Recently, I composed the score of a short film project that won a contest and is part of a festival in Cambridge, Massachusetts on June 29th. 2 problems. I live in Dayton, Ohio and after doing some numbers crunching, I realized I wouldn’t have enough money for both hotel and transportation. After exhausting all my options (aka family members 😛 ) I created a go fund me campaign. I don’t particularly like crowd funding because it feels like I’m begging, but after remembering a potato salad kick starter inadvertently got funding for $50,000 (which happened in Columbus,OH btw), I realized asking for $300 to go experience a moment of my life and career that I’ll never have again is modest in comparison. Thanks for your time reading this. Please share and I hope to see you in Massachusetts on the 29th!
So, I went down to the local community college today. Sinclair Community College and took over their piano lab with my awesome improv. I know you’ll enjoy it!
If you like that you should totally support me by listening and buying my new single Genesis. It’s a story about how I created music in 8 days. A crazy concept of a song, but well worth the listen if I do say so myself. Album/Track Art, Lyrics, Instrumental was done by yours truly.
Remember the guy to the left of me in the “Dabbing for my City” post a couple weeks ago? Probably not, but either way his name is Cedric and he is in a band called “In Night & Nature” and they’ve recently released a single called “Lifeblood” and it’s amazing! If you’re into rock, You need to check it out.
Also did I forget to mention but today is also Audio SeXXX’s 3rd Anniversary. Thanks everyone for 3 great years.
My friend Cedric isn’t the only one who dropped a single. I drop the single to my project “Genesis”, yesterday. You should totally listen to it and if you love it. It’s purchasable for a mere dollar. Enjoy! Thanks for listening.
When you think of musicians and artists you usually refer to them with a pseudonym. A fake name that they give themselves to be identified throughout their career. I have nothing against it’s use but, personally it’s not for me and here’s why.
I’m Proud of My Name: James Revels III. I love it. It’s unique(ish) and like the the way it rolls off my tongue. James was passed down from my granddad to my uncle and now me, so it’s like a passed torch. I also love my last name because it’s a memorial to my (very) distant uncle Hiram Revels, the first African American senator. With that much history behind my name I have a lot to be proud of.
Pseudonyms as Alter Egos: I prefer to use my name because when I create my art I feel I’m at my realest. A lot of artists describe themselves having an alter ego or separate personality when they create, I feel the opposite. I feel like this creative side is the true me and when I work my day job I’m putting on a mask. Some artist put on a certain “image” while the only image I wish to portray is an accurate portrait of myself.
Google Friendly: Because my full name is relatively unique it’s easier to corner my own niche of keywords to google. Type” James Revels” and the second auto-suggest is “James Revels the Composer” the third is “James Revels WordPress”. Typing in “James Revels” in general, provides links that fill the entire ever crucial 1st page. This saved a lot of time that would have been wasted on thinking of an SEO friendly name.
So those are the reason’s that I use my real name instead of a made up one. Stay tuned for updates on my upcoming Hip-Hop Project “Escapism EP”. It’s a 5 track original EP that is an escape from the current norms of hip hop. I also released the album cover yesterday (also designed by yours truly) Check it out. If you like it hope you stay tuned as I get ready to release the first single “Genesis” in the next couple of weeks.
Trying to find some music listen to so everyone reading this leave a comment with the song you are currently listening to or currently invading your mind. Right now I’m listening to Wake me up when September ends by green day.
So, my lease is ending soon in early May and I’m seriously considering moving to Texas; Austin, Texas in particular. I’ve lived in Dayton,Ohio my whole life and I want to see what opportunities are out there for. I suggested this idea to my music friends and instead of them fighting me and trying to make me stay. They agree that Dayton is cool for steady jobs and getting on your feet but there isn’t many opportunities to grow as a young adult and mature in a business sense. They then suggested we team up and move together. My reaction was this face -> O.O. I’ll keep you updated on anything crucial that happens but I’m excited to see if this works because it could help us all pursue our dreams of living a life of creativity and art. Teamwork makes Dream Work (Studios)
I know I’ve been silent for a while but I’ve been taking the time to refresh myself. Boy am I refreshed and I have some stories I’d love to share.
First the New Suit. I decided a wardrobe make over was long overdue so I decided to get me a suit in order to have a more professional look. I prefer wearing button up shirts any way so it wasn’t much of a stretch. Here’s a selfie of me in it. (Follow my Instagram @jamesrevelsiii)
Second, My friends and I were walking down in Oregon District, a small strip of local businesses. We walked out the store and a lady with a camera asked if we wanted to have picture taken for Dayton.com so we did and we decided to dab for our species! (Shown below)
Other than mixing down music and composing I’ve been working on my video editing skills on a series I’m calling “A Guide to Music Composition. Here’s as snippet from the script s well as a short video snippet underneath.
Hi, I’m James Revels Composer and thanks for watching “A Guide to Music Composition”. Together we will be exploring the routine I use as a guideline for creating my music. I assume that you already have a general knowledge of music theory so that I can reduce jargon in order to be more accessible to new or non-musicians.
The step in the guide are:
Studying/Review
Pre-writing
Creating a Rhythmic Motif
Choosing a Scale
Creating a Theme
Creating Accompaniment
Developing Orchestration
Mixing the Track
There are many types of intelligence that exist in this world. There’s social intelligence and academic intelligence, but I want to focus on two I am intimately familiar with; analytical and abstract intelligence.
Analytical Intelligence
We’ve all heard the saying “Think outside the box”. Well, analytical intelligence is the exact opposite of that. Analytical people will look inside the box, describe and break down every thing inside the boxes. They may even get lost in the boxes inside the boxes! This type of intelligence is great for understanding the nuances of specific objects. It’s like taking a magnifying glass and notating all the like cracks, crevices and colors. This lends well to math and science. The problem with this intelligence is that getting lost in the details is all too easy.
Abstract Intelligence
Abstract intelligence is the counterpart to analysis. Theses are the ones who “think outside of the box” and realize that all ideas are in one big box with infinite smaller boxes. Stated simply, abstraction is the act of generalization; stripping away the specifics and focusing on the similarities. For instance, “Color” is an abstraction of the specific colors “Blue” and “Orange” or “Sport” is an abstraction of the specific sports “Soccer” and “Baseball”. An abstraction is, like a big box that you fit other smaller boxes in to connect them together. This lends well to poetry because you can abstract two unrelated words like, “bullet” and “shark”, into a simile such as “The shark swam like a speeding bullet”. Abstract minded people usually are good at creative writing, art and music. The problem with abstract thought is that if the relation between the two ideas is too loose communicating the thought could be disastrous.
Final Thoughts
No intelligence is better than the other. I’d say analytical intelligence tends to be more practical, but abstract intelligence tends to be more beautiful. Although, in practice we use both simultaneously, there tends to be a preference for analytical over abstract. There’s nothing wrong wrong with this but without understanding the balance we miss one half of the equation that makes subjects like math interesting. Math is the analysis of an abstract concept called numbers. While writing composition classes are the abstractions of multiple pieces of writing. By framing school work or problems in this way it could help with finding solutions. If you know all the details and are still stuck, try to find a loosely similar situations that you relate to and try to tackle it that way (analytical to abstract). Or if you are confused on a dense concept, try to ground the idea in a metaphor, by relating the parts you do understand to something familiar. (abstract to analytical).
What do you think? Leave a comment. Thanks for reading.
Check out the new song I composed for the game I’m working on.
Here’s the world map theme to this RPG I’m creating called “Apex” it’s still a long way from being finished, but I throughout the week I will post more information to flesh out the world and game. So, Stay Tuned
Audio SeXXX 