i want to address a point that i have to address periodically. i'm actually not sure what it is that leads people to the conclusion that i'm a dj working with sample libraries, but, for whatever reason, it's something i've had to address for years...

i think it's partly just the age we live in. people just assume that a one-person project must be sample-based. it's the null hypothesis, in some sense. i also think i should probably take it as a compliment, in the sense that it suggests a perception of complexity.

but, it's not true.

i'm a guitarist by training. i've dabbled in blues, jazz and classical - and it's all there. i'm also a self-taught punk guitarist, if that makes any sense. i use a lot of effects, and some of it is in the production stage. but the actual truth is that the vast majority of sounds coming at you in my songs are produced by a guitar.

ok, you're thinking, that's believable - but what about the horn parts? the string parts? the wind sections? they must be samples, right? well, no...

they're actually sequencers. when i'm doing a horn or string part, i don't take riffs out of existing songs. rather, i write them out in a score (like a composer would) and use a sequencer to play them back. some of these sequencers are sample-based. and, i think i need a brief discussion of the three different ideas of "sampling" in contemporary music.

sampling can mean taking sounds out of existing songs and reusing them. this is popular in a lot of contemporary music - including hip-hop, techno, trip-hop and industrial music. i've never created anything with this kind of sampling. however, sampling can also mean recording individual notes on an instrument for use in a sequencer. what does this mean?

well, imagine that you've got a saxophone in front of you, and a saxophone player. you don't play the saxophone, but you might want to create a saxophone part later. so, you might ask the saxophone player to slowly run through the scale on the saxophone. sampling, in this context, means connecting each note played on the saxophone to a key on the keyboard. once this is mapped together, a composer can then use the keyboard to compose saxophone parts.

there's complexities - saxophone players breathe, buttons click, etc. but this kind of sampling allows for full composition, rather than mixing and matching existing isolated riffs and pasting them together.

what i want to get across is that these are two very different things, on a compositional basis. i don't expect most listeners to really care. but i want the record set straight on the issue, for those that do: when you hear these orchestrated things that i do, they are created by a computer mapping an original score to a sequencer to trigger samples. if you don't believe me, note that many of my eps actually come with sheet music in the download, in the form of midi files. they are *not* collages of existing snippets of sound, as is common in a lot of modern trip-hop and otherwise electronic pop music. they are compositions created the old fashioned way.

i am not a dj. i am not spinning. i am not mixing samples. i do not use fruity loops. i am a composer of original music, and my main instrument is the guitar.

that said, there is a third type of sampling, and i did make some use of it in the past. this kind of sampling reclaims found sounds for use in creative collages. i haven't created anything like this since about 1999, but a few things do exist like it in my discography. here is one example:

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inrisampled

you know, this might actually work out alright. i managed to talk my way up to a supervisor, and if i send my odsp stub off to vancouver they'll put a hold on it for six months - which should let my refund go through for the year, so that's step one. step two is that i need to get my odsp forms filled out in june so that it's permanent - and i think i can do that. then, i can apply for the loan to actually get wiped. it's the one and only way out, apparently.

otherwise, i need to send them the stub every six months.

i'm going to get the diet form when i fax the stub, anyways....

i'm pretty sincere about permanence. but if things work out some other way, the loan is gone.

i've just been ignoring this for months because it's just like....i can't pay you..but they got me the incentive to deal with it.

wait. there's conditions on the diet forms. gah...

i'm a model of physical health, it's my head that's fucked. gotta be some way around this...

the way people talk about this, it's like anybody can get it.

yeah...no. i'm not going to win this argument. so i'm not going to start it. i'll figure something else out.

i remember reading the review a few years ago, and one of the recs was to just abolish the special diet and give everybody the extra $100. i wonder how convincing that report might be if i showed it to a doctor. it's just....i don't see how an empathetic doctor could fill the thing out....

actually, i've had some dysphagia recently. i've been wanting to have this dealt with, anyways. i think i should probably do that tomorrow. if it gets me a useful diagnosis, great. i'd kind of like to get to the bottom of it, anyways.

stupid cra wants to take my tax refund...

which is, like...if you do that, i'm going to apply for the special diet allowance, which is actually roughly twice as much. so, i end up with an extra $50/month.

and, what you're going to gain from my tax refund is roughly 10% interest on the loan in the first place. it's just flat out stupid....

smart thing to do would be to let me declare bankruptcy. but, if you want to burst the student loan bubble, have fun - not like i fucking care.

as it is right now, if i were to get over my disability and find a job tomorrow, the loan payments would actually leave me with less disposable income than i have on disability. and, as the interest builds, i'm left with less and less incentive to get over the disability and find a job. i'm not the kind of person that's going to work for nothing. my life is not valuable enough to me to sacrifice it to the state. if i end up in that situation, i'll kill myself out of political protest. and spite. i'd enjoy it, to be frank.

i got manipulated into this loan - it was supposed to be paid off. i'd have never taken it, otherwise. but the person that made me that promise proceeded to die without following through on it. now, it's simply never going to be paid. ever.

they're telling me to wait for my notice of assessment. it might be available online, let me check...

i'm just not going to live that life. our existences are too short and meaningless to bother. it's stasis or bust.

the point is just that bankruptcy is the proper way out of my situation - but, unfortunately, you can't declare bankruptcy on student loans. nobody benefits from this, though. i'm simply never going to generate the income to pay the loan down.

no assessment, but i've got some more numbers to call. i'm not waiting for the assessment to get the dietary allowance, though. if this isn't figured out today, i'll have to do that tomorrow.

it is going to be kind of funny one day, though, if i live long enough. like, how high can the interest grow on this? can it reach a million dollars?

"in other news, there's apparently a sixty year old disabled person in windsor with three million dollars in interest on her student loan payments. when reached for comment, she simply said that they should have let her declare bankruptcy."