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Nascent Music was a podcast of improvised music by Shane Carey on solo Chapman Stick®.
Possibly the first podcast to feature Stick music exclusively, the show debuted on October 21, 2005. Over the next 100+ episodes, Shane used the virtually limitless array of guitar, bass, synth, and percussion sounds the MIDI-capable Stick makes possible to give voice to countless hours of new music.
The final episode was recorded on May 12, 2008. There was no official farewell episode, but a 2-disc compilation, Greatest Hits And Misses, was released on August 31, 2008.
From here you can:
In 2001, I moved from San Diego to Arizona. In San Diego, I'd been in a band; here, with no musical collaborators, I struck out in a new direction, focusing on solo improvisation. As my fluency increased, and I started to recognize the sounds I wanted to make, I gradually acquired the synth modules, looper, and other gear that would define my sound over the next two years.
I half-seriously considered starting some sort of MP3 blog, to expose the recordings and the process to the world and let the music find whatever audience it might. When podcasting came to my attention in 2004-2005, I recognized that the time had come to put that idea into action. In October of 2005, I set up shanecarey.net, and the first thing I did was set up a Wordpress blog and figure out what to do.
When the first episode appeared on October 21, 2005, the podcast was called "Notes From The Mind Of..." But that name never really rolled off the tongue, so a month later I renamed it "Nascent Music," and in January 2006 I finally moved it to its own domain, nascentmusic.com.
By the time Stickist.com added the feed to their main page in February of 2006, significantly boosting listenership, I'd settled into a slightly more leisurely pace, producing 1-3 episodes per week. The enthusiastic support of fellow podcasters Juan Leon and Zak Winnick helped me feel that I wasn't merely playing in a vacuum, but occupying my own little corner of a community. Over the year, I settled into a weekly schedule, to which I kept pretty well, even doing two episodes from the road while driving across the U.S. with The Remainders.
But in 2007, as the gap widened between what I wanted and what I achieved, so did the time between episodes. It wasn't that I disliked the music, but that I felt like I was stagnating, becoming more habitual in my playing, and not offering a clear channel for genuinely new music to appear. Several times that year, I returned after a lengthy break with new ideas for revitalizing my approach, and resumed weekly episodes for a month or so before gradually slowing to another stop. Occasionally I was spurred on by a significant milestone, such as the first and second anniversary shows and the 100th episode, each of which had some sort of concept that required more thought and effort than usual.
Had I known that the May 12, 2008 episode was the finale, I might have made an event of that as well; but, at the time, it was just another weekly episode, three weeks after coming back from a five-month hiatus (the longest yet), and the latest dose of motivation had already run out. In retrospect, I wish that I had stopped at the second anniversary; again, not that I dislike the music that came out of the five episodes after that, but I'd prefer to have finished with a bang rather than trailing off.
However, when an old friend found the podcast and asked if I planned to release any compilations, I finally recognized that my MP3 blog was no longer serving the need or purpose with which I began it, and that he'd suggested the perfect way to say goodbye. So, now that Greatest Hits and Misses is finally complete, I'll say it one more time...
Thanks for listening!
-shaneGreatest Hits and Misses is a compilation of (arguably) the best bits of the Nascent Music podcast. Clips spanning the show's entire 2-year history have been remastered and edited into a double album, 12 tracks and over 150 minutes of improvised instrumental music on solo Chapman Stick ®, now available here for free download.