User:Johnsmith

Bio
My name is John Smith(yes, it's my real name). I come from an extremely uninteresting place called the Tri-Cities. I'm currently taking Audio Production at the Art Institute of Seattle. Writing and recording music is something I love to do. I play lead guitar and am a vocalist in the Metal band Ruins of R'lyeh. I also own a home-based recording studio and have recorded several artists and bands in the Tri-Cities area. I've got really long hair and don't talk much. Don't let the silence fool you though. I'm a pretty nice person, and easy to get along with.

Always Wanted To Schedule

 * Topic

I'd like to resurrect my old thrash/black-metal solo music project by writing and recording AT LEAST 3 new songs by the end of this quarter.
 * Research Component

Finding different music writing methods and techniques that I am unfamiliar with.
 * week 1


 * week 2


 * week 3

Get influenced again by old bands I used to listen to when I was originally writing for this project.


 * week 4

Start writing guitar riffs.


 * week 5

Continue writing riffs and structuring the general outline of the songs.


 * week 6

Create drum tracks for the for the finished guitar-only versions of the songs. Do some rough recordings.


 * week 7

Write the bass and lyrics to the rough drum and guitar recordings


 * week 8

Go down to the Tri-Cities to record and master the complete versions of the songs.

Why Do I Like What I Like?
The sculpture I didn't like too much was "Untitled" by Roy McMakin. The reason I decided I didn't really like it was because I had walked passed it at first and thought to myself "Why is there a random bench here?". It took the returning trip for me to realize that it was an actual sculpture with two more parts that consisted of a black lawn chair and a box. After researching Roy McMakin I came to realize that most of his work had to do with chairs and other types of furniture, and most of his artwork that I saw is untitled. I also saw that he was Seattle-based. Reading about him, I learned that some of his artistic pieces were more humorous than others. While I still don't quite understand the sculpture itself, I now have a greater appreciation for it than I had before. I think this is due to the fact that I just read up on him, and got to see more examples of his art which I thought were great.

How Am I Manipulated?
My first fallacy is Wal-Mart's "Save money. Live better". This non-sequitur fallacy works by implying that saving money on purchases will make for a better quality of life. It's very blunt, to the point, and doesn't require much thought at all. Surprisingly, alot of people believe this.

The second, is an Allness fallacy that an old high-school teacher of mine would say. "There's always an exception" he would say. After thinking about it I've come to realize that there are exceptions for a number of things, but not everything.

Self-Assessment
Over the past 11 weeks I've learned quite a bit. The most important thing I learned to do better is manage my time. For the entire semester we've had the "I've always wanted to" assignment. I was pretty confident that it wasn't going to prove to be an obstacle. However, as the weeks went on I kept pushing my project to the back of my "to do" list. By the time I actually got to working on my project, I fell into a severe musical rut because not only had I been out of writing my own material for so long, I was also pressed for time. I feel that if I started earlier I would have been in a much more relaxed state of mind and would have been able to complete ALL the songs I intended to write by the time this assignment was due. I don't look at this as a failure at all though. It was a great learning experience for me and I'm glad I was apart of this class and got to participate in such a project. And to Steven Arntson, You're an awesome instructor, Keep it up!