XPRTNovice

Last week's parkour playground:

Nice to know that there are others that feel similarly. I just can't grind anymore...I want an awesome story, and I want getting through it to be fun. I just finished Assassin's Creed 3 at like 40% complete - but it feels 100% complete for me and I loved the game. There's no way I'm going to go around picking up small trinkets and stuff. I find myself unwilling to do things like beat Emerald Weapon, etc, though I still definitely replay the oldies.

So, um, I should probably delete the 12 Amazon profiles I just created?

Happah baddah!

There's gonna be tin whistle.

I actually practice parkour on playgrounds all the time. They're great.

Woo woo! I'm having crazy fun with Sir Jordanius on this track.

He's right - I had to throw away my spit swab after the recording session.

As a clarinet and sax player, I was really interested in this until I saw the bit about being charged $60/year to rehearse with no concert schedule to speak of yet (except the caveat of two per year). I love playing, and I love video game music, but getting charged to drive to Rockville once a week with nothing to show for it is a lot to ask musicians. All the community band/orchestras I've ever been in derive their funds from the community supporting them, not the artists who are already volunteering their time and talent to make the community better. I might consider submitting an arrangement, though. Gripes aside, best of luck with the group. I hope to catch a concert.

After struggling through tonal center exercises for the last 30 minutes on saxophone, I needed this

I had no clue about this place until like 2011. I typed "Nobuo Uematsu" into Last.FM and a couple of OCR people came up. When I dug deeper, I found the site and joined the forums in 2012.

Unrelated, but my 8-year-old self named the main character STIFFY in this game because I thought it was funny.

Thanks guys The VO clients have all been through a freelancing website; I was hoping to pull business independently like a real VO artist, but so far I've had no luck. Marketing is annoying

Small world! If he graduated in 04, then I probably never met him. I was a sophomore at the time and didn't take on any upper classmen because I wanted a group that would solidify for four years. The band is still there, too, though I'm not in contact with any of the members. Edit: I just realized that I started the band in the fall of 04, and if he's an 04 grad he graduated in May, so he never would have heard of it.

Aw man, I just realized there needed to be a slide whistle somewhere in here. We need to recall all copies of this mix so I can put it in there.

Just give us fair warning this year as to the places/times where you won't be wearing any pants.

Just a few months away! I am excitebike.

I'd prefer to do voice acting (I assume you're talking about video game, cartoons, and other entertainment rather than corporate/commercial), but voice acting, like regular acting, has different gateways. Most big voice ACTING jobs that are worth your time are going to require you to be represented by an agent or jump through some other hoops. I'm a freelancer. Voiceovers for commercials and the like are easier to break into. Currently, I exclusively use voices.com as a source of freelancing jobs (I have a blog post about it on my site you can read about) and there are a few other sites out there that act as conduits for small time voiceovers.

Totally my wife's idea.

Well, I kind of did it like two months ago, but for some reason I never posted it here. I thought you guys might be interested, AND I wanted to clear up some confusion on some of the names I use. The name of the studio is Renaissance Man Studio (@RenManStudio for twitter, etc), because it's a combination of voiceover and music work with some editing/writing services offered on the side. I've been into voiceovers for about 8 moths now and it's bringing me great results and a lot of clients (about 85 to date). I had some trouble trying to figure out if I wanted to brand myself as XPRTNovice or go with something broader, and I went with the broad option (because I'm also getting much more business with voice than music). Anyway, that's my story and here is the site. If any of you work for production companies that could use a voiceover artist (I wouldn't dare ask you to refer me for music, as most of you deserve whatever that job is more than me) I would probably love you forever.

Erm, I wouldn't say I'm good at all, but I approach learning anything, especially art, in three basic ways: - Do it. - Do it mindfully. - Accept and acknowledge crap, and move on. Do it: You just have to sit on your ass and DO the thing you're trying to get better at. Reading 10,000 blog posts on composing isn't going to make you better; you have to compose. As a writer, I've written 5 novels in the last 2.5 years, and now I can say they're worth reading. Do it mindfully: I used to tell my students that "Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes habits. PERFECT practice makes perfect." If you're "doing it" above but you're not being mindful about ways you can get better, you're going to stay stagnant or, worse, create bad habits. If I practice my piano scales at blinding speed with errors, I get really, really good at playing them really, really poorly. This is the part where I'm also reading, learning, asking questions of experts, and then trying to apply it to what I'm working on. Accept crap: I have lots of unfinished projects, both in writing and in music, that are crap. But each one of those turds came with a golden nugget of learning (or corn, I never could figure that out). Those hunks of steaming poop don't define you as an artist, and you have to let them go and acknowledge that they taught you something that you can then apply to #1 and #2 (no pun intended) The real lesson is you gotta put in the time. If you're interested in this kind of stuff, Malcom Gladwell wrote a book called Outliers where he explores "geniuses" and how in many cases it just becomes an opportunity for a person to put in monumental amounts of time into one activity.

Happaaaahh badddaaahhh!!!

I generally only like remixing music from games I've played...but maybe I'll take a look