Pitch to Pixel Featured in Scatterbrain Goober's Album Spotlight

Another review of Pitch to Pixel went live today, and this one is from the Scatterbrain Goober blog, aka "The Arch Nerd." 

I guess this is a good time to reflect on reviews in general. In my career as a game industry pro, I've only had one game that I've been involved in get reviews, Vicious Cycle Software's Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond (I'm not in the credits, it was almost done when I started there last June, but I did do a little bit of work on it). Even though I wasn't personally involved with a lot of the major things, every criticism stung, and every praise made me smile. I'll admit: I'm not one of those guys that makes a big pretense of "having perspective" when it comes to people's evaluation of my work. No, that does *not* mean I take criticism badly and don't want it. In fact, I welcome it in every field I'm involved in. But I don't pretend that I'm not human either. If someone says something I do isn't any good, yeah, that isn't going to feel great, even if I smile, say thank you for your thoughts, and take you seriously and in good faith (which I will).

Which leads me to some of the reviews I got in my musical career, with my jazz/fusion outfits. I'm not sure if this is out there anywhere so I won't bother to find it, but the first real album I ever put out, "What Is Paragon?," was absolutely destroyed by a jazz critic. In retrospect, I don't blame him, the linear notes were pompous and waaaay over the top (I should know, I wrote them. Heh). The playing was good but we were all kids just starting out in music college, and I was inexperienced as a record producer. I didn't exactly know who to get the best out of my friends and colleagues, and we hastily recorded it all in a few days.

Surely my solo album, also in the jazz rock realm, titled "Zeitgeber," would be better. I had more experience then. I had even cut a real, nationally televised commercial for marathon oil (I played a smokin', kinda "Southern Rockish" lead for a commercial about some free travel map you'd get if you went to a gas station or something). I had graduated with my music degree, and my musical buddies had as well. We were all pretty polished musicians and it showed. But, it was still really artsy and odd in places (although I think if you listen to Pitch to Pixel, you'll find the fabric that connects it to the jazz stuff). The only review it got was a smart-alecky fellow who hated the guitar solos (this is the CDBaby review).

So I guess you can say I've gotten used to negative reviews, even though most have been more or less positive across my disciplines. So when I started to read the review from the Arch Nerd, I kept waiting for the "but..." the moment were he describes something he didn't like. All of my life, I have been conditioned to expect "the compliment sandwich," when someone says something nice, something constructive, and then something nice to make you feel good.

But in this review, it was all positive, and very deeply touching to me personally. My wife told me when I told her about it, "yeah we want to make money on this, but its really great that you made somebody happy with this." Yeah, it is really great.

My music isn't perfect, and this album isn't either. There are lots of stuff I would want to redo or improve (I had a self-imposed deadline of early April when I started this is late January). But I believe strongly in the idea of gestalt, or, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." When you got gestalt goin' on, it covers up the flaws. Now, I cannot possibly know if Pitch to Pixel, or anything I'll ever do, musically or video game wise, will have that effect for you. But its really great to know some of my work had a little bit of that for somebody!

Pitch to Pixel featured in Arcade Heroes and Waxing Erratic

One of the big challenges of doing a project like this is promotion. When you do something as an indie, you have to really hit the pavement hard (well, the virtual pavement of the internet at least) to get the word out. Especially since the very nature of this project excludes a pretty well worn business model: selling CDs at shows. I won't be doing shows anytime soon, except for maybe recording myself performing "live" for YouTube purposes (I currently don't have the right kind of equipment to facilitate that, but we'll see what happens in the future).

So I really, really, really (no, I mean REALLY) appreciate it when blogs and websites actually decide my stuff is worthy of their attention. In my experience, going back to my earlier days in music when I was in a jazz rock band called Paragon (whose debut album is still available, link to the left, and who may or may not have another album coming out soon... hint hint!), I've found that most places basically ignore you. And why not? There are countless people out there doing music. Why should you get special attention?

So the peeps that actually promote your music tend to be the people who connect with it on some level (i.e. they actually think its good).

Anyway, two websites have recently featured my stuff, and even though I've obscured the original intent of this post (to link to them and thank them) with my pseudo-philosophical ramblings, here they are:

Waxing Erratic has been an early and ardent supporter of Pitch to Pixel, and featured me in a post here.

Arcade Heroes, a really nifty site dedicated to coin-op gaming, features me here.

I'll have both listed in a new blogroll to the left for further reference. Thank you guys!