goals

Sometimes Its About Whiskey and Cake (July Talk, July Talk review)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Apparently music writing is something that cannot be taught. Well at least that’s what I read in a review of a book titled  “How to Write About Music” which was edited by the same person that wrote the review.

We all understand that the digital landscape has changed things significantly, to the point that anyone with 7 bucks a month and an internet connection can speak their mind, and literally anyone can stumble onto their work. That’s both a terrifying and fascinating prospect.

But the lady who wrote the article makes some good points, and I enjoyed it, so I want to write about my take on what she shared.

So what did I learn from this article? Some good things in fact.

  1. Listen to music normally before you approach it critically. That makes sense, you can’t really discuss an album until you’ve experienced it.
  2. Put it on repeat, but don’t get trapped in your seat. If you over-think it, you’ll probably give a false impression of how you really feel. However, if you listen one time you might not appreciate hidden details.
  3. R&D is everything, just ask Batman. By researching you learn what the music is about, what the perception in the media is, and how you feel about it all.
  4. People like stories and storytelling is easier. Well potentially. But if you do come up with a framework, you can progress along quicker.
  5. Embrace the darkness. Err, I mean editing. Embrace the editing. What, another Batman reference? You are going to spend a lot of your time reading and rereading what you’ve written, moreso than writing. But more than that, you will be rewriting your work.
  6. Do not succumb to timeline pressures. Writers aren’t going to have much of an advantage over anyone at this time, because of downloads and the like. Write a thoughtful evaluation because its useful, not because you need to be first.xzibit-meme-generator-first-line-so-i-made-a-lame-comment-on-your-post-p-fbfb45

Now that I have those tips and tricks under my belt, I think its time to tackle my first album review. Because I can, dear readers, and because I think its time to start expanding my reach and my breadth.

July Talk – July Talk
released October 15, 2012
******** 8/10

julytalk-album-extended

I like Peter Dreimanis’ voice. Its distinct and also reminiscent of Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, Americana, and whiskey. All things that I love in equal proportions.

Incidentally, and while doing a little research, I learned that he didn’t used to sing when he played. In fact, he only began to embrace that musical ability after he decided to form July Talk with Leah Fay (co-frontman, frontwoman?), Ian Docherty, Josh Warburton, and Danny Miles back in 2012.

What makes July Talk even more distinct is the pairing of Peter’s vocals with Leah’s vocals right beside him. She carries an angelic weight so slight that if you were to reach out for it, it would disappear.

I’m not one to fawn over an album too often, but when I like a musical act, I find generally that the tracks will work together. July Talk doesn’t easily give me that comfortable satisfaction though.

It seems with every track I have to work and listen through it very carefully because while their “vision” is familiar throughout, the content shifts ever so subtly. With lyrics like “if you want money in your coffee, if you want secrets in your tea” it is hard not to smile at the whimsy they offer up so quickly in Paper Girl. Then they’ll switch gears and jump into a track like My Neck – A track that has amazing chords woven into it’s chorus and feels like it’s ripped out of a bad TV show from the 70s, hints of sexuality and tired violence. But its oh so captivating.

And have you watched any of the music videos for their singles? Go do it now! They refuse to put colour into any of the videos, and it makes them more special for it. It reminds me of painting as a teenager, so much angst and emotion, but you don’t need colour to appreciate it.

You know what, I’ll just link to them all here. 1 2 3 4 5 6

You’re welcome.

You’ve probably heard Headsick at this point in history though right? That’s another one of my favourite tracks. I think it combines a nice mix of their indie, garage, punk, and pop sensibilities all in one place. And have I mentioned their voices… So good!

You should also consider visiting Leah on twitter she is pretty fun to follow @whiskeyandcake

If you ever have an opportunity to check them out live. I highly recommend that experience as well. I personally saw them this past July and rank it among my favourite live acts. Convenient and poetic right? Also it was one of the first dates I took my current belle on, and I think that’s pretty neat.

So what did you think? I hope you enjoyed my post. I look forward to hearing your feedback. My goal here is to share music that is currently in my queue or whatever is hot off the presses and on the top of my mind. For instance, I may just be giving some feedback on EODM next week, but you’ll have to stay tuned to find out.

And that’s all the theories I’ve got this week.

Tim!

Emotional Exposure (Improv Classes)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Have you ever been stumped for something to say in conversation? I think it is fairly safe to state that we all have, but imagine if you were in the middle of a dialogue and just did not have a choice to pause for a moment and collect your thoughts. What if you were in a situation where no matter what, you were expected to come up with something interesting and/or entertaining to say without missing a beat. What would you do?

Well, dear reader, I have consciously put myself into circumstances where that is exactly what I will be uncovering for the next 7 weeks. I am going to learn about the art of improvisational theatre! For those unfamiliar, improvisational theatre, usually called improv by those who follow it, is an act of executing or of composing a performance without any previous preparation.

In fact, I have already begun my own journey, as I completed the second improv class just this afternoon! I happen to be taking musical improv as well, but we will save that for a later post…

So why would I sign up for improv if I am a visual artist and confirmed introvert? Is that what you want to know friend? I firmly believe that we should purposefully look for opportunities to challenge ourselves and grow beyond the comfort zones everyone becomes guilty of living within. One way to do that is by becoming vulnerable and going after new pursuits.

Adding on to that idea, my improv instructor spoke of the importance of vulnerability in the first class last week, and while I admit that I did not write down what he said specifically of the topic or which author he drew his reference from initially, it was a profound point that was made – I will come back to the reason I personally found the point so important in a moment, but first I want to describe the topic of vulnerability within theatre in greater detail.

After spending some time reading on the subject of vulnerability on my own this week, I came across this article which goes over the topic with consideration and which I believe retains the thrust of what I learned that first day. Below is a snippet for those who don’t wish to read the linked article, but would like some context.

Vulnerability is not good or bad, it is simply real. Some kinds of vulnerability feel awesome and some feel terrifying. All vulnerability is profoundly experiential and memorable. The more we learn how to nurture our vulnerability, the more intimacy we can experience and the safer and happier we are likely to be in the world.

Actors need to access vulnerability in order to portray their character authentically. When this vulnerability does not transpire, the audience will often use words like “wooden” or “lacking” to describe the characterization they see on stage. Adding on to that idea, one of the major reasons why actors get paid in the first place is because a great majority of people are not comfortable with their emotions but can definitely appreciate when someone achieves those emotions in art. We usually say things like “I can totally relate to that” or “I’ve been there.”

For those of use who are not in the performing arts, there are other major benefits from becoming vulnerable and thinking actively. For example, we can better respond to those around us when we are communicating because we become invested in a giving way, without giving up. Many of the warmup exercises and improv games my classmates and I have been learning teach this notion consistently. Whether it is recognizing the energy of individual members, accessing the energy of the troupe or simply saying “yes” to what is happening on stage, we work on becoming better communicators.

Now back to me: the reason I personally found this concept of vulnerability so vital is that I am acutely aware of how challenging it can be to connect with other people and how rewarding it can be once that starts to happen. What is exciting about learning improv is that opportunity to use body language and become more aware of it in other people.

On top of that, the techniques we are learning force us out of our comfort zones, and pit me against my own worst enemy – My desire to formulate my thoughts perfectly before stating what I want to say. There is no time for that in an improvised play. You will not get to learn your lines because you have to make them up as you go! This is yet another way that the arts can help to improve life and allow us to have fun at the same time.

What sorts of quirks do you have that you want to work on? Tell me about them in the comments! Or send me an email!

That’s all the theories I have this time around.

Tim!

Go back

Your message has been sent

Encoding Culture (The Watch List)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Last week on timotheories (I’ve always wanted to do that), I wrote about archetypes, common sense, motivation, and how watching films can help in learning about human behaviour (see my post, Motivation and Movies). This week I am going to get a little more personal and write about one of my longstanding goals that has become both a great effort and a great help in staying motivated to glean more from the world around me.

Before I fill you in on my goal, I am going to speak to the activity known as list making. List making is an ancient practice that I would argue goes as far back as the beginnings of the written word, and I may be generalizing, but I think we would be hard pressed to find proof to dispute that matter… And if someone does, then I have no problem withdrawing this statement, but I hope its worth the time, effort, and energy to said person to prove me wrong!

Moving right along.

There are lots of uses for lists – examples can include breaking up projects into tasks, prioritizing chores, planning out our days, keeping an inventory, arranging items in a particular order (ex. Top 10), putting together playlists, bookmarking information or for sharing with others, among other uses. In brief, lists are an awesome method to organize information in such a way that we can digest life more easily.

So what is my goal you ask, dear readers? Well my goal is to watch approximately 1100 movies within a 2-3 year period. I’ve decided to affectionately call this project The Watch List, because I think that this title succinctly wraps up the purpose of the list.

Now you are probably wondering, “well how did you come up with this list Tim?” And that is a very good question as there are thousands of movies out there and I don’t necessarily want to watch them all, but I do want to view those movies that have cultural significance, cult status, or a combination of both.

I decided to start my list by visiting the most straightforward of places, by looking at IMDB’s Top 250 list. For those of you who are unfamiliar with IMDB, it is also known as the Internet Movie Database, one of, if not the most, popular movie websites on the Internet. And according to ebizmba.com, it receives approximately 115 million unique monthly visitors each month.

I’m not going to delve into detail about what movies are on the Top 250 list, otherwise I wouldn’t have given you a reference link above. I highly recommend you check it out if you are interested in an amazing cross-section of film, but some of the highlights include The Shawshank Redemption, The Godfather: Part II, Pulp Fiction, Schindlers List, Inception, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Going through that list initially, I determined that I had already seen more than half of these movies, but what I didn’t immediately recognize upon first glance is that IMDB also indexes films based on a group of 22 sub genres. Examples of these genres include, action, comedy, drama, film-noir, musical, sci-fi, and western.

The more I started to dig the more excited I got though. And so the idea finally hit me in a way I could articulate, why not look into every single sub genre and start writing down all of movies I hadn’t seen? That way I would expose myself to genres I was less comfortable with like war, film-noir, and biography. But that would also mean I was sure to run into some movies more than once, and so I set myself up to the task of creating a Google docs spreadsheet that could house all of the movies, and I could then search by title, decade, year, genre or a combination thereof by taking advantage of the filter command available in Google spreadsheet. Below is a screen cap of what my list looks like. I might get around to sharing it at some point, but this should do the trick for now.

Screen Shot 2014-12-09 at 10.20.51 PM

I have colour coded the list for myself so that I can remember what movies I’ve watched over a certain period of time, as well as identifying which movies are available at the Edmonton Public Library or on Netflix. Lets face it, it would insane for me to buy such a great volume of movies right out the gate, but that is something that I may get around to, once I start rating the films myself, but lets stick with baby steps for now.

And that’s all the theories I’ve got this week – until next time. But please let me know what you think of my list, and if you have any ideas of how to improve upon it or if you want to know what the list is made up of, leave a comment or send me an email!

Tim!

Go back

Your message has been sent