andrew dodson

It’s weeks like this when my bank account doesn’t like me. Tomorrow will see the release of CDs by Casting Crowns & Building 429. On Friday, the Dave Matthews Band will release the fourth volume of their LiveTRAX series. The good news is, all of this music should hold me over for a few weeks – until the new David Crowder Band CD comes out in late September.

As of this evening, my vehicle hasn’t moved in over 48 hours, thanks to my new bike. The past two days have been great days to get out and ride – low humidity and cooler temperatures. I haven’t checked the weather yet, but I’m hoping to be able to ride once again tomorrow and see if I can keep my truck in the driveway for 72 hours.

You know… the way God works strikes me as humorous from time-to-time. I’ve been in a minor state of awe the past few days. See… Saturday, I sat down to work on the JMB website. I’d actually put a decent amount of time into the project prior to Saturday, but wasn’t at all satisfied with the results. I wasn’t feeling creative at all. I got up to get something to drink, and on my way back to the computer, I stopped and said a prayer. I just asked for God to lead me in the right direction and allow me to use the ability and creativity He’s given me. From that point until Sunday afternoon, I experienced one of the most creative periods of time I can remember. In just over 24 hours, I created (arguably) two of the better websites I’ve ever designed.

I will admit that I had a slight influence from another band’s website for the JMB website, but it’s not an exact ripoff (that site was out of my league graphically & technically). It did, however, spark the idea for the JMB site. The new Vertex site is, in my opinion, the best site design I’ve created to this point. It’s edgy, it’s modern, and very graphic-oriented. Both sites have given me a new confidence in regards to creating more graphic-based site designs.

My question for non-Christians – if God isn’t real, how do you explain my answered prayer?

He is real and He will work in your life if you believe in Him.

I guess this has turned into a weekend of website maintenance. After redesigning the Josh Martin Band site yesterday, I redesigned the Vertex website today. I still have to add content to several pages, but it’s mostly complete. Go check it out….

I spent this afternoon redesigning the Josh Martin Band’s website. I still have a lot of work to do, but I was able to make some pretty good headway. Go check it out!

Ok, where to start?

It seems that Saturday is a good time for me to blog, since I’ve been free the last few Saturday afternoons.

I’m planning on spending the rest of the afternoon listening to music and working on websites. We had praise band rehearsal this morning, where I worked click tracks in to our in-ear monitor mix for the first time.

I noticed after listening back to our concert from last month that I took almost every song way too fast. Since then, I’ve worked on loops that I can play through my in-ear monitor mix. The improvisational/jazz musician side of me is thoroughly against this, but I’m not playing improvisational music at church. I’m using Apple Loops through GarageBand (just another example of Apple saving the day). Now, every time we play a certain song, it’ll be the same tempo. Eventually, we’d like to run the loops through the house mix to add a new dimension to our sound. I have to say that I’m slightly nervous about using the loops for the first time in a service tomorrow morning, but this morning went well.

The Josh Martin Band has a fairly busy fall coming up. We’ll be playing a couple/few dates per month for the next few months. I’m almost positive more dates will be added here and there. We started working on new material this past week, which I’m pretty excited about. Since I’m the newest member, it’s fun to be there during the creation of the songs. We’ve worked up one new song that we’ll probably play at our next gig, and touched a few others. There’s one that I’m really excited about working up – it’ll be a great live song – lots of energy. I can also tell that Josh is becoming a much more mature songwriter. It’ll be a while before we start recording these songs for the band’s next CD – in the mean time, we’re still mixing & mastering our live recording from a few months ago. It will probably be out before the end of the year.

I finished mixing & mastering the orangewhip recording from late July. I’m very, very pleased with how it turned out. Should the band decide to release the album (which I don’t believe is their intentions – they just wanted a recording of the show), I would be happy with the results.

I’m off to grab some lunch and start working on sites. I have a few more things I’d like to post, but this should hold you over for now!

After over a year of thinking about it, I finally broke down and bought a bicycle last week. I’d tried fixing up my old bike last summer, only to find out the frame is too small (I hadn’t ridden the bike in about eight years).

The reason for getting the bike was two-fold:
1.) I’m close to church and work – there’s no reason to waste gas in my truck (approaching $3/gallon), when in 10-15 minutes, I can get to two of the places I go to the most.
2.) Another method of keeping in shape.

I was able to ride the bike to work a few times last week, and to church once. I also went for a quick ride on Sunday to East Frankfort Park. As would be my luck, it’s either rained, or there’s been a good chance of rain the past two days, so I haven’t been brave enough to ride it to work any this week. I’m hoping to ride it tomorrow.

The next time you go in Best Buy in this region (Cincinnati, Louisville, Lexington and surrounding areas), you might see a graphic I created on the shirts of some employees. Thanks to Mike Barnes, CLS landed a shirt order for Best Buy’s District 52. It seems they wanted to create a logo for their district, with the elements of Thunder Struck, a lightning bolt, a shield, D-52 and Gladiators. They liked what I came up with and ended up placing the order.

The brings me to the topic of the graphic artist’s life behind-the-scenes. Quick – name the creator of the McDonald’s logo. Or, the Nike logo. How about Starbucks? Sadly, those are names I can’t even come up with. The CEO’s names might come more readily than the person/people responsible for creating a company’s identity in the marketplace. Behind-the-scenes, graphic artists get credit and pats on the back, but the general public never knows who created the graphic that distinguishes their cheeseburger, tennis shoes, or coffee cup.

I’m not saying I want fame and fortune for creating a graphic. I just think it’s a really interesting job field, is all.

In an attempt to streamline my life, I’ve created a weekly list for updating websites and chores.

I have a hand in designing, updating and maintaining nine websites. Lately, it’s easy to lose track in regards to which sites need updates, redesigns and so forth. The new weekly list breaks the websites down among different days of the week. For example, today (Saturday) was the day I scheduled to maintain my personal site.

The same is true for chores around my apartment. Lately, I’ll pick a day every couple of weeks to clean my entire apartment. The new list splits chores up onto different days. Today was bathroom-cleaning day.

So far, it seems to be working fairly well. Instead of setting aside large blocks of time to update websites or do chores, I can do a little each day to stay caught up.

I’m in the process of updating my personal site. Let me know what you think!