It’s been a long time, so I should probably take advantage of having my very own site don’tcha think? Its been a busy and NOT so busy time lately. I’ve been playing in my old band again for about a year and a half which has been keeping me extremely occupied. Not only does the band keep me busy, I’ve been playing the bass for a year in the band so learning this instrument to actually SOUND like a bass player is time consuming. I try really hard to pull this off without smoke and mirrors and I think I’m getting it down.
I’ll keep this re-entry back into the world as brief as I can and let you know a couple things of what I’m up to and planning. I’m real good at planning. Following through is a whole different monster (I blame television). For starters, this website will get completely redone (I know I’ve talked about this before) and this I have already looked into. I study lots of music sites and take notes about things I like and don’t like, so I have a pretty good idea of what to do now. It’ll be a fresh start and a new beginning and I’m pretty excited about that.
I have also been planning on writing and recording a new album for quite some time now and will commit to getting that out this year. It’s been a slow process. It’s not as easy as I thought but I have some music done and a lot of ideas to weed through and make real. I’ll have updates here and things to listen to as this progresses. If there are any drummers out there that would like to work with me on this, and have recording gear, and work for peanuts (translation – “for free”), but most importantly just want to have fun making music, send me a message and we’ll see what we can do. I do all my drums with software and it’s a lengthy process that I could do without if possible.
In the next couple days I’m going to put some songs here that I forgot to do from a long time ago. I’m in the process of remixing and making them sound better. Oh, and a brand new song that I hope to have done soon as well.
I’ve learned that time is my friend and not to fight it. I frustrate myself very easily by wanting everything done immediately then go into a weird funk and get nothing done. So it’s time to shake off the funk, except for those of you thatwant the funk, and get some shit done and make some music. That’s what this is all about and its time to come up for air and swim again.
PS – This website will soon change to chriscogott.com. Once I figure out how to do that, I’ll post it. I may just start off the new site with that name.
Spring is in the air and the smell of Nur Ein is all around. A crazy, stressful yet awesome songwriting contest with loads of fun, super creative and talented folks from around the globe. Yea I probably should have posted this, oh I don’t know, 4 or 5 weeks ago when Nur Ein actually began. For those that don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a couple links for you to check out. The first one will bring you to the main Nur Ein site and will explain how the contest works. The second link will bring you to this years contest.
It feels a little strange posting this now because after 5 weeks in, I will be eliminated. I will not have a song this week. It was a bad, crazy week and the title didn’t inspire anything in time. I had a little bit of music then real life work came into play. I might have been able to get something done but it wouldn’t have been strong and would have been more like an awful demo so I am bowing out which sucks. Hopefully the next Nur Ein I will be in a better place and have more time on my hand. In the meantime, enjoy the rest of the contest. I’ll be cheering from the sidelines here and should be a lot of fun.
A cool thing happened this past weekend courtesy of Travis (SpinTunes, SpinTown). He has been making these Minecraft videos and has decided to put the music from various SpinTunes contestants as the background music. This is the one he just did with 3 of my songs. Very cool! Thanks Spin. You rock! Check out the other Minecraft videos while you’re there if you’re into that sort of thing.
Lately it’s been extremely frustrating trying to get new song material out there. It’s a good frustration though if there’s such a thing. Late last year I rejoined my old band, Page 22. This is good frustration number one. Songs needed to be learned and relearned and practiced over and over. This takes a lot of time because each show we play is a minimum 40 songs and each show is different. I forgot to mention that I rejoined as a guitar player just as I was the last time in this band.
Fast forward to the present and good frustration number two. Certain situations have been brewing that the band needed a new bass player. For some reason it was difficult finding one in this area. After a couple failed attempts, I decided to switch to the bass so we could get another guitar player instead. I’ve been playing the bass over the past few years on my own songs and enjoy it tremendously. It’s one of the parts in my songs that I look forward to when it’s time to record it.
Long story short. It worked! We have a great guitar player and I fell in love with playing the bass. This is what I should have been doing and never realized it till now. The past two to three weeks, I’ve been doing what I did when I rejoined the band last year, and that’s learning all the songs AGAIN, this time on the bass. It seems to come more natural to me and isn’t taking as long as I thought. We’ve already had a band practice that sounded great and we’ll be having another one tonight. I feel like I’m almost up to speed playing bass which means I’ll be able to resume the songwriting process and start coming out with new songs like I planned. We’ll be playing on St. Patricks Day. If anyone is in the area, stop on by! Here’s the website. More dates will be added soon.
SpinTunes 4 has officially begun. 34 songs submitted. Round 1 Listening Party long long over. There’s a lot of work and sorting out for the judges to do. Never an easy task with this many songs. The popular vote is going on now where you can vote for your top 5 favorites. First listen to all the songs here, then you vote over here. If you feel the need to download any of the songs (you know you do), PLEASE download the ENTIRE album. There are only so many free downloads available and downloading the album is the same as downloading an individual song. So once you download the album you can keep what you want and chuck away whatever you don’t want.
My song, Alone, is about a recurring nightmare I used to have as a kid where I would be abandoned on the streets of some indistinct city. When the dreams start I would be with someone who I was comfortable being with, probably one of my parents. And in the blink of an eye, they’d be gone. I’d be alone and scared in this city not knowing what to do. When i would try to scream, there would be no sound and my legs would move excruciatingly slow when I tried to run. That’s the general gist of the thing and would go on for quite some time. Nowadays my reoccurring nightmares deal with the usual surviving nuclear holocaust type dreams. Oh yeah…I was super sick when I was recording this and there’s a couple moments that need to be redone because my sick ears didn’t pick up on it. So as usual there we be a newer version coming soon.
Round 1 Results
Day one without coffee. So far this SUCKS! Why am I doing this?! Why why WHY!!! Ok sorry about that......maybe a sip? A tiny one? Please???? 1 month ago
