Upcoming Performance – June 7, 2008

If you’re in the Phoenix area on the evening of June 7th, come out to the City of Gilbert’s Riparian Institute and enjoy a nature walk through the 110-acre preserve and listen to music by several members of the Mesa Symphony and yours truly. I’ll be playing harp and classical guitar near where the walk [...]

Read Full Post »

Harpist for Hire – Have Calluses, Will Travel

As delicate an instrument as the pedal harp seems to be, most people don’t realize that a harpist needs to have very tough fingertips to play one for any length of time. I’ve been working quite diligently on tone and technique lately, and the increase in practice time was giving me blisters on my [...]

Read Full Post »

The Dog Ate My Practice Log…

I am now a music teacher at Gilbert Music in Gilbert, Arizona.  Talk about timing – they did need another instructor, as their one classical guitar teacher is one slot shy of a full schedule.  In I walk, resume in hand…
I’ve been busy today getting all of my ducks in a row for a major [...]

Read Full Post »

The Saga Continues…

“LoRes” vs. “HiRes” mp3 Files
The only viable solution I could come up to the audio quality issues I was having over on mySpace was to re-upload the lower bit and sample rate mp3s for free listening/downloads. All of the variations I tried other than the 192 kbps bit rate developed the same annoying sound [...]

Read Full Post »

Change of Plan

It seems that my mp3 compression and MySpace’s streaming process don’t mix well. Three of the four tracks sounded great on my computer, but developed an obnoxious high “buzz-hum” when they were processed for streaming by MySpace. I’ve taken them down until I can tinker around with the compression some more.
I will come up [...]

Read Full Post »

New and Improved Sound Files!

Lots of homework last night and today…and with what I learned, I’ve now uploaded new and better quality free, streaming and downloadable mp3s on MySpace.
I used Apple’s iTunes to do the file conversion and am much happier with today’s files versus yesterday’s. The audio quality is a lot better – as good as it’s going [...]

Read Full Post »

Free Music: Just A-Lookin’ For a Home

I spent most of the day trying to find a way to make some of my music available on this blog – four full length songs for free. To make a long story short (the rant about hosting services is placed at the end so you can skip over it), I finally resorted to posting [...]

Read Full Post »

Business Cards, v. 2.0

Everything seems to be entering the “version 2.0″ stage lately. Even though I fully intended to finish up the “Artist Bio” on the Music By Ariel blog, I spent a lot of time reworking my music business cards instead. I’m debating whether to use the dangerous angel website for music or add another domain; the [...]

Read Full Post »

Repertoire Pages Up

Got my harp and guitar repertoire pages up on the “Music By Ariel” blog today, plus a whole lot of practicing done. The guitar nails (version 2.0) do seem to have bonded well. Not much time for other blogging at the moment.

Read Full Post »

Drawn Portrait vs. Photo?

I’m still undecided on this one. I’ve been working on this drawing to use on the “Music by Ariel” blog. It’s got potential, but I’ve still got a ways to go. I’m posting it just because days ago I said I’d be putting something up and this is my way of proving to [...]

Read Full Post »

Music By Ariel

I’ve got another blog started (Music By Ariel) and hope to have some stuff up there later tonight. This is all experimental…

Read Full Post »

Promotional Ponderings

This promo/branding/self-definition stuff is difficult. I’m still trying to finish up my business cards before tonight’s gig and I keep going round and round, wavering between two very different ideas of my music, with correspondingly different color schemes, themes and images. I have narrowed it down somewhat, though. I laughed when I put the “Lover’s [...]

Read Full Post »

Guitar Nails, Continued

After getting my acrylic nails filled, I tried playing with the longer tips again. This time it’s sounding better than before, so I’m going ahead and leaving the nails a little longer than last week. I’m not getting as much noise in my tremelo and I’m not as concerned about the harp playing at [...]

Read Full Post »

Second Childhood

Yesterday was a busy day. I attended a concert, prepped for gigs, did some promotional work, and got my “flamenco nails” filled in. Yesterday also taught me something about how I’ve changed recently.
Who’d have thought? It seems that there is a glut of harp players in Flagstaff, at least as far [...]

Read Full Post »

OMG, He’s Right!

It’s a gorgeous spring morning on the prairie. The birds are singing and it’s warm, clear, and calm. I’m a little bleary-eyed, however. I stayed up until 2:00 a.m. getting the audio station set up. I was not going to let another day go by with all that junk sitting on [...]

Read Full Post »