Steve Ball

C3 Niagara Falls, now on iTunes

More times four good news: the fourth weekly C3 single is now for sale on iTunes.

Dangling carrots.

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One Month Ago

From December 20th, although right now it feels like this was one year ago.

This was written in real time and recorded in my favorite practice spot on earth in the Grand Wailea:

Forward looking trivia: this is also the exact spot in the hallway where I met Tom Costain during the filming of Just Go With It in 2010.

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Working: Hammond Song (Instrumental)

One of the new pieces C3 has been working on for our live show is the Roches iconic Hammond Song.

A couple of weeks ago, Paul and I recorded a rough working skeleton arrangement (minus the evolving four-part vocals and Stephen’s flute.)  I also filled in a working bass part.

We had a breakthrough on this song at rehearsal earlier this morning. 

Our performance coaching with Lucia last week is already beginning to reap practical rewards as we are beginning to get inside these songs by working in a new way. 

Here’s a glimpse: Hammond Song (instrumental) 9.2M mp3

 

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Earlier this afternoon, Paul, Jax and I also attended a new year kick-off Seattle Circle business meeting with a significant subset of the SC and SGC family at Curt’s place. 

It was an ear and eye-opening reunion on a number of levels.

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C3 Orphan, now on iTunes

More more more good news: lead time for getting a single onto iTunes ~24 hours.

Translation: the third weekly C3 single is now for sale on iTunes.

No more depressing thoughts about fractions of pennies.  Replace that with a vision transmitted by Lucia Neare at our life-enriching C3 rehearsal with her earlier this evening: invite your future audience into the room.

Now: no time for questions when there’s work to be done.

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Hollow: Video v2.1

It’s what’s known as ‘crunch time’ both at work and in my Work. This means there is a 24 x 7 commitment to active progress on both people and projects.

One project: processes to promote C3 products.

For example:

This video is an experiment in use of Creative Commons images with attribution to stitch together a non-verbal story to accompany the song.

Will this kind of work help us sell more Books/CDs? Doubtful – but you can’t play the game if you’re not in the game.

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Thirteen Years of Blogging

Check out what was going on 13 years ago.

Here it is again, in this more modern format:

Sunday January 9 ( 2000 !)

More David Byrne alive in my psyche today:

In my mind, the weather never changes
Skill overcomes unfavorable conditions

I realize today that I need a day of rest once per week from diary writing. From this week forward, Sunday will be my official 'day off' from diary keeping.

This is a good thing.

I have found the line and it's direction is known to me. Absolute trust keeps me going in the right direction. To the extent I am determined the result is the good thing.

So I say: I have adopted this and made it my own.
Cut back the weakness, reinforce what is strong.

Watch me work.

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Poster and postcard mock-up design for the Whidbey show:

Peter, Jax, Bob, Dean, Curt: feedback? Do we need to mention the fact that it is in Langley on Whidbey Island? Need more words about what we do? Pithy press blurbs?

Is less more or is less less?

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We recorded and taped that Whidbey Island show, btw. Someday, it will be interesting to digitize and share that event and repertoire.

But not tonight. It’s already too tomorrow.

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Peak Happiness

Worth reading, from Anne Kreamer in Fast Company:

“In her book The Happiness Myth, Jennifer Michael Hecht identifies three basic kinds of happiness: good day, good life, and peak, and I’ve found that thinking about work within her construct has helped me tease apart some of the “happiness formula” variables that influence well-being.

Good-day happiness at work might mean: I got to the office early, I was able to take care of backlogged paperwork that had been nagging me, I had a productive meeting, and I was able to leave in time to make it to my daughter’s school concert. Good-day happiness is about an awareness of the fortunate conditions of one’s life--where stopping to smell the roses can have measurable positive impact.

Good-life happiness as it relates to work would be more along the lines of being engaged in tasks that you find meaningful and challenging, and in which you are aware that you’re helping provide a decent material quality of life for your family. This kind of happiness is more connected to hard work--the sense that one is doing the best one can in any endeavor and, ideally, endeavors in which the work itself is its own reward. Good-life happiness does not relate to things like our gender or our age, over which we have no influence, but rather to conditions over which we do have some control, such as where we work or the kind of work we choose to do. But good-life happiness does not mean that we are “happy all the time,” to quote the (only somewhat ironic) title of Laurie Colwin’s great novel. Far from it. The positive psychology field puts this in perspective, acknowledging through empirical and replicable research that in spite of the advantages of thinking positively, there are times when “negative” thinking is appropriate, and that difficulty, pain, and sadness are inevitable. We need obstacles and challenges in our lives for achievements to have meaning, the cold and cloudy days that make us revel in the warm and sunny ones, the necessary and numbing work that lets us really enjoy the resulting moments of success. Outrage on behalf of the disadvantaged can lead people to make their corners of the world better places. Ferocity--a little anger, even--can fuel healthy competition.

And, finally, the third kind of happiness--peak happiness--is the more transcendent sort, by definition rare in everyday life, including (and maybe especially) on the job. I’ve also found that this sort of happiness becomes more elusive the older we get--the more cares and responsibilities we have, the less willing we may be to engage in the kinds of experiences where peak moments tend to happen. It takes effort to wake up in the middle of the night with our kids to watch the Pleiades’ meteor showers if our prospective sense of how exhausted we’ll be at work the next day outweighs our anticipation of awe. But, Hecht intimates, it is the peak experiences in our lives that endure, that offer us hope and glimmers of meaning, and that connect us to our families, communities, and a sense of the eternal. And this kind of happiness is closely connected to the “V” in the happiness formula--these are the things we choose to do.

While in our personal and private lives peak happiness may be, for instance, the kind of euphoria we experience at a great rock concert or after exceptional sex, at work it is more often connected with the creation of something original: designing a new kind of ergonomic desk chair, discovering a new way to isolate and destroy viruses, delivering a giant project early and under budget, or creating the next Simpsons. In short, moments of peak happiness at work often involve some aspect of the creative process.”

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C3 Curtains, now on iTunes

More good news: lead time for getting a single onto iTunes: ~ 48 hours.

Translation: the second weekly C3 single is now for sale on iTunes.

Let the fractional fractions of fractions of pennies continue rolling in.

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C3 Rehearsal this evening had a special guest five-year-old sitting in on drums.

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Telling Stories: Storyboards

A big part of my work involves explaining how things could or should work with documents, pictures, sketches, text, videos, or demos.

After a multi-way Skype call to Argentina and Spain this evening, I spent a few minutes doing some quick sketches:

I’ll let you do the (monkey) math to figure out what this is for.

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Hollow: Video Proof of Concept

Evening work, baby steps forward on a video for Hollow.

Tomorrow: back into the full swing of work for the new year.

Many significant challenges just ahead. None easy or even intuitive. And that is precisely what makes them worth doing.

Also coming overnight, the next C3 single: Curtains.

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