LOCAL
“INVITING PEOPLE TO PARTICIPATE AFFECTS MY MUSIC AND WHAT IT COULD BE.”
BEAT
{BY ALEX GORDON}
CLOUD MUSIC In late January, an online forum for the songwriting project February Album Writing Month (FAWM) received a cryptic post from its founder, Burr Settles. “FAWM intergalactic headquarters has been working on a top-secret project with a music tech startup that should make your FAWM collabs easier and more awesome,” he wrote. That startup is the Pittsburgh-based Nebulus, and the project is a month-long partnership between the two dynamic collaborative-music sites, which started Feb. 1. Last April, Carnegie Mellon University graduate Robert Kotcher founded Nebulus as an online audio workstation for long-distance collaboration. Nebulus has since shifted its focus to arrangement — as opposed to recording — but the underlying problem remains: It’s hard for musicians to collaborate effectively online. “We still want to solve this issue where musicians have trouble working together if they’re not in the same place,” says Kotcher. Instead of recreating a workstation like Garageband, Nebulus’ six-person team created a clean, simplified workshop where musicians can edit, arrange and collaborate on their demos online. Around the same time, Settles, who works full time as a software engineer at Duolingo, was working on a rebrand of his own. FAWM, which challenges songwriters to write 14 original songs in February, needed a new website. When Settles started FAWM with three friends in 2004, it was simply a way to jumpstart their musical output. But the project and its blog gradually caught on. Last February, FAWMers from 61 countries across six continents produced more than 10,000 songs in the short month. While online collaboration between FAWMers was always encouraged, it was not particularly easy. So when Nebulus reached out to FAWM in late 2014, Settles saw a mutually beneficial opportunity. FAWM needed simplified online collaboration; Nebulus needed user feedback. By Feb. 1, the new FAWM site was finished and Nebulus began hosting the demos through its own site, while providing users with new interactive songwriting tools. For the first time, FAWMers could comment, collaborate and interact on their songs all in one place. “We’re hoping it’s a good springboard,” said Settles. “Because we’ve already got thousands of motivated songwriters from all over the world who would jump at the chance to use this.” In the first 24 hours of FAWM 2015, they received more than 600 songs. INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
More at: www.fawm.org and www.nebulus.io
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MUSIC IN
MOTION {BY JEREMIAH DAVIS}
J
OE SHEEHAN is the main creative force behind Kinetic, the local jazz-inflected R&B band, which recently released its first album, World of Wonder. He’s joined in the group by vocalist Anqwenique Wingfield, guitarist Michael Borowski, bass player Jason Rafalak, percussionist P.J. Roduta and drummer Ryan Socrates. CP spoke with Sheehan, a pianist, composer and professor of music at Duquesne University.
YOUR BAND IS A VERY ECLECTIC GROUP OF TALENTS; HOW DID YOU GO ABOUT ESTABLISHING WHAT INSTRUMENTS AND MUSICIANS WOULD BE A PART OF THE GAME? It sort of evolved over time. I spent about six months studying West African music in Ghana, so that was the idea behind the music. My first thought was that I only wanted to write music with hand drums, because there’s a lot of hand-drum music in Ghana. So the first time we played [two years ago], we had two percussionists — but I realized the sound wasn’t quite right. So I just gradually pulled in people that I knew. I met Anqwenique, and as soon as I heard her, I felt like we had to get her involved. So, the band is comprised of musicians I met whom I felt fit the musical content and vibe.
{PHOTO COURTESY OF MICHAEL BAIDOO}
Joe Sheehan on a visit to Ghana
to five songs on the album. One of the songs’ lyrics actually come from the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech by Martin Luther King Jr. It’s the song “Proverb.” The song’s lyrics come from one line in Dr. King’s speech. So I can’t really get credit for that. That’s [more] poetry than song lyrics.
for a while, and then I wanted to write music with words, but I had never done it. I wrote the song, then I realized that I don’t know how to write words to music. So, I found two other people to do it for me. I soon realized I should try to write [lyrics], so I eventually wrote one song and then I just kept going.
KINETIC’S WORLD OF WONDER
YOUR SONG “SHOW ME” INCORPORATES A CALL-AND-RESPONSE SECTION — WHAT INSPIRED THAT SONG AND THAT PARTICULAR DEVICE? I don’t know — sometimes it’s hard to say where the songs come from. Usually I’m sitting at the piano and improvising and listening to what I play and trying to hear something that I like. The words from the song help me make the musical decisions that I make. That song in particular reminisces on several friends I made who really affected me while I was in West Africa. Anqwenique actually came up with the whole call-response idea, and that’s common in a lot of music from the
is available via iTunes and Amazon. To stream some tracks: www.soundcloud.com/kineticpittsburgh
NO, YOU DO GET CREDIT FOR THAT — BECAUSE YOU TOOK IT AND MADE IT SOMETHING CREATIVE. There are two more songs that [other] people wrote lyrics for. Track two on the album is entitled “Waiting for Giving,” YOU WRITE THE MAIN MUSICAL IDEAS [and] was written by Geña Escoriaza; and FOR THE GROUP. WHEN IT COMES TO the lyrics to track four, “My Everything,” WRITING LYRICS FOR ANQWENIQUE TO are written by Morgan Erina. Basically, the SING, DO YOU WRITE THOSE AS WELL? Yes, I did write most of them. I wrote lyrics issue was that I was a classical musician
PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 02.11/02.18.2015
CONTINUES ON PG. 24