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jcapehartjr · 2 years

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An Interview with Matt Charuka

When prompted to interview an artist, many different ideas came to mind, but I ultimately landed on an interview with my good friend Matt Charuka. It was Matt’s interest in music blogging that led to my entering the Blog-o-sphere™, and Matt is one of the most artistic people I can think of. Matt is a clarinetist who entered Mason Gross School of the Arts in the same year I did: 2019. He’s doing some really incredible things, and I wanted to shine a spotlight on his endeavors and pick his brain about some aspects of what he does as a musician.

You’ve clearly got a love for music. Where did this love start and where has it led you?

I would say my love for music started when I was a very young kid. I was in the car a lot with my mom from a very early age, and she always had some sort of CD she was listening to. She would listen to it for a couple of weeks, then move on to the next one, and during those listening periods, I was analyzing music before I even knew it. If there was a track I liked, I would ask my mom to play it over and over again, until she was incredibly sick of both the song and the CD itself. I was listening to every little detail, and when I got bored of that track, I would hyperfixate on another one. Perhaps I was the reason for my mom cycling through CDs so much! This eventually led to me singing a lot as a kid while trying to learn guitar by ear. Eventually I picked up a Clarinet and now I’m striving to be a professional performing artist and songwriter/composer/arranger!

What music/musicians would you say have influenced you the most as a performer, music maker, and music consumer?

These past couple of years, I have been largely influenced by rock and electronic music. I constantly find myself listening to all sorts of rock bands and electronic artists, which has had a huge impact on my identity as a Clarinetist and Bass Clarinetist. I know these two concepts don’t seem to blend at all, but I have found a way to combine them, and I will talk more about that later. In terms of musicians, you will remember as much as I do that we took a trip to see STARSET together, Jason! We got to meet them and pick all of their brains about the music industry and even what makes each of them tick haha. Their insight and motivation got me through some dark times to follow, and thus began a year and a half of exploring every unorthodox and strange thing I could do with the Clarinet to put out music that I feel represents myself the most. These musicians are Dustin Bates, Ron DeChant, Brock Richards, Adam Gilbert, Zuzana Engererova, and Siobhán Richards. If any of them see this, I hope to one day see you all again and thank you for your kind words and help! Maybe when I’m a fully established musician in the professional world, we could collaborate at some point!

What drew you to playing clarinet in particular?

This is without a doubt going to be the least in-depth answer of this whole interview! This answer is very simple, have you ever heard of SpongeBob? Yes I know, I can hear the laughter and groans coming from the readers as I type this on my iPad, but Squidward is basically why. I was largely interested in music as a kid, and once I was in fourth grade, we got to choose if we wanted to play an instrument and what instrument that would be. The only wind instrument I was familiar with at the time was Clarinet thanks to the show, so as a happy-go-lucky kid, I chose the instrument! Definitely an odd circumstance, but I can confidently say that it was the best possible choice for me.

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When I first met you, you were on track to becoming a music teacher. Your path has taken quite a few turns since then, which of those would you say were most significant for you?

I’ve had a lot of significant turns that were unique in their own ways, but I would say the largest turn happened sophomore year when I decided to drop music education from my bachelor’s track. I came to Mason Gross as a double major in both music education and Clarinet performance. I’ve talked to many people during that time and got the perspectives of those who were farther along into entering the field or who were already there, and as I continued to grow as a musician and a person, I realized I could not teach in a public school setting. My teaching style would be a private Clarinet studio either tied to a music school of just a studio of my own. I am someone who loves to create music and experiment with contemporary techniques and styles, so while music educators are some of the most important people when it comes to inspiration and sharing the gift of music, it’s not my place. My passion and dreams lie elsewhere.

What do you hope to get out of your time at Mason Gross and do you have plans to pursue any further musical education?

For the rest of my time here, I am going as big as I can in terms of performance and risks. Next semester I will be playing in two recitals, one of which is my own and another one that I will be co-hosting with my fellow quartet members. I am also slated to perform a solo Clarinet work with one of the great ensembles here at MGSA, it’s going to be a semester to remember! Down the line, I do plan to pursue another degree in music. My dream as of now is to pursue a contemporary performance track at Manhattan School of Music, in which I will be able to experiment with fusing Clarinet with electronics all while staying in the city, close to the great friends and colleagues I have already made. In the meantime, I have backup plans prepared, one possible path being to perform on cruise ships for a couple of years!

In your best estimate: what is the next step for you? Where do you expect to end up next?

To go a little deeper in what I said before, my ideal step would be to either pursue a contemporary performance track for a masters or to get some performance experience before entering the masters. Either way, my next large step I have planned is to go for my masters, I am just not sure of when that is going to happen. I have a new music group/project that I am currently working on getting off the ground, and if all goes well they will also climb in priority, hopefully to the point where we can perform and tour together. They are my closest friends and I’d love to tour with them! I have also discovered a means of installing a pickup into my Clarinet and Bass Clarinet, which allows me to feed my instruments’ sound through a signal chain of EFX pedals and out through an amp. This is going to be a HUGE part of my performing career, and I plan to write music for this as well!

What people would you say have been most helpful on your journey?

There are so many people in my life who have both helped and encouraged me on this path, all of which I have been very fortunate to have met. If I were to choose the most helpful people, they would be my immediate family. They have supported me through all of my highs and lows, and I have put those people through absolute hell before, but they never left my side. They never stopped encouraging me and they were always there when I needed them most. I’ve come very close to giving up on my dreams before, and if my family wasn’t around to support me, I probably would have foolishly given up by now. They are my foundation, and I wouldn’t even be close to where I am today without their love and support.

In what ways have your perfect pitch and synesthesia affected your musical path?

I’ve answered this question plenty of times before, and each time involves a new set of experiences under my belt, and so I feel my answer always changes. Overall, it has its pros and cons. Being able to know exactly what pitch is sounding has made both writing and transcribing music very efficient, and synesthesia has given me the means to have extremely vivid visions while both listening to and performing music. They benefit my musicianship greatly, but I have encountered people in my life who have been jealous of these attributes I possess. It can make social situations a little weird sometimes, especially when someone points it out. Just the other day, I was in a performance seminar and the professor asked “If someone in here has synesthesia, I’d love to hear your perspective on this piece of music”. Due to not wanting to deal with glaring eyes, I didn’t even raise my hand. We just moved on, but all I felt was relief, like I dodged a bullet. It’s something I hope to get over as time goes on, but both of these things have put me in good and bad situations.

I know that you are a proponent of new music and that you have yourself dabbled in the creation of music. Do you see yourself diving deeper into the world of music creation in the future?

100% yes, I love writing music. At this point in time my computer is filled with incomplete creations of various forms. I have incomplete chamber music, solo music, electronic compositions, large ensemble compositions, singles, instruments with EFX pedal compositions, and more. Just recently I have finally finished a complete work of my own, dedicated to my mother. I won’t give details just yet, as I plan to refine the work and release it publicly, but I feel invigorated now that I have a fully finished piece. I have plans to write music for my new music group/project as well. It’s a very large part of my life and I only realized it very recently.

Any plugs or music recommendations for readers to get a taste of the Matt Charuka Musical Experience™?

Here are a couple of groups to listen to, as they have amazing music that I really enjoy. These groups are STARSET, Polyphia, and (though I listen to them pretty infrequently) The Lucky Chops. I mention these three groups because the music I plan to write for my own music group/project will combine the styles and techniques of these three. Plus, they’re all just great groups to listen to with unmatched talent. In terms of new music I am pursuing, I recommend looking up Chris Mothersole, a Clarinetist based in Georgia who does all sorts of music with electronics. This guy is fantastic, we’ve had some email exchanges and he gave me all sorts of advice in terms of equipment and music to pursue. Finally, if you’re a musician who wants to install a pickup into your own instrument(s), look up either Rumberger or Piezobarrel. These are both fantastic brands that will help you out!

#interview #clarinet #electronics #starset #musician #rutgers #bass clarinet #polyphia #lucky chops #Youtube

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joshualayok · 2 years

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Let Me Go Rock and Roll

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#35mm #Adrian Danon #Brooklyn #Dont stop or well die #Film #future islands #gogol bordello #Jersey City #lucky chops #Manhattan #photography #ron gallo #the sloppy boys #wyldlife

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joemarta · 2 years

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The New Lucky Chops

The kathunk of a subway rail. The hiss of brakes on the track. The shuffling of feet, covered by the overlapping voices of commuters and travelers alike in the New York City subway system. Amidst all the rush and chaos of the busy New York underground, if you are lucky, you might just hear the kathunk of drums, the hiss of a screaming trumpet, and even the low honk of the sousaphone.

Lucky Chops is a New York based brass band that started in 2006, taking the streets by storm. One of their biggest hits that got them on the scene was their cover of Funky Town/I Feel Good. Since then, Lucky Chops has gone under a lot of changes of personnel, going through a few drummers, tubas, and bari saxophones until settling on the group that they have now. The band for many years has been known for their raw, energetic performances and covers, but it’s starting to change. They now use a lot more processing and are experimenting with new instruments to create new sounds that we’ve never heard from them before.

Arvory, one of the newest 2022 releases demonstrates the controversial new sound of Lucky Chops. The group for a long time has had two main styles of music, traditional busking brass band, and pop covers. The group's style for a long time was to do pop covers in the instrumental styles that they were used to. Whether it be a cover of Ariana Grande’s Problem or their original hit single Buyo, the group had its established sound. Over the years as the members changed, they have started experimenting more and more with mixing, making the tracks feel more ‘pop-y’, EQing the tuba to sound like a bass, a lot of reverb, and other effects found commonly in pop. And this brings us to their newest release, Arvory.

Arvory features a seemingly new sound for Lucky Chops, but it really has been years in the making. The first difference we can see aside from the processing, is the instrumentation. We see our usual sousaphone, trombone, bari sax, and drums, but now added to the fix is bass clarinet and rotary flugelhorn. These two new instruments add a much darker color to the traditionally brighter sounding group that many grew to know. Another note to add is that the sousaphone is also using a fiberglass instrument, which helps darken the sound by not ringing like a brass one. This helped lower the timbre of the whole ensemble to a much darker sound. Some fans argue that this new sound strays too far from what they started in, but I think it shows the group's progression. There are not really any other groups out there with the sound that Lucky Chops has, making them stand out, while also pushing the bounds of their respective genre. They are completely blending and pushing boundaries between brass band and pop through both their audio mixing styles and instrumentation choices. They are incorporating elements of pop in their mixing and song construction, and pushing the boundaries of brass band by using nontraditional instrumentation. This is the new Lucky Chops.

#lucky chops #busking #funk #jazz #street music

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slime-sandwhich-nom · 3 months

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Ngl gumball is the type to not fuck around when someone says anything about his gf he's very obsessed with

the tags aren't letting me tell you how gumball literally brought an entire PERSON, probably a dead one of unconscious as a SACRIFICE to a fake cult made by his own teachers and classmates (they didn't take it well)

#this guy had the idea to rip in pieces his classmate uncle to fill a box for a BIRTHDAY GIFT #killed his classmate multiple times just to prove a point #tried to decapitate Leslie and in the most creepy way ever #burned his own gf house down to impress her #did give his own gf an allergic reaction multiple times #tried to choke his own bother because of a dream that didn't even happen #panicked multiple times about his gf nit loving him anymore and resulted in destroying the town more than once #almost killed rob with no hesitation #made his own brother feel guilty about eating potatoes in front of a potato while HE HIMSELF ate potatoes and didn't give a single fuck #sold somebody's parents to prove a point #framed people multiple times #did commit manslaughter before #created toxic and radioactive chemicals just because he didn't wanna admit he was wrong #his plan as a president us to literally bomb the entire country without a care #“we all know how things will go so let's just skip to the end” [bomb dropped]#he was dully prepared and committed to kill whoever was trying to fancy his mother #DID jumped into literal fire just for a stupid ass lucky hat #there's more but this guy.#this guy is not okay #tawog #the amazing world of gumball #tawog gumball #gumball watterson #also he proposed like 2 times in a row to penny #he mentioned to Darwin he was creepily obsessed with his own gf #is a narcissist but like #very slightly #he does have a HUGE ego though #his brother isn't safe either Darwin literally kidnapped someone's mom to get a videogame back and did chop somebody's head off #the last one was a mistake though

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gorespawn · 10 months

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anyone wanna hear some fresh gore gossip? of course you do.

my brother works at a parkour gym in town, and he knows most of the people who train there and those who do acrobatic type of sports in the area. anyway, he wasn't there, because he had a fever on that day, but there was a FREAK ACCIDENT.

his friend was doing his little parkour routine, running on the blocks and scaling the tables and walls and whatnot, and he must've been going at a mighty speed, like a crazy mighty speed, because when he was to make a three meter leap between platform A to platform B, he miscalculated i guess, missed by a decimeter, and hit his shin on the edge of platform B.

and his leg fell off.

i didn't know legs could do that.

do you realise how fast you must be running to get such a momentum when you jump that you stub your toe on a table and your leg falls off????

the edge cleaved through the skin, it cleaved straight through the bone and straight through the calf muscle and the fat tissue. it cleaved through literally everything except the skin on the back of the guy's calf. so the whole lower leg of his just hung there, dangling by the skin.

had they had kitchen scissors at the ready, they could've just cut off that thin remaining skin and thrown his entire lower leg away. like it was OFF. dude got AMPUTATED AT THE GYM.

they have to get a replacement for that platform too, because he hit it with such force that his leg made a dent in the wood. not a crack. a dent. a pit, a leg shaped pit. like he molded the wood around his shin as it simultaneously cut his whole leg off. like a meat axe

anyway he screamed bloody murder of course and fell and then proceeded to bleed over a liter all over the floor and everyone had to hold him still so he wouldn't tear the remaining skin of his leg off in his panic. the kid who called the ambulance has had nightmares ever since apparently, which like, fair.

anyway the ambulance arrived and abra cadabra the orthopedists somehow managed to magically reattach the leg again and screw the bone back together and sew all the other tissue together, putting his leg in one of those sort of morbid metal cages that are all frankenstein style with the freakishly large bolts and whatnot.

the grand finish of the story is that guys who do parkour are fucking insane bc he's back at the gym now ready to jump

#it's of course very lucky that parkour guys are fucking crazy. it'd be so sad if he lost his passion just bc of an accident and trauma #anyway #just wanted to share #bc it's so fucking crazy #i didn't know legs could do that!#like....#if i had a meat axe. a large axe. and a leg. i still feel like i'd need a few chops to cut a leg off #and this guy did it in one go by just falling on a table #falling very. very fast #anyway he's 22. imagine doing some autoamputation at the gym at the tender age of 22 #and then being back at the gym 2 weeks later #parkour guys are fucking crazy but i respect it!#.txt

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