Hey there, internet! It’s been a minute.
& I’ve missed you so! Life in Starland has been…complicated, as of late.
That said– lots and lots of good changes are in play and I’m really excited for all the awesome stuff I have coming up to share!
First and foremost– I’d like to tell you about this project.

I haven’t tried to do a yearly project since the Tank Girls Calendar that I did in 2006.
That went over really, really well back then– so I thought to myself that I was way overdue to try to do something like that again. Any attempts to do a 365 photo project or even a 52 weeks project between then and now have lead to complete and utter failure, and as such, I decided a monthly project was as much commitment I could handle.

I also decided that I’ve wanted to work more on recording and music stuff this year, so it was a logical choice to do some kind of monthly song thing!

After tossing some ideas around, I decided to do a cover every month with the name of the month in it.

This month’s is 11:59 It’s January, by Scrawl.

Just in case you’re loading this from a reader, and it strips out the iframe above, you can listen over at bandcamp.

Here are the words if you want to follow along:

January came too soon
Survived the holidays
Without you
But who are you
You are anyone I wish I knew
And tonight I wish I knew
Everyone single one of you

First day Champagne
Old acquaintances are far apart
Tonight Auld Lang Syne means
Leave before the kissing starts

Last year went down the drain
They all do really
Why complain
Drink a cup of kindness (yet)
And say goodbye to our regrets
Ooooh, it’s January
Ooooh, it’s January
Ooooh, it’s January

11:59
8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1
Midnight
Was it a good year
Do I really need to know
’cause now it’s behind me forever
It was a good year because it was such a bad year
That this year could only be better

Last year went down the drain
They all do really
Why complain
Drink a cup of kindness (yet)
(And) say goodbye to our regrets
Ooooh, it’s January
Ooooh, it’s January
Ooooh, it’s January

But who are you
You are anyone I wish I knew
Tonight I wish I knew
Everyone single one of you
Tonight I wish I knew
Everyone single one of you
Tonight I wish I knew
Everyone single one of you

It’s January
Everyone single one of you
(It’s January)
Everyone single one of you
(It’s January)
Everyone single one of you

January
(It’s January)
January
(It’s January)
January
(It’s January)
January

This song was suggested by the excellent Douglas Wolk. Thanks, Douglas!
I had previously been unfamiliar with the original, and if you are too, here it is on the youtubes for your listening pleasure. While I wasn’t super into the track, I thought the words were pretty spot on for where I am right now, and so it became the clear winner amongst an admittedly small group of January songs to choose from.

If you have a suggestion for a month-named-song you’d like to hear me do, please leave a comment, or drop me an email!

This January was a huge amount of change all at once.
This month I:

+ Moved to the mission. My house is number 12 1/2 & I adore that so very much.
+ Got a new input device to record with. (MOTU Traveller Mk3)
+ Celebrated Chinese New Year in the pouring rain– throwing fireworks into the street as part of the Chinatown bang. I got to share this with 3 of my favorite people in the world & it felt like the fresh start that I was really needing after all the craziness at the end of last year.
+ Got offered my first solo gallery show in years.
+ Booked a show with Corpus Callosum for March.
+ Bought more furniture than I ever have in my entire life thusfar– new house pictures coming after it all ships to me.
+ Found out a story I wrote and drew for an anthology about 5 years ago is finally going to come out this year.

All in all, despite a lot of transition, this has been a pretty great month.
Here’s hoping the next one keeps going in that direction!

I’m playing a show on December 1st at The Lost Church with my dear friend Myrrh Larsen, and you all should come.

I imagine this set will be full of things you haven’t heard from me in a long time as well as things you’ve never heard before.

Also this is my favorite venue in SF right now, and it’s only got 50 seats!
They assure me that the link for presale tickets will be up at TheLostChurch.com really soon, so check there to see if you can get tickets ahead of time.

It would really mean a lot to me if you’d come.

<3
S

You guys, things have been rough in Starland.

& I suspect they’ll get worse before they get better.

I’m trying though– harder than I think I’ve ever tried at anything.

Here is a cell phone picture of a laptop screen, editing the Show and Tell video.

The raw footage is something I’m really, really excited about.

I’m hoping to screen it at the show we have at The Lost Church on December 1st, which you should come to.

I could really use the support right now.

Things are going to change soon. I’m not sure how yet, but I know that they will.

Here’s to hoping that it’s for the better.

MUSIC VIDEO: This Can’t End Well “I’ll Let You Watch” from Chad Michael Ward on Vimeo.

At long last! The anxiously awaited debut of our first music video “I’ll Let You Watch.“
A million thanks to Chad, Niko, and everybody who had a hand in making this possible!!!

Please let us know what you think, and if you like what you hear, friend us on facebook.

If you’re viewing in a reader that strips out flash embeds & you don’t see a video above this text– CLICK HERE TO WATCH IT!

Written, Produced, Directed, Shot and Edited by Chad Michael Ward and Niko Sonnberger
Assistant Editors: Diana Lopez and Mary Taylor
Gaffer: Carlos Oropeza
Production Designer: Sarah Taub
Grip/PA: Fefe Amazing
Makeup: Cris Alex

Lolita: CourtLyn Canñan
Man: T.C. Smith

This Can’t End Well is:
Star St.Germain – Vocals, Cello, Laptop, Guitar
Kristen Adam – Viola, Glockenspiel
Adam Willumsen – Violin

Location courtesy of Sarah Taub
Lighting package courtesy of Dean Nichols
Additional props courtesy of Allan Barnes

Camera: Canon 7D

Shot on location in Hollywood CA, January 2011.

WWW.THISCANTENDWELL.COM
WWW.DIGITALAPOCALYPSE.COM
WWW.NIKOSONNBERGER.COM

Stay tuned for more behind the scenes stuff coming up next week!

It is with great pleasure that I announce the release of This Can’t End Well’s brand new music video!
It is coming out TOMORROW!

Just to get you properly excited, I have a couple preview stills and some behind the scenes photos for you!

The above images are stills from the video, by the directors Chad Michael Ward and Niko Sonnberger.
I have a whole lot to say about working with these lovely folks, but I’m going to save that for after you can actually see the video!!
Suffice to say they are awesome, and professional– awesomely professional!

Here are a couple shots from behind the scenes– so you have a teaser of what’s to come.
Our lovely Violist Kristen shot the ones of me, and I shot the rest!

Come back tomorrow to see these pictures MOVE!

I am beyond excited to tell you that This Can’t End Well is playing this year’s Noisepop festival!
Thanks to James from Isotope Comics, we were paired up with Ted Naifeh to put on a full scale radio play production of his comic, Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things.
I am playing the role of Courtney, so I have some big shoes to fill!

This thing is going to seriously rule– we’ll be doing a few songs, the very first Courtney story with voice actors/live foley, hilarious fictional commercials, and visuals by our lovely projectionist, Mediapathic.

Also? It’s FREE.

Seriously, be there.

Sunday February 27th
1pm sharp
Public Works
161 Erie at Mission

I recently took a trip down to Los Angeles with my bandmate Kristen, so we could shoot a music video for the first single on our upcoming EP!
It was directed by the amazing and talented team of Chad Michael Ward and Niko Sonnberger.

I’m going to give the video it’s own post, so you can get a sneak peek of what Chad and Niko have planned for your eyeballs. Also, there will be a bunch of behind the scenes video and other goodness after it actually comes out!

Before all the excitement of working on the video, though, we had to drive all our gear down to LA, and get checked into our hotel.

We stayed at The Standard- which is basically my favorite hotel in Hollywood.

They will deliver booze-filled milkshakes TO YOUR ROOM.
If somebody can make that happen at my house, I would pay good money. Just saying.

They also have a pretty excellent restaurant in the lobby that’s open all night.
Behold it’s cuteness as we frantically drink coffee and decide what foods we ought to nom:

Tune in later this week for part 2: Our visit to Pygmy Hippo Shoppe!

My band, This Can’t End Well, is playing tomorrow night at The Uptown in Oakland, CA.
Won’t you please come see us?

We will play this gem for you:

We are playing with the following lovely folks:

Victoria and the Vaudevillians — cabaret rock awesomeness.

Unwoman! Cello and electronics– bestill my beating heart!

Friday, November 12
The Uptown
1928 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland, CA
Doors at 9pm
21+

Hope to see you there!

It is with great pleasure that I announce the release of my most ambitious project to date!

I have joined forces with Mr John C. Worsley to create a multimedia project of epic proportions.

This started in the spring, when John was about to embark on a road trip from Oregon to Massachusetts.
After discussing his plans, I discovered I had previously taken a trip along nearly the exact route he was planning– just in the opposite direction.

The Comic

We decided to make a comic about the concept of the cross country road trip, based on my previous experience, and the one he was about to have.

We came up with a format, which allowed for the book to be read in either direction.
We each wrote a loose story, and printed them in opposite directions on the same page– using the road itself as the dividing line between our stories.

The Album

As we began working on the comic– John had begun working on an album about the experience.
Initially it was his plan to do this separately from our comic project– but seeing as we are both musicians, I suggested that perhaps I should write my own album.

This was where things really got interesting.

We decided it would be really excellent if I were to write all my songs in the same key and time signature as John’s, in the hopes that we’d be able to play them at the same time and have them sound good.
John’s songs were largely electronic and instrumental, so we knew it would be possible for me to write things with words that would compliment what he had already done.

John began writing out all the parameters of all his songs for me– key, time signature, length, bpm, etc.
I vowed to not listen to any of his material until I was finished composing my own.

The Process

John finished his album and released it.

I spent considerably more time on my half– seeing as I was also having to write words that would work with the content of the comic.
I can vouch that my half of the project ended up being about every road trip I have ever been on, and then some.

Since he was finished, John listened to me while I worked.
He would occasionally say things like “This isn’t working– you’re going to have to scrap it.”

While I was less than thrilled by those sort of developments, I was determined to make a good record that would work with John’s half– without compromising the integrity of the project and listening to his work.

The Result

Months later, I finally finished.
I heard the songs playing in sync for the first time.
The results were better than I ever could have expected.

Here is the first track, combined with John’s last track:

We decided we needed a nice way to show people exactly what we did.

As such, we built a player for the music that crossfades the music between John’s half, my half, or both.

It is flash, and it won’t work on your iThings. Sorry about that.

We made a bandcamp page, where you can buy the combined album, either half on it’s own, or all three with the pdf of the book.
If you buy the deluxe package of all 3, please wait patiently, as it takes bandcamp a long time to shell out 36 tracks and a pdf.

Of course, you can stream the whole thing for free– either through our player, or on bandcamp.

I’d love to hear any comments you have on any aspect of this project.

Thanks for listening!

If you told me a couple years ago that I would be composing music for something that could be described as equal parts sculpture, instrument, and flamethrower– I would be skeptical.
However, that’s exactly what I did leading up to Burning Man 2010.

A huge group of people, many of which I’m proud to call my friends, decided to build this project called Syzygryd.

Their website describes it as follows:

Syzygryd is a town square for the collaborative creation of music. It’s a public space, it’s a sculpture, and it’s a professional musical instrument. It’s the most beautiful expression we can imagine of the joy we take in community, music, technology, fire, sculpture and architecture.

Three large custom hardware grid sequencers. Each controls a single instrument and they share a clock, so they’re all synchronized. By controlling time, pitch, and harmony, these devices make it easy for people with no musical training or talent to create melodious compositions.

The consoles are arranged at three equidistant points around a 60′ diameter circle, far enough apart that the participants can see one another but can’t communicate verbally. Each console reflects the state of the others. Three people collaboratively create a continuously evolving piece of music without communicating, except through the music itself.

The center of the circle is a huge metal tornado of cubes, pulsing with synchronized sound, light, and fire.

The Syzygryd team had musicians submit sets of music created in Ableton live, for people to trigger using the grid sequencers.
Each set would have 3 instruments, one for each sequencer.
The length of the sequence is only 16 bars– one measure of music.
The participant playing with the sequencer would dictate the melody of that measure, meaning that the melody has the potential to change constantly.
But what about the rest of that measure?
Could I really listen to the same sounds over and over again for the full 20 minutes that the set was meant to be played for, and not get bored?

Most likely no.

I decided that I wanted to do something to randomize my work, so the sounds would not get repetitive.
For that, I needed the help of the most serious ableton badass in my rolodex: Juan Segovia.

When Juan and I sat down to work on this thing, we knew that two of our three instruments were going to be cello and drums.
We started with the cello, and I found myself playing the same scale 5 different ways. I played pizzicato (plucked), arco (bowed), tremello (rapidly moving the bow back and forth), with heavy vibrato, and playing harmonics.

We then told Ableton to use one of these styles at random, while keeping the melody the same.
This way, when the user inputted a melody, they would always get the notes they asked for, but the style of playing would vary each time!

Here is a little video of us putting this together, where you can easily hear the notes changing styles as the measure loops.

ThisIsStar & JuanLittleDevil: Composing for Syzygryd #1 from Star St.Germain on Vimeo.

This took us a very long time to do.
For the Ableton-minded who are curious, we achieved this by setting each different style as a level of velocity for our midi track, then set the velocity to random.

Here’s another little video that shows off our third instrument, a music box, a bit better.

ThisIsStar & JuanLittleDevil: Composing for Syzygryd #2 from Star St.Germain on Vimeo.

When I got to Burning Man, I packed all my good cameras and microphones to capture some video and audio of the sculpture playing the music that Juan and I had created.
Unfortunately, when I arrived, my set would not load on the sculpture!

I sat and waited as the team kept trying to pull it up, only to have it crash the sculpture every time.

After all that, I went home defeated and disappointed that nobody had heard our work.

But then, somebody linked me to the following youtube video:

Apparently, there was a point at which our set played– and some random person just so happened to have taken a video and put it online.

GOD BLESS YOU, INTERNET!

I am looking forward to trying to get better documentation of our work the next time the sculpture runs, in a more local setting.

Juan and I are also planning on making more sets for Syzygryd, as well as other music.

Speaking of music– I have a hugely awesome thing to share with you on Monday.
Be sure to check back then!

Destroy All Podcasts — Comic-Con San Diego 2010 from Star St.Germain on Vimeo.

I’ll have another post coming up with a ton of photos and general reflection on the trip, but hopefully this video will satiate you for now.

So we did a little photo shoot the other day in my living room.
So here’s our first official band photo!
We did another sweet shoot during our epic trip to the desert on the 4th weekend, but I’ll have to post that one later.

Tonight, we are doing our first ustream in 2 weeks! Please come watch us rock.

In related news, construction is well under way for my new electric cello!!

Here it is about halfway finished!

It’s being constructed custom for me by the kind folks at Vector Electric Instruments.
When completed, it will be Red (Pantone 19–1763) with mother of pearl star shaped pitch dot inlays.

Yay!

When it arrives, there will be a HELL of a photoshoot.
oh yes.

Some things to know:

1: We are booking shows right now in SF and beyond.

This is super exciting news. Dates will be announced really soonlike!
If you want to book us for west coast gigs, please email us at: thiscantendwell@gmail.com

2: We are getting some new gear!
Kristen has a new Xylophone and a new looper/delay pedal, which we will be making use of tonight!
I, on the other hand, will have a sweet custom electric cello made by the kind folks at Vector in a couple weeks.

3. We are still livestreaming our practices every Tuesday night, around 8:30 pacific time.

Speaking of which, it’s Tuesday! Tune in tonight!

Here’s some stuff from previous practices that I haven’t posted here yet:

This is us writing a new song! No idea what it will turn into.

& here is Adam learning a song that he didn’t know previously!

I’m really happy to be sharing all this stuff with you guys as it’s in progress.
Thank you for watching us turn the raw materials into real things.

We pulled out an older track last night and this was our first time playing it through with Adam.
You also may notice that the locale is different– since we played at Tim’s house.

Watch us live every Tuesday around 8pm on my ustream channel!

So I started running a tumblr about cello related things.
It’s been totally satisfying and surprisingly easy.
If you’re interested in cello, won’t you please follow me?

We record the last run-through of all the songs we did that night and archive it, so you can see all the songs without the banter, mistakes, and pizza-eating that typically occurs earlier in the practice. There’s also the added bonus that we are *far* more drunk by the time we get this far in.

Last night’s setlist was:

Amazing
Redacted
Five
I’ll Let You Watch

For those on my blog, see below. If you’re viewing this on facebook or in a reader, the embed may be missing, so click here.

& if you want to see us in all our mistake-filled pizza-eating glory, check out the stream on Tuesday nights, here:

Live Broadcast by Ustream.TV

Thanks to Katie & Lou for having me be a part of it!

Hello!
I’ve been super busy the past couple weeks.

Like, unbelievably so.

One of the things I’ve been doing is writing a song a week for the kind folks over at 5lights!

Here is my contribution for this week!

A few weeks ago, I got asked to do a video interview for LitNImage.

Kimy came over to my house and asked me a lot of interesting questions about all the different things I do & now you get to see what I said about it.

The first video is more about the visual art stuff I’m doing,
and the second is more about the music stuff I’m up to.
There’s a newish song in there too, called Redacted, that you probably haven’t heard yet (unless you were at my show in Portland a couple months ago, or if you know me and I’ve played it for you from the saftey of my living room.)

Anyway, you should go check it out.

I was recently asked (by the lovely Miss Katie West) to participate in the 5lights Project.

The 5Lights Project is a collection of artists creating stories.

Each week, five artists will all interpret the same story through their own medium.

At the end of the month, we’ll have four stories expressed five different ways.

The next month, new team, new stories.

Art as free form jazz as free form art.

I am the musician for the month of July, and here is my first week’s song.

The other rad artists for the month of July are as follows:

Chad Michael Ward: photos
Meaghan O’ Connell: writing
Ray Fawkes: illustration
Laura Taylor: video

I am excited and honored to be collaborating with them.

& all of you get to watch me write a song a week!
oh boy.