I have a bunch of covers and new songs that I’ll be uploading to YouTube in the next few months, so keep your eyes peeled…

I recorded the track and made it available on Itunes, Amazon, etc.. All the links along with the tabs for the arrangement over here.

Man, been a while since I posted anything here. Well, in my defense I’ve been getting used to being a new dad. March has been month where I’ve slowly started getting back into the music and things are now in full swing.

Tomorrow I’ll be playing at Valentin Stüberl in Neukölln, here’s the Facebook event for that. I also played at Salon Remise (with Joe Czarnecki) and Kugelbahn this month, both very cool venues in their own right.

The guys at Kugelbahn even shot this little video of one of my songs.

I’m also working on an EP which I should be recording in the coming months, once I finish writing the song I’m currently working on. Before that I have a few covers I’d like to release, the first one should be out very soon. More on that later :)

Also, I’ll start releasing exclusive material (demos, live recordings, unreleased, etc…) on my mailing list. If you’re interested, sign up right here:

I also wrote a blog post talking a bit about it. Oh, and here’s a live performance of the title-track:

Here’s the short:

“Beyond” – 48 Hours Film Project Berlin from Albert N. Romero on Vimeo.

I’m also gonna do the music for a web-series by the same director. I’m very excited to see how that comes out, but more on that later.

And last Sunday I played another concert with Joe Czarnecki, this time at B-Flat. And once again, it was a great night. I should have some video footage of it shortly.

I think of Minimize as my prog song. As I composed it I was reminded of Discipline-era King Crimson with some Steve Reich. There’s definitely a minimalist vibe to it.

I don’t really remember how the Griot came about, but I remember really liking the melody. The rhythm changes between an afro-beat groove in the verses, and straight-ahead rock in the choruses. I could lie and tell you that it’s a juxtaposition of different cultures or something or other, but it isn’t. It just sounded cool…

And not long before that, Kate Weed did a great review on her Dovetail blog. She goes through all the songs and uses some very detailed imagery to describe them. Thanks Kate!

One idea I’ve been mulling over is: what if we take ideas from developer community? If you want a great example of online collaboration, look at any major open source project.

Using software like Trac, they share ideas and propose changes. Not just by stating, but also by actually adding the change. Then others can add to or improve it. Or provide another alternative. And all the changes are kept track of, so you can always go back. Or even break things off in another direction. Here’s WordPress’s Trac, for example.

This is how I imagine it: One guy provides and idea or song. This would include all the files and recordings. Then another guy could come in and make a ‘ticket’ saying “Hey, this part is really cool, but the transition into it could be better.” So he records a new transition.

Things are discussed, others provide different transitions. Eventually, depending on the nature of the project, either the community as a whole or the original composer decides which transition is better, or if a change was needed in the first place.  If it’s not taken, maybe the guy who made the transition could decide it’s such a cool transition, that he starts a whole other project with it. And so on and so forth.

Those who are more prone to work with sheet music, can do all the above, but with notation…which is probably more practical for this type of thing.

Some of you might be thinking  this seems pretty dry, but I find it pretty exciting. Programming can also be a very creative endeavor and we can learn a few things from these guys.

The real challenge though, is to make software with the given functionalities that’s geared towards musicians and not code monkeys. Maybe something exists already that can be used in this way?

So, what do you think? Useful idea or pointless musing?