How Full is Your Bucket

In Tom Rath's discussion on people's metaphorical "buckets", he shared with the viewer a few ways that he or she may keep a "full bucket". The first was fairly obvious and self-explanatory; prevent bucket dipping. Essentially, this is saying to avoid bad things, stick to good things. As simple as this sounds, it's something that many people find trouble doing. Sometimes it's voluntary, but sometimes we have no choice. Everyone has those people that give you no option but to interact with them on a regular basis. The best thing one can do is to avoid adding people or things to that list. Another strategy was to "shine light on what's right". Again, the concept is fairly simple and obvious, but difficult to grasp in the moment for some people. It just makes sense that positive criticism will, in both the long and short term, have positive results. One last strategy for keeping a full bucket was to "reverse the golden rule". The "golden rule" being respect--treat others how you would want to be treated. This last strategy was unique, in that it was not based off of common knowledge or basic fundamental thought. The point made is that not everyone is the same, and ergo, not everyone wants to be treated like you do. Each person is a unique individual with different needs and desires. Instead, one should find out what it is that fills others' buckets, and utilize that knowledge to do so.

While I agree with Rath's points made in his discussion, I feel that it was primarily due to the fact that most of it was composed of common logic. I also feel that the lecture was ultimately dry because of this fact. While I did find some of his research and studies to be interesting, his examples became redundant. I would have much more preferred to have been given a resource to access the studies cited, that way the redundancies are avoided, and anyone who wishes to review more information on the topic may optionally do so.

Personally, as humble as I can possibly be, I definitely consider myself a bucket filler. This is primarily based off of what others tell me, as well as my individual way of thinking. I personally do my best to make people happy and prevent them from feeling sad or angry. Many people have repeatedly told me that they have never seen me sad or angry, and some ask me how that is. I guess the answer is simply because I am, apparently, a bucket filler.

My Essential Question

What is the biggest market for music composers?

To be completely honest, coming up with an essential question pertaining to my topic was very much more difficult than it seemed at first. What made this difficult was the fact that music is an art form, and ergo, has an abundance of elasticity to it when trying to deal with and inquire about absolute qualities of the subject. Instead, I had to think about the important things I should know regarding the occupation itself. By trying to find the answer, I feel that I may learn a useful amount of information that I can use to better plan out my career.

IQuest book

The book that I read regarding my iQuest project was Anyway Anyhow Anywhere: the complete chronicle of THE WHO, by Andy Neill and Matt Kent. The book is essentially a definitive and highly detailed story of the band The Who. It details everything from the very beginning of the band's formation through the death of drummer Keith Moon in 1978. It is a useful tool for my personal project because it offers insight into different perspectives of the music industry as well as methods of songwriting. Personally, my favorite part(s) of the book were the chapters detailing the years 1964 and 1965. During this period, the reader is taken on a voyage through The Who's struggling rise to popularity. I found that reading about how the band journeyed on through various venues and songwriting strategies was very interesting. Overall, however, the book does tend to get fairly dry and boring. This is not the fault of the author though. The purpose of the book is to offer the most detailed telling of the story of The Who. It does its job well. It's just that the stories sometimes get SO detailed, it loses captivation. That being said, I would not recommend this book to anyone who is not a die-hard Who fan or extremely interested in the music industry of the mid 20th century.

Planning for Second Semester

Now that I'm finally almost half way through my senior year of high school, I can confirm that time does, in fact, move slower in school. It seems like it's taken much longer than 3 1/2 years, but I'm here. The best parts of these last few years have definitely happened outside of school. Rundown Radio continually grew more successful, and my job as a martial arts instructor was becoming more stable and efficient. Overall, I can definitely see how I have matured over time. I do recall many stressful and strenuous hours spent over homework and projects for classes, but the time in between makes for some good memories. This year, I am very grateful for the extra time that iQuest has given me. It has allowed me to put a lot more focus on what is now my passion; writing music. This has evolved to improve both the career of Rundown Radio, as well as my own personal career as a musician for media. I even recently learned how to use a program that allows me to directly edit the coding for the music of one of my favorite childhood SNES video games. As far as the future goes, my plans are panning out well. I recently got accepted to my top choice college: Berklee School of Music. I have also applied to UCSC, USC, UCSB, and Cornish, but Berklee is definitely where I intend to ultimately go. However, I am deferring my admittance until fall 2015, to allow myself time to continue to work and gain money close to home while promoting Rundown Radio.

Bucket List

• Skydiving/BASE jumping
• Travel the world (at least 4 countries)
• Attempt a world record
• swim with dolphins
• Invent something
• Bungee Jump
• Go cliff jumping
• See the aurora borealis
• Become multilingual 
• Write a concept album
• Go backpacking over multiple days

Chasing Signals now available!!

Rundown Radio's new EP, Chasing Signals, is now available!

iQuest Update

Recently, things have been kind of hectic with all the college applications due soon. Luckily, many of the colleges to which I am applying for give me opportunities for experience in the process. That's why a lot of my recent free time has been devoted to writing scores for submission to music colleges. The downside is that this, on top of my job and school, leaves me with almost no downtime. So far this year, I have completed the soundtrack for two indie video games. The first is a mobile puzzle game called "Polygone", which can be found here: http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/19861 (note that only one song has been coded into the game so far, as it is still in the mid-early stages of development). The other is a platformer called Pointstar. Images can be found here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/pointstar/images. Almost all of my music has been posted up on my personal soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/joe-marchuk. 

And then there's everything with Rundown Radio. We've been playing all over the place lately, and will be playing this Friday at the annual Danville Tree Lighting. Most excitingly, our new EP, Chasing Signals, will be released soon. It is our greatest recorded work yet, and we're all really excited for it's reception. 

Most importantly, I'm having a great time doing everything--even during the hectic moments. Once college applications/auditions/interviews are all finished, any residual stress should be out of the way.