The dB OlympicsMarch 2nd, 2010

Forget Vancouver, the real action is at the Institute of Art in Schaumburg where students have been competing every week for great prizes such as microphones or a recording session with our academic director.

Some students put together a great promo radio spot for the event:

During the fierce competition, I went head-to-head against fellow instructor (known as Mr. Black), to see who could be victorious in a microphone set-up and tear-down speed competition.  Here is the nail-biting video:

More Recording in ClassFebruary 19th, 2010

Here’s a quick video of an in-class recording project we did last week:

We ended up recording a djembe, electric guitar and bass.
It is great to have amazing mics to work with, including earthworks, AKG and Sennheiser.  We ended up with a simple recording that was thrown together, but it gave us a lot of mixing possibilities and different ways to listen.  It’s a learning experience for everyone to get used to the studio, especially the SSL console.
We’re over halfway through the quarter and the students have just endured mid-terms… more fun to come!

The CHAT Digital Arts FestivalFebruary 12th, 2010

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my piece, ‘Opening/Unknowing’ is going to be played at the CHAT (Collaborations:  Humanities, Arts & Technology) Festival at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.  The piece will be presented as part of a live music series called, ‘Festival on the Hill’ and will be played next Thursday night, February 18th at 5pm.

I am disappointed that I will not be attending the festival because there are many interesting workshops and performances on the schedule.  Here’s a few that caught my attention:

Carolina Performing Arts Presents STREB: Brave Collaborative Performance

From the CHAT Festival Website:

STREB’s virtuosic, daredevil performers combine extreme sports with dance. With backgrounds in ballet, modern dance, martial arts, acrobatics and circus skills, they use experimental technologies such as “smart” prostheses, personal robots and a human-sized yo-yo to create a new vocabulary of performance. In this performance, the collaborators will investigate physical concepts such as ways to occupy traditionally unoccupied surfaces—ceilings, walls and trusses; challenge gravity; and investigate high-speed vertical motion in the face of centrifugal force.

The Art and Culture of the DJ is a work for turntables and Latin ensemble from composer Raúl Yañez, to be performed by UNC’s Charanga Carolina and turntablist DJ Radar.

The February 18 performance in Gerrard Hall will be an open rehearsal, during which Yañez, DJ Radar and Charanga leader professor David Garcia will perform and discuss the piece.

Bathysphere is an underwater opera and an interactive game: a musical narrative in which the audience triggers events.

Imagine: you enter Gerrard Hall; you see an underwater world floating by and hear its gentle sounds. You also see a few real objects around you. Pick up a beach ball, and toss it. An octopus appears! You notice that as you move your beach ball, the octopus moves correspondingly, projected on three of the walls.

It is as if you are inside an aquarium. The octopus also has different musical phrases, depending its situation. Say that another person in Gerrard Hall picks up a fishing rod. It is re-projected as a school of fish, with its own musical phrases.

Wow, this is some REALLY cool stuff… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
There’s much more to check out at the website:  www.chatfestival2010.com

Class in the StudioJanuary 29th, 2010

The other day, we did a class project using various stereo mic techniques in the recording studio at the Institute of Art.  It was a fun project and it was exciting to be using such fantastic gear.  I owe a big thanks to the guys in the class who helped with setup and tracking.  Check out some pics:

Jake and Geoff micing up Jeremy on the Acoustic Guitar

Dakota, Laurent and Jake behind the SSL Console

Tracking to Pro Tools

The New DecadeJanuary 22nd, 2010

Happy Holidays, New Year, New Decade, etc.  Wow, it’s been a long time since I posted, and a LOT has happened.  I’m glad to say that I accomplished my goal of completing Grad school with a perfect 4.0 GPA.

Receiving my diploma

Our holiday break was packed with family, food, and presents.  Cassie and I joked that we should film our travels and make a movie called “Five Christmases”.  It was great to spend time with all of our various families despite all of the rushing around.  We continued our tradition of visiting Milwaukee and hanging out downtown with my family.

Me, Cassie, my brother and his girlfriend with ‘The Fonz’ in Milwaukee!

Over the break, I was informed that my piece, ‘Opening/Unknowing’ was accepted to the University of North Carolina Digital Arts Festival this February!

My other major life change, other than Graduating, was starting a teaching position at the Institute of Art in Schaumburg.  I am teaching ‘Audio Technology II’ and ‘Listening and Analysis’.  It also doesn’t hurt that they just built a brand new multi-million dollar studio with an SSL console and the works.  In fact, I am lucky enough to teach one of the classes in the studio itself!

Andrew from Solid State Logic traning us on the console

Cassie has started her final semester at NIU and is working hard as usual.  She is teaching two classes as a Teaching Assistant this semester, so she has her hands very full.  She is also preparing for her Graduate show that will be coming up later in the semester.  She is currently showing some of her work at the Pleasant Street Gallery in Dekalb and we enjoyed going to the opening last night.

One of Cassie’s awesome paintings

As you might imagine, I am keeping myself out of trouble between my teaching position and the Bose store.  Cassie and I are excited to be on the path toward our goals and know that there’s a lot of excitement still to come.  My birthday is coming up this Sunday, and some friends are coming over to watch some football and have a good ‘ol time.  For now, in the words of Edward R. Murrow:  Good night and good luck.

Bobo being sneaky.  (stolen from Cassie’s blog)

Nowhere. - Now Posted Online!December 9th, 2009

I’m preparing to walk across the stage this Saturday and receive my Masters Degree!
In the meantime, I uploaded my thesis video. Check out the trailer:

And here’s the real deal: (Click the HD button to see it full-size)

Nowhere. from Nathan Edwards on Vimeo.

From the program notes:

Nowhere. is a high-definition video presentation filmed across seven states over the course of seven months. It is inspired by the filmmaking of Ron Fricke and Godfrey Reggio in its employment of non-narrative structure, use of time-lapse photography, and observational technique.

I saw this project as a personal challenge to create a film with production values that are as comparable as possible to the works of the filmmakers mentioned above, even with a limited amount of funding and equipment. The film was shot entirely on a Canon HV20 digital video camera and features music that was recorded and mixed on my home computer and in the computer music studio.

The resulting film seeks to uncover where we find the greatest wealth of beauty in our habitat by observing the way we live and the how we affect the land we inhabit. Through its poetic structure, the viewer is allowed to question both the aesthetics and meaning of our environmental impact and discover where the lines between garbage and grandeur are distorted or ultimately realized.

Article: Modern Age of Retail ShoppingDecember 2nd, 2009

In the Modern Age of Retail Shopping, Minimalism Can Give Consumers the Most

As curious shoppers made their first trips to the highly-anticipated new Microsoft stores, flooding the web with smartphone video tours, many of us noticed something fishy: The blinding white lights, roomy floor plan, and geometric tables with laptops sparsely presented on the surface. It all looks so familiar, as if there is another company out there who knows what kind of retail store design draws throngs of eager consumers like magnets. Indeed, both Apple and Microsoft find a minimalist store design to be an appealing approach, and are working to create a similar breed of shopping experience.

Read on…

A Day to RememberNovember 19th, 2009

I couldn’t believe the number of friends and family who came to see my show last Sunday.  I want to give a huge THANK YOU to all who attended and made it such a special day for me.  My thanks goes especially to Dr. Phelps for all of his help in the program, and to Cassie for all of her support and the work she put in to making the day great.  I also had a lot of help from Cassie and our families with the reception following the show.

The performance went great, and I was very pleased how fantastic the video looked on the big screen.  I will have many videos to come.  Here’s a few photos from the show:


At the piano performing “Tiny Pieces”

Setting up the board for a piece

As I mentioned, stay tuned for more pics and videos.  I’m almost a graduate (again)!

NOWHERE. - Concert this Sunday!November 9th, 2009

A Night of Collaborative SoundNovember 6th, 2009

We successfully completed another great Annex concert last night!
The concert was conceived by Evan Merz, and all performances were intended to be collaborations.
My piece was ‘Mechanical Lullaby 3′ which was a collaboration with my brother, as I mentioned earlier.
I think we had one of the largest turnouts I’ve seen!  It was a very diverse showing of live performance, surround pieces, and video.  Here’s some shots I took at rehearsal:

Evan and Kenneth Joseph with their piano and steelpan collaboration.

Alex Beach and Mark Popowitch getting ready to rock

Evan rockin’ the board.

Now that we’re done with this show, there’s only 9 days until my concert!  The time is near!