Copper Cabbage Studios

🎵 Make Your Sound

Whether you've been singing in the shower for years or you're ready to record your first demo, this is your space to make something real. I teach voice and piano tailored to you, your goals, your style, and your pace, with a cozy studio to rehearse, record, or chase that bucket list dream. You are welcome here.

🎤 Music Lessons
🎧 Record a Demo
🏠 Rehearsal Space
🙏 Worship Coaching
🎙️ Voice Over
🌟 Artist Support

🌐 Your Web, Your Way

We build custom websites that actually feel like the people behind them, not some cookie-cutter template that looks like everyone else's. From design to development to maintenance, we handle the techy stuff so you can focus on what you're great at. Your dream site is closer than you think!

🎨 Custom Website Design
🛡️ Website Maintenance

🧑‍💻 The Latest...

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My Plan

How to Create a Quick List of Web Pages for Your Website 📝🌐

How to Create a Quick List of Web Pages for Your Website 📝🌐

Building a website is like constructing a house—a humble, digital house—where visitors can learn about you, your business, or your hobbies! Before you start decorating the rooms, you need a solid blueprint. This blueprint is a list of web pages for your website that will form your navigation and sitemap. Here’s how to create one quickly and efficiently! 🚀

Step 1: Define Your Website’s Purpose ✨

Before you jot down any page names, think about what you want your website to achieve. Are you selling products? 🛍️ Providing information? 📚 Or showcasing your portfolio? 🎨 Your goals will guide the pages you need.

Step 2: Brainstorm Essential Pages 🧠

Every website has some must-have pages. These usually include:

* Home: The front door to your website.
* About: Where you tell your story or your business’s mission.
* Services/Products: What you offer to your visitors.
* Contact: How people can reach you.

Write these down as they are the core of your site’s navigation. 🗺️

Step 3: Think About Your Audience 👥

Who will visit your website? What will they be looking for? Answering these questions can help you decide on additional pages that will enhance their experience. For example, an FAQ page can answer common questions while a Testimonials page can build trust.

* FAQ: Answers to common questions.
* Testimonials/Reviews: Positive feedback from customers.
* Portfolio or Gallery: Show off your work or products.
* Blog or News: For regular updates and articles.

Step 4: Organize Your Pages into a Simple Sitemap 🗂️

Now that you have a list, it’s time to organize! Group similar pages under categories. For instance, “Services” might include different service pages, while “Shop” could have categories for different products.

A sitemap is a diagram that shows the structure of your website. You don’t need fancy tools for this; just grab a piece of paper and draw boxes for each page, then connect them with lines to show how they link to each other. This visual can help you see if you’re missing anything and how easy it will be for visitors to navigate your site.

Step 5: Keep it Simple 🤏

Ensure that you don’t overwhelm your visitors with too many options. A good rule of thumb is to aim for no more than seven main categories in your navigation. This makes it easier for users to find what they need without getting lost. Perhaps this is the time to prune or combine pages.

Step 6: Plan for Growth 🌱

Your website will evolve. Leave room for new pages as your business grows. Maybe you’ll add a blog or a special offers section down the line. Thinking ahead will save you from having to redo your entire navigation later.

Step 7: Review and Refine 🔍

Look over your list and sitemap. Does it cover all the essentials without being cluttered? Is the order logical? Can users anticipate what they’ll find on each page? Adjust as needed until it feels just right.

Step 8: Share Your List with Your Web Designer 🤝

Once you’re happy with your list and sitemap, send it over to your web designer (that’s me!). This will help me create a navigation structure and sitemap that matches your vision, ensuring a smooth and user-friendly experience for your visitors.

Remember, your website’s navigation is your visitor’s map to your online home. Make it clear, make it simple, and they’ll feel welcome every time. Happy planning! 🎉

Bad Bit

Bad Bit

Link shorteners like bit.ly are wildly helpful when you’re sharing a long URL that could have TL;DR‘d itself! 🤓 I also find that they come in handy when I want to track the stats on a URL 📊, such as how many people are clicking and where they’re clicking from. They don’t fully mask the original URL after the user clicks through or enters the URL into their browser, and rather just pass the user on to the intended destination through a handy redirect. ↩️ When a user sees a shortened URL that you share, it looks something like this: bit.ly/aWh0l3BunchOfL3tt3r$, unless you choose to customize it. But really, the user is trusting you with a lot here! 😬🙏

After all, the destination could very well be anything: a spammy site at best, 📨 a phishing scam at “ughhhhh”, 🕵️‍♂️ and a malicious download at (possible) worst. 🦹‍♀️

I’ve gotten a couple of text messages in my time that have had bit.ly links that I totally knew had “uh oh” written all over them! 🙄 So instead of clicking in to confirm my suspicion, I reported this short link misuse to bit.ly right away! ✍️

bit.ly's header in their reporting form. Click this to go to the form to report a bad short link now!

Here is bit.ly’s (short, heehee) article on it: https://support.bitly.com/hc/en-us/articles/231247908-What-can-I-do-about-an-unsafe-Bitly-link-

And here is the reporting form: https://bitly.com/pages/trust/report-abuse

I recommend that you report right away to prevent others from getting trapped! 💀 I always include the phone number that sent it as well and the content of the text in the message field. 💬 The support team is fast to respond to disable those links, 🔗 and often, they’ll ban the user account that created it. They’ll give you an update of the run down, if that helps to set your mind at ease as well. 😌

Happy and safe surfing (sans shortlink misuse)! 🥬

Best Border-Radius Tool

Best Border-Radius Tool

Sometimes, you just have to see it to believe it. And sometimes where you build it isn’t a place where you’re easily able to see it. For border radius CSS styles, I often use border-radius.com to help me visualize what those different border corners could look like. The border-radius style is part of CSS3 and is used in webkit and gecko browsers.

Here’s an example of an output from this website for 15px on all borders of an element:

-webkit-border-radius: 15px;
-moz-border-radius: 15px;
border-radius: 15px;

To have an element with different border radii (have I always wanted to say that and write that? Yes. 🙂 ), enter the top, leftmost radius and then change the others after. Changing the top, leftmost radius will update them all only the first time.

Have fun!

DISCLAIMER: These are my hand-picked favorite tools and resources from years of scouring the web. The sources have not paid me to appear on this page and I do not receive a commission or other compensation from any of the links. Please do your own due diligence before paying for any services. I am not responsible for the services provided or the results of their services.

Manifest YOUR Band Brand Aesthetic

Manifest YOUR Band Brand Aesthetic

Working with bands and musical groups is such a cool experience that I’ve been lucky enough to step into! 🙌 I love helping them discover their musical niches and voices within their genres. 🎶 I want to get better at giving branding advice 💁 to all of my clients, but I do find that the music industry has a unique set of it’s own challenges. In a quick online search, I was able to find blog posts such as this one and this one that offer a great starting point for bands in their branding. Their key take aways ☝️ are that musical groups need to dive further into the purpose of their bands. Obviously, starting with “why” is a great first step!

But I found that my bands had already done the first few steps and they were now ready to get more specific with their aesthetic 🌈 so that their unique fanbase could find them faster and throw themselves in with more enthusiasm! Your music needs to feel accessible to the right person, not every person. Your band is a business. And businesses have to imagine personas, specific consumer profiles with distinctive behaviors, preferences, and patterns, to effectively target their markets. This goes beyond knowing your market, or genre, and even needs to be more encompassing than the ‘why’ alone. Who inspires your fan Caleigh Thomas? What will make Orion Gnash add your T-shirt merch 👕 to their wardrobe? Why must Seeley McGrather come to every single one of your shows?

So, as is the norm with all of my blog posts, if I’m not able to find it when I’m searching online, I just make the post myself! 🧑‍💻 And since I’m obsessed with lists, it developed into the form of a really fun little branding worksheet with listed questions. 📝 I tell the bands that I work with that if they aren’t coming up with answers to these questions, then they aren’t owning those little aspects of their brand. If you’re thinking about these kinds of things beforehand, then your audience will have less questions about whether your music was made for them or not. Some of the questions may sound silly 🤪, like:

Your drummer has a super-power but has asked you not to tell anyone else. What is it?

Or strange 👽, like:

One of your fans just woke up from a coma they had been in for the past year and the doctor’s orders were to play your music through headphones for them to restore their health. They report that your music gave them the wildest coma dreams. Who had they been living as in those dreams?

But some of them really hit hard 🔨, like:

If you weren’t selling music, what would you be selling?

All of the questions are meant to help you ✨manifest✨ the right energy around your band to create specificity and deliberate in your branding choices. At the very least, these help to get the juices flowing so that you can create more space in your mind 🧠 for your band. Remember: Your brand should evoke feelings, images, and a certain affinity. Come up with answers fast and go with the gut. Don’t second guess yourself. Be you! Voila (in no particular order):

  1. What do you do best (in life and musically)?
  2. What is the most integrous or authentic thing about you?
  3. When do you like your music? What are those contexts?
  4. When do you hate your music? What are those contexts?
  5. Are you going commercial or are you an artist?
  6. Who are 3 artists you love?
  7. Who are 3 artists you sound like?
  8. What are 3 albums that you wish you wrote?
  9. Word bank dump! Go!
  10. Lookbook! Go!
  11. Pinterest mood board! Go!
  12. What do your friends love about you?
  13. If you weren’t selling music, what would you be selling?
  14. What’s that one thing you do that your mom hates that you do, but you like doing it because it ruffles her feathers and she secretly also likes it when you do that because it reminds her of your father?
  15. What are the people wearing while they are listening to your music live?
  16. What does the venue smell like where you’re playing shows?
  17. What do you disrupt?
  18. What rocks about music?
  19. Do you have jokes in your padder? Does anyone laugh with you or at you when you’re on stage?
  20. What sucks about music in general?
  21. What is the sex position of your music?
  22. Which country would most worship your music?
  23. What do your lyrics taste like coming out of your fans mouths?
  24. If you were a beer, what would you be?
  25. One of your fans just woke up from a coma they had been in for the past year and the doctor’s orders were to play your music through headphones for them to restore their health. They report that your music gave them the wildest coma dreams. Who had they been living as in those dreams?
  26. What is the eyeshadow color that your fans wear to your shows? Is it different from what they wear to work?
  27. What is your band’s cocktail?
  28. What is the snack that fans NEED to order at your live shows?
  29. You’re taking photos in a shoot, would they be in studio or on location?
  30. Your band gets teleported back in time to reinvent music. How do you teach music to Mozart?
  31. What’s a place on Earth that is significant to your bassist?
  32. People who show up to your gig are already chattering with each other. What is the main focus of conversation?
  33. Who are you?
  34. Okay, who are you really?
  35. How do your fans smile? With their mouths and eyes? With a flash of their left painted-on eyebrow?
  36. What is the one thing that makes all of your songs sound like each other other than the fact that you’re behind it all?
  37. What’s a musical technique that you’ve stolen from another artist?
  38. What did your fans just recently spend too much on?
  39. Your drummer has a super-power but has asked you not to tell anyone else. What is it?
  40. Your vocalist/front-person has invented a dance move and it’s been coined the ___________.
  41. What is the middle name of all of your fans?
  42. Why must you make music?
  43. Why must people listen?
  44. What substances do your fans use? What are they smoking?
  45. Do your fans have any accessibility needs (address this question respectfully acknowledging that perhaps you will want to advocate for these fans)?
  46. What are your fans experts in?
  47. What level of education do your fans have?
  48. What are your fans’ nerd kinks? (the common thread that runs through the media they consume)
  49. What is the backstory of your superfan?
  50. Are your fans the younger children, older children, middle children?
  51. Who/what is your mascot?
  52. What do your fans go to therapy for?
  53. What would cause you to develop a mental illness if you weren’t able to do it?
  54. Two of your fans, Seeley and Orion, are having an educated dispute over what your sub-genre exactly is. How does Seeley peg you and how does Orion classify you?
  55. What cartoons did your fans watch growing up?
  56. All of your fans easily embody this Mario Kart character: ___________
  57. You get to help the world celebrate a monumental event. Is it New Years? Where are you?
  58. Who is your muse?
  59. What is the collective story of all of your fans? Coming of age? Underdog? What is their narrative? What have they overcome?
  60. What have you overcome?
  61. What’s your catch phrase?
  62. What is your mantra?
  63. What is their mantra?
  64. What is the most important thing that you are going to do in your life?
  65. What is the most important thing that your fans are going to do in their lives?
  66. What socks are they wearing?
  67. What’s the one thing that can always lift your spirit?
  68. And theirs?

 

I hope you enjoy working through this list as much as I enjoyed making it! 😀 The list is constantly being changed and added to, so come back often to continue working through your aesthetic. 👍 Please share it with others and let me know what really helped you lock in your Band’s Brand Aesthetic! ♥️

Original document here 🔗.

Team Tools

Team Tools

Here’s what I am going to tell you today:

💁 The different TYPES of systems and software that you will need in place in order to get your team all organized on the same page.

Here’s what I am not going to tell you today:

🙅 Exactly WHICH of those types of systems I would recommend that you and your team use. For recommendations on specific software that I have tried and used, check out my personal blog here.

Different tools work for different people. And then on top of that, teams also need to think about what works for them collectively. The combination of work ethics, personalities, and roles (I found this quiz interesting for work personalities) within that team will play a part in the decision making over the right tool to use. But as a launching point, here are the 5 types 🖐 of tools that your team will need in order to get started! Don’t start working without a tool in place for each of these categories!!!! Okay, phew *sighs* glad I got that out of my system. 😪 Please. 🙏 Do yourself a solid by choosing the systems that should be in place before you begin working. From there, delegate who will be in charge of each of those systems, if that will be a need for your team! Good luck! 🙌 So here we go…

Five Types of Tools for Teams:

1. Communication 🗣

This will be the first tool that you need. Obviously you can’t even start a project if you can’t communicate with anyone else who is working on it! You’ll need a couple different avenues set in place for communication as well.

  • Find a tool that let’s you meet together. A bit more obvious for in-person meetings, but for online meetings, find a tool that makes the most sense for y’all. Of course, you’ll have to find some way to schedule those meetings or have a shared calendar of some sort. That’s one of my favorite steps for the whole process. ☺️
  • Find a communication tool that let’s you send messages to each other that don’t require an immediate response – email usually works for most people.
  • Find a communication tool that allows for the group to send instant messages to each other. It’s very helpful to have these channels in case of emergency.

2. Productivity 📝

This is my favorite tool of the whole bunch! 😍 While the communication tool will be the first, the productivity tool is the heartbeat 💓of the whole set! This is where the team can plop every kind of task ✅ in one place and delegate these tasks to one another. Team members should be able to access these at any time, anywhere!

3. Storage 💼

You will need somewhere to store documents, 📑 media, 💽 musical instruments, 🎷whatever! This may be a physical place like the band’s van 🚌 or somewhere online where the team can collaborate and work in real time together.

4. Time tracking ⏳

Often overlooked, this tool helps to increase productivity! It’s crucial for individuals to know how they are spending their time to better budget that precious resource. Teammates also need to be able to view time estimates for tasks and then the actual time spent completing tasks.

5. Changes tracker or historical records 📜

When working on a project, it’s easy to push forward without regard to the information that the past has yielded. Some teams may have more of a pressing need for this tool than others, but by tracking changes and keeping good records, it helps to reduce redundancy and keeps everyone on track.

I’m obsessed with productivity! I love systems that work well! Don’t you? 😇

Hold it!!

Hold it!!

Look at you! 👀 You’ve got yourself a microphone! 🎤 Wonderful! I believe that every singer 👩‍🎤 should get themselves one of those good ol’ SM58s for rehearsing around the house. Just in the same way that an electric guitarist 🎸 wouldn’t be much without their trusty amp, vocalists who sing worship or pop music need to be bringing their own mic to the party! And you might be thinking that we can go back to sharing straws 🥤 and forks 🍴 and microphones 🎙 as soon as precautionary measures are lifted after COVID 🦠, but I would still think that it would remain good practice for every vocalist to bring their own microphone to a rehearsal or live recording session. This is your chance to get to know more about the tool that you will be using for the rest of your life! 😇 (Because these things last forever) … (Even if you drop them 5 billion times, they’re still kickin’ 🦵) (And even if you stop “being a vocalist”, you can use the frickin’ thing as a hammer 🔨) (I got that last one from my Live Sound instructor at MacEwan. It’s not a Knickle original) (Unfortunately… 😝)

So! Let’s learn how to use the sucker properly. ‘Cuz I see people holding these things in the gooniest ways and it makes my eyes vomit. 🤮 Here are 7 ways you SHOULDN’T be holding your microphone: 🙅‍♂️

1. The Creepy Uncle at your Cousin’s Bat mitzvah 👎

The Creepy Uncle at Your Cousin's Bat mitzvah

Nope nope nope.

2. The Odd Flex, But Okay 😑

The Odd Flex, but Okay

Cool, but nope.

3. The Invert 🙃

The Invert

Honorable attempt, but the sound doesn’t come OUT of your ears, so nope.

4. The FEAR 😰

The FEAR

Since it looks like you don’t even want to be there, it’s a nope from me.

5. The Choke 🥵

The Choke

Does this even work for ANY genre? Nope.

6. The Flute 🎶

The Flute

Precious, but wrong instrument, so nope.

7. The Ice Cream Cone 🍦

The Ice Cream Cone

Cute, but nope.

 

And, last but not least, THIS is how you hold a microphone.

8. The Water Bottle 🍼

The Water Bottle

Take a sip and breathe easy!

Sign up for some lessons with me for some more tips! 🥰

Web Trend: Circle Logos

Web Trend: Circle Logos

Take a look at your logo. 👀 Then back at me. 👁 Then at your branding guidelines. 👓 Then back at me. 👁‍🗨 Are your branding guidelines making it too difficult for you to adapt your logo across the web? 🥴 Are you unable to use your logo as your profile picture on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter? 😰 Worse yet, are you finding that your logo is hard to read in different formats now or that it gets cut off on certain platforms? 😖

The Copper Cabbage Studios Logomark

The Copper Cabbage Studios Logomark simply depicts a copper border surrounding a mossy cabbage. The brown border around the copper background further stresses the emphasis on community in the Copper Cabbage vision, mission, and values.

It’s now standard across those social media platforms for profile pictures to be circular 🔴 in shape. So, let’s not resist this trend and instead be ready to adapt! Today is the day to make sure that your logomark (not the logotype) is round. 🟡 Maybe it’s time for you to consider choinking your logotype down to a logomark. Check out this article for more information on the differences between logomarks and logotypes. By staying within the new boundaries of a circle 🟢, your brand can continue to look agile and current. It can also be a great chance for you to simplify your logo down to it’s most critical aspects without any bulk. Let the title of your business or brand be a part of your logotype, and NOT your logomark! People have an uncanny ability to recognize brands based off of the slightest hints of graphics, sounds, and slogans. Circles 🔵 also communicate hidden visual messages that speak to our human nature.

What do circles say? Human nature?! 🤷‍♂️

Psychologically speaking, circles in visuals give the impression of wholeness, cycles, and community. 👨‍👧‍👦👩‍👧‍👦 These are all aspects that most brands can align with anyway. But especially in this day and age when a lot of us feel so disparate, it’s quite a smart move from social media platforms to emphasize our unity in a time such as this. ✊ Embrace this shift and make sure that your logomark fits in those rounded borders!

Hit up our DMs on instagram to chat more about logos, logotypes, and logomarks! 😁

Singing Tools of the Trade

Singing Tools of the Trade

Great! 👏 You’ve decided that out of all of the musical instruments 🎺 out there to learn, you want to just use the ones that are already in your throat! Easy peasy, right? 😅 You don’t have to get any equipment, right?! 😬 Totally low-maintenance, RIGHT?!?! 🥴

Wrong! 😭 Being a vocalist requires many lovely tools of the trade 🔨 for regular maintenance and upkeep! Here is a list of 9 of them (I think you’re picking up on what my favorite number is by now 😝) in order of most common to wait-what-the-heck-is-that-doing-here:

  1. Water bottle 🚰
    1. This is 1000% the most important tool any vocalist can have. I don’t even think we need to talk about how important it is anymore! Hopefully you’ve heard it all!
  2. Straw and/or Tongue depressor 🐢
    1. When you’re in vocal lessons, a straw will literally become an extension of your hand. This is used for breathing exercises and sometimes for reducing tongue tension. A tongue depressor can also be helpful for relaxing an overactive tongue. Pick up a glass or metal straw to save the turtles!
  3. Microphone, PA, and/or Amp 🎤
    1. I recommend this to any of my students who would really benefit from hearing themselves amplified or who are learning performing skills. Make sure you’re not holding it like a dingus or keeping it too far from your face!
  4. Stretching bands or a Neck tie 👔
    1. These are useful for stretching and increasing the range of your flexibility, but they can also be used to wrap around your waist to feel the breath drop lower from up in the chest or high in the lungs to in the diaphragm and in the pelvis. Working through this with an instructor is revolutionary.
  5. Yoga mat and Roller or Exercise balls 🧘‍♂️
    1. Getting out that tension is key! Get right into the shoulder blades, low back, and the pelvis.
  6. Pitch pipe 🎍
    1. Not everyone considers this, but there are many times when a vocalist will need to sing a capella and will need to cue and orient themselves to a key before starting the tune. I like the ones tuned in C with the little dial so that you can find the right pipe hole easiest.
  7. Nose plug 👃
    1. I use these for myself when I need an adjustment in resonance or air placement. Sometimes it’s too tempting to sing through the nose and plugging the nose with my fingers can cause some neck and shoulder tension. Best to let the nose plugs do the job!
  8. Steamer 👅
    1. Not the clothing steamer variety. The personal face and lung steamer variety. It’s great for the whole vocal tract. The human body doesn’t really like to send any moisture to the vocal folds…kinda makes sense when you think about it. It takes somewhere around 24 hours for the folds to be moisturized through drinking water, so of course sometimes you gotta cut right to the chase and prioritize those suckers yourself!
  9. Vibrator 📳
    1. The weirdest one for sure! Setting all taboos aside, small vibrators like the Lelo Siri II are great for stimulating and relaxing the muscles of the neck and the vibrations release the vocal folds, providing a more liberated delivery. The Siri II was actually designed for vocalists and musicians.

Yeah, unfortunately not so low-maintenance, hey? 🙃 If you’ve able to purchase a few items on the list, I do recommend starting from number one and then progressing through. You’ve got a lifetime to build up a good collection of tools of the trade! Let’s get started today! If you’re looking to see how you can put these tools into practice, I’d love to coach you through it! Contact me below! 🙌

The ‘Bob the Builder’

The ‘Bob the Builder’

He’s always building something. My dad, Bob Knickle is always busy working with his hands, usually repairing something while making use of his small collection of extremely useful spare parts. He always has just the thing. As a kid, I could always trust that he’d be able to fix or fashion anything I needed or dreamed of. My dad, a very quick learner, built an addition onto his family’s home when he was 17 or 18, just before he moved out. His integrity and strong work ethic led him to great heights – quite literally! Bob has great tales to tell working on the roof of a high-rise building in Calgary! It’s always fascinating to travel around the province – and even in some places of the country – because he’ll tell me of all the little places where he’s done work and left his mark. The overpasses in Calgary, the apartments along Saskatchewan Drive, the office buildings in Industrial Edmonton. Not to mention the vehicles he’s restored. Bob makes waves.

Bob and Paige Knickle with the restored 1948 GMC Truck

Bob and Paige Knickle with the restored 1948 GMC Truck

But doing electrical work and contract work isn’t even his day job. I think that’s what always impressed me so much as a kid! I was inspired to have both the office job and the get-down-and-dirty job. Because my dad was able to do it all and more, I wanted to follow in those footsteps! I was nicknamed his “Shadow”. Whenever anyone would ask about what my dad did for work, I would always say that he was an Electrician by Trade, but he owned a business. Even that isn’t quite right. His roles in all of his endeavors are quite illusive to me, but he’s somehow able to keep them all straight! And he organizes all of his life in Outlook none the less! 😛

Bob Knickle at the Enjoy Center for the Lights Festival

Bob Knickle at the Enjoy Center for the Lights Festival

With a dad this cool, I never had to go through that “I’m horrified by my parents” stage! He always encouraged me to live a God-glorifying life with dedication to my craft and focus on my purpose. He knew that my two major passions were voice and music work and web design. Out of sheer graciousness, he offered to build me a studio when I acquired enough equipment and outgrew our home basement. So when the time came for Copper Cabbage to find a new home, Bob was eager as a beaver to build the perfect home for the studio. He let me scribble the little design down on a napkin and he took it to the contractors.

Bob Knickle at Copper Cabbage Studios

Bob Knickle inside the upstairs space, which would soon be Copper Cabbage Studios, on Davies Road.

That space served Copper Cabbage well for five years! Many bands, artists, and students enjoyed recording, meeting, and learning in Edmonton’s most charming and smelly recording studio. It had always felt like a second home to me. But sure enough, the studio’s goals and reach expanded again with a little push from the pandemic. Bob was already prepared for the next project. He got the coveralls on and got down to work. The new space will be ready for the public after the pandemic lifts! We’re so proud of our Copper Cabbage fam and we can’t wait to show off all the great work that my dad, Bob Knickle has done here!

Bob in Hawai'i

Bob in Hawai’i

Life Hack: Library Cards

Life Hack: Library Cards

Did I listen to that song 🎶 on repeat while writing this blog post? Yes! I’m a 90’s kid, it’s an obligation! ☝️

You might be all like, “Why the Shrek (still a 90’s kid) is a music 🎙 and web design/development studio blogging about library cards 💳??” Well! Any business can easily make use of all of the resources found at (and through) libraries. If you’re in Edmonton, like us, you should get your free library card now!

Here are 9 things we do with our library card at the studio:

  1. Check out sheet music like this collection right from the library or through Alexander Street 🎼
  2. Submit music albums to Capital City Records and support other local artists! 👩‍🎤
  3. Stay subscribed to the Edmonton Public Library’s YouTube channel for great video tutorials for musicians 📼
  4. Access Edmonton’s Open Data 🖥
  5. Listen to jazz music that sometimes can’t be found elsewhere through Alexander Street and Naxos Music library 🎺
  6. Brush up on Italian pronunciation for those lovely art songs with Mango languages 🗣
  7. Learn all about graphic design on Lynda 🖼
  8. Watch operas on Naxos Video Library and through Alexander Street 🎞
  9. Search for grants through Grant Connect 💰

I LOVE free, don’t you?? 🤑

For Science!!

For Science!!

You’re ready for a big step up in your life but your resume isn’t giving you that lift? 🏋️‍♀️ Or you just think that it’s not in your DNA?? 🧬

Well! ☝️

Here is an excerpt from my unreleased book 📖, “My Thoughts On Everything: A Memoir – Sike Shawty, I’m Not Dead Yet, Just Givin’ You Opinions On Stuff Y’a’int Ask For”, which will be hitting the virtual shelves in 2023 👎. In this portion from Chapter 4 – Positive Affirmations 🙏, within the section entitled If I Did It, You Can Too 🙌, I am interviewing myself on the many wacky jobs 🤡👸🕺👨‍💻🎤 I’ve had throughout the years:

“Oh yeah! I’ve had many wacky jobs throughout the years! All of which, I’ve been ridiculously ‘unqualified’ for!”

“What a scream! You’ll have to tell us about the weirdest one!”

“You bet! Many people don’t know that I was a Bio Lab TA in university”

“Le Gasp!! In uni?!? Don’t you need to be, like, pursuing a masters to be a Lab Teachers Assistant for any course?”

“Apparently not! I took one Bio course that was required of my for my breadth courses and somehow the instructor thought that because I asked so many darn tootin’ questions about all that janky material, that I would be a good teacher for it. Something about ‘The best teachers ask the best questions (dot com)’. Mind you, that was the course where I learned about the smell of grass being the way that grass screams and that the first shape that humans take in in-utero is a cylinder, which will then amass to our digestive system… (we start off as a gut….so cool!) Regardless, I said YOU HECKIN BET to the job offer and signed the papers. Next thing I knew, I was peeling DNA out of bananas and jabbing cow eyeballs with a scalpel. Did I have any idea of what I was doing? The first year was a little rough (yes, I was rehired!)… I had to borrow a Bio Major’s textbook to re-learn how the heart worked 20 minutes before I had to teach how to cut one open. Otherwise, I certainly brought a lot of spunk to that lab! By the second year, I was chopping up sheep brains left, right, and center and demonstration the waft effect better than ever! I s’pose I was just never really bothered by the smell of organs steeped in formaldehyde. I even had a student ask me to privately tutor her how to correctly do the Punnet squares. I brushed up on the art of the Punnet and wung it!”

“Wild! Why did you take on the job if you knew you weren’t qualified?”

“Because I was asked to, and that was the qualification. I was asked to get into a room that I would definitely not have access to again if I said no, and I wanted to risk it for the biscuit. There would be other ‘rooms’ that I would fight my way into later on down the line, like the Party Princess ‘room’ and the improvisor ‘room’, but if someone was offering me a seat at the ‘Bio Lab TA’ table, it would be absolutely lame to say no!”

Don’t be lame! Try a ‘YES’ today! The only people who can afford to say no to pretty much everything are William Buffett and Elon Musk. But sometimes having that much dough in the bank isn’t how a person measures success. Maybe you, reader, want to experiment with the possibilities in your life, y’know FOR SCIENCE! 😝

Inspired? Ready to start a project? Let us know! We design websites, record audio, teach music lessons, and manage bands! 🤘

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