Skagit Impressions – Photography and Music

Photography of Skagit County, WA farmlands by Gary L. Brown with piano music and nature sound field recordings by Conrad Askland.

Gary Brown is known locally as one of the premier photographers of surrounding landscapes in the Skagit County farmlands of Washington State in the US Pacific Northwest. He also does excellent live theater photography and has been photographer for many theatrical shows that I have been involved in locally. A few months ago he took me out on a photo shoot with him to hunt for different sunlight, shadows and cloud formations after a local rain shower. It was incredible to get a sense of how he views our local land through his lens.

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Interview with Steve Such – Drum Practice Tips and Visualization

Welcome to the Conrad Askland show where we talk about Business and the Arts and all the intersections in between. This episode is brought to you by the Berklee College of Music. I love this school and their classes are fantastic. I’ve taken many of their classes myself. Berkeley College of Music, now offering offering Bachelor and Master degrees online.

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Today’s guest is Steve Such. Steve is the trap kit specialist, or you can simply him a drummer, for the Broadway smash Rock of Ages with NCL International out of New York; and also drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers tribute group: The Red NOT Chili Peppers. You may know Steve from his viral YouTube video: 100 Rules for Drummers featured on Drum Talk TV and DrummerWorld.com or as the creator of ChopsFit, a cross-training system for drummers. Steve proudly endorses Evans Drum Heads and ProMark sticks. He also holds a degree in Jazz Performance from Indiana University Bloomington.

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I’ve worked with Steve on live shows and many recording sessions in New York. He is, in two words, absolutely incredible both on and off the stage. In this interview, he talks about his approach to practice and visualization. Here we go. Enjoy

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Q&A: Romeo and Juliet rendition questions

These are questions I received about my musical “Romeo and Juliet”. My musical version of RJ premiered in January 2015 at the Historic Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon, WA. Directed by Joe Bowen and presented by META Performing Arts. The challenge set for this production was to score the entire musical using only Shakespeare’s original text. No watering down the words. No slang and updated lyrics. And no hipster modern setting. We set the set and costumes to the original Shakespeare time period of the late 16th century. It was a very challenging project and extremely fulfilling. Here’s a link to check out original musicals by Conrad Askland.

How have you adapted the themes of the play to adapt and suit the modern day audience and politics?

Yes and no. In my rendition,  I use Shakespeare’s original words. For the premiere run I requested period costumes and sets (1590’s). Of course, a future company could choose to change that approach, but to me those considerations are superficial. To my personal taste, those changes detract instead of adding to the production. Musically, I scored the show in a combination of North American Broadway style and light opera. So it was the music itself that was tailored to a musical theatre crowd while the text and presentation was true to the period in which it was written.

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Beginning Vocal Lessons

In helping a student with beginning vocal lessons in classic technique I came across some materials online that I think are of value to new vocal students. One of the difficulties with developing vocal technique is that what the student hears in their head is different than what others hear. So with voice study in particular, it’s important to have an outside source guide you in technique and placement. In it’s simplest form, the teacher is helping the student with how a proper placement feels to them, so the student can build muscle memory on basic technique before moving to more complex layers and interpretation.

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Los Dorkos – Americano Pharaoh (The Donald Trump Song)

Los Dorkos perform Americano Pharaoh (The Donald Trump Song). I wrote the song and produced it for them and it was so much fun to work on. I’m interested to see reaction to the song. It’s a novelty song and like with musical theater, you never quite know how it’s going to land until you put it in front of an audience. Humor is a fine line between what is funny to one and not another. So here it is, just released today – let’s find out what happens…

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Skagit County, WA farmland photos

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Photos of farmlands in Skagit County, WA on Easter evening 2016 after a light rainfall. This area is known for it’s tulip fields where tourists visit in the spring every year to tour the local farms. It’s a breathtaking area to drive and take in the local sights. We affectionately call this area “God’s country.”

This is my first venture into nature photography. I look forward to improving my skills. The process of taking these photos is an adventure in itself and very fulfilling.

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Feeling Worthless and Time Managment

On a day not so long ago I was low; that yucky very dark low where the worst of thoughts cross your mind. I searched “feeling worthless” into Google search and found page after page of “you are a child of the universe” type stuff. Those are great sentiments but it really didn’t speak to me. In fact, it made me feel worse. I just didn’t have the stomach to read articles about “you are unique” and “you are special.” Again, great sentiments, but nothing to turn my mental boat around.

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WordPress sitemap page empty

My WordPress sitemap page was empty and it took me a while to locate the problem. Hopefully this is helpful to another user.

Problem:

Sitemap.xml page empty. Page only had header information without content. Showed as blank page.

Source of Problem:

I was using the WordPress plugin WPcache which was prevent three different sitemap generation plugins from working.

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Should I use Pop-Up ads on my website?

Should I use Pop-Up ads on my website? Stats show it increases conversion rates but we all hate them. I actually spent the better part of a day looking into this so thought I’d share what I found out and ultimately what I decided to do.

Great article here:

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/08/14/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-pop-up-ads/#gref

on “the good the bad and the ugly of pop up ads”. In a nutshell, it says we all hate them but it has been shown to be effective.

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WordPress Disable Sidebars

My blog was started back in 2006 with WordPress and over time the categories have gotten crazy out of hand. I write about the shows I work on, my original productions, science, religion, software and everything in between. It’s bad practice from an SEO standpoint and bad for focused business marketing, but it’s my personal blog so it is what it is.

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