Soft Charisma Official Blog

More Inventory Available

2008-10-19T15:53:00.002-05:00

Just wanted to drop by and say that there are now more available of the following albums for your tangible enjoyment:

From There to Here: Chapter 1 - Musical Beginnings

2008-10-11T07:04:00.008-05:00

From There to Here: A Brief History of Soft Charisma
(as recalled by Scott Kingsley Clark)

Most of my life, I begged my mother for a drumset. I used any tabletop, desk, and wall that I could get a hold of to reap my havoc through. It all started when I moved to Phoenix with my mom and brother.

We moved to Phoenix, AZ in 1994 during "Winter Break" as they called it in Phoenix and "Christmas Break" as I remember from Carrollton, TX where we lived from the time of my birth. My fond memories of the move include getting to honk a trunk horn all on my own and building a humongous box fort with all the boxes (big, small, large and tall!) from the move -- But let's get to the music!

It was 3rd grade, I was 9 years old, and my brother went into the orchestra program for violin. I had piano lessons for a few years off and on before the move, so I had a faint background in music already. It was time for me to answer the question of whether or not I wanted to play in the orchestra or band. Those horns seemed so loud and fun, I couldn't resist. I joined up in 4th grade on the Trumpet. I spent about a year and a half on the Trumpet and I was really getting the hang of it. Then allergies and mild asthma set in. It became difficult to play the Trumpet, so I switched to Percussion. The band director (and computer teacher at the time), Steve Edman, recommended that my studies focus on mallet percussion since I had a beginning understanding of piano theory. I was pretty much in mallet percussion from 5th grade onto 10th grade.

After 7th grade, we moved again. This time it was Euless, TX that we called home. I joined up with the Euless Junior High School percussion department and began rudimentary studies of the snare drum.

From there, we moved to Irving, TX and I started high school. At MacArthur High School, I was in the band program for 2 years, while I and everyone else could easily say it was for a year and 1/4. On paper, it was 2 years because of the weird scheduling system we were on at the time.

During High School is when I began to study the drumset. Although my first class performance was enough to make it so I wouldn't play the drumset ever again in class, I managed to finally convince my mom to get a drumset for me to play at home. I played that drumset every day for hours. It was originally in my room, but after a while we moved it to the garage.

Now I was no Buddy Rich, but I was beginning to make some sense of the mystery behind all the different parts of the drumset. I joined up with other musicians in Irving just fooling around with sounds and songs. I started my first album which was me REALLY fooling around on the drumset and singing on-top of it using a 4-track Tascam tape recorder. I'm very protective of that album and as I find that people still own it I gradually steal them from existence.

Eventually, fellow Irving musician Andrew Savage decided to give me a shot with his band The Skankaholix. At the same time a bunch of us from the Drama department decided to make up a story band called The Spuds. We were apparently the direct decendants of Irish potato farmers who were the original punk rockers. You can hear a couple of the songs that still survive from both of them that I've found (MP3s/CDs are lost or broken over the years).

After The Skankaholix played the Irving scene for a while, our musical tastes changed and we formed the Five Pointers. At the end of High School, I was off to the University of North Texas. When we all graduated, we drifted out of Irving and the band disbanded after being inactive for a few months. Andrew later formed Teenage Cool Kids in Denton. I joined up with Obsession With Depression which eventually changed it's name to The Affected around 2005/2006. The band was headed by Travis Jones and disbanded to form Analog Eyes which I bowed out from to focus on my solo music. Travis Jones later went on to form the band 'A' with his fiancee, April.

My time at the University of North Texas was to be ground zero of the next chapter of my music.

New Studio Setup, First New Song from Breakfast With Friends and other stats

2008-09-28T23:56:00.006-05:00

First, I want to really thank everyone's response to the Life Inside The Robot Man release! Over 200 torrent downloads to-date, and I've been cleaned out of all 50 CDs that I had manufactured. Still countless other streams and downloads across the web contribute to an overwhelming appreciation that I have for everyone who has made this possible including:

Ryan Ragus: The primary sound engineer for Life Inside The Robot Man
Baron Gomez: Helped get Life Inside The Robot Man off the ground by contributing his sound engineering skills at the start of the album's production
Justin Bonnet: Designed the Life Inside The Robot Man CD artwork
Justin Houston: Recorded the very first High Fidelity tracks in Soft Charisma's entire history
Daniel Candiotta: Provided his USB microphone to help keep Soft Charisma's music sounding as good as it could until the new Studio Setup was complete
Philip Gage: Sold me my first 4-track recording setup in or around 2002, which provided me a means to perfect my sound and style

New Cover from Breakfast With Friends Available

With that said, the next few albums should have a great new sound that I've been developing. The first track I recorded just a day after my new Studio Setup arrived, is a cover of Over At The Frankenstein Place from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. You can hear it on the new T61 Soft Charisma profile located at www.thesixtyone.com/softcharisma. T61 (The Sixty One) is a new beta music discovery service that allows you to actively participate in finding new music and sharing it with other people. There has been a great response to what has been uploaded to the profile so far, and I'm definitely looking forward to the many great things to come to T61.

New Studio Setup

The new Studio Setup is complete and here's the breakdown of the operation:

Pro Tools LE v7.4
digidesign m-box 2
Shure KSM27 Studio Condenser Microphone

Now this is a huge upgrade from a USB dynamic microphone! This setup was modeled after the setup that Ryan Ragus would bring over for late night recording binges to finish up Life Inside The Robot Man. So now I am free to record on my own schedule -- AND in my birthday suit I have to add! Okay so maybe the birthday suit thing might be a bit unnecessary, but being able to experiment on my own time makes things a lot easier and I don't feel as bad :-)

CD Release - Life Inside The Robot Man

2008-08-25T08:48:00.003-05:00

The release was a big success -- on a small scale of course.

Release Stats:

CDs: 46+
Downloads (torrent): 75+
Release Show Attendees: 45~ (estimated)

That's pretty good for a relatively unknown Soft Charisma. So if you haven't already gotten the CD and you're a digital kind of person, Soft Charisma endorses torrents of it's released albums. The last three are available for full download from The Pirate Bay and Demonoid.

Also, be on the lookout for the next album as it pieces together. Chocked full of covers, Breakfast With Friends will be a treat for anyone sharing a similar taste for music with Soft Charisma. Rough drafts of songs will start popping up as soon as I get enough money saved up for a condenser microphone.

Wicked Little Town - Video

2008-06-29T14:48:00.003-05:00

Just uploaded a video produced / recorded by Ian McKenyon. This one is my interpretation of the song Wicked Little Town from Hedwig and the Angry Inch (specifically the scene in the movie where Hedwig is playing at the small donut shop). I'd really like to have John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask listen to this at least once, and I'll be happy. So, here's hoping that John/Stephen searches YouTube for Fan Covers from Hedwig.

Check the video out!

New Songs: Non-Gluten Cookies and Nude (Radiohead Remix)

2008-06-20T08:12:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd be the late bloomer and create a Nude remix after the contest had closed. I will release the remix in drafts, each one replacing various chunks of the song with Ukulele. Draft 1 has one track of Ukulele minus the drums.

Also, I recorded a eclectic piece that was inspired by the smell of Non-Gluten Cookies being prepared and baked.

New Album, and Quick Question

2008-06-06T07:56:00.001-05:00

I've got the hammer nailed to the top of Life Inside the Robot Man, but now that leaves new songs and other previously unreleased material left out. I thought they should feel more at home in a new album, aptly titled Apples Audited After Allotment Allocated.

However, I've got a quick survey for you which you can simply send your answer in through the contact page or leave a comment directly onto this post (if you have a Google account).

My question is, how do you keep up to date with Soft Charisma?

A: Through RSS / Atom XML Feeds
B: Checking the website
C: Word of mouth

My main question is, how many people utilize the RSS feature? It's very useful in my opinion and means I don't have to go to websites I wish to keep updated about. I already subscribe to a few of my friend's blogs. Well, answer away, and I'll be working on adding more lyrics onto the site!

CD Release Show - Life Inside The Robot Man

2008-05-22T07:20:00.006-05:00

Soft Charisma has just scheduled the CD Release Show for Life Inside The Robot Man. The plan is to release the Album online in July, and on August 2nd have the CD Release Show at the Art Six Coffee House in Denton, TX. Most up-to-date show information is on the Shows page. Information about the album itself is on the Life Inside The Robot Man album information page.

Torrents Online - Full Downloads Now Available for Albums

2008-04-22T07:50:00.000-05:00

You can now download full official Soft Charisma albums from The Pirate Bay. So far, only The Lo-Fi Adventures and Livin' In The Project are available for download.

Midnight Radio (Hedwig And The Angry Inch Cover) - Very Rough Draft

2008-04-19T11:45:00.000-05:00

I found a version of Midnight Radio from the Hedwig And The Angry Inch musical while I was prepping for my next recording. I decided I should upload it because it's not 100% horrible, but it's still a rough draft. I recorded it originally on March 31st, 2007. So for the record, this cover actually preceded Wicked Little Town. I had worked on Midnight Radio for a while, put down the track (recorded), and then decided to start Wicked Little Town because I thought it would be much more fitting.

Does anyone have an idea of which Rough Draft they'd like to hear next from the upcoming cover album Breakfast With Friends? Well here's your call-to-action. This is a ghost town comment-wise, feel free to add them and let me know what you think about posts! You can login with an OpenID or your Google/Blogger account to comment.

You can also always contact me using this easy to use form for Booking, Merch Ordering, Questions, Comments, Suggestions, Etc..

Oh What A World (Rufus Wainwright Cover) - Rough Draft

2008-04-19T07:38:00.002-05:00

I finished a rough draft of Rufus Wainwright's Oh What A World last night. It turned out really good I feel and it's not exactly a complete cover of his song, but I think I was able to adapt it to my own style. I had a lot of fun with this one!

Front imeem Player + Lyrics ahoy

2008-04-10T21:15:00.005-05:00

I figured because the music on the front page is ALL not released yet, and it's all on imeem, I would put a playlist player up! So I did that and for anyone who doesn't have Javascript / Flash, you can see the featured songs links as normal.

Working on getting the rest of the lyrics up this month so here's looking at you, hermit!

Discography Section Tweak

2008-04-09T00:10:00.001-05:00

I just finished organizing the Discography pages a bit better. Now you can navigate around and it's clean! Just a short update to keep record of changes -- you know how it goes.

New Song and News about Upcoming Albums

2008-04-07T07:48:00.003-05:00

Over the weekend I drove down to San Marcos with my mother to visit my brother. He's down at Texas State University taking Accounting. While I was there, I started work on a new song. When I got home Sunday afternoon, I wrote the lyrics and recorded Parallel (lyrics). This has turned out to be a very uplifting song about finding one's true love. It's still in rough draft phase so you'll have to check back for the fully produced song soon.

At this time I'd like to announce an upcoming album titled "Breakfast with Friends", in which I will release covers of songs from other artists I admire and give my homage to some of my all-time favorite songs from the biggies. I have also set into stone the track listing for "Life Inside The Robot Man" album, which is nearing completion.

177 pages? Snap.

2008-04-03T03:04:00.005-05:00

I've been working this morning and this evening on updating the site with lyrics and song information. This site has grown to be pretty big. Now there's 177 pages (Update: now there's 214). With 115 individual songs, I can see where the bulk of that comes from. Each song has a page for Lyrics (if available) and a page with additional information, including any song credits or background story. Still working on filling in Lyrics / Song Information as I'm able to.

I've also tweaked the interface a little so now there are icons to help you know what each song has. The play icon links to the page where you can hear the song at. The down arrow icon links to the actual mp3 file download for the song. The white notepad icon links to the lyrics page for the song (if lyrics are available). The actual song link itself goes to the song info page which gives background story about where the song came from and what it means to me as well as credits where credits are due (where available).

Still working on finishing up the tab system to work with CHOPRO format.

Well there you go. I'm tired now.

Added 10 Rough Drafts to imeem

2008-04-02T07:51:00.002-05:00

I was going through the audio files from around 2006 and found some rough drafts of songs that are currently unfinished. I added them to the Discography page, but you can also hear them over at the Soft Charisma imeeem. You may need to wait a day or so to be able to hear the full version as it's still waiting to be put into the system for full streaming. But as always, you'll need an account to hear the full songs, otherwise you'll only get a 30 second preview.

Added Lyrics

2008-04-01T22:49:00.002-05:00

Tonight I added as many lyrics as I had -- which means I've lost some lyrics over the years! So the solution is to listen to the songs again and transcribe lyrics onto the site. My plan is to have 100% lyrics up, so that's a bunch more work for April.

Merch Ordered

2008-03-31T21:39:00.000-05:00

Ordered 500 Stickers, 4 Medium T-Shirts (2 black, 2 white), and 25 CDs (10 Livin', 15 Lo-Fi).

Everything arrives late this week so let me know if you're weary of ordering online and I can get you a shirt or whatever you wish.

Dreamer done! Others recorded!

2008-03-30T18:08:00.007-05:00

Finished production of Dreamer (Ozzy Osbourne Cover). I've been helped a great deal by Ryan RAGUS and his audio recording / engineering for this and a few other recent tracks. So on top of a deep voice, an almost satanic ability to play bass, and his promotional skills, he's got a dang good ear. Just wanted to publicly thank him for helping out. Thanks!

We recorded Same, Maine, and Soulmate (Revised) this afternoon. Just a few steps closer to releasing the next album, Life Inside The Robot Man!

New Songs and T-Shirts Arrived!

2008-03-29T08:35:00.004-05:00

I finally put up Think Of Happiness, after it's been sitting around waiting for you to hear it. The second new song is A Matter Of Fact which I finished this morning.

Also, the shirts arrived and I am amazed at the quality! You should consider getting one with your next paycheck. I'm ordering 10 more, so you can also purchase them directly from me if needed.

New Song, imeem, and T-Shirt Talk

2008-03-27T08:02:00.008-05:00

Added the rough draft of the new song titled A Matter Of Fact. As usual, you will need a imeem account to listen to any Soft Charisma songs that are in progress. I will tell you now that if you sign up, you won't receive spam or open your wallet to the internet. It's free and won't bite you. I put finished tracks onto Last.fm where you can listen / download them without an account. The reason behind putting tracks onto imeem is to restrict access to a song and it's mp3 which may be updated a few times until it's completion. This prevents multiple versions of Soft Charisma tracks on the "internets".

I just ordered 5 shirts, in two separate orders; The first order will arrive this afternoon (I ordered 2 days ago), and the second order just shipped out this morning (I ordered last night). So you can say that I'm excited about this our new T-Shirt distributor, SpreadShirt.

Added Shows / Open Mic Nights

2008-03-26T08:15:00.004-05:00

Finally put up the Shows and Events page. It has documentation on most events Soft Charisma has performed at. If you're wondering when Soft Charisma will play next, send a booking inquiry and request Soft Charisma to play at your venue / house / apartment or wait until the CD Release show coming alongside the upcoming Life Inside The Robot Man release.

Minor Tweaks

2008-03-25T18:51:00.005-05:00

Updated the home page with new songs and information. It's now dynamic so I can easily manage it and keep you up-to-date directly from the home page on any progress. Also, updated the code on the site so it runs a bit smoother and added some minor design tweaks to the boxes and merch page.

Merch Added

2008-03-24T20:47:00.004-05:00

Added some T-Shirts and CDs to the Merch area. Right now you can order the shirts direct from the distributor, SpreadShirt. I'm working on linking up the CDs so you can order those as well.

New site launched!

2008-03-23T21:31:00.008-05:00

Finally got the site launched. It's taken a few months to get all the stuff together, organized and then put to web! Keep on the look out for new songs to be recorded. I'll be posting here to let you know of everything going on, new songs, and upcoming shows and events. And of course, you will find this information on the actual site along with the rest of the previous events / songs.

So,... good stuff. Take care and hope your doing well, friend.