Hello.

Welcome back to Micro Thoughts with Zach Winnick.

This is the third episode I believe that I’ve done of this show.

The last two are basically the same where I talked about I don’t know what I’m going to do with this microcast and blah blah blah.

Well, microcast I think I even said towards the end of the last one.

This microcast is going to be kind of like a stream of consciousness thing.

Just throw some ideas out there, see what sticks, let my brain kind of work on things.

But I wanted to take this episode to talk about a couple of projects that I have coming up.

The first one is a new music blog and podcast that and I use the term new loosely because it’s not really new.

It’s kind of under new management.

I don’t know.

I’m bringing back an old blog that I started a few years ago actually on Tumblr of all places called Zach’s Tracks.

No, I’m not using micro.blog’s new Tumblr import feature for that just because I didn’t do anything with it.

But it’s going to be a music podcast and blog and things where I can talk about music and other things like that.

Just seeing the conversation about music on micro.blog all the time and then of course Just Good Music.

Of course I’m going to post stuff there as well.

You know kind of like what the tech bloggers do where they have their own websites that they post stuff to but you know Jason Snell, he posts on sixcolors.com and then occasionally he’ll write a story for Macworld, you know, things like that.

So that’s kind of how I’m going to treat that.

But the podcast is basically just going to be me playing music, things that I’m digging at the time, songs you might not have heard of, some mainstream stuff.

It’s just going to be a bunch of really cool things to play and to get out into the universe and obviously offer my opinion on it and on that and just kind of go from there.

Also talk about music technology.

I love music technology.

I used to go to the NAMM show, National Association of Music Merchants show all the time when I lived in LA.

I know there’s one in Nashville but I never get a chance to go to it.

Actually I just missed this year’s too which sucks.

So you know start talking about music technology, things like that.

Obviously I’m a musician so I look at it from that window as well.

For those of you who don’t know, I originally started off on drums.

I’m a percussionist by trade and then I kind of took a left turn and started delving into rare and unusual instruments or stuff you don’t normally see.

So my other primary instrument besides drums is the Chapman stick and if you haven’t seen or heard of a Chapman stick, I can offer you two things.

Go check out stick.com.

Also listen to King Crimson in the 80s.

So the three albums that they did in the 80s, Discipline, Three of a Perfect Pair, and Beat.

Tony Levin, if you’ve heard of Tony Levin, he’s played with Paul Simon, he’s played with Peter Gabriel, that’s kind of his big gig.

Obviously King Crimson, he’s probably the most well-known Chapman stick player in the world.

Basically nine times out of ten when he’s on stage, he’s got his stick and that’s what he uses.

So if you’ve heard anything Peter Gabriel or seen him live, I should say, Tony Levin, bald guy, mustache, totally awesome.

King Crimson, 80s, he did the double band album Thrak as well because they had the new band and the old band there, which was awesome.

So there’s that.

I also play the didgeridoo, which is awesome.

That just comes from high school.

I was a tuba player in high school as well.

It’s basically the same mechanics, just add in circular breathing and barking and other things like that.

It’s kind of fun.

And I had a, oh, what the heck was that thing called?

I want to say it’s like an audio phone, something like that.

No, Eigenharp, that’s it.

The Eigenharp.

I had an Eigenharp.

If you don’t know what that is, look that thing up.

I don’t think they make them anymore.

But I was actually inspired by a band called Afro Celt Sound System.

They were kind of the biggest mainstream, quote, mainstream group to use that.

It’s basically, it looked like a giant oboe and you plug it into your computer.

Well, the big ones you didn’t have to plug into a computer.

But basically you can play it and it’s MIDI and you can assign notes and stuff and you blow and that’s how it activates the sound.

So, you blow on it and play it like a saxophone or an oboe or whatever you want to call it.

But it was just an awesome instrument.

Eigenharp, E-I-G-E-N-H-A-R-P, all one word.

So, you know, that’s kind of how I look at things and that’s what I am drawn to.

When I was in high school and in college, I kind of got into like this really weird music scene in L.A.

You look up bands like Astratosphere, Sleepy Time Guerrilla Museum, Farmer’s Market, Lotusphere, Secret Chiefs 3, Mr.

Bungle, things like that.

That’s the kind of stuff that I got into and I still kind of enjoy all that.

But then I also like mainstream stuff.

Like my favorite band is Dave Matthews Band.

You know, I worked in radio for a radio station.

That was my very first job.

I was an intern at a radio station in Santa Monica.

It was actually one of the first radio stations to go from broadcast radio over the airwaves to the internet.

We were broadcasting on worldclassrock.com and then simulcasted on KACD and KBCDAM in Santa Monica.

But it was the entire old team from KSCA, 1019.

I forgot what the call letters for 1031 were when they moved there.

But it’s AAA, Adult Album Alternative.

So it was Dave Matthews Band, Ryan Adams, Coldplay, U2, we played some Cowboy Junkies, Pink Floyd.

It basically covers all music, but it’s, you know, it’s pretty awesome.

If you have SiriusXM radio in your car, you can listen to Channel 28, Spectrum.

That’s the kind of the remnants of that now.

But yeah, anyway, I digress.

So that’s kind of where I’m coming from, from the music world.

You know, having worked in the music industry, quote, the music industry, working in radio and things like that, teaching radio production, things like that.

So looking at it and, you know, I have my degree in audio production as well.

So looking at it from that perspective, you know, it’s kind of cool.

And I made some really awesome friends along the way that are amazing musicians like Greg Howard, who’s another Chapman Stick player who actually was the one that got me into the Chapman Stick because I heard him play on the 1998 release, Before These Crowded Streets by Dave Matthews Band.

He plays on one of the tracks called Dreaming Tree.

And if you are familiar with that and you don’t know about the Chapman Stick, fast forward to about two and a half minutes, three minutes into the song and listen to the, put some headphones on and listen to the left channel.

You hear a really cool like little groove going on in the back.

That’s Greg playing the stick.

Don Schiff, who is a bass player, also another stick player.

He plays a derivative of the Chapman Stick called the NS Stick.

It’s really cool.

You can check it out on chapmanstick.com as well.

He used to be the house bass player at the Flamingo in Las Vegas.

He’s played with people like Elvis, Sammy Davis Jr., things like that.

So he’s pretty awesome.

Back in the day when I was younger, I was a huge, I still am a huge Weird Al Yankovic fan.

But back in the day when the internet was first starting, I kind of helped out with Weird Al’s drummer, John Permuda Schwartz.

He started the first Weird Al website and I kind of helped him with that.

So we became friends through that.

So I have a lot of friends in the music industry and so I’m hoping to maybe have them on the show and talk about music and stuff and do that and kind of turn it into a thing and see how far I can take it, which will be totally awesome.

So that’s going to be Zach’s Tracks.

The other thing I’m working on as well is a video blog, a vlog, on YouTube, of course.

And it’s a little scary for me because I’m not usually the guy in front of the camera.

I’m usually the guy behind the scenes running the camera or running the sound board, running the lights, whatever, you know, which is why obviously I study audio production.

But so that’s going to be an interesting thing and I’m not quite sure what I want to do with that.

I just know that I want to do it.

I have all these cameras I might as well have an Osmo Action, Osmo Pocket.

I got two GoPros.

I got a Sony camera that does 4K video also.

So I might as well put these guys to the test and do things.

I got a Mavic Pro sitting in the closet as well.

So I have all these cameras and I can do all this stuff and I know how to use it all and I’m a pretty good cinematographer and photographer, I think.

So might as well put something together and do something with that.

Especially with my two crazy dogs as well.

Yeah, I have two Siberian huskies.

They’re puppies still.

They just hit nine months yesterday, actually, the 28th.

September 28th.

And they’re nuts.

You can actually follow them on Instagram.

Bella N, the letter N, Flynn.

And feel free to join them and watch their escapades.

So, yeah, that’s all that’s been going on since the last episode.

And I hope you all didn’t mind me rambling on for the past ten and a half minutes.

So I’m going to shut up now.

If you want to follow me and watch me ramble online, you can go to ZakWinnick.com, Z-A-K-W-I-N-N-I-C-K.com.

Also, you can find me on pretty much every social media platform at ZakWinnick, Z-A-K-W-I-N-N-I-C-K.

If you are a subscriber to Micro.blog, you can find me on there, Zak.Micro.blog, Z-A-K.Micro.blog.

And I think that’s going to be it.

Oh, yeah.

If you want to follow me on YouTube, there’s nothing there right at the moment, but YouTube.com slash Zak Winnick.

Hooray.

So that’s all for today.

Thanks for listening to me ramble on.

And I will see you all in the next episode.