Nick Takenobu Ogawa

I went and voted early yesterday. The line was pretty crazy, but it was totally worth it!

I bought a cello neck and fingerboard through the internet and they finally came today. I’ve got this pet project to build my own electric cello. I have one of the Yamaha ones, but it’s very robotic and mechanical looking and I want to take a stab at making my own design. It will basically be a trial run because I’ve never built anything like it before, but it will definitely be a fun project. The design will be loosely based on the shape I use for waxatronic - which is my electronic stuff that you can find here.

The TVOTR concert this weekend was awesome! I thought the flow of the show was really well done, although I was skeptical at first. They played “Wolf Like Me” for their 4th song, which seemed like a bold move, especially in the typical save-the-hits-for-last concert mentality. But it really brought the crowd in and they kept the energy high even through some of the slower sparser songs after that. “Golden Age” was a lot faster than on the record but it was still good. Dave Sitek had these windchimes hanging from the end of his guitar for a bunch of songs, which was pretty crazy. It was hard to tell what they were really doing, but I guess they must have added some kind of sustained overtones to add to the overall wall of sound he makes.

I’ve gotta say, I’m pretty excited about seeing TV on the Radio this Saturday. I’ve got their new album and have listened to it a bunch of times and it’s awesome.

Looking at my post from yesterday I realized that the picture doesn’t make Atlanta look as pretty as it actually is from my window, mostly due to all those wires. I work right near Piedmont Park, and I ate my lunch there yesterday so I took a picture. It was pretty nice to sit in the sunshine in October, especially since it’s supposed to snow in VT today. While I ate my sandwich I read David Foster Wallace’s essay “Consider the Lobster.” It’s really not the best thing to read while you’re eating, but it’s pretty awesome stuff nonetheless.

I’m back . . . at least for now. I spent some time in Vermont, which was a nice break from New york. Life is much slower there, and it’s nice for about a month, and then it gets a little too slow. Then, I moved to Atlanta at the beginning of September. It was kind of a crazy whirlwind move. I’ve got some new music that I’ll be putting up soon. Meanwhile, I’ll just leave you with a picture of Mid-town Atlanta from my office window.

Next Monday, August 18 at 7pm EST I’ll be playing on the Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour in Lexington, Kentucky. The show is broadcast all over the place, and they have station listings, as well as webcast info on their website, www.woodsongs.com. Please tune in if you can.

I’ve moved all my recording equipment back to my parents house, so I won’t be able to add any new songs for a while, not that I’ve been adding any recently anyway. It’s been pretty difficult to record new things while having a full time job, which is why I’m quitting in a month and moving home to record a new album!

Actually, 2 albums. I want to split up the sound so that I can focus on things more efficiently. I’d like to do one album of all folk songs, with singing and cello accompaniment, but keep it pretty sparse.

 The other album would be instrumental and more heavily focused on layers with beat production. I’ve been really inspired by the band Ratatat lately, and I’d like to do something in that vein of electronic beat production with live cello on top.

 I’ve been finding tons of cool old folk songs and cowboy/western songs that I want to adapt for the cello. I think I’ll probably include some original stuff too, but it’ll be fun to rely on the traditional stuff since it’s so rich.

I haven’t decided if I’ll include vocals on the electronic album. I’m just excited about the possibility of being able to perform both in acoustic and laid back environments, and louder more club like venues.

I took a pretty big break there for a while, but I’m back. I actually put the cello down for a few weeks, and it was nice to be able to come back to it fresh. 

I’ve written this new song and hope that you like it. It’s about life in the city, and generally just being part of the crowd.

This is still pretty much a demo and I plan on adding some simple percussion in the future, and maybe a mandolin or something. It’s pretty tedious to worry about the production aspect though so I think for now I’m just happy with getting back to writing. 

 Method and the Masses 

SO yea, I’ve been lazy, but only in terms of updating the blog. I’ve actually done a couple new things, I just haven’t gotten around to posting them. Neither of these songs contain any cello - I did them all in Logic, but they still have their merits I think. The first one was more of an exercise to see if putting a poem to music really works or not. I think it does more or less, but I’d like to redo the vocals at one point, and my slight dissatisfaction with them probably explains my instinct to put them so low in the mix.

Excessive Options

 This next one was very fun to make with my roommate and two of his friends from home. The goal was to make some sort of David Bowie-esque futuristic space song. We made the whole song in an evening, and if it seems thrown together it’s because it is. If it seems incredible then that’s just because we are futuristic space geniuses. Doing this one made me realize how dumb and simple pop songs are, but at the  same time how fun they are. I think I’d like to do something like this, with a heavy beat I mean, but instrumental, with some cello - maybe kind of a trip hop type of song like DJ shadow or something rad like that. Who knows, I’ve been pretty uninspired lately, but I’m going away this weekend and maybe it’ll revamp the creative juices.

Cosmic Space Party

This is an instrumental song. I’ve only performed it live a couple of times so far, and originally it was written as a pizzicato piece. I think it works much better arco and lends itself better to expressive interpretation that way. I’m posting a link to a Finale Notepad version of the sheet music, but I’ll be able to print out and write in the bowings at work tomorrow and scan it as a pdf.

I’m calling the piece Black Stallion because it’s one of my favorite movies, and because it just reminds me of the music in that film.

Black Stallion

Sheet Music(Finale Notepad)

2/29 UPDATE: Here’s the PDF. I was going to put in bowings and fingerings but I’m not sure if it’s necessary. If you want me to do it please let me know, but otherwise I’ll just let you figure it out and assume that’s ok.
Sheet Music PDF