for the skin tones in the shade and open up a stop ..

rehearsal

When Rehearsing:

• Make sure you warm up – centre breathing (relaxed abdominal/diaphragmatic – don’t go into high, tense ‘fight and flight’ breathing).
•  Use good posture – keep leaning forward to a minimum.
• Use physical metaphors for difficult text – act it out.
• Act out any ‘story’ you tell.
• If you feel disconnected – or are pushing – hang over and speak, let your neck go completely, then come up quickly so nothing changes. (bend your knees, watch your back!)
• Put the script into own words or just speak as yourself then go back to text.
• Breathe where you think. If you let your breath out first, you are ‘missing the moment’. New thought on a full stop. One thought at a time.
• Make sure you have specific pictures in your head that you’ve chosen/planted in rehearsal. Then let them pop up as they will.
• Fill in gaps in story with improvisation work to make it come alive.
• Know where you are. Understand the relationships.
• Find the previous relationship, circumstances etc.
• What senses do you use? What is different to your own experiences?
• What physical life has your role led?
• Where have you come from – where are you going to?
• Repeat a phrase many times trying different intentions to keep it fresh and avoid decisions on ‘how’ to say it.
• Know what you want & why you want it.
• It is YOU ‘as if’ you were in those circumstances, that world, that time.
• Use animals to inspire you in preparation. Use ‘chakras’ or secondary centres.
• If you have to play older, use gravity/weight to find age.
• Find the rhythms of speech and thought.
• Once you’ve prepared, trust it. Let it go. Don’t feel you have to show us the work. Be ‘in the moment’. Fly lightly.
• It is a super-serious, wonderful game. All must have fun!