NoWare

Tonight my Business and Ethics class was given the opportunity to go and check out our teacher's other job ... I may have mentioned before that most of my teachers teach on the side and usually gig or live the music world most of the time. But if I haven't, now you know. My school pretty much rocks ... my teachers are pros at what they teach. Anyways, NoWare is located in Minneapolis and is considered a 'music based creative house.' We learned a lot about my teacher and what he does, what has got him there, what he hopes to achieve with this new 'baby' business, and even got to watch a 60-second commercial for the new Bauer hockey skates that him and his business partner composed music for (I highly doubt we were supposed to see that commercial, but that's one of the cool things about working in a sweet industry ... you get to do and see things before others). I learned a lot about having passions and what they actually mean, along with priorities and what this whole growing up, real world thing is really about.

NoWare is made up of two guys working in a brick room, with no windows, that used to be a storage room for the building. There's a skylight that brings the only natural light ... and apparently it was leaking this morning. There are music instruments everywhere ... most from pawn shops! So so many, including toy pianos and 60's electronic instruments. Both of the guys working there used to work at record labels and were great at recording ... my teacher's partner had three albums on the billboards last year. However, they both decided that they needed to do their dream and actually make and compose music (or as they consider it, noise; when you mic a refrigerator humming, or an old organ engine turning on, you can call it whatever you want) and make a living off of that. So they started NoWare and have made music for companies like Nike and Land O' Lakes. Not bad.

My teacher talked about how you can do things for little money and how if there's a will, there's a way. Everybody knows somebody (or somebody who knows somebody) in every single career field. So utilize it. There were old albums and sweet painting all over the wall that the company got for free from friends. The whole construction of the studio and the office cost under $1000. There were chairs and furniture everywhere, yet the most expensive piece of furniture was the huge oak conference desk that cost them $10. It may not look like they are living the dream to some, but this place was full of creativity, comfort, and makes a great place to work for two successful people.

Our final for the class is making a short film on interviews that we conduct with people that are working in the field of what we want be in. I am really looking forward to connecting, conversing, and figuring out the people that I hope to some day work for. So in place of our class on Thursday, we are supposed to investigate who those people are that we want to interview (and my teacher is going to SXSW ... pretty jealous).

I also noticed it's pretty nice outside today and will be for the rest of the week. Senioritis has officially kicked in. Ahh!

peace and love.
kails.