Four New Percussion Posters
By johnb on January 21st, 2012
There are four new posters in the Tone Deaf store. These are based off of the Anatomy of a ___________ comics that came out over the course of the last year. PLUS, a new one with marching cymbals. You can either just purchase one ($7 a poster) or take advantage of the BUY 3 GET 1 FREE poster sale that is ongoing and get one of these free. Also, when you put these posters side by side (tenors, snares, basses, then cymbals) they create one big long poster!
Anatomy of a Tenorline
Anatomy of a Snareline
Anatomy of a Bass Drumline
Anatomy of a Cymbal Line
Take No Prisoners
By johnb on January 17th, 2012
The newest poster, TIME FOR BAND, is now available in the Tone Deaf Store. And yes, the Buy 3 Get 1 Free Poster sale is still going on!
FMEA Recap
By johnb on January 16th, 2012
Well, FMEA came and went. This was Tone Deaf Comics first convention and I have to tell you that I had a blast! There were so many great things about the convention:
1) The People- it was so great meeting everybody that came out to the booth. You guys made the time fly. On Friday the exhibition hall was open for eight hours but it felt like two. It was so wonderful seeing people react to my comic, because I don’t get to see that at home. Even more wonderful was watching people discover the comic for the first time. It was awesome to see a lot of people returning to visit my booth for a second time, but this time they brought someone along with them to show them my booth. Those visits really made my weekend.
Regret: I had my iPad with me and it was my intention to get pictures with people but I totally forgot the entire weekend. If anyone got any pictures please send them in and I will post them.
2) Booth Neighbors- I had some great booth neighbors my first time out of the gates. On my right was Encore Fundraising and they kept stuffing me full of their delicious cookies. Not only was the food great but it was nice to talk with them the whole weekend. A great bunch of people. If you are looking for a fundraiser (I believe in TN, GA, & FL only) then check them out. Also across the way was Jody Espina of Jody Jazz. He was fun to talk shop with on exhibition booths and the such. They make clarinet and saxophone mouthpieces. To my left was Dan Geist of DG Portraits, whose set-up really inspired me on how to meld my booth in future conventions. Then down the aisle was Key Poulan’s booth. Unfortunately, he could not make it due to basically doing the absolute right thing for his family and being an awesome guy, but at the booth for him was Arjuna and Drew Farmer- both of which are really great drill writers. They were great to talk with throughout the weekend.
3) Other Exhibitors- Beyond the exhibit neighbors I already cited I didn’t have much of an interaction with other exhibitors. I should have done more on my part. However, I thought it was very cool that on Saturday and Sunday a lot of other exhibitors kept coming up to my booth to check it out because they had “been told” to come check it out. That made me feel really good (not going to lie).
4) Rehearsals- One of the bad things about exhibiting is that I didn’t have a chance to see much of the band rehearsals that were going on. I did get a chance to visit an Intercollegiate rehearsal and then the All-State Symphonic Band rehearsal a couple of times. Gary Green was conducting the Symphonic Band and they were playing Whitacre’s Lux Aurumque and Steven Bryant’s Ecstatic Waters (when I was in there). Both pieces are great but I have to say this- if you are introducing someone to classical music don’t take them to a concert. Take them to a rehearsal for a little bit and get them up close. There is no greater feeling than being that close to the music and just totally have it overwhelm you. Ecstatic Waters will do exactly that up close. What a great piece. You have to hear this piece live if you have not.
Regret: Not being able to see any of the concerts due to exhibiting or tearing down the booth or going home to fall asleep from exhaustion.
5) The Performers- Totally blown away by the talent of the kids at the convention. Wow! You guys are good. Don’t go changing!
6) Cathi Leibinger- She was a great help throughout the weekend. She used a few of my comics in her clinic and sent many people my way. She has even offered up help for in the future. Very good person with a generous heart. Thanks Cathi!
To recap- I had a blast! The set-up and tear down was hard, but worth the while. FMEA, you can count me in for next year (that statement actually does me no good unless I send in my paperwork, so I guess I should do that now). Thanks!
FMEA
By johnb on January 12th, 2012
If you are attending FMEA please stop by and visit me at booth 9005. See you there!
Organizing DCI Albums on your iTunes
By johnb on January 10th, 2012
Having DCI CDs all the way back to 1982 is pretty rad. I used to have all the way back to 1972 but, honestly, I never listened to those that much. Good stuff, just not for me. Here are some ways that I keep them organized on my iTunes, so I have a few different options to listen to them on my iPod.
First you want to make sure that you are able to listen to your corps by either the year (such as 2005) or by the corps (such as the Blue Devils). You also want to make sure that you number the tracks for each year as well, so you can play them in order of their finish competitively (unless you like listening to drum corps in alphabetical order, in which case that is totally up to you). Here is an example of a track info box on iTunes:
Here are a few things to note:
1) Name- that is the track name. Some people like to put the show name up there, but it gets a little silly when you go back into most of the shows of the 80′s (or even some shows in the 90′s!) when they didn’t really name their shows. So, I put the corps and the year for the Name.
2) Artist- this one is key. You want to be sure that you title all of the Cadets shows with the same artist name so if you want to you can listen to all of the Cadets shows from their earliest year all the way up until this past year in one fell listen (which would take quite a while by the way). But this is good for long car rides if you only want to listen to the Cadets. (the Cadets used to be called Holy Name Cadets, Garfield Cadets, The Cadets of Bergen County. If you put all of those names in separately they would not show up as the same artist so you want to simplify it and just call them Cadets).
3) Album Title- This is where you want to title the name of the drum corps year. I use DCI 2011, or DCI 1995, or whatever the year is. It is easy to find on my iPod so I use this system. Album title allows you to listen to just that year on your iPod, if you just wanted to listen to 1993 only for example.
4) Comments- this is where I put in the show title (if there was one). That way if I can’t remember what the show was I still have it in iTunes for me to check out.
5) Year- put the year in here so it keeps it organized properly.
6) Track Number and Disc Number- Putting in the track numbers and Disc numbers allows you to listen to the corps in their respective order of finish (which is the way I like to listen to them when I listen to one year at a time).
7) Genre- put Drum Corps or DCI there. Whatever you prefer so you can just look at drum corps music only if you want to in iTunes.
Compilation- be sure to check this box so the Disc Numbers (compiled by the YEAR box and album name) stay together.
When you do that you have a very organized DCI album collection on your iTunes:
Listening to corps by the year:
Listening to corps by the corps:
I hope this helps. I’m sure you all have your own way to do it, but this is the way I organize my DCI library. In a later post I’ll show you how I organize my classical music library. Thanks!
