Joshua Van Tassel

(on facebook? go to www.joshuavt.com for the full post.)

Been a while since I’ve had my things set up, but today was the day. Gave myself 45 minutes to make about a one minute piece that had to have electronic and acoustic elements to it. Not my best work but gets the wheels turning, the juices flowing, the legs stretching, etc….

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(on facebook? go to www.joshuavt.com for the full post)

Pocket sized, operates on 2 AAA batteries, allllll analog with an input to run anything you want through the filters. For $80??? Yes please. I love you Korg thanks again.

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That you find a 9mil hand gun in your back yard. This came from a good friend of mine who lives close to queen west. Sometimes a big city can feel like a big scary place.

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Saturday mornings are for thinking and coffee drinking. I’ve been thinking about trying to take guitar playing a little more seriously lately so I can actually communicate ideas to other humans without nervously trying to fumble through a start stop rendition of a piece. SO. Practice time! Books nowadays are very cool and come with sweet play along cds that don’t make me feel so lonely and sad as I practice slow quiet “free strokes with my thumb”. Make no comment.

Also, thinking a lot of seeing Inception last night. It’s so nice to see a beautiful and complex and quite dark movie be the blockbuster hit for the summer.

Been doing lots of great playing this month, but one thing I’m especially excited about is the return of the Outlanders to the Orbit Room for the month of August, every monday night round 10. It’s a band that I’ve always felt I could totally be myself in, musically and otherwise. Come down and hang out with us, and we’ll play songs of heartbreak, hope, and introspection. Call us introspectors? The introspector? Joel and Bret write great intros and great tunes. Never mind. Hope to see you there..

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Back from Vancouver and had an amazing trip. A huge thank you to the Atrux collective who brought me out there. Part of their mandate is to connect musicians from distant places together and see what happens, and what happened with Clinton Patterson and I was a whole lot of music making, hanging out, me learning colorful new expressions care of Atlanta and LA, and some recordings that I think will turn out really well.

One of the best shows we had over the weekend was also the strangest. Picture a club. A very swanky, new club. Picture all the mid 30′s really cool people that you you see on the really cool street in your town. The one’s with the weird dichotomy of baddass tatoos with huge nerd glasses, the web designers, the budding architects, the fashion designers. Picture them all drinking nice scotches, nice wine, and local beers. They’re laughing, having fun, and really into the music that’s happening. Now: picture me on stage with Clinton and a great bass player named Russel Scholberg making a complete cacophony of noise and looped trumpet and distorted beats, and people completely loving it. That’s just another Thurs/Fri/Sat. at the club Guilt and Company. It’s a beautiful venue with great sound, experienced staff, committed solely to having improvised music go on. And people love it. It’s totally bizarre, but amazing. If you’re in Vancouver, go down and check it out while it lasts before free jazz becomes uncool again.

Lots of shows this week, back in town for a little stretch now, so if I haven’t seen you in a while lets hang out.

(on facebook?go to www.joshuavt.com for the full post)
The libre room in Vancouver is very VERY particular about the volume you play at. They have a really big decibel meter on the bar that’s visible from the stage. When it flashes red, you’re too loud. It makes for a very tense, very quiet show. Headed home today….

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Heading off today for an exciting weekend in Vancouver. A really cool group of people called the Atrux Collective are flying me out for a3 nights of shows, improvisations, and recordings with LA keyboardist/trumpeter Clinton Patterson. The Atrux mandate is basically to create circumstances for Canadian and US musicians to meet, connect, and see what happens. I’m really excited for the trip, it’s totally an honour to be brought out to do this kind of thing. It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to play some full out improvised shows, and I’m a little nervous about it, but I suppose that just means I care right? Sounds good. I’ll keep the  cymbals splashy and take what photos I can…….

This is all I’ve been doing. Helping a good friend build a very very nice studio. Very very excited. More soon. I may even be becoming a handy man….

(on facebook? go to www.joshuavt.com for the download)

It’s been recently brought to my attention that I do a poor job marketing myself and the music I make as a solo artist, and these same people have informed me of this because they’re kind enough to also like the music I make as the aforementioned solo artist.

SO. To help remedy this I’m posting a link to download the last ep I did which I apparently didn’t really  tell people about. It’s called “Everyone Has It All” and it features me playing and shaking a variety of things, and also the endlessly talented and virtually interchangeable Dean Drouillard on bass on 2 tunes, and Joel Schwartz playing Resonator on “Smile at Me” (thanks again gentlemen).

I learned a lot recording these tunes, it was the first step down a slippery path of actual song writing that I’m trying to take a walk down. Anyway, go ahead and click here to download, and hopefully enjoy it. More to come soon. Here’s the cover art below, or feel free to make your own with finger paints or paper mache or digital white glue.