Neevita.net

courtnee — Thu, 17 May 2012 09:28:27 +0000

There is nothing quite so lovely as being totally over an ex.

How to care

courtnee — Thu, 17 May 2012 09:20:28 +0000

We are all various portions of introverted and extroverted traits, in an ever shifting organic concoction of tides and spikes and infinite purpose and possibility. In my opinion, applying both of these guides toward each person in your life is simply known as: “caring”.

courtnee — Thu, 17 May 2012 08:09:59 +0000

“Today I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can’t.” – Jerry Rice

courtnee — Sun, 13 May 2012 23:42:31 +0000

There is one of my paintings that I have given away that I periodically wish I had courage enough to ask for it back.

Cali road trip pictures

courtnee — Sun, 13 May 2012 07:28:10 +0000

Some random pictures from my road trip to Cali, including some show photos from Mr. December playing at Louie’s in Rancho Cordova. I’ll add to this as I take more and post process them.

The Flash Player and a browser with Javascript support are needed..

var fo90_1 = { params : { wmode : "opaque", allowfullscreen : "true", bgcolor : "#000000"}, flashvars : { langOpenImage : "Open Image in New Window", langAbout : "About", xmlURL : "http://neevita.net/wp-content/plugins/nextgen-flashviewer/xml/autoviewer.php?gid=90"}, attr : { styleclass : "autoviewer"}, start : function() { swfobject.embedSWF("http://neevita.net/wp-content/plugins/nggflash-swf/autoviewer.swf", "fo90_1", "100%", "500", "7.0.0", false, this.flashvars, this.params , this.attr ); } } fo90_1.start();

courtnee — Sat, 12 May 2012 05:18:12 +0000

I’ll never forgetcha, Mark!

Plastic Fantastic Acceptance

courtnee — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:26:37 +0000

Chris just emailed me to let me know that our picture was accepted into the Plastic Fantastic Show. They accepted an alternative crop of this image. The shoot was entirely Chris’ concept, I just got up at 7:30am and let him take pictures of me in the cold. Congrats!

See the amazing pictures from a previous show here: http://lightbox-photographic.com/exhibitions/PF2FP/

courtnee — Sun, 06 May 2012 20:29:26 +0000

Just found one of my longer hairs, loose on my shoulder, that went gray about an inch ago. For some reason, it seemed poignant and fitting.

Music writer

courtnee — Fri, 04 May 2012 20:05:23 +0000

I could potentially be enticed to keep at learning how to write music down if I had one of these to do it with.

courtnee — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:38:45 +0000

Sometimes, when I am massaging a face-down client and doing compressions, I balance on one arm while stretching the other up in the air and pretend I am handbalancing on them.

It’s coming along

courtnee — Wed, 02 May 2012 16:01:14 +0000

Spontaneous Chris Clark

courtnee — Tue, 01 May 2012 19:44:25 +0000

Washing the Duwamish shore off my feet after a spontaneous early-morning shoot with Chris Clark, for the purpose of submitting work to a plastic camera only photography show. We shot with a Holga!

More play

courtnee — Tue, 01 May 2012 06:23:59 +0000

Queensland

courtnee — Tue, 01 May 2012 00:11:10 +0000

Took a few minutes today to learn one of my favorite pieces from the Madness Returns soundtrack. No clefs were harmed in the making of this video. Honestly, with how frustrating and clunky and annoying it is to attempt to learn music as it’s written, I’m not sure I’m going to bother with much more sight reading. I’d rather memorize chord charts and work on fingering.

Aerial Introduction class: Sundays at 3pm!

courtnee — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:38:14 +0000

I’ll be teaching an additional 4 week intro series this summer at Versatile Arts on Sundays from 3:00 to 4:30pm starting June 3rd.

In this class, you will learn the basics of working on the trapeze, the rope, and the tissu. It will cover all the skills you need in order to join one of our level 1 classes. Register online now!

http://www.versatilearts.net/register/intro.php

This series costs $100 for four 90-minute classes and prepayment is required. You can either pay with a credit card when you register or you can send your payment in within 5 days of registering.

If you don’t send your payment in, your spot in the class will be given to somebody else. This class is extremely popular and it fills up fast.

Your other payment options (other than credit card at time of online reservation) are:

Mail a check to Versatile Arts; 7601 Greenwood Ave N, Suite 103; Seattle, WA 98103 PayPal to versatile.arts@gmail.com. (If you can afford to add a few dollars to cover paypal’s cut (3%), you will earn good karma points.) Cash or check delivered to the studio. Please contact us to find out a good time to come by and drop off your payment.

If you miss out on this class, you can join the announcement list to find out about upcoming sessions: http://groups.google.com/group/versatile-arts-intro-announce

Bumby by ear

courtnee — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 06:22:06 +0000

If I’d tried to learn this song last night by reading it, I wouldn’t be able to play it now or have retained the information needed to play it in time and with soul to it.

Instead, I cheated and took 15 minutes to learn it by ear, so I could fucking enjoy myself for a change.

I dunno how I feel about this reading music shit, man.

courtnee — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 03:03:36 +0000

My experience with Breathing Color (http://www.breathingcolor.com/) has been exceptionally satisfactory. They shipped quickly, had great prices, and a tech followed up with me the day I was supposed to receive my stuff to give me his contact information in case I ran into problems, and make sure I had all the information I needed to use what I’d ordered. 5 stars on service, very interested in what the quality is like as I work with my materials over the next few weeks.

Spring showing: Red Chair Salon

courtnee — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 02:28:10 +0000

For the months of May and June 2012, a selection of my paintings are being shown at the Red Chair Salon in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.

324 15th Ave E Ste 104 (between Thomas St & Harrison St) Seattle, WA 98112 Neighborhood: Capitol Hill (206) 922-2427

http://www.redchairrocks.com

“Madness lingers” – Music from Alice

courtnee — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:10:13 +0000

(if player doesn’t load, please install/update flash)

Earlier this year, partially due to extended illness, I became deeply entrenched in the game Alice: Madness Returns, which is the sequel to American McGee’s Alice. It’s the first game I’ve really sunk my teeth into in a decade, and once I did that, I thrashed it around in my mouth like a rabid bulldog for weeks.

I found myself relating to the visuals, storyline and music in the sequal even more than I had the original, and in ways I can’t summarize quickly. There were even pieces of my original songs that stuck out in this soundtrack. The feel and movement of the audio in the game has, but especially had then, a sinisterly heavenly feel to it. It overtook me, gave me nightmares, personified my own flavor of festering pain I’d refluxed up at the time, and extended its hand to me.

In a word, it was fucking beautiful.

I don’t recall how I stumbled across wickedslicks1003‘s game extensions on youtube, but I did, and I’m glad for it. I still try to fall asleep to this stuff sometimes, but because I still have really fucked up dreams when I do that, I mostly listen to it as background and sing with it. I imagine at some point soon I will make good on my priority to learn how to play some of it, and I won’t be surprised if some of this music makes its way into Obsidian next year.

Here are my favorite of these musical pieces, extended into ~10 minute long tracks.

Enjoy.

Focus shift

courtnee — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:48:17 +0000

After my latest rant on reading music, I took a well-deserved break for a couple days. Upon returning to practice, I found that my focus had shifted from reading written music and the fingering exercise I practice to a metronome.

Currently I’m still all about the fingering exercise for challenge and warmup, but now I’m also playing memorized songs with the intention of playing with more efficient fingering, using my ring finger more, and playing to a beat.

As for written music, I haven’t given up on it, but rather than going through lessons from a book or video and stumbling through sheet music, for now I am improvising simple songs and using http://noteflight.com to write them down. The process of doing that is keeping learning creative and allowing me to discover some of the more detailed aspects of written music on my own.

The fingering exercise has been frustrating to me. My goal is to learn the next one in the series of 60 when I can play the one I’m working through at double-time 160bpm in smooth velocity and without any full-on trainwrecking.

It’s going slowly, however I’ve discovered that playing to music versus a metronome made a huge difference for me this morning. Here’s double-time 120bpm all the way up the keyboard (two more octaves than specified in the book).

That’s more along the lines of where I’d like to be. Now to get it about 40bpm faster.