However, because of this, I did not feel like getting out of bed this morning. With effort, and feeling a little bit like butt, I managed to drag myself to my feet at 10:30. Not an improvement over the last couple days, but so far I’ve kept myself from regressing, so that’s something.

First I went back into the “Fabula Venera” score. Turns out I hadn’t finished the harp part, and I had left off the 2nd percussion part. Needing something to do, I entered those two parts. Also, I found an interesting solution in finale to notating harp glisses, the kind that go up and down and back up again, making unusual shapes. So my score may look pretty after all when I’m done with the cleaning.

I didn’t spend much more than an hour on the score. Still lots of time left to go. And I was frustrated with myself for not getting any composing done the first two days.

That’s right, people. It was time to Just Write.

Part of the problem has been that I have about 5 ideas floating around in by brain that I want to execute. But in order to actually accomplish anything, I desperately needed to choose one and focus on it for a while. And choosing one is no trivial task. Should I do this one? I dunno. It might be too ambitious. It might be stupid. It’s too much like that other one. I might not even use it. Well today, I decided. I just picked one.

A while ago I jotted down this little musical snippet. It was interesting because it sounded like a viable 2 measure phrase, but it modulated to a different key partway through. For a phrase that short, the fact that it modulated seemed to open up a whole bunch of interesting possibilities. I dug up that phrase several months ago and expanded it into a page-long melodic statement that could serve as the basis for an interesting piece. I toyed with the idea that it might be used as a jazz head if I ever put a jazz combo together again in the future, but somehow I couldn’t quite figure out how to make it work that way. So I shelved it.

Recently, it occurred to me that it could make a pretty effective orchestral piece. I went and found the sketch I had made, one of the few complete sketches I have available, which makes it an ideal candidate to work on during this project.

So that’s the sketch I grabbed this morning. I set up a full score in Finale, inserted the first part of the melody as a trumpet solo, and then it’s just a matter of filling in the other parts. I got about 4 measures finished and then it was time to break for lunch.

That’s when my mom caught me.

She’s been waging war against Maytag for a year. They sold her a dryer almost exactly one year ago, and its favorite food is clothes. And despite the fact that it was under warranty, Maytag has been giving her the runaround, refusing to acknowledge that it is damaging her property and not replacing or fixing it. So in the last year it’s run up about $1000 (conservative estimate) in damage to her clothes.

The problem is, my mom is very bad at the internets, and she needed to submit a claim form to try and reclaim some of the damages before her warranty runs out in a couple of days. This needed to include evidence including scans of all the paperwork and photos of all the damaged clothing (a compromise, since initially they wanted her to mail them all the damaged clothing… haha, great idea). So we spent a couple hours snapping 100 photos of damaged clothes, scanning paperwork and readying them to be emailed to Maytag’s legal department. What a pain.

In the end, I lost a little bit of time today, but I still managed to finish about 8 bars of music. I mean finished, too, not any of that “I’ll come back to it later” bullcrap. This is very encouraging, if I can get 8 bars or more done each day, I should be in excellent shape.

Well, enjoy your Saturday! I’ll probably work some since I have big Mo on my side now, although probably not the full 7. We’ll see.

Yesterday, Thursday, I was up at 7:00 in the a of m for my morning walk with the bro’s live-in lady, also known as my roommate.  It’s a good morning routine.  It’s not so hot at 7am.  We do our thing for about forty minutes and come home to a fresh pot of coffee.  Brother and Lady get ready for work.  I assess my day whilst I wait for the shower.  It’s a good time for me to read over any work I did the night before, make a to-do list for the day, and inject myself with some much needed caffeine.

Because of class and work, I spend Thursdays in Sacramento, leaving at 9:30 in the morning and getting home close to 11:00 at night.  So Thursday morning I printed off my notes for HL, the latest PL draft, and an edit of SU done by my wonderfully stereotypical mentor.  I put everything in a very large denim bag.  At the last minute I threw in both a thesaurus and dictionary because I totally kick it old school and bringing my laptop anywhere scares the crap out of me.

After class I slide my battered grand am out of its spot without taking off anyone’s rearview mirror.  People who drive SUVs and park in compact spaces are assholes.  Right?

So anyway, about that list.

I found a credit union willing to take my broke ass!  Thank heavens for $1 minimum balances and questionable methods of address verification.  So that’s checked off.

I had been scoping out a coffee shop near where I work for a few weeks now and decided to take the plunge.  A worthwhile trip indeed – thick ceramic tile tables outside with wide umbrellas to protect my porcelain Wisconsin skin from that sweltering California sun.  I ordered myself a breakfast burrito and a latte the size of my head before getting to work.

I tackled HL first.  Right now it’s just a basic outline with some notes and a ton of sexy sounding vocabulary words relating to bodily functions, tho not sexy bodily functions.  It’s not that kind of story.  I’ve been looking forward to getting to work on it, and I think I might use it to start my first writing assignment for my fiction workshop.  So I read through my notes, made new ones, and you know, vacillated and pondered and pontificated.

Then I moved on to PL, which is a piece I’ve been rather absorbed in for the past six months.  Lately, things haven’t been going so well with it, but I feel like it has taken a turn recently so I’m hopeful.  I read through my latest draft which I had worked on the night before, made some notes, and moved on before I got too frustrated and knocked over a child on a bicycle*.

I did a brief read through of SU.  At this point the piece is pretty polished and I really needed my computer to make any progress.

Having checked all of my works in progress off my to-do list for the day, I had no choice but to get to my schoolwork.  I have a poem due on the 8^th for my creative writing class, and I don’t want to write it.  The more I work on it, the less I want to write it.  But I remain determined.  We have a choice to do a sonnet, villanelle, or ballad.  I’ve decided to go with the ballad.  The entire time I worked there was that bitchy voice in my head taunting me about how now that I’ve started this and I’ve put a muddled mess down on paper, I will NEVER EVER BE ABLE TO UNWRITE IT.  The days of me being a person who has not written that ballad are over.  This is all very terrifying for me, and may be reflective of a larger psychological issue that warrants attention.  I choose to disregard this.

All in all a productive day.  I worked for about five hours in addition to attending class as well as my morning review.  I’m happy with that.

Today was a bit less productive,but we’ll discuss that tomorrow.  And now I’m signing out.

*something I’ve always wanted to do.

Day 1.

My alarm hasn’t gone off like that since the first week of August, the last day of the Summer season of my “real job.” That job consists of arriving at 8 am, 15 minute morning recess, 30 minute lunch, 15 minute afternoon recess, quitting time at 4. No cell phone, no internet, no social hour. No distractions. And during working hours, we work. No sitting around doing nothing; there’s always something to be done.

Yes, it is like being in elementary school all over again. But that job has taught me something important about myself. When I have 8 hours of the day reserved for working, and it is clear what I am supposed to be doing, I can be extremely efficient. I can get a great deal accomplished.

So this is my goal for the next three months. Structured working time during which I will work on music, and only music. No distractions. For 3 months, it is my day job. And I will approach it with the same urgency and fear of disappointment or failure with which people approach their job. Except this time I am accountable to myself.

It will not be easy.

The alarm sounds at 9:00 on day 1. It is 10:30 before I drag myself out of bed. Not great, but an improvement. Previously I had been sleeping in till 1 or 2 pm. Baby steps.

Time to write. I sit down at the piano and tinker around. I stare at my computer. I grab some staff paper and try to write some notes. Just write. Just write something. I can’t.

11:00. Time is wasting. Well let’s start on something menial while we are waiting for inspiration to strike. I pull up one of the pieces I wrote for Albert in March, because it needs to be scored out.

So that’s all I get done on day 1. I get about half of the parts for “Fabula Venera” scored out. I don’t feel like today is completely wasted, but I also am not yet accomplishing what I need to accomplish. Goal #2 for this project has become to get better at Just Writing. Something I have always struggled with, but also an important skill if I want to get into the world of film.

At the end of my work day, I find that the blog is down. Can’t report on day 1. Oh well.

Day 2 was more of the same. I decided that scoring out a piece first isn’t a bad idea since I haven’t used Finale in a while, and need to re-familiarize myself with it. So I basically finished the score except it is still a bit of a mess. Needs to be cleaned up. But at least the notes have been entered. Something accomplished.

And the blog is back up and running, which means I can write this report. Yay!

So we’ve run into some snags already. However, very little time has been wasted and we’ve still managed to get some stuff accomplished. Promising. This is gonna be the key. Always be productive. Always find something to do.

I’m proud of Alli for making her list. I’ll try to make mine within the next couple of days. It will help, this way I can use it to find things to do if need be.

So days 1 and 2 are done. Hopefully we can start Just Writing soon.

So I had solid plans to start this off with something really eloquent, humorous and yet inspiring…

However.

This morning I was forced to write the first stanza of a ballad with the prompt, “fickleness”.  Pairing me with poetry is a bit like pairing a sloth with running shoes.  I’m sure the sloth would love to go for a jog, but despite his valiant efforts to tie sneakers on those claws, it ain’t happening.  Anyway, I came up with the following:

Wretched dusk, for you hang too low
Making way for crippling night
Damn you sun who has yet to sink
No view through your light

This was not good for my self-esteem.

I managed to hide behind my enormous purse long enough that class had to be dismissed before I was forced to share with my peers*.

Somewhere between “fickleness” and the bell, my innards commenced a twisting and tightening so awful that I practically passed out in the parking lot. As a Wisconsin native transplanted in California, this happens. I stopped for egg drop soup on the way home and had to settle for won ton. And trust me. I settled.

The moral of all this being I don’t want to talk about personal growth and being held accountable to the goals I set for myself. That’s all good stuff, but let’s save it for another day. Instead, I give you…

my list.

YOU DO THESE THINGS…

1. For a Happy Life Conducive to Creative Work
o Income
o Apartment
o Credit Union
2. Portfolio
o SU
o PL
o HL
o TkY (flash fiction?)
o RC
o StL
3. The School
o Schools
o UNLV (02/15)
o Eugene (01/15)
o U. of Wash (01/02)
o Fort Collins?
o UM-Twin Cities (12/15)
o Madison (12/15)
o Milwaukee (12/15)
o Iowa?
o FIND SAFETY SCHOOLS!
o Recommendation Letters
o SP
o DN
o YS
o DR
o SC?
o GRE Scores
o Transcripts
o Personal Statement
o Writing Samples (See #2)

I’ve made some progress on this list.  Unfortunately, my hot water bottle misses me over there, so now isn’t really the time.

*I use the term “peers” lightly, but that’s another issue entirely

Today, Wednesday, September 1, 2010, my friend Alli and I are relaunching this blog as “Hey! Be Awesome!”: part blog, part motivational tool, and ALL SEXY SEXINESS.

You see, what we have realized is that we both are passionate and both aspire to stake out careers in the creative arts: myself, as a film composer, and Alli as a novelist/creative writer. What we have is all the necessary skills and talent, but what we lack is the proper motivation and accountability to get our goals accomplished.

As it happens, we are both looking to attend graduate school in fall 2011 in our respective fields as a first step toward future careers. With looming deadlines, the earliest of which is December first, we needed something to really get our fires burning hot and to help motivate us to stay on task.

That’s where this blog comes in.

Over the next 90 days, you will be seeing regular updates from the both of us as to how we are progressing toward our goal, which, for the time being, is to give ourselves the very best chance to get into the graduate programs of our dreams. Along the way, we may get frustrated and we may get discouraged, but we will each have the support of the other, and after 90 days, we will be looking back and seeing just how much we have managed to accomplish, and looking forward after having taken the first step on the path to what will hopefully prove to be long, fruitful and fulfilling careers.

So with these words, I hereby officially usher in our 90 DAYS TO GET INTO GRAD SCHOOL. Let the “Becoming Awesome” begin!

Had a great birthday yesterday. The weather was fantastic so naturally it was an excellent night to go out and celebrate. Thank you to everyone that I saw out and about!

I have a gift for you all, another blog-exclusive puzzle. Hope you enjoy it!

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My crossword “Schwalterations” is up on the LA Times site, and is being published in syndication all over the country today! If your local paper carries the Sunday LAT, you can find my name in there!

If your paper doesn’t carry it, you can also give it a shot online at the following link:

Schwalterations by Jared Banta

Leave me a comment and let me know how you do on it

I actually applied once before, a year ago, and didn’t get in, but I did make it onto a wait list which I took as a promising sign. Admittedly that application was a little rushed, so I’m looking to not make the same mistake this time around.

The fact that I’m still amped about the program after a year has gone by is very significant. It turns out it’s probably a good thing I didn’t get accepted the first time, because it has lent me more insight than if I had made it right in. Often when things don’t work out I can just brush them aside and they will fade away into the past. So the fact that I still feel strongly about this program tells me that it’s probably pretty important to me, and something that’s worth throwing some effort into.

I also wanted to share that I sold another puzzle! This one is a Sunday and I sold it to the Los Angeles Times (coincidentally). The LAT is pretty cool because it is syndicated all over the country, so wherever you live, there’s a good chance there’s a paper nearby that carries it. I know the Colorado Daily runs the daily crossword and the Daily Camera runs the Sundays. Wow there were a lot of “dailys” in that sentence. But anyway, check it out if you get a chance.

To celebrate, I made a crossword for my grandpa’s birthday, since he does ‘em every morning. I’ll post it below so everyone can give it a shot.

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I was just reminded recently that I have this blog sitting here, and I realized that I have a bunch of stuff that is waiting around that could be on it, I just haven’t been keeping up to date.

I was getting sick of not being able to embed stuff within the blog posts, so I’ve migrated to Byethost, which is a free host that seems to be pretty well-suited to my needs. So we will see how they do. So far so good though, you will see that I’ve got a crossword puzzle applet running, as well as embedded video, audio, and flash on many of the pages, so the experience should be vastly enhanced over what it was previously.

I’ve been busy lately, working on Albert Cook’s new project, and also submitting some new puzzle grids to various papers to try and sell one again. It’s been 2 years! It seems like not that long ago. I will try and make updates as I find out how those turn out. Also I’m making a 2nd push to apply to USC’s film scoring program, which I am massively excited about.

Don’t forget to check out the comic strip that Luke and I are making. It’s over in the sidebar –>

Hope to hear from me again soon!

(Spring 2007)

In February of last year, I was approached by Albert Cook to write the score for a zombie movie he had been filming. The project had started out as a simple trailer for one of his film classes at the University of Colorado, but he had decided to see the project through, and by the time I became involved, it had ballooned into a 48-minute near-feature-length behemoth.

I was delighted to have an opportunity to write some action/adventure/suspense film music since I hadn’t really done too much of that. Little did I know the project would require me to write, in addition to the dramatic underscore, a death metal song, a country song, a punk-rock song, theme songs for both a news show and cowboy show, and yes, even a one-minute opera to be performed by Styrofoam packing peanuts. (Now there’s something you probably have never seen before!)

All in all, I composed about 30 tracks of music for the film, and have since compiled a soundtrack album which is available for listening at Last.fm and SoundClick.com.

Some of the tracks on the album are:

• Zombie Blood Chaos – this is the theme of the film, although it only appears in its entirety on the DVD menu. My brother Luke Banta improvised the vocals for this track, and I cobbled the song together out of his shoutings. Matt Beckemeyer laid down the guitar tracks and, in the process, helped pen some of the licks.
• 

  Packing Peanuts Sing the Transformation Opera

  Zombie Girl – this one was written by Sam Cooper, and also features Sam on vocals, guitar, bass, and drums. Thanks are due to Jeremy Averitt who let us use the equipment in his basement to record all the tracks. All told, the song was conceived, written, performed, recorded, mixed and mastered over a period of about four hours while Sam was in town for a day.

• Zombie Party – this dance track was done by Chris Stibrany.

Other people who helped me out on this huge project were Shenandoah Davis, who sang the soprano part for the Transformation Opera; Aaron DiVesta, who laid down some saxophone and flute on a couple of cues; Josh Moore, who was the drummer on a couple tracks; Jocelyn Holst, who let me borrow her equipment while I was recording the live instruments and vocals; and my dad, Bob, who let me take over his basement while I was making all this noise.

The film debuted in June, 2007 on campus at the University of Colorado, and later appeared at the 2008 Backseat Film Festival in Philidelphia, PA, winning an award for Best Drinking Movie.