I just came across this video recently and it’s really interesting and well done. It’s actually a series of videos called “Everything is a Remix”. The videos delve into the idea that pretty much everything in some way or another borrows and repurposes ideas from what has come before it. If you’re any kind of artist you know that it’s always a constant struggle to try and find your unique voice and create something new. It’s somewhat comforting to see in these videos how so many things that appear to be total originals, borrow heavily from their influences. In the end I think it’s our influences that make our art what it is and the tricky part is learning not to run away from the things that first struck that chord that inspires us to create. It’s an interesting idea to think about. Here are the first two parts of the series, there will eventually be four parts I believe. Part one deals mostly with music and part two deals with film. Make sure to keep watching until after the credits for more. I personally can’t wait to see the rest of the series. Hope you enjoy it. Love, dan
hope the weekend was wonderful… i hear that there was some sort of football game that happened? if it’s not high school football drama (ie. “friday night lights”), i’m not into it. … regardless, go cubs! oh wait.. who plays “football”again?
(kidding)
terrible jokes aside, here’s an interview we recently did over the phone with a very sweet gal named hannah. we had lots of fun speaking with her! huge thanks to hannah for the great questions and for giving us a reason to interact with the outside world (as opposed to working like hermits on yearbook…)
p.s. nothing hugely telling in the trailer, but here’s the super 8 trailer that aired during the game (if you missed it) – j.j. abrams and spielberg.. count me in.
For a while now it seems like half the fun of watching the Super Bowl is seeing all the new funny commercials. It costs a fortune to buy ad time so companies really go all out trying to make their time count. If you’re not a big fan of football and are just planning on watching to see the commercials tomorrow, here is a link that could save you some time. Or to go one step further, if you don’t even have time to just watch the commercials, I’ll save you a bunch of time and show the best one. It’s awesome.
awww man… i just wrote a long-ish update on how the “march” EP is coming along and… the blog post window deleted everything i wrote! so lame. so this will be a shorter version, i suppose. (thanks a ton, blog…)
we’re getting a bit of a head start on the “march” EP, and so far it’s coming together! february is a very short month and i’ll be out of town for a few days for TWLOHA events, so we’re doing our best to stay on top of this new EP, in order to stay on schedule.
very pleased to report that song #1 is finished! already sent off to mixing in fact! very glad about that and really excited about how it turned out. it’s an instrumental track and we hope you enjoy it! it’s based around something i have been waiting to work on for the right month, and march feels right as rain… and it came together fast and we’re super proud of it.
song #2 was quite uncertain until last night… it’s coming together quite nicely today and i’ve already written lyrics a couple verses for it! each verse will be a small fable or parable… a little bit different for me, so i’m excited to experimenting with new ideas. we’ve got a guest in mind for this one too, so i’m excited about that! hoping to get a lot done on this song this weekend.
song #3 is a complete mystery right now… no clue yet as to what it will be, but i have high hopes for it’s arrival very soon!
thanks for reading guys! have a really great weekend.
That’s my dog Oskar. My wife took this picture the other morning as we were digging ourselves out from the crazy snow storm we all had the other day. I know you’re probably all tired of hearing about this Snowpocalypse or Snowmageddon or whatever it was, but I just wanted to talk briefly about something really nice that we experienced after the storm. We had spent the night of the storm just hunkered down in our condo watching some movies and looking out the window. The wind was blowing so hard that little bits of snow were coming in under our sliding door and on the outer doors of the building snow was actually coming in through the door knob. It was crazy. In the morning we woke up and decided to head outside to play in the snow a bit and see how stuck our car was. I brought my shovel and headed downstairs to the parking lot. When we got down there we saw that most of the people in our building also had the same idea. The parking lot was more crowded with people than I have ever seen it. Everyone was out trying to dig their cars out of the snow. But people weren’t just working on their own cars. Everyone was helping everyone else with the shoveling. It was really nice. I joined in and helped a few people with their cars and then I was generously helped with mine. We were all out there for a good three or four hours. It was just really nice to see how everyone banded together and helped each other out. It was like the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life” but with snow shovels. I knew I had great neighbors but I didn’t realize how great they all were. Thanks so much to all my building mates, you’re the best.
even after being house-bound for 3 days straight due to the blizzard, i still failed to blog yesterday! hmm… i blame yearbook… and friday night lights… and “the daily” on the ipad.
here in the midwest, you’ve no doubt heard or experienced first-hand, the mighty snow that hath fallen. overall for us, nothing too crazy happened. just lots and lots of snow. no power outages in our area, so it was a successful and safe blizzard in our world. how about you? hope it treated you kindly! and for those of you from warm, sunny places… i have nothing but jealous words for you.
so my wife and i have been totally into the “friday night lights” show lately… i had no idea that a: i enjoyed football anything… and b: that i enjoyed high school drama. apparently i do… very much. it’s not the greatest show ever, but we’re totally hooked and it’s another threat to the progress of “yearbook”… especially on snow days such as these!
i’ve also been pretty into this new “the daily” app for the ipad… just a few days ago i posted about “world of goo” feeling like match-made-in-heaven for the ipad, well, this exclusive ipad-only newspaper/magazine type of app is definitely another shining example of an ipad app that i can only imagine on the ipad. (or i guess another tablet, but… ipad’s my fav)
it’s pretty rad… i’m not a huge newspaper reader, other than a few websites, but this is really great and i may end up subscribing (it’s 2 weeks free now, and then 99 cents a week, after the free trial) – it’s pretty future-like.. which i’m totally into. tons of interactive stuff…video integration, animation, swiping, 360 pictures, networked games, etc… pretty darn awesome. here’s a video of it:
pretty neat! reminds of the harry potter newspapers in the movies…
The Beatles posted this little video today to their facebook page. It’s a short little look at the making of the soundtrack to their Cirque Du Soleil show “Love”. As you may know I’m a huge Beatles fan. I unfortunately have never gotten to see the show but the soundtrack is great. I was definitely skeptical when I first heard about it but I was converted when I heard it the first time. Basically George Martin (Beatles producer) and his son Giles went back to the original tapes of the Beatles recordings and took elements from their entire catalogue and kind of remixed them and mashed them up to make this really fun and exciting soundtrack. The video shows a few examples of the mash ups but the album is full of them. Like in the video they show how they took the drums from “Tomorrow Never Knows” (the coolest sounding drums in history, if you ask me) and put them over the music to “Within You Without You”. If you’re a big fan like me it’s really fun to listen to and try to identify where the different elements came from. It’s being released on iTunes soon, so you should check it out.
If you’re a big Beatle fan and into recording you have to also check out this book called “Recording The Beatles“. The engineers at Abbey Road kept incredibly extensive notes on all the sessions and this book pulls together all those notes to give you a day by day account of what was going on in the studio for each song and how they did it. They had a copy at the studio we mixed “Storyboards” in and it is really the coolest book you can imagine for a Beatles fan. Thanks for reading.
Love, dan
P.S. did you guys know that it’s snowing outside? it’s awesome!
i adore my ipad. it has become a favorite device of mine for sure… but besides just being extremely convenient as a travel companion (watching movies on planes with such a nice, person screen is perfection,) a wonderful writing-music tool and a large scale iphone, i haven’t really found many apps that are exclusive to the ipad that “define” the ipad so much. (i suppose netflix is an exception.. it’s better on the ipad than on the iphone) in general, what makes the ipad super nice is it’s size and convenience factors. BUT i recently bought a game called “world of goo”… it’s incredible and has become the first app that feels made FOR the ipad. (even though it was originally a wii game)… it’s a match made in heaven.
i haven’t gotten way into a video game in a loooong time.. but this one sucked me in and i played it through to the end! (which is a rare thing for me… especially lately) – it’s got a really neat art style, the story is silly but fun… and the gameplay is incredible with the touch screen.
i didn’t really like the game after playing it for the first couple times, but all of a sudden i got hooked. hopefully it hasn’t cost me too much songwriting time, but it was worth it! super fun. grab this game for ipad.. or wii… or mac or PC, i think it’s available on all of it. check it out here…
here’s the trailer…
love, ryan
p.s. our new EP “february” is out tomorrow AM! hooray!! hope you guys like it!
Per usual, each Yearbook EP is $3 on it’s own, or you can subscribe to ALL 12 of ‘em anytime for $30. (Saves $6!)… learn more here!
“February” will release on iTunes (& all other digital music stores) on approx. Feb. 15th ( FYI: each of the previous Yearbook EPs are all on iTunes now! Click here)
“FEBRUARY” TRACK LIST:
1. Dear True Love 2. Land or Sea 3. Learning Curve
We can hardly believe that this EP marks the 5th installment of Yearbook already! Time sure is flying by… but we’ve still got 7 more EPs to go! (not even halfway!) “February” was a ton of fun to make – in honor of Valentine’s Day, this EP’s a bit sweeter than the rest, especially “Dear True Love,” which is a straight up love song. “Land or Sea” is a bit more upbeat and direct, and “Learning Curve” is a reunion of the electric guitar in our sound. (fair warning: it’s a gentle kind of song, not a rock anthem! Sorry metal-heads.)
“FEBRUARY” GUESTS:
Our incredibly talented friend, Eva Holbrook made her second appearance on Yearbook and played mandolins on “Dear True Love.” As usual, her beautiful performances gave the song sparkle and charm. We’re thrilled to have had another chance to work together with her – such a privilege to work with someone as kind as they are gifted. Eva appears courtesy of Nashville Republic. Make sure you check out Eva’s band, “Shel.” They’re just great!
Our pal, Ryan Francesconi played a touch of banjo and slide guitar on “Dear True Love” as well. For those of you unfamiliar with Ryan’s work, he’s a genius multi-instrumentalist and songsmith that is a member and contributor to one of our all-time favorite artists, Joanna Newsom. Ryan also played as a guest on a few songs of ours on our “Storyboards” record, so it was fun to make more music together! Ryan was headed out overseas for a few months for some solo performances and some touring with ms. Newsom, but we are grateful that Ryan was able to take a few minutes before his trip, to add this subtle and beautiful contribution to the song! Check out Ryan’s solo work here. or Joanna Newsom’s latest “Have One On Me,” which features many of Ryan’s performances and arrangements.
Our good friend and wonderful drummer, Aaron Mortenson played drums on “Land or Sea.” We worked together long distance on this song. Aaron’s living in Nashville, so we worked out the drums with Aaron via ichat, which was a fun experience, and we are thrilled with how it turned out. Aaron’s a first class dude. A huge thanks to Chad Brown as well for his help with additional drum engineering in Nashville! Keep your ears/eyes out for Aaron’s band, “The Clones.” New record coming out soon and it’s great!
As usual, our veteran/resident mix-genius, John Goodmanson mixed “February.“
Well, we sincerely hope you enjoy “February!” Thank you so very much for supporting us, guys. Yearbook has been an absolute privilege to work on and we can’t thank you all enough for making it possible.
Who doesn’t love Legos? Who doesn’t love a good movie? How about Lego versions of good movies? Well here you go. Scenes from this year’s Oscar nominated films recreated with Legos. You can always count on the internet to come up with stuff like this.
Love, dan
127 Hours
Inception
Black Swan
True Grit
The King’s Speech
Click here to see all the nominees get the Lego treatment.
… regardless, go cubs! oh wait.. who plays “football”again? 
;)
