Hope all you students enjoy the piece.  We’re really excited to come and work with you all.

Click Here to download.

Enjoy and don’t forget to think of a name for the piece.

The Final Battle (Practice Track).mp3

To download above link you can just right-click on link and select download linked file.

Every year the West Des Moines school district hires a composer to write a piece for their young orchestra. This year they have selected me to write the piece that will be performed in April this year.  I’m really looking forward to it.  As an added bonus for writing the piece I decided I should record the piece so that kids can download the piece to help them practice.  I thought I would put this up on our site so they can easily access it.

My only request is that if you like the piece you go find us on facebook and like us and maybe even buy our first record on itunes.  If you really feel inspired you can go make a donation on the shop page to help us with our next record.

Enjoy and can’t wait to perform this epic music.

We sat down at Derek took a lot of time to tune his drums.  It took a little more time than usual because of the newish drum heads he put on the drums.  We got all the mics placed and were about ready to get levels when Derek received the text 911.  His wife had called and shared that we was having some flooding in his house unexpectedly and we needed to leave right away to fix the emergency.  This was frustrating on many levels, but what can you do.  Before we left we decided to come back on Thursday and try again.

We got the drums set-up, mics placed, levels checked and were about ready to record when pro tools didn’t want to work for us.  Every time we pushed record either pro tools shut down or the whole computer shut down.  We spent 2 of the 3 hours we pegged for this easy drum session on fixing this problem.  We tried everything under the sun to get pro tools up and running and all the sudden pro tools magically decided to work and don’t quite know why.

We then did what we could but needed more time.  We’re going back in on this Sunday to attempt again this easy drum session.  It makes you wonder why life at times has to be so confusing.  The only thing I can say is that we certainly have learned a lot in the process, unfortunately it wasn’t what I had hoped to learn.  Let’s hope Sunday has no issues.

…..more to follow……

Derek

Thanks again MNSOTA for having us.  I hope it was enjoyable time at the conference.

http://www.clocksandcloudsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/Breaking-the-Stereotypes-of-Music.pdf

Most jobs you have a few tasks that you are required to do. In this job I have to be a composer, musician, engineer, manager, graphic designer, mailman, salesman, and 100 other tasks. I then have to share all these roles with the other band members (which is great, but at times tricky).

 Right now we are all putting on our salesman hats in trying to get this music heard. It’s a tricky situation to be in. I have a product that I believe in and think is actually very good that many people will enjoy. The issue is how we get know by more and more people. We have quite a few marketing strategies, but the hard part is actually putting yourself out there. I don’t like this hat of being a salesman as much. I would much rather just play and write music. However, it’s also no fun to play to an empty room so alas I must sell.

I have been trying to get inspired and remembered a particularly moving speech about being a salesman I would like to share with you. I couldn’t find a better quality video but it does the trick.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duZ4VSDmwNo&feature=related

 Just to clarify I am joking. Dwight Schrute isn’t my role model for what it means to sell a product. If I could put myself out there right now for one second. If you like the latest Clocks & Clouds CD we would really appreciate if you could pass the word along. You could do this by facebook, twitter, email, text, phone, talking face to face, or for the select few telepathy.

The good news is we didn’t cut any corners. We did everything the way we wanted it done and worked very hard to finish the product. We learned a ton from this process and I hope the future projects will go a lot smoother. In fact future projects are already well underway. We have 1 track recorded, another track ready to be recorded another 2 well underway, and another song that is half way through the composing phase.

If you want to purchase our album you can do it on itunes. However, if you want to give C&C the most money you should purchase it from our website so we don’t have to pay Steve Jobs anything. You can also get the physical CD from our online store as well as give us a donation if you feel so inclined.

Lastly, now that the CD is completed we hope to keep a lot more content going through our webpage.  I’m also going to try a new venture and post some video blogs.  I might even do one tonight while I’m recording some strings for a different project.