Here are some photos that describe what my story beat is for Chris Clines Music and Gear. More Photo’s and stories are coming soon so hang tight!

On April 17th, I visited the Slowdown bar in downtown Omaha where I saw 3 very talented bands perform on stage in front of about 100 people. The bands, No Getter, Timecat and Defeater, pleased the audience who appreciate the talented arts of the D.I.Y. Punk community, alternative rock and metal. Although No Getter and Defeater had amazing performances, I was mainly there for the band Timecat, you can check out their website in the link at the bottom of the page. As always, Timecat delivered a performance that can’t be forgotten with music only the D.I.Y. Punk/Metal community can only describe as Midtown Moonrock. The members, Matt, Jay, Joey and David make you feel as though you’re part of the performance.

Timecat Slowdown Performance Video

No Getter

Defeater

 

Jamie Linh Tran is a Junior and a music major at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Jamie started her path of music when she was in 7th grade, at the time she wasn’t very interested in music but her school required her to take a music course. She says her choir director gave her a lot of inspiration to pursue music as a career. Aside from her talent of singing, she also play various percussion instruments in high school such as the xylophone, snare drum and bass drum. She also developed skills playing the piano while attending UNO.

A few of her favorite music genres Tran likes are musical theatre, Opera, and classical music. Lately she has been getting more into Jazz music since performing with the UNO Jazz Band. When she’s not in the classroom practicing for her next performance, Tran likes to cover different types of music and adapt it to something different, for example she would take a Classical song and turn it into a Jazz type song and make it her own.

Being a music major isn’t easy, it takes a lot of hard work and dedication, you can listen to the advice she gives to any aspiring to music education and performance in the link below.

Link for the audio is here:

Janie Linh Tran Audio

Zach Beran is a senior at the University of Nebraska at Omaha majoring in Music Performance. When he was in 4th grade, he picked up the trumpet and has been playing ever since. Beran continued to play the trumpet through middle school and high school, it wasn’t until high school he realized he wanted to play trombone for a living, he then got accepted to the University of Nebraska at Omaha to pursue studying and playing music.

During his freshman year, Beran was in the UNO marching band where he performed on the football field for his first three years, during that time he was also involved in Symphonic Wind Ensemble  and Jazz band No.1 for the past four years, Jazz band No. 2 for two years and the stray horns brass band for two years. Beran is also involved in the Heartland Philharmonic Orchestra for four years and the Chamber Orchestra for two years and the UNO pep band.

Some advice he would like to give any aspiring trumpet player and musician is to never judge yourself on other people’s standards and always go for playing the music and not be to caught up in who is better than who.

Link for the audio file is here:

Zach Beran Audio

On Monday, March 28, our media storytelling lecture class had two guest speakers from UNO’s MavRadio. Our guest speakers were Jodeane Brownlee and Matthew Barros. Jodeane Brownlee is an instructor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s School of communication and also works for MavRadio. Jodeane has always worked in the radio industry, later on in her career she applied to the school of communication at UNO and fell in love with teaching and has been teaching at UNO for the past 10 years.

In the beginning of her talk, Jodeane talked about how in today’s modern age, radio broadcasters can now broadcast on the radio straight from his or her own home instead of commuting to the radio station and doing a broadcast there. She even used her brother, who is also a radio broadcaster, from Grand island as an example because he does his radio broadcasts from his home. Later on, Jodeane asked the class with if we believe that radio is dying with all the new and different types of media out there today. My fried Chris who sits behind me in the lecture class talked about his own opinion about the future of radio. Chris believes that within 10 or 15 years, DJing and music radio will be dead but FM and Radio talk shows will still stay.

After Jodeane finished her discussion, we then transitioned to MavRadio’s general manager and sales director, Matt Barros. Matt talked about what he does over at MavRadio and what MavRadio does for the university. He also argued about how radio is going to make a huge change. In his personal opinion, he says that our personal relationship skills are what’s going to help anyone who wants to make it in the radio business. He says it takes a high level of skill to be in the radio industry if you want to make it on the air.

Overall, Jodeane and Matthew gave our class a lot of history and advice for anyone going into radio broadcasting. I hope to one day be in a class Jodean teaches to broaden my horizons about the communication field.

For this video assignment I have put together a short clip of my second photo essay on the Chicago Music Exchange. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to please check out that post on the blog, you’ll be very happy that you did so. For my next video project, I’ll be talking about a concert I went to on April 17th that featured the band Timecat which I’ve written about before. I also encourage you to check out Timecat, they’re a pretty cool Omaha based band, I promise you’ve never heard anything like them. Other than that I’ll be writing some new stuff later after my Junior year at UNO wraps up, I’ll be in Chicago after I finish up and of course I’ll be paying the Chicago Music Exchange a visit and of course share new photos of the awesome staff and showroom. Thanks for reading and stay tuned!

Chicago Music Exchange Showroom Tour Video