So I recently set up an account on Distrokid, which means that I can do unlimited releases onto platforms such as Spotify for the low-low price of around $3 per month. My plan at the moment is to release all the tracks I've got as singles--mostly because my friend Charity Ridpath was willing to let me [...]
Author: mescamilla1980
Hi.
My real name is Marshall Escamilla. I do a whole lot of things with my time. First, I'm a dad and a music teacher. I've been a teacher my entire adult life, and have learned a lot about adolescents, music, and people. Second, I live in Austin, and I care a lot about this city. It gave me a home when I desperately needed one, and for that I'm forever grateful. In everything I do, I'm animated by the desire to give other people the opportunities Austin gave me as a young person.
I have lots of side projects. My wife and I co-host the Tumble Podcast. I also play the baroque guitar and theorbo, and perform occasionally with the Austin Baroque Orchestra. I'm also a music commissioner, and that takes up way more of my time than I'd originally thought.
In the past, I fronted the Unbearables. I also helped write a Zombie Rock Opera. But those days are long gone.
It’s Released!
So my promise to myself for at least the rest of 2018 is that I send out a new recording every month. This month's offering is a solo project I've been developing for some time. I'll be posting regularly about each of the tracks on this record--though I'll probably take a break until after the [...]
How I built this: “This Story’s All Been Told”
Note: To hear the finished version of this track, go to my Bandcamp page! When you're working on a project in Logic, the very first decision you have to make is about the tempo and time signature. Since I've always been interested in the idea of writing pop music in odd times, this is where [...]
$8 on Spotify
Lately, I've been pretty inspired. Inspired by this post to conduct a little experiment. Since Spotify came around in 2008, I've been wondering exactly what the new streaming economy means for musicians. On the one hand, its principle appeal early on was that it would discourage pirating, which, you know, is cool, but on the [...]
For 2018, I Turned My Life Into a Game. Here’s how things have gone so far.
Whenever I’ve done one of those personality type things, I’ve always come back as the type of person who works in fits and starts. Periods of intense working have always been followed by periods of intense—I don’t know. Not working. What this means in practice is that slow and steady progress towards goals has always [...]
Folia!
This week's posting is a performance of Francisco Guerau's "Folia." In the baroque era, a folia is a dance in three with the accents on the first and second beats of each measure--as opposed to a jig, say, which tends to accent beats one and three. The folia also has a pretty typical harmonic structure [...]
Jacaras de la Costa
Sometime around 2012, I took a baroque music literature course at Texas State. It was taught by a professor who ranks as easily one of the most deadly boring professors I've ever had in my life. He would begin each course by sending us some lecture notes that he clearly had written during the Reagan [...]
More Mammal Drawings
I've been on kind of a kick, when it comes to mammal drawings lately. I went ahead and paid the euro fifty or whatever it was to get some high-resolution scans of these drawings, so I could (theoretically) someday plug them into illustrator and do something or other with them. Like add color! Or whatever. [...]
This Week’s Post – Monotremes!
I've always been super fascinated with the tree of life--just the whole idea that all living things on this Earth are related, and imagining what it must be like to go back in time and find the connections between all of us and our common ancestor. For a while, I was super obsessed with the [...]
A Song that came to me in a dream…
A few weeks into my family's move to Barcelona, I woke up in the middle of an incredibly vivid dream. In the dream, I was wearing a black unitard and was on stage in a small, black-box type theater. With me were Josh, Ian, and Harrison--my three original bandmates in The Unbearables, before we exploded [...]
Marshall Escamilla 