I recall Central Park in fall.

So I just realized that I have not posted something on here in quite a while - time just got away from me! You know what they say, time flies when you're having fun. Everything has been pretty standard since the last time I wrote, interning and classing, going out in the city and just living in NYC. My best friend was here this past weekend for a little visit and to celebrate her 23rd birthday. It was awesome! We went to a show for one of the band's represented by Stunt Co. Wild Light and it was stellar. They put on a great show and the guys are super nice, so it made for a perfect b-day celebration. We hung out in Central Park on Sunday, which I have discovered is my favorite place to be in the fall. It is gorgeous, I could sit there all day and take pics of the autumn colors everywhere.

I am STOKED for this week because my family is making the 10 hour drive to spend Thanksgiving with me. This year is a bit different because "my family" includes my parents and their best friends, Steve and Carla, and their two sons Chris and Matt. I am so happy for everyone to be here and to spend the holiday together! The other great part of this week is my 22nd birthday on Saturday!! I am sure it will be fantastic since I will be journeying out to Long Island with my boss to see one of my all-time fave bands, Brand New. I cannot wait, especially since this is their hometown show AND it's at the massive Nassau Coliseum. So, I will be sharing my birthday with a bunch of hardcore LI kids belting their lungs out to their hometown heroes. I honestly can't think of a better way to turn 22.

Only 2 and a half more weeks! WHAT?! Where has time gone? I want to stay.

Quick Update

Wow, it's been awhile since I have updated you all on my life.

The past few weeks have been pretty exciting. A few weeks ago, I was able to attend one of the Rock n Roll 25th Anniversary concerts at MSG for free! The show lasted about five hours and was packed with amazing performances. Some of the performers included Aretha Franklin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Annie Lennox, Lenny Kravitz, Sting, ZZ Top, Ozzy Osbourne (my personal favorite of the night), Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Metallica, the Black Eyed Peas, Mick Jagger, and U2! A great experience for sure.

On Monday night, Amy and I went to see Luke Bryan at the Bowery Ballroom. Nashville came to NYC and we couldn't have been happier! He put on a great show. We've missed the south and country music. While we were there, we met some new friends who graduated from Vandy last year and now live in the city. Small world.

My internship at AMO couldn't be better. I'm sad that I don't have many days left. This was the perfect internship for me. I have learned so much and have gotten to know so many people. I feel like I am a part of the company. They always involve me in everything as much as possible. I have also gotten to attend all of our artists shows when they come to town. I've helped prepare for these shows all semester and it's fun to be able to see the final product. On top of all that, I have been able to help with some special events for our artists. I love special events and event planning so I enjoyed every minute of it. Two of our artists have a show tonight, so I am going on a field trip to CAKE BOSS with one of the girls from the office to pick up cake (obviously) for the evening. I'm not going to lie, I'm excited about the little adventure to New Jersey.

My mission this weekend is to go out and experience more of NYC! I'll hopefully hit up the Brooklyn Flea Market as well (this is the last weekend for it).

Until next time...

Shannon

P.S. I have located the Chick-Fil-A in NYC for all of you who are missing it!

Parent Weekend!

This weekend my parents came into town to visit me! It was great to see them, but we had a pretty tough time meeting up. First their flight was canceled and then there were issues with the F train, which made it difficult to get to their hotel in Midtown, but it was done.

I took them to some of my favorite hangs in NYC and Brooklyn, including Tom's Diner in Prospect Heights (if you ever go to NYC you HAVE to get breakfast and a milkshake at this place) and we spent a lot of time around Rockafeller Plaza, which is probably my favorite touristy area in NYC. The Rockafeller Christmas tree was recently brought in, and it still has scaffolding around it, but I look forward to being around to see it lit up.

Unfortunately the weather was less than desirable because of a hurricane/tropical storm thing that brought cloudy skies, a light rain, and a lot wind, so we weren't able to go to the Top of the Rock, which has the best view in NYC. We ended up going to MoMA, which was great and we saw the play A Steady Rain which has the actors you may know as The Most Recent James Bond, and Wolverine. It was fantastic, and it was just the two of them, but the way they told the story it made you feel like everything they were talking about was actually happening on stage with them.

Anyway, it was a nice short visit and I got to do a lot of things that I normally wouldn't have gotten out to do.

Also, I just thought I'd mention that it's November 16th and yet it is 60 degrees outside. Wow.

This is Sirius.

Better late than never.

Well I'm pretty slow to jump on the blogging bandwagon even though so many amazing experiences have happened to me up here in NYC. Belmont East was one of my major reasons for coming to Belmont University and I'm happy to say it has not left me disappointed.

I am interning at SiriusXM satellite radio and I have learned so much. I have gained education on many different systems, a great knowledge of how to trouble shoot a network with over 40 studios, hands on physical maintenance from the studio gear to cables. I spend most of my days following around the Engineer on Duty (EOD) responding to maintainence calls as well as the day to day upkeep. Some of my other days I am working in BNOC- Broadcast Network Operations Center. It is essentially the command center for SiriusXM. And when things are getting to technical I pop my head into to studios and work with Studio Operations. I've worked on live recording sessions with some amazing artists as well as really famous people such as: Oprah, Dr. Phil, Barbra Walters, Howard Stern, Smokey Robinson, Queen Latifa, NeedtoBreath...and many more (those were just my favorites).

I've had a great time at Belmont East and believe it has not been just my internship. I feel like I always have exciting weekends, and compared to the ones I have during the summer in Fayetteville, Georgia they can't even compare. This weekend I saw two shows and spent very little money. I saw Tourdant at the Metropolitan Opera. But the more amazing part was I was able to "stub-in" and see 2/3's of the show in $222.50 seats for free. This was an amazing experience. The show was phenomenal and the setting was more breathtaking. But this was only half the weekend. My roommate Jake and I had been trying to win a ticket lottery for a Broadway show for a while, and after six failures we found great success. We landed Box seat tickets for the show "Next To Normal" for $25 each.

My weekends continue to impress me, and I constantly don't know what to expect from my random adventures around The Big Apple.

Patrick Griffin

Macy's

If this group were any luckier it'd simply be unfair. unfair.
So far we've gotten random free dinner, free tickets to opening nights and final dress rehearsals, free tickets to pro football games....and the entire time in GREAT seats, btw. and now - Balloons.

All you kidz out there who want to attend Belmont East should go to church on Sundays. Why? So you can meet peeps with the hookup to Macy's Balloon Fest.
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade - it's a nationally televised event. You'd think it'd be super easy to get to become balloon handler - or to find out when the testing happens for new balloons, right? WRONG.
The Macy's Balloon people are a tightly-knit, super secret, initiation required society. It's like a sorority, but without rush.
(Think the Amherest society in the TV show 'Greek')

Anyways, thanks to Church, I met a young man, whose name must be withheld, who scored me and 4 friends free tickets to the Macy's Balloon Fest - an event for sponsors of the parade and new balloon handlers to come out and test the new balloons.

We all got free breakfast, sweatshirts and a chance to walk Snoopie around a large parking lot for an hour an a half.

So much fun.
The photo is us in front of spider man.

I mean, you're right. it's unfair.

This is the greatest experience of my life.

TuneCore - Tyler Bryant

I've gotta show my face sometime, huh? :)

New York has been a fantastic experience - it's been a lot of fun hanging out with the Belmont crew (Tori, Ashley, Emily, Shannon & Amy - yes as one unit, Jessica, Patrick my roomy, Ian, & Matt.Dowd). Shannon & Amy live below Patrick and I...and they've had to suffer a lot of unnecessarily loud and obnoxious noises from us over the past few months. Let me publicly apologize for that :)

TuneCore

While I've been up here, I've been interning at a digital music distribution company called TuneCore. TuneCore distributed independent artists' music to all the major digital stores, including iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, Napster, Shockhound, eMusic, etc... They handle about 150,000 artists' music on iTunes (that's a rough estimate). I'm their only intern and I've been treated just like a new member of their team, helping put together content for their newsletter and exploring different marketing strategies. I was originally given the task of finding articles for the newsletter, but soon found it was easier to write them myself than to track down other people to write them... Sooo, you can read a few of my articles here if you want:

Talk the Talk with Your Sound Engineer by Jake Hartsfield
The Producer's Checklist by Jake Hartsfield
Stay Hot in Online Marketing by Jake Hartsfield
Inside EQ - Keys to a Great Mix: Part I by Jake Hartsfield
Keys to a Great Mix: Part II by Jake Hartsfield

Tyler Bryant

Another large part of my existence this semester has actually been spent in various cities around the US, touring with an artist out of Nashville named Tyler Bryant. I'm currently his tour manager and front of house engineer (and marketing guru, online techie, graphic designer, etc..) I'd fly in to California, meet the band, run front of house sound for a few shows, hang out, then fly back to New York... I did this every weekend since I got up to NY until about 3 weeks ago when we all got a little break. But guess how many classes I've missed this entire semester? Only 3! :) Two of my good friends at Belmont actually started playing for Tyler back in March before they got me involved - Caleb Crosby (drums, junior at Belmont) and Calvin Webster (bass/vocals, junior at belmont. I started running Front of House sound for Tyler earlier this summer, and we toured along the west coast, down south, and on the upper east coast, opening for B.B. King, Styx, REO Speedwagon, and Heart, among others. My role with the band grew into tour manager as the summer progressed, and we're all just one happy little family now :)

Obviously, I wouldn't have been able to do any of this if it weren't for the Belmont East program. I may have had a stranger, more hectic, experience than most, but it really is what you make of it, and New York is a fantastic city to be a part of.

Peace,

Jake Hartsfield
jakehartsfield@gmail.com
http://jakehartsfield.com

October Re-cap

Sorry that it's been a while! No need to state the obvious... been busy! I guess I will tell of the month of October collectively. It was amazing. October is probably my favorite month no matter where it's spent, but it has definitely been my favorite in NYC. I had friends visit for 3 of the weekends!!! Three of my good friends from Belmont got to come for Fall Break and we all stayed in a hotel in Manhattan, so it was good to get out of Brooklyn for a little weekend. Then, another good friend from Alabama came for Halloween. We had a blast. I loved Halloween in NYC. The weirdest city in the world gets even weirder for one night. It's crazy. Although, having creepy people in masks on the subway and wandering around makes the probability for crime much higher... In turn, I was nervous all night. But we dressed as flappers and had a fun night people watching! But I must say the best part of the weekend was the day we spent in Central Park. I had been awaiting fall in CP since I've been here. It was pretty spectacular.

Life at Atlantic has been good, working hard and learning a lot. Nothing super exciting to speak of lately. Just a valuable experience on the good days and bad, and I'm really grateful for the opportunity. I went home this last weekend to see my little brother's last football game, and it really made me realize how much I miss life in the South. So I can't wait to get back to Nashville in December! I need a job!!! :) Roommate Shannon and I are embarking on accomplishing serious NYC To-do's that we've neglected all semester so I'll keep you posted on what's to come... -Amy

Pumpkin Carving and my first backflip!

One of my biggest challenges at Belmont East (and college in general) has been the time spent away from my family. My roommate, Ashley, is a dream of a roommate and knowing this, invited myself and some of our classmates to her home in Philly for the weekend.

We had a Harvest Party, complete with Pumpkin Carving, tours of historic Philly and of course, Philly Cheese Stakes. I've never gotten along so well with such a small group of people. We're becoming fast friends and I have this trip to thank for that.

The bigger news is that I learned how to do my first backflip. It was kind of amazing - i'm not going to lie. You can watch the video here.

:)

I believe that this picture just captures the essence of NY. I just experienced my first NY Halloween and let me just emphasize... you won't find anything else like it in the U.S. Although the crowds were massive and there were a few riots on the subways, it was great! A few of us sported garden gnome costumes and we got several friendly high-fives and we even got a hug from a fellow gnome on the streets.
It still amazes me that so many New Yorkers are really friendly and will go out of their way to do you a favor. My amazing friend and roommate Tori and I received a free bus ride from an MTA bus driver! We were even treated to a comped dessert at Max Brenner's all chocolate restaurant, just for being involved in the Music industry!
Unfortunately New York is full of amazing food, so my friends and I must come up with creative ways to work off all the goodness we eat. One of our favorite activities after Beka and Ben's class is to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge! The view is breathtaking at night and is a little over a mile walk. Ben and Beka teach the Entertainment Industry in NY class. I have to say, that I have learned so much about the music industry from their experiences. I feel like I am able to apply everything I've ever learned at Belmont in this class. I am able to discuss and strategize effectively about the music industry. Another great thing about the classes at Belmont East is that we get to have amazing guest speakers and field trips! But I’ll give out more details the next time I blog!