so, i should just focus on finishing the clean for right now and get to doing things on friday.

i mentioned before that it's just a handful of papers left. really. then i can get back to a normal once a month cleaning routine...

so, i spent friday sitting down and posting to the releases timeline blog (https://jessicamurrayreleasestimeline.blogspot.com/), and in the process rewound back to late 2017. i'm going to do a little more of this before i put it aside for next week.

what i spent saturday doing was finishing the cleaning i started on wednesday night. i've now got most of my books out of boxes and on to shelves for the first time since 2011, and the same is true of most of the cds. the last step is to cut some wood for the shelves, and i should be able to do that as soon as this annoying month-long rain storm passes. i have enough wood in the space for two shelves, and i'm going to need 6. that should be cheap.

getting the books and cds out is a step towards resuming the alter-reality (i know.), and a step towards the place being clean and normalized again. so, it's huge progress, even if it seems silly.

the rearranging and reordering in this place should be more or less done by the afternoon, which will let me sit back down and refocus.

so, i've got two fixed mixes from the art show demo ep up on the isomorphism ep. these mixes were normalized when burned in 2004, and i'm going to leave them that way. but, these are the original mixes:

1) file actually from 2003 (nulls with art show demo rips, after volume adjustment):

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/into-oblivion-art-show-mix

2) this was built yesterday morning from 2003/04 source to null with volume-adjusted cd rips, except for clipping in the initial track (from the normalization):

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/planetary-isomorphism-art-show-mix

that will probably be inri084, but i'll be sorting through that over the next few days.

so, what having a rebuilt version of the isomorphism from late 2003 means is that i can salvage a demo version for the single when it comes up. it's the same version as on the art show demo, but it's not normalized (which makes combining the three tracks i cut it into back into a single track very difficult).

mid 2004 was my first re-release phase, so i've now come to the first point in the discography where i started to look backwards and consolidate. while i didn't realize it then, i had made it through the second period of my discography and was starting the third period in earnest. to an extent, i was processing the process that sent me across the country on an absurd trip with no purpose; in that sense, period 3 doesn't really start until june of 2004, but it leaves that year (may of 2003 to may of 2004) as a lost space, where i was both finishing period 2 and starting period 3. the ftaa material that closes in june, 2004 is really period 2; the trivial group material started in late 2002 is really period 3. so, this was a transition period...

the re-releases will appear in the grid as stubs, and i'll try to be as comprehensive as i can be. i'm also going to want to put together some kind of compilation that collects the edits i created in that first moment of looking back, as there are enough for an ep, at least.

further, there were a number of mix cds created at this time that i tried to pass around in novel ways, such as exchanging for cigarettes (i got you to take my cd, didn't i?). i'm shooting darts in the dark with this stuff, and i've known it for years. they could have releases, as well.

but, the next serious release will be the isomorpshism single as inri084ish, so lining this up (which is what i did tonight) will set me up for any potential remixes that are coming.

so, i'm finally lining up the core part of the isomorphism in cubase tonight, from source files initially pasted together in cool edit.

this will release in mid 2004 and is essentially done, i just need to file it first.

so, here's my shortlist on period 3.1, which i'm currently filing for the night:

inri075: re-record list of acoustic demos that is tbd

inri076: audiomulch noise collage

inri077: finish demo version of lost symphony left stranded on tape (not final version)

inri078: all versions of lost symphony, including a new 2021 version to be started imminently

=========================

inti079: no further edits. done.

inri080: no further edits. done.

inri081: no further edits. done.

to recall.

record #1 (06/1998): https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inri-3

record #2 (01/1999): https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inriched

record #3 (12/1999): https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inridiculous

record #4 (11/2000): https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/deny-everything

record #5 (12/2001): https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj

record #6 (12/2002): https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj-2

record #7 (05/2004): https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ftaa

publishing inri081

this is a big deal - the 7th record is now released.

and, i'm up to mid 2004 in terms of the rebuild structure.

i need to spend the night filing.

==========

when it was released in the summer of 2004, this would have been my fifth official recording, after inri, inriched, inridiculous and deny everything. sarah and i moved into a place for the beginning of may; she was working overnight (22:00-6:00) in a diner, so it gave me time to read and record. things seemed like they were starting anew, so i took the time to sort through the discography and reassemble what i actually had. 

a decision was quickly made to unpublish the first three records in favour of a zappa/keneally-style disc of cut-up guitar shorts that i called inricycled, and start seriously at deny everything. the written music that now exists in this space only existed in the form of completed scores, during this period. so, the only other things i had were the rabit is wolf demo, the recently completed reflections ep, some classical guitar stuff and a bunch of these noise demos. this was consequently the extent of the truncated discography, in mid-2004: inricycled (as it was then), deny everything (as it existed then), the rabit is wolf demo, reflections and a 5-track version of this ftaa disc. 

now that i have republished the three inri demos as instrumental recordings, stripped the deny everything lp of samples and converted the rabit is wolf material into two instrumental discs, taking this project to it's final conclusion becomes the process of removing samples from the 2004 demo, and converting it into my 7th completed original lp. 

the ftaa project was supposed to be a combination of political poetry and sample art projects that presented a vaguely "anarchist" political messaging. my concept of anarchism in 2004 was mostly economic, and mostly about presenting an alter-globalization alternative to the rising tide of "free trade" blocs that focused more on local worker control than on the outsourcing of cheap labour to countries with poor labour standards, which is what this term "globalization" actually means, in an economic sense. so, it was supposed to be about syndicalism, and it was supposed to be a *very* noisy and very abstract project. 

but, then 9/11 happened at about the same time as i was starting with this and the entire anti-nafta left just evaporated, as the war took over the popular movements and the more socially conservative aspects of the union movement dissented against the backlash and started looking elsewhere. we seem to forget that the real origins of the shift to the right amongst unionized workers is really cultural, and comes from a disconnect that developed in the anti-war left after 2001; a very large number of workers felt the country had been attacked, and wanted to respond with force. 

i kind of came in somewhere between. i was certainly opposed to the war, and for the right reasons, but i also felt that globalization was a bigger problem and deserved more attention. i think a lot of organizers on the left kind of got tricked by the size of the anti-war protests, into thinking there was more of a path in opposing the war. and people just kind of forgot about the trade issues. and, i also felt that the civil rights breaches that the government was ramming through were bigger issues than either the war or the trade protests. 

so, the record kind of shifted along with the realities around it's construction into something that retained a broadly anarchist ideology but was really more about reacting to the onset of fascism in the united states. so, the initial 5-track release included a track with a poem about the war in afghanistan, a sample collage about the incoherence of using more trade to undo the problems created by trade, a sample collage decrying rights lost in the 9/11 attacks, an instrumental noise collage raided from the then unreleased (and expected to remain unreleased) curious george suite and this sprawling 25-minute exploration of the collapse of liberal democracy into statist authoritarianism and cultural fascism. 

but, as with the other recordings, the samples have been removed to leave an almost entirely instrumental recording. i have retained the poem in the first track because the track is much stronger with it, which is an unusual decision for me. 

however, the initial intent of the record is salvaged on inri067, spoke: 

jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/spoke 

now, if you want to hear the record exactly as it was initially released in 2004, you'll need to take a look at the aleph disc, as you would need to do in order to hear the initial pressings of my other early recordings, as well. this is intentional as i believe the record is stronger in it's current incarnation and want to present it that way as final. 

i have added instrumental versions of atom's and taught to twist the affected so low as bonus tracks to the lp in order to make it comprehensive. that is, the lp now has the strongest versions of all of the ftaa material. 

these tracks were written and recorded from 2000-2004, mostly as throwaway experiments over the course of an afternoon. the counter-example is the seventh symphony, trepanation nation, which was reconstructed repeatedly over the years 2001-2014. this record was initially constructed in this form (minus the last two tracks) in june, 2004. reconstructed and resequenced in theory (but not in fact) at the end of sept, 2019 from parts that were rebuilt over 2014, but not actually reconstructed, resequenced and uploaded until june of 2021. finally re-released on june 20, 2021. audio permanently closed on . finalized as lp025 on . this is my seventh official record; as always, please use headphones. 

released june 1, 2004 

j - electric & acoustic & classical guitars, effects, bass, synthesizers, vocals, electric mandolin, live drums, drum sample manipulation, drum programming, piano programming, noise generators, granular synthesis, ring modulators, sequencers, sampling, sound design, digital wave editing, composition, production 

greg - drum performance sample source on track 5 

sean - ring modulator on track 5

yeah, i must have saved the source file for this as an mp3 and decompressed it.

for this particular track, it's so noisy that the artefacts are almost a positive addition.

yeah, that creative software acts like spyware. you can't get it off the machine. that wasn't a problem before because the drivers for the older card (which didn't support asio at all) were integrated into xp. so, i'm just reinstalling immediately.

all i need to do is line up the sample in harry to take it out and the 7th lp releases. finally.

and, then i need to finish sorting through the drive.

...and i had two copies of my h2o driver....oops....

i had to take a nap...

i needed to get two phase inversions done this afternoon. one was easy and the second doesn't want to line up, but the creative card wasn't syncing right with cubase. so, let's try again with it removed from the machine.

so, the recording machine has been a bit more stable recently, until i did two things:

1) switched the asio driver

2) searched the big drive

i just proved that the soundblaster appears to not properly work over asio, so it's of minimal use to me anyways. it's coming out right this minute.

and, i suspect that xp may have problem with drives larger than 1 gb, which i'm going to try to deal with by repartitioning the big drive.

i don't like sleeping...

i wanted this build of my 7th record done last night, but it's just a few more bits.

so, if you want the instrumental version of the renaissance piece that starts like divine amoebas, it is on the single. 

but, unlike everything else in my discography except stress, this is a vocally driven conceptual work and not a piece of pure music and i need to leave it that way.

broadly speaking, i've removed vocals from these records because i'm not comfortable with them. i rebuilt most of the inri-era vocal tracks for a series of singles, but they are broadly hard to listen to, so leaving them on the singles is the right way to do it. deny everything only had one vocal track to remove, and that was the right choice, partly because i had the electric folk version, which appears on the 5th record as the only salvaged vocal piece for the official lps. the 5th and 6th records were both built in 2014 for the first time, without vocals. and, the trivial group 2xlp will have vocals removed because they're mostly cringey, too - but left on the singles. 

unlike the others, i can't argue that that the vocals for like divine amoebas are cringey or hard to listen to. they don't interfere with the music, which was built around it. rather, i'd be separating the sound from it's content in a way that ultimately doesn't make sense.

so, i'll uploaded the 2021 rebuild for it. that's the right answer.

and, i'm going to replace some files on the amoebas single so they flow a little better, then, too.

a part of me is resisting the idea of removing the vocal mix from the ftaa disc.

let me chew on it  a bit, first.

publishing inri080

so, inri080 is done up to finalizing...

====

as mentioned below this, inri080 is now released - and this one's done to start. 

i needed a way to release an updated, corrected version of this tune, as i'll be removing the vocals from the 7th lp, which is set to release imminently. the version on the art show demo is normalized, but i'm leaving it like that. so, this fills a gap that opened up. 

the first part of the track (quantum psychosis) was written on heather's acoustic guitar in sarah's bedroom one night when i was there by myself and recorded directly to four-track tascam at the same time. several electric guitar overdubs were added either right away or very shortly. i digitized this in 2004 and do not know where the tape went; it is presumed lost, in 2021. 

the second part of the track was constructed more or less all at once in january, 2004 for the purposes of creating an art show demo. i had just finished reading a couple of books on afghan history, and had imagined this idea already, so i just implemented it all in one go. i haven't altered the recording substantively, since. 

the demo doesn't appear to have found an audience in it's initial presentation. 

the track itself is pretty esoteric. if you're not following the lyrics, it's a summary of the history of afghanistan, starting from the period of persian hegemony. afghanistan used to be a wealthy and buddhist place, but it was utterly demolished by the mongols in the 13th century and has yet to recover. it climaxes in the bombing of what is left of an afghan family, and then sputters out into a 14 minute transmigration of their souls, as they split apart and rejoin the ancestral soul pool. well, it's about a historically buddhist region; the victims might be muslims, but their ancestors would no doubt forgive them for it. 

this is a comprehensive collection of the different versions, as of mid-2021 and i don't expect to expand it further. 

written and recorded from 2001-2004. all versions here constructed over early 2004 from sound written in 2001 (the piano part) and/or recorded in late 2003 (the vocal quantum psychosis folk section) or early 2004 (the transmigration section). compiled and uploaded on june 19, 2021. as always, please use headphones. 

released february 1, 2004 

j - electric & acoustic guitars, effects, drum programming, vocals, noise generators, piano programming, noise generators, digital wave editing, composition, production 

special thanks to heather's guitar, which was just sitting in the corner minding it's own business before i picked it up to jam a bit.

so, that means inri079 is now properly filed on my archive drive and i need to build inri80 after...breakfast. 

so, i can't create a comparable instrumental version of "like divine amoebas" because the track would lose it's purpose. it's two tracks pasted together - an acoustic guitar tape experiment & a weird piano + drum machine freakout that's meant to represent two souls dividing from each other as one dies (like amoebas).

if i just phase reverse the vocals out, there'll be this awkward gap in the track - which was really constructed around the vocals. rather, i'd have to fade the tape experiment down or something, but then why not just put  the whole thing in there? the dramatic "amoebas" loses itself...

and, then, if i'm going to do that, i need the amoebas single after all with the following:

- the full vocal mix in the best way possible (the version on the art show demo is a little bit corrupted)

- the instrumental mix for the ftaa (with the full tape experiment)

- the version on the art show demo, which was normalized in the burn (and left that way in the upload)

i'm also going to include a base mix that i have, which is unfinished but interesting, and a cut version of the symphony of psilocybin induced madness, which utilizes the same piano part.

so, that's inri080, which i'm going to date to feb 1, 2014; the ftaa demo is next, and will be dated to inri081. i need to stop to eat...

a few loose ends so they're written down...

i thought about releasing an alternate lp that included the following 2003 components, which are basically comprehensive, in sequence:

1. reflections

2. all you need

3. into oblivion

4. like divine amoebas

5. interplanetary isomorphism

...in some combination of vocal and instrumental tracks but everything's worked out already.

- if you want the full pieces with vocals, listen to inri074, inri076 & inri079 in order.

- what about without vocals? well, like divine amoebas only exists instrumentally on inri077 right now and all you need doesn't exist instrumentally at all. so, i made a decision to put an instrumental version of all you need (along with the pending noise intro) as a segue between reflections and isomorphism on the first side of the upcoming trivial group 2xlp. in that space, into oblivion is remixed and segues directly into isomorphism; in fact, they're combined into a single, epic song. further, isomorphism then runs directly into xenophanes. so, there's nowhere to put amoebas, except right after all you need, and that's not sitting with me well, not for the least reason being that the track is released on ftaa. so, should the version on ftaa be stripped of vocals, then, to place the instrumental version on a record? then, i'd have to move the vocal version to a single. of the major records (inri, inriched, inridiculous, deny everything, jjjjjjjjj, jjjjjjjjj^2, ftaa), the only vocal track is stress - everything else is discarded as singles. so, this would only be the second retained vocal track. do i really want that, or do i want a vocals-only single for amoebas like the others? is that too much overlap? 

- so, i was looking at a divine amoebas single, which is another way to do it. if i do this, i'll need to date it to right before the art show demo, and push the ftaa up inri081.

-  i'm going to explore the idea of splicing the end of all you need with the end of a transfer for the record, though.

- that said, there will be a vocals-only compilation released at the end of period 3 with all of the vocal tracks from periods 2 &3 (post-inrimoved).

the update for june 17th is coming soon, and it needs to be the completed version of ftaa record - my 7th lp, finally.

we'll see if i stop there or keep going.

so, the period 3.1 post for june 16th was the art show demo, inri079, which i uploaded as is some time ago and dated to early january, 2004. there will be a number of historical demos released over period 3 that contain half-finished music because i circulated them that way; it's really a relic of the period when cd burning was easily accessible and everybody listened to music that way.

what it is is an unfinished mix of the interplanetary isomorphism symphony, with the track "like divine amoebas" inserted into the middle. "all you need" had already been dropped by then, but the symphony is simply not yet complete.

so, i mean, it's a historical relic, but it's also interesting for what it is - as an alternate lp.

the bulk of this will appear on the trivial group lp in completed instrumental form, whereas "like divine amoebas" appears largely as is on the ftaa ep. 

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/art-show-demo

what actually happened was that i started doing the lost symphony and got lost in the intro.

so, the intro in that demo ended up over a half hour long when i worked it out, meaning the actual song got lost in the process...

in that sense, the lost symphony is sort of "xenophanes part two", but t's more like xenophanes is the introduction to the lost symphony.

some time in 2004 or so i mentioned to sean that the trivial group will either end up being the most ridiculous, epic thing ever recorded.....or the most pretentious flop ever imagined. you can tell me what you think of it.

this version is dated to 2007, i think.

inri078 initial demo upload

today's period 3.1 run through post is for inri078, which is the lost symphony and will complete the trivial group 2xlp when it completes over the next few weeks. 

i have many demos of this track to sort through, and most of them will end up on this single, which will be like the other singles in being comprehensive. but, because this is the lost symphony and not an incomplete composition, these will actually be multiple demo versions, and i'm going to want to find a way to pull them together, as well.

for right now, i'm just posting a link to the demo from 2007 that has been up there for a while and will *not* form a literal basis for the version i'm about to start one last time from scratch. however, it's the most complete version...

this will sequence after xenophanes to close the 2xlp, but it is dated to late 2003 (whereas xenophanes only completes in mid 2006). 

jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-lost-symphony

today's period 3.1 run through post is for inri078, which is the lost symphony and will complete the trivial group 2xlp when it completes over the next few weeks. 

i have many demos of this track to sort through, and most of them will end up on this single, which will be like the other singles in being comprehensive. but, because this is the lost symphony and not an incomplete composition, these will actually be multiple demo versions, and i'm going to want to find a way to pull them together, as well.

for right now, i'm just posting a link to the demo from 2007 that has been up there for a while and will *not* form a literal basis for the version i'm about to start one last time from scratch. however, it's the most complete version...

this will sequence after xenophanes to close the 2xlp, but it is dated to late 2003 (whereas xenophanes only completes in mid 2006). 

jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-lost-symphony

i'm a good chunk of the ways done what i was doing.

there's a lot of data....

https://jessicamurrayreleasestimeline.blogspot.com/

so, i'm going to create a separate blog just as a timeline for release dates.

this will replace the facebook page, which will be shut down relatively soon.

pickup notes in this fashion are fairly common in celtic guitar music.

i can grasp the corruption in sound audio, but how'd it get out of sync? 

what seemed to disappear in the track was the pickup up note that it starts on, which both precedes and finalizes the loop. i'd notate this in 4/4 and make the loop four bars, so you'd end up with the following if you were to notate it:

x |: 1... | 1... | 1... | 1..x :|

...with the pickup note where the xes are. so, it's just an extra quarter note at the front of the pattern...

i don't know how, but something got confused somewhere, as it sounds like the pickup shifted to the one, which just put everything out of order.

like i say - this is very weird...

so, i deleted the track and reuploaded and it sounds better.

weird.

some kind of corruption somewhere, maybe.

yeah, the bandcamp compression seems to be having some difficulties with that rough version of the lost symphony i pulled from tape. there's supposed to be a flanging effect on the right channel, and it's just a gross, muddy, warbled mess on the stream. oddly, it seems like the stream is having difficulty syncing the right and left channels together as well, which i don't quite understand. the file i uploaded is correctly in sync. what process would separate the channels and then put them back together wrong? it's weird.

it sounds fine on the other computer...

but, it's a temp mix anyways, and i'll need to fix it when i clean that up over the next few weeks.

so, yes - i'm several days behind schedule...

what i need to do right this minute is file my backup drive and rebuild it in the back-up sources. and, i need to get it done before sunrise.

and, today's period 3.1 update post is for the bedroom cassette demos (inri077). this is likely complete.

==============

inri077. 

these are some demos that i recorded on my 4-track in sarah and heather's apartment on dalhousie in ottawa in late 2003.  

initially, the only thing i transferred was a section that became "like divine amoebas", because i was using it, directly. i seem to have lost that tape, but i have found a second tape with an early version of the lost symphony and added it to the ep. it's not currently immediately clear if there are further demos from this period in the other room in a pile of boxes or not.

released november 1, 2003 

inri076

so, it's uploaded now and it's staying there.

i think that, of the pieces not yet released, this one is the most emotionally difficult to let into the public listening sphere. it was a long time ago...

if it's not obvious, the track is pretty sardonic. but, this is also, like, just pure sound art - i was feeling fucked up and just wanted to capture it best i could.

do i sound like sean in the recording? well, sean admitted he was trying to sound like me in the first place. the rabit working relationship was always sort of weird, as i was in total control of the whole process from the very start, so sean sounded the way he did because i made him sound that way (and he never figured out how to recreate that, if he actually wanted to). what is true is that there is some lingering feeling from that part of the discography, which had at that point just closed down a few months previous. but, i never released this until today, and it doesn't linger much longer than this.

that noise file i found from 2004 actually uses the same jx-8p sound effect i used in this track, and there's a conceptual idea i wanted to document that's kind of lingering, so i will probably add a noise composition to the start of this that is based on that existing file. that works out quite well.

i'm past due to eat....

==============

inri076 will be a short single with the early version of eleventh dimension (& all you need...) 

soul swap piece? 

============ 

i'll do a write-up for this a little later. 

for now, i'm just going to point out that my brain sort of broke in the middle of 2003, and this was the result of it. it sort of speaks for itself in some sense. 

i think maybe two people have heard this.... 

the second track got cleaned up and used for the start of the interplanetary isomorphism (the third trivial group symphony), but the first track just got completely discarded - and there's lots of reasons for that that we'll go over later. 

what i've done in 2021, for now, is remaster the track to turn the vocals down. the track is otherwise bitwise identical (excluding some intentional clipping). 

i may write an original piece to precede this to close it. 

written & recorded in 2003. remastered in 2021. inri076. 

as always, please use headphones.

released september 1, 2003 

j - guitars, drum programming, digital wave editing, synthesizers, electric mandolin, vocals

alright, this is on it's way up a few hours later than i wanted it to be but so be it.

i've never released this before...

....and this is, i think, unlike anything i'd ever done previously. i'm lucky to have an archive like this - i don't tend to repeat myself, creatively. so, let it begin - this is period 3.1...

*deep breath*

(like anybody's listening, anyways.)

got it, actually...

ok, this is going to take longer than i thought, so i have to eat.

i need this filed before i leave the house, too.

so, what i want to do with this tonight is very simple, and it may be all i do with it at all - as this kind of pre-track for the interplanetary isomorphism is more or less stranded. in the end, i'll have to decide if i want to pull it back into the final product or leave it here, but for now what i need to do is just pull the vocals out and put them back in slightly more quietly.

i was still using cool edit to mix at this point, so the files were pasted on top of each other. period 3 is the last period using this method, but it's still dominant until early 2007. as mentioned many times, there are actually major benefits to this (and i'll continue to come back to it when i want something with a certain blurry sound, like the reprise to the time machine), and the material done in this period really exaggerates it, but it means i have to reline everything up in cubase from scratch to remix it on the existing hardware.

unfortunately, the vocals and guitars were both pasted in with a clip so it's not as easy as phase reversing them out - it leaves the distortion there as a relic. so, i have to rebuild it.

so, what i've done is copy the abandoned combined mix i had into cubase and then take each of the parts and put them into their own new tracks. once i've phase reversed each part out as best i can, they'll be lined up - and i can then reverse them back to where they were initially and mix them without the clipping.

ok, i'm caught up.

so, it's time to eat and get to the next thing, which is creating a first run of inri076.

first upload of inri075

the next chunk of material to come up is going to be inri075-inri080, inclusive. some of this is totally done (inri079, inri080), some of it needs a brief look at (inri076) and some of it will be a project to finish (inri075, inri077, inri078). i'm going to try to get an approximate document for each project up, one per day, over the next week. this was an unstable period, so some of these releases will be short eps meant to represent ideas that were temporarily abandoned due to needing to relocate and finished elsewhere in a different mindset as a result...

for today, here is a rough outline of inri075: 

jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/akousmatic-performance

this release is meant to document a tracklist of acoustic material, as performed over the summer of 2003, when i was backpacking across canada. some of these will be tracks from period 2 and others will be demos for the upcoming period 3. as such, it's a sort of middle point between what was done over 2000--2002 and what is coming up for 2003-2007. 

i want to re-record a number of these tracks on acoustic guitar because the demoes i have were done for electric or classical, and may rerecord everything in the process. we'll have to see.

for now, this is a starting ep that i'll fill out over the next few weeks as i finish these releases for period 3.1, which ran from mid-2003 to mid-2004 and was kind of unfocused and scattered due to reality around me.

by the time that you, as a consumer, get this wav file on your computer, it's been so badly degraded, anyways...

but, that's not true if you're listening to music that doesn't go through this destructive process by major label production teams.

i mean, that's what i'm trying to get across here - that the compression done by the producer is 100x worse than anything the mp3 algorithm could do, in the first place.

and, yes - i know that they record at 48 khz or higher,

it doesn't matter, if they sculpt 50% of the frequency range out and then compress the shit out of it, in the end.

they're selling you cds at 44.1/16, so you think it's actually pretty good, right?

see, that's where you go wrong with this...

if it's radio music, the sad and pathetic reality is that it's more like they're functionally upsampling a master done at 22 khz, 8 bit - so your mp3 compression isn't degrading the sound nearly as much as you imagine that it is.

any artist that's actually taking advantage of cd quality audio isn't going to compress to mp3 well at all...

it is true that some of the more sound-conscious artists out there at least used to do things like create mixes for radio and mixes for cd/lp. you'll also find tv mixes back in the mtv/muchmusic days, and i've heard of corporate rock musicians mixing for mp3 (that was even really what the loudness wars were actually about). so, don't take my statements too broadly....

but, generally speaking, if an artist is marketed for radio play then the product that you buy on a physical media in the store is mixed to play on am radio, and plugging it into an expensive sound system is pointless because the source is intentionally garbage.

then, when you compress it it doesn't matter - because it's shit to begin with.

that is why people can't tell the difference - because they're listening to trash.

well.

what kind of music do i make?

the answer is that it's electro-classical music with jazzy and bluesy flairs and only vague references to rock music instrumentation (i play electric guitar. that's not very "classical". but, besides that, i'm a composer.), and while i don't think i need the dynamic range of 24 bits to get those super quiet oboes and flutes, i do insist that you try not to butcher the frequency range too badly, please.

to put it another way, this is the actual pathetic truth - corporate music is so badly produced, in general, that you can run it through massive compression and not lose anything important.

but, what this really is about is garbage in / garbage out, and it's not an argument for the parity of the technology, in a broader sense.

the ranges of frequency that mp3 removes are not chosen at random - frequency bands that are ignored by your kind of standard or "normal" corporate pop/rock/rap producers are taken out rather consciously. mp3 programmers refer to this as "psycho-acoustics".

it's not just the high and low bands that are outside of your frequency range, it's also a fairly large amount of frequency bands that corporate pop producers cut out on purpose. so, it's actually very true that you can't tell the difference if you're listening to celine dion or taylor swift or something - because the production process intentionally cuts out the frequencies that the mp3 removes, which is why the mp3 removes it.

but, if you're listening to abstract techno that's mixed by non-professionals (or professionals that don't know better), anything labeled "classical" or "jazz" or even interesting psychedelic or progressive rock then things actually do exist in those frequency bands - and i demonstrated the point when i posted that ping-pong effect, which the compression algorithm just demolished. you will lose a lot of music with an mp3 if you're listening to these types of music because they weren't mixed with the corporate pop techniques that the mp3 compression is designed to take advantage of.

so, the process is like this:

1) corporate pop producers eliminate specific frequency bands, because they get in the way (and can't be produced on am radio, for example)

2) the designers of the mp3 algorithm realized that and took advantage of it. so, they cut out the same ranges that were cut out during the corporate pop production process. they call this "psycho-acoustics", which is just a pretentious term to describe what i'm describing.

3) creative musicians then come along and they don't cut those ranges out when they're producing their music.

4) somebody uses mp3 compression to compress these songs, unaware of what i'm trying to explain to you.

5) large amounts of the music disappears, and they don't understand why.

a good rule of thumb is this: if the music you like is released on a major record label, it probably doesn't matter if you use mp3 or flac. but, if you're listening to anything that is remotely interesting at all, you're really better off avoiding any kind of lossy compression - because the mp3 algorithm didn't intend for you to use it to compress the music you're listening to.

and, i'm an expert on this topic - you're not.

so, i hope that's clear.

if you can't tell the difference between mp3 and flac, it's because the music you're listening to is boring.

i listen to interesting music, and, to me, it's immediately obvious.

i'm very, very close to getting back to it, and when i do i'll start with uploading versions of inri076 and inri080. the projects in front of me are now going to be inri075, inri077 and inri078, and that will get me to the inri records compilations, which is the next pause.

while i suppose that another catastrophe may be in front of me still, it seems like i'm back to work. imminently.

as mentioned several times now, it's going to work like this:

- music over weekends

- alter-realities (starting in 1989 and hopefully stabilizing shortly. i didn't really start listening to much rock music until about 92 or 93, so i still have time) on fridays

- music journal catchups in the week (i have to do the diet thing, first)

i will eventually have this more linear, it's just....this is where i'm at right this minute.

i seem to have found some old noise programming from 2004 that i never used and forgot about. hrmmn.

so, i needed to synchronize my various backup files, first, and then back everything back up to the various places. it's this 100 gb folder with what's left on it that i have in slightly different versions in roughly 5 different places....

i'm just about done copying everything to my data drive. once it's properly filed, i can copy it back to the satellite spaces.

what i want done by the end of the night is everything from mid-2003 until early 2007 filed, numbered and ready to finish.

some remixing will be necessary, but the fact is that most of it is done.

and, when i get over this hump, the stuff from mid-2007 forwards should be a lot fresher. yes, 2007 was a long time ago. but, all i have from 2007 forwards is mostly just a collection of seeds.

period 3 is the real heavy lifting in catching up to where i was, even if where i was is now a long time ago, too.

ok.

so,  i may have to reperform some (really, most) of these tracks, and that's ok. so, there'll be some overlap with the impressionist jazz punk disc, but i want these all to be strictly acoustic, so i'll have to redo it. that's the conceptual break here, regardless - inri075 is the backpacking trip which i'm going to date to july 1, 2013 and inri076 will be a mini-single of material worked out when i got back.

so, let me file this as roughly and then get to working it all ot.

inri075 - guitar backpacking disc. redo some guitars. functionally, a hybrid demo disc of upcoming third period material, with some stripped down versions of period 2 pieces.

inri076 - all you need single. remove vocals? most of my vocals in this period are pretty cringey, these ones are particularly awful, but also kind of intriguingly pathetic. i'll probably include both options.

inri077 - bedroom cassette demo ep. right now, it looks like two tracks - but i want to finish the demo, as i left it. i mean, i left those channels open with intent. let's finish the demo before i do the final recording. 

inri078 - this is the lost symphony. the other three symphonies for this project will have versions from 2003-2006 as lead-offs, remixes and alt-takes included and then final versions as hidden tracks (which will be album versions). this one cannot do that, but needs to be comprehensive in terms of collecting demo versions and outtakes. may include new remixes. in short, i'm recording this more or less from scratch, so it should get a full treatment like the jjjjjjjjjjjjj material.

inri079 - this is the art show demo, released as is.

inri080 - this is the ftaa disc.

and, i need to file a little bit more before i can carry forward - but intend to do that by the end of the night.

these numbers are now final.

tentative track list:

- me, myself...

- 9:46

- gravity's rainbow

- hyperbola

- kelowna  <--------

- preludio

- little suite

- psi

- stress

- trepanation nation

- you know, they really should've killed aristotle, instead <--------

- punk django dance thing <-----------------------------

- lost symphony  <-----------------

i think these are all accurate, at least. some of it will upload easily, some of it....i'm going to need to see if i can extract guitars, or otherwise convert electric recordings to an acoustic sound.

inri075 cover art

so, this is how i'm doing this...

this is a sketch of me performing on the big steps at the ubc, done in june of 2003 by an anonymous sketch artist (presumably a student) that snuck up behind me and handed it to me:

i keep it on my wall, because who wouldn't?

i would have been performing a mix of older songs and newer ones and i'm pretty sure i know what most of them are; in fact, i had a sort of a setlist that i would normally go over that was roughly an hour or so. i don't remember exactly what it was, but i can fudge it enough to make it worthwhile.

so, that's going to be my bc release - a compilation of acoustic pieces, as i recall them.

and, that's my inri075, that's settled. just let me put it together.

so, how am i going to do this?

i've done this once before, but i'm going to copy all of the files i have from cds and dvds to disc and at least file that. it'll help me better understand what i've got in front of me...

life was weird when i got back from bc. it was mid summer, sarah and i were pissed off at each other, and i wanted to go back to school for the first time in my life, but didn't really want to either. and, then i ended up homeless because my stepmother was a retard, and where else was i going to go? and, how does one make time for art between math degrees, homelessness and a hopeless relationship brought on by financial necessity? it's really kind of insane that i actually managed to get a substantive amount of writing done.

but, it's less that i have completed projects and more that i have segments of time spent in a handful of different places, and sort of lost ideas that need to be built one way or another. so, let's understand the segments of time first, and determine whether each one is worth it's own release or whether it should all be put off until the end.

1) there was the time from may, 2003 to aug, 2003 spent travelling and coming back. some material was written over this period on the acoustic guitar i brought with me, some of it reworked and some of it forgotten. should that be released as a single or should i wait? how much can i date to that trip with any certainty? jazz punk stuff, even?

2) i have a two track single dated to aug 31, 2003 of material recorded in that swank basement before i got kicked out. the first track got dropped entirely, whereas the second became the start of the interplanetary isomorphism. should that be released here or should it wait?

3) i remember going on osap for the first time that year in an emergency bid to try to get some cash. so, that would have been really early in the semester. i didn't think the situation would last the whole semester, but it did - and then some. so, i would have been at sarah's in like september or maybe early october. there were the four-track tapes recorded in sarah's apartment that fall, which i appear to have two tracks for. one ended up on ftaa and the other is a demo fro the lost symphony. should that be released as an ep, or should i wait?

4) i have some tracks dated to the end of the year that would have been recorded in my mother's apartment, which is where i ended up for a few months. i have already decided to release a demo dated to the first weeks of 2004.

5) there's some further tracks recorded in my mother's apartment over the spring. i don't expect to release anything specifically around that.

6) sarah and i ended up in a separate apartment together in the summer, and i did a systematic review at the time, so there's mixed cds and rereleases dated to the early summer. i built the ftaa at this point. i then more or less completed the interplanetary isomorphism over the summer, and there will definitely be an ep for that. the cycles per second was started here, and there will be an ep for that, at least. xenophanes is started but not completed here.

8) i moved out in i believe february because i couldn't handle the situation and ended up in an apartment on prince of wales. i completed xenophanes in this apartment, and there will need to be an ep for that. there are some further demos created here, as well, that i will need to finish and release.

9) i then finally ended up back in a different basement, as my parents had at this point moved several times (again) that was essentially a storage room, and i had to leave almost everything in the closet. there were some compositional type pieces done here.

that is where i close period 3, which is a difficult phase in my life.

so, it seems like the ambiguity is about the early stuff.

let's start with idea number one, to close the gap - how many demos can i isolate that i think were written on the road in the summer of 2003? i wanted something from that period, so let's see what i can pull out.

first, i need to copy everything to the drive, and then i can organize it and pull out what's there.

to be clear - i've got the live drive! with the panel in the 98 machine.

i want to get another panel for the audigy in time, but i probably won't actually use it for anything until i get one, anyways. so, there's no real point in leaving it in there, with all the potentially annoying drivers running.

the 98 machine only has the soundblaster running, so it can take over that machine, if it wants.

ok.

so, what i wanted to do was organize everything perfectly and completely (i've never been diagnosed with ocd, really) before i got back to recording, so everything was perfectly functioning and i could just quickly get through everything. yes, it would require some time invested upfront, but it would be with the payoff of efficiency as i went.

as the machine has some kind of unknown problem, that's not actually feasible. instead, i should do a quick and rough organization upfront and file things as i go - which means i can be back to work within a day or two, but will need to stop frequently to reorganize, until i'm done.

i have to adjust. so be it.

so, i'm going to take the audigy back out (soundblaster installs are just loaded with bloated  drivers, and it's a perfectly plausible cause), disconnect the front panel (i'm not using it) and even unplug the blu-ray burner (which was added years after i constructed it) to start.

i'm also going to hold up on the deletion script, for the reason that the machine is no longer on the internet so i don't have to worry about locking it down as hard as i did. the machine will still run faster with as much of windows taken out as is possible, but i'm going to slow down and take things out one piece at a time.

and, i'm just going to get right to it, so i'm back in order for the weekend, which is the schedule i want to click in to.

i have every reason to think i'll be able to get back to normal rebuilding on monday, and to the alter-reality not this friday but next friday. and, if i'm productive, i can hopefully get tons of stuff done by labour day.

return to three room basement suite (2002-2003)

after selling the house with the concrete jail basement for a profit, and renting the split-level townhouse for a few months, my dad found himself employed again and they were able to move into this four bedroom mansion about a block from where i went to high school. the room i ended up in was designed pretty much perfectly for me, as it had a door leading to a room with another room off to the side, which i was able to split into a bedroom and a studio. my sister got her grand piano back, which meant i got to make use of her digital piano (heard on reflections and flying). but, not a lot of new gear entered this space, either - i just got to make the most of what was there.

tracks recorded in this basement:

- trepanation nation was finished

- penny shoeman & jumped up and down were demoed

- untitled was started

- atom's & taught to twist the affected were done

- reflections symphony

- and the start of interplanetary isomorphism, along with some outtakes associated with it

- in an attempt to move to multitrack digital recording, i bought a copy of cakewalk but i couldn't get it to run on the pc i had and had to abandon it. it disappeared some time after 2003.

- the introduction to untitled was created using orion 

- the drums for untitled were created from a variety of sources, including noteworthy composer, leaf drums, sounder, hammerhead and some new programs - fruity loops and an emulator of novation's drumstation.

- reflections uses claps, pens on tables and spoons on bowls for percussion.

near the end, i was trying to get sarah to move her drum kit in, but it never happened - rather, she moved in, herself. 

and, this is where i've left off.

so, if i was hoping to get a list of lost gear to emulate, that didn't happen, did it?

downstairs studio in split-level townhouse (a few months in 2002)

apparently concerned that i was spending too much time alone in basement dungeons, my parents made the conscious decision to move to a house without a basement. well, it was like a split level kind of thing. there were two upper floors and  a lower area with a fireplace and an entrance to a backyard with a manmade lake (which was gross, and nobody went anywhere near, not even the two retrievers living there), but no actual basement. i had to sleep upstairs. foiled, right?

well, i talked my way into being allowed to use the storage space off to the side of the downstairs as a studio. so, there was a bed upstairs, but i didn't sleep in it very often...i more often slept on the studio floor....

i think they were renting this place, actually, because they wanted to sell the last one to some developer, who tore it down and built a mansion on top of it. so, i was really only there for a few months, and i only really remember working on what would become trepanation nation.

- still hoping to get that demented foot pedal guitar sound, i swapped the morley for a digitech xp100 and still didn't really get what i wanted. the harmonizers are exceedingly synthetic sounding, probably because they're ultimately doubling the sound from a sampler, which is kind of lame. it was used in the next two basements, but was sold in 2003. the pod actually does what this did a lot better than it does.

i can't think of anything else.

spacious concrete jail basement (2001-2002)

i was into the next basement by the end of 2001, and was only there a few months. this space was essentially a concrete jail, but it was at least fairly roomy. annoyances about moving aside, my parents were relatively smart about buying the place for peanuts, then selling it for a nice profit, which let them move into a nicer place down the street. 

i remember working on the following in this basement:

- #9

- the wave

- 9:46..

- time

- trepanation nation (start)

i do not think any new gear was purchased by me or given to me when in this basement.

soiled rug on a concrete floor basement (2000-2001)

i didn't know it at the time, but my parents actually didn't have nearly as much money as they liked to pretend they did, they just borrowed absurd amounts, and were able to convince people to let them borrow it as long as they had two incomes. but, the company my dad worked for relocated around the year 2000, which sent him back to school over 2001-2002. they had to downsize, which meant i had to relocate from this posh three room suite into an unfinished basement, with cracks in the floor and a house fly infestation, to boot.

they still had leverage in their mortgage, though, and they managed to buy some property in a good area for cheap and then sell it off to somebody that wanted to rebuild, which let them move back up the ladder within a few years and eventually into a mansion that they couldn't afford. i don't know why this was so important to them, but it's not uncommon amongst people born in the late 50s, this "generation jones" mentality, where it's absolutely imperative to seem like you have money, even if you're driven hopelessly into debt in order to do it.

so, everything disappeared in the course of about a week - the drum kit was sold, the piano was sold and the house was sold along with it. i kept the things that were mine, which was a large percentage of the items that had built up, but i ended up in a 10x10 room, and fighting off the flies. this kind of dramatic shift in perceived wealth is something i'd already been through a few times (i grew up with my mom, who lived in a rent-subsidized townhouse) and would go through a few more; it's kind of indicative of reality, for me. i could very well go through it a few more times, too...

so, there's no new fancy gear in the next few basements, just a lot of use out of what i actually had.

- the one new piece of gear that shows up in this basement is a dx100, which my dad found for dollars at a garage sale. near the end of my stay in the last basement, i took the jx-8p apart to fix a stuck key, and i couldn't get it put back together again. listen - i didn't break it, it was already broken. but, i needed a controller for it, now, and the dx100 was ideal. i also used the dx100 itself in a lot of the rabit is wolf material, most of which was started in this basement.

-  i sold my main classical guitar in 2003. a second mini classical guitar appears in this basement, which was purchased at a garage sale. i still have this one, and it's frankly better suited for my freakishly small hands.

- an old 12-string acoustic guitar made by a budget guitar company from japan was found underneath the stairs, apparently left by the previous owners, which i then inherited. my sister appears to have stolen this from me when i left it in storage at my parents' house in 2011, probably because she incorrectly deduced it was worth money due to it's age, and she probably sold it for peanuts. in fact, it had a vicious warp in the neck. it's very sad to see what drives people in this world. it's heard in the end of clarity and in strung out.

- there was another no-name guitar found for nothing at around this time that i kept for alternate tunings and shows up on a few tracks. it was also very old, but essentially worth nothing. it also disappeared in 2011.

- i don't remember where the harmonica came from, but it first appears in clarity.

- i think the altec mic first appears here, as well.

- my dad kept buying and selling basses, because he never played them, but pretended he did. so, when he had money, a new bass appeared, and i could play it; when he didn't have money, he'd sell the bass almost immediately. i got fed up and bought a red washburn bass that i hung on to until i left in 2003.

pieces recorded in this basement were:

- little suite

- preludio

- strung out

- give 'em hell, harry

- stress

- me, myself...

- time

- clarity

...but i spent most of the time writing into noteworthy composer, including:

- stuck..

- time machine

- symphony of psilocybin induced madness

- intersection of two identical particles

- existence

it was late 2001 or early 2002 when i ended up in the next basement.

(this post was started on the evening of may 27th and worked on over may 28th, then abandoned on the morning of may 29th as i focused on a number of more personal concerns. i am resuming it and finishing it on june 7th 8th.)

three room basement concept, 1999-2000

my parents moved a lot, and i tended to end up with some kind of space in the basement - be it a finished bedroom, an enclave near the laundry or, in this case, access to two adjacent bedrooms, along with a large open area full of gear.

as before, my dad had a desire to have an open jam space, but nobody ever showed up. this was his last attempt at this, but the initial set-up was absolutely amazing - he put a new maple drum kit in beside a giant grand piano, and a huge fender bass amp (which i still have). i was supposed to get one room and my sister was supposed to get the other, but the sister didn't want to live there (?) so i ended up with both rooms, instead.....at least to start. slowly, my stepmother reclaimed one of the bedrooms as an "exercise room" and the various instruments started getting moved out of the recording area (some into my now cramped bedroom), which was reclaimed as a "family room". this was on some level a tragedy, but the fact of the matter is that nobody was using any of this stuff, except me. but, i sure used it...

so, what have i got to look at here?

- the one extra piece of gear on liquify was a dan electro dd-1 fab tone that was temporarily left in the space by my friend greg. out of all those dorks i knew at the time, greg was the one that actually had some raw musical talent (as a guitarist, a drummer and a singer), but he went through this yoga rebirth anti-pot phase in his early 20s that set him down an extremely different path as a human being, one that we weren't really going to base much commonality around. i fucking hate yoga - it just destroys people, as individuals. i've been through this with too many people. it's a fucking awful cult. he was a legit good guy, though. no, really, he was. but, there was a new greg and an old greg, and i found myself voting for the old greg, the one with silly, flappy hair that did too many mushrooms and played guitar like a jimmy page wannabe, not the one on some bullshit "spiritual journey" to buff up and get laid. we just kind of drifted apart...but i wish there was an explicit greg + j recording, and there isn't. he actually left it in the basement by accident sort of thing, and i mostly used it to create a feedback loop in the bridge as i found it wasn't hot enough to get the tone i wanted (it would have sounded better with a boost in front of it, which i didn't have) and i also realized very quickly that it was ridiculously noisy, and consequently difficult to record in such a way as to allow it to be driven later (amplifying it in cool edit just blew up into noise, and you put a gate on that and ruin it). the distortion on the track was actually mostly created manually in cool edit, over top of a very low send. and then i pasted it back on, after. so, it ends up sounding doubled because it is. i mean, you can tell that that isn't my normal guitar distortion by comparing to the other guitar parts, and the dan electro is in fact the reason why (even if i had to find a way to predrive it, as mentioned). so, it's integrated into a few of the guitars and a component on some of the drums, but i was actually trying to use it as a send on a track when i fed it back accidentally, and that's what really ended up sticking. so, if somebody can find a vst of this, i'll archive it, but i wasn't particularly enamoured with it (good guy greg loved it, though - and it worked well with his good guy riffs).

these things have somewhat of a following, but they're just, like, utter noisy cheese, imo:

...although, as mentioned, i wonder what kind of screech you could get out of it if you put something like an electro harmonix linear power booster in front of it....

if i saw one for less than $20, i'd probably snag it.

- it seems like the first use of the new soundblaster is in the track "tribute", which features me feeding my guitar through the environmental audio processor - and it's easy to see how warped it sounds, almost immediately. it's like instant frippertronics. i was lucky enough to get a new pc as a combo birthday/christmas present, which had the soundblaster live in it. as posted previously, here's a vst emulator of this that i hope works well:

https://github.com/datajake1999/EAXReverb_VST/releases

- it was around this time that i started using a leslie rotating speaker emulator fairly frequently. like, on almost every song. it's very heavily utilized on 'stress'. i still install this.

https://aipl-spincycle.download3000.com/

- i started using a filter by prosoniq called "north pole" as well that can, for example, by heard on the breakdown in book it. i still install this.

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/northpole-by-prosoniq

- the "pi" filter was also used quite a lot for guitar effects in this period. i still use this.

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/piwarp-by-prosoniq

- there was a hyperprism plugin pack that i used extensively from about 1999-2004. this company no longer exists and the files don't appear to be available anywhere online. i do still install these, though.

- i started using a program called "sounder" that lets you generate midi sequences using an interface similar to the video game "pong". you tell the computer which notes to play, so you reduce the randomness to note length and dynamics, while picking the key it's working in - making it sound more like a jazz musicians than a computer. it was the kind of generative app i felt was actually useful, to the point that i was frequently jamming with it. i could never get this to work on xp, not even in a virtual machine, but i intend to reinstall it to the 98 system - in fact, it's one of the reasons i'm doing it. this program formed the basis of the track "entropy", and is used in a number of other places.

https://www.sounder.com/

- there is some tactical use of an old version of acid at this point to mess with some horn and string samples, but i've always found the interface sort of stifling. yes, i said that. in fact, you'll notice that - i don't make music that is loop based like that (sometimes, the differences are subtle, but everything is live, and it's very consciously so). that said, i more seriously toyed with the idea of using it to build a string library, but even the new computer had problems with using it in any meaningful way due to the program's extremely heavy use of ram. acid is not currently in the list of programs i'm installing on this machine. acid is no longer owned by sony, apparently. you can hear this in "entropy", as well, but you'd never guess it was acid. in the end, i just preferred to write midi scores than try to use samples.

https://www.magix.com/ca/free-download/acid-music-studio/

- i picked up a morley pro series wah around this time for pretty cheap but i found the effect to be a little more subtle than what i wanted. i mean, i was hardly interested in doing 80s hair metal whammy dives, but, after playing with direct x filters in cool edit, i wanted a much more dynamic instrument that i could warp like a dj or sound engineer warps filters with their hands, but in real-time with my feet, and found this was really designed to be the opposite of that. there was no doubt a mental disconnect between the world this was made for (southern rock guitarists) and the kind of sounds i was imagining (warped sound effects from contemporary experimental techno, like download). i mean, i knew better, but i guess i didn't. that said, i made some sufficiently demented use of it in the climax to "entropy", as well as in the intro solo to  "ignorance is bliss" before i swapped it for a digitech xp-100 a few basements later. the pod has a couple of wah sounds in it; it wouldn't make sense to try to model this in a daw, unless you have the right kind of controller. so, you need hardware here, one way or another.

- audiomulch makes it's first appearance here - try the "v2" sounds in gravity's rainbow, or the jungle drum sequences in the "curious george suite" or the weird sequence at the end of the curious george suite. i still install this, although i don't think i used it over my last recording binge phase (i would expect to use it for cycles/second, along potentially with max, reason and a few other overwhelmingly nerdy things. that's a research project of it's own when i get there.)

http://www.audiomulch.com/

- i use a bass sequencer program called "rubber duck" by d-lusion (that is based on a tb-303) on a few tracks for the deny everything period (you can hear it squelching in acidosis, and gravity's rainbow):

http://www.d-lusion.com/DownloadRubberduck.html

- the drum sequencing for "curious george" was done using leaf drums, and took in a number of odd sources, such as a donald duck sample. i also used rubber duck as a source for some of the samples. there was also a "leaf effects".

http://www.audiomelody.com/software/leaf-drums/

- the secret effect on the guitar tone in curious george is the "megatrancer" direct x plugin, which i can't find anywhere online or in any of my files just right now.

- i made some use of a generative sound program pushed by brian eno called "koan sound" that has since been purchased by wotja and that i should look further into:

https://intermorphic.com/wotja/21/

-  hammerhead, coagula, granulab and sound raider were used extensively during this period. some of the synths on ignorance is bliss used coagula to generate samples that were then pitched using a soundfont program that came with the soundblaster (vienna?) and performed on the jx-8p. 

- there was a program used to generate "ukelele permutations" which was some kind of guitar chord teach-to-play software, but i've forgotten the name of. it might have come with the soundblaster, but i don't remember.

- there is some use of the synthesizer in the soundblaster, as well, just as a midi bank. specifically, the "orchestra hit" is used in ignorance is bliss (and then warped mercilessly in cool edit)

- i also picked up a creamy dreamer, which is a modded russian muff intended to sound like the tone that corgan used in siamese dream. i still have this, and in fact still use it. regarding emulations, there are attempts to pin this sound both in the pod and in guitar rig and i'll leave it at that. i have a regular muff as well, and we'll talk about that a few basements up.

- around this time of his life, my dad tended to disappear on sunday mornings for a few hours. in later years, it was obvious that he was trying to avoid going to church, and he even used routine breakfast with myself as a way out of it (after i had moved out). but, in these years, it's a little less clear what he was really up to. however, he'd often come back with things he'd purchased at garage sales - which ranged from speaker parts to beatles lps to obscure, out-of-print prog cds and whatever else he could get his hands on. it was a hobby, no doubt. and, from time to time, he'd come back with some old guitar effects that cost him a buck or two each, which included the following:

- mxr m-168 stereo flanger, early 80s. i still have this, but it is finnicky and often doesn't work. i think it's a power issue. this is kind of a basic flanger; universal audio emulates the rack version, if you insist on it. 

- mxr distortion II, late 70s (the big one, with the plug, in the gold box). i still have this, and it's noisy, but it works - i'm no fan of hair metal, which is what it's associated with, but it gives a good noise rock tone if floored appropriately, as well and is used on numerous recordings from 2000-2002, although i never left it in my normal signal due to the noise. these units are very expensive ($600?), and i don't want to sell mine, but i can't imagine why - they don't sound particularly good. i'd rather use a boss sd-1 for that kind of light overdrive sound as it's a bit tighter. the mxr+ is widely emulated, but the mxr II is kind of obscure. like i say - i'd suggest using an sd-1 for normal use, anyways. but, i like having it around as an oddball secret weapon if i want a particularly noisy, live sound (most of the amped guitars in little suite were done with this, as one example).

- mxr m-102 dyna comp (this was broken on arrival and appears to have disappeared. i think he gave it to his friend larry, actually. so, maybe larry got something in return for his broken phaser, after all.)

- ibanez ge-601 (this was broken on arrival and never fixed. i still have it, though.)

- i picked up a mooger fooger mf-102 ring modulator that spring, hoping to drive it with the morley and get that dramatic foot driven techno-oscillation filter, but it didn't actually work; it just didn't convert to an expression like i hoped. i never got another expression for it. guitarists kind of have their hands busy, so this became an expensive trick item. that said, it is used extensively as a bass (acidosis) and vocal (trepanation nation) processor over the next few years, before i cashed it in as having done it's purpose. it's also become very expensive ($600?), but isn't any more useful than a freeware vst plugin - it's expensive because it says "moog" on it, and likely of little actual functional value to you, unless you're doing very modular synth work. just about any old ring modulator with a carrier signal should be just as good.

i wish i could find a demo with the expression pedal plugged in like i wanted to set up, but what this demo does is really demonstrate how kind of useless the thing really is:

during this period, the eventual set up was:

mxr flanger---->moogerfooger mf-102---->zoom 1010 (for comp-->dist--->chorus/flg---->rev/delay)---->creamy dreamer---->boss oc-2---->mxr phase 90 ---->morley wah

...with the mxr distortion II set up off to the side.

you can hear at least parts of that chain on "entropy", on "ignorance is bliss", on "being a good little monkey" (which uses the ring mod) or on "acidosis", as well as on some tracks recorded in the next basement - like little suite.

and, there's really nothing in there worth looking for a specific emulator for, that i can't get in the pod, or in guitar rig.

- up until this point, my guitar training was in blues and rock music, and i felt i needed something a little deeper, so i started taking classical guitar lessons. i just wanted to get a basic footing before i ran with it on my own. so, there was a classical guitar in the house now, too, which is heard on "acidosis" primarily, until it picks up a little in the next basement. i took about a year's worth of lessons before i stopped. i still had the ibanez, the epiphone sg and the obese strat at my disposal, along with an electric-acoustic.

- a found an electric mandolin at this point at a garage sale that eventually developed some electrical problems and had to be disposed of. it's heard on "acidosis" and "strung out" amongst other things.

- another item i picked up at a garage sale in this period was a bontempi electric air reed organ. this was a noisy, half broken piece of gear that i had to use digital noise reduction to remove the motor from, when recording. it's heard in a number of tracks from 2000-2003 (acidosis, 9:46..., little suite), before my stepmother discarded it under the claim that it was "garbage". sadly. i can get an organ sound from any vst synth, and then mess with it further from there, but nothing quite sounds like this old thing that probably end up in the landfill.

this is similar:

- an ebow was purchased while living in this basement, as well, which i still have. it's heard on "acidosis" amongst other things.

- as mentioned, there was a drum kit in my bedroom at this point (heard on the curious george suite, a commercial break, gravity's rainbow), along with a grand piano a few feet outside of my door (heard on acidosis) and a large fender bass amp (used to record most of the guitars, which i still have).

- there was a peavey bass/keyboard amp (gone) and a cheri guitar amp (still have)

- the wood flute is used in "acidosis" and "book it!"

- the jx-8p is the main synth, still. the ry30 is used sporadically, because the memory was full and i didn't know how to back it up.

- there was a bass, but i don't remember much about it. 

- the equalizer i had been hauling around for a few years went belly up around this time, and you can hear me taking advantage of it near the end of "acidosis".

nothing's clicking or whirring, and it's running a little hot, but it always did.

this machine was built in 2007. it's an old machine. i don't need it to emulate a quantum computer, but i do just need it to stop freezing.

and, before i do that, even, i should run chkdsks on all four drives in the machine.

it might be bad sata cable or something stupid like that, but i have to strip it right down  to figure it out.

alright. so, i don't really want to troubleshoot this machine, but i unfortunately have to as it keeps freezing, and i'm not convinced it's hardware. i simply don't know what the problem is.

there were some periodic freezing issues back in 2015 that i thought was ram, but i'm no longer convinced is. there were also base issues with chipset drivers when i first bought the machine, years ago.

what i'm going to do is reinstall the machine in the most minimal way possible - just the programs integrated on the disc + the drivers for the most minimal hardware configuration possible. and, then i'll bring things in further as i need them, rather than all at once and carefully observe what happens.

i suspect i may need to reprogram the board again like i did in 2014. why do i have to keep reprogramming the board, pigs?

the reality is that there's a lot of software on here that i barely use and that the next phase is not going to be heavy on things like vst synths so much as it's going to be about guitars, actual hardware (like drum heads) and abstract sound design. so, i shouldn't get caught up in getting all of these virtual vstis to work, because i'm probably not going to use them much anyways.

and, once i'm convinced that i've found the problem, i can rerun the script again.

alright, let's hope that stays put until i'm finished doing what i'm doing, at least.

what else could be wrong?

i think the drives are fine, but i'm a little iffy on the processor.

and, i vaguely recall needing to reinstall cubase after the script, due to resetting some system files...

well, i recently bought some new lithium batteries, so why not try a brand new one?

no, that didn't do it...

the only thing that ever seems to work with this thing is flashing the bios, and i wish i understood why, exactly.

i messed around with the page file and environment variables, and i'm running a defrag.

i know these are old timey concerns, but it seems like it's either that all of the ram is bad or none of the ram is.

it was stable with 3 gb for quite a while...

yeah, i'm far less convinced that the issue with this thing is related to ram...

i got the board to read all 4 gb, and i'm going to stick with that for a bit. instead, i've unplugged the card reader, because i don't use it in that device anyways.

yeah, it seems better after doing that. good. 

it sucks not having confidence in your hardware, but i haven't been able to demonstrate that there's anything wrong with any of it, either.

i'm trying to remember if i had this problem before and i don't remember.

however, i vaguely recall figuring this out a while back. i backed up my appdata directory so i copied it back over and the load process was instantly different.

i don't need every single plugin to load every time i launch, what i need is to figure out if i've got a ram issue or not, and there's no easy way to do that....

the immediate concern is just making sure that the plugins i recently downloaded actually launch. so let's hope i can get through that without it freezing further, then try to bring some more ram back in.

of course, the idiot cops seem to think i'm hiding secret messages from the kremlin somewhere, and they seem to keep fucking with my bios, so i might need to get in the habit of clearing my cmos whenever i come in from somewhere in order to get the machine to run properly.

*sigh*.

i've swapped the ram around and it keeps halting, so i'm going to have to shut everything off in cubase to start, then bring it all in one by one.

naw, it crashed with 2 in it, too...

i know i have a questionable stick, but i lost track of which one it was.

so, let's try with 1.

of course, i could also have some unstable plugins, right.

so, i launched cubase to check to see if the eax plugin was loading, and it froze with the third stick in.

i took it out, and it booted.

here's what i don't know right now - is the stick bad, is the board funny or is cubase having difficulty with this hybrid ram channel thing? what i mean is this - if i have two sticks in, it loads them together and if i have four sticks in it loads them in parallel. but, when i put three sticks in, it does this weird in between thing.

i have to experiment with it, but i want to make sure everything is loading first.

in the end, if i decide that one of the sticks is bad, i might have to choose between 2 and 4 gb if i want the machine to run. but, i should be able to get 2x1 gb of ram relatively cheaply nowadays, right?

so, like everything else, the next process is going to be a little bit convoluted.

i want to finish my train of thought regarding all of the extra plugins before i do a narration of the last week of events. so, let me rewind to about ten days ago...

ok, so i've got the machine installed, finally. i still have some filing to do, though.

i need a nap...

let me put this all in one place in case there are questions about it, and i'm going to do it running backwards from the order of last modification.

when was the last time i altered these releases?

early 2018:

inri068 & inri069: constructed over late 2017 and early 2018 from tracks finished over 2014-2015 and written over 1996-2003.

late 2017:

inri026, inri031, inri034: remixed from orphaned demos from 1999

inri030, inri038: constructed from mixes done over 2015/2016.

inri042: constructed from 2017 mixes of 1999/2000 material

inri043, inri044, inri047, inri050: rebuilt from midi over 2014 by adding extra recorded parts, final mixes added over late 2017.

inri048: recorded more or less from scratch over late 2014. extra mixes from 2014 source added over late 2017.

inri055, inri056, inri058, inri061: demos from 2001/2002 were completed over late 2014 by adding extra recorded parts. extra mixes added in late 2017.

inri065: midi file completed in may, 2015 by transcribing demos from early 2003, which was then used to build multiple extra remixes. last mixes complete in late 2017.

inri071, inri072, inri073: compilation from 2015 of tracks completed by that date, but updated in late 2017 with more appropriate alternate mixes

inri074: initial version from 2003 was stripped of samples in late 2017 and added as a hidden track. will also appear that way on trivial group 2xlp.

over 2016:

inri004-inri015 & inri017-inri022 & inri024-inri025: this is the proper inri/inriched release cycle. remastered, with much difficulty due to interference from some unclear source, over the summer and fall of 2015, and finally remastered and rebuilt with many stops and starts over the course of 2016. the first singles were finalized in january, 2016 and the last comp was finalized in december, 2016. minimal midi parts and one new vocal part were added in this time frame, as well.

late 2015:

inri066: all ry30, soundblaster sequences and jx8p tracks from the late 90s or early 00s. some added sequencing and production work from late 2015.

early 2015:

inri035: mix tape constructed from material recorded 1996-1999.

inri046: lead mix finished in 2006 from files written in 2001. extra mixes added in 2015.

inri049: a new ambient mix was created in may, 2015. all other files are unaltered from late 2002.

inri062: new recorded vocal mix added to demo from 2002 in may, 2015. all other mixes from 2002/2003.

inri063: 6th lp. final version compiled from material remastered and finished over 2014/2015.

inri070: soundblaster & vst renders of material written before 2003, as output between 2014-2015.

late 2014:

inri052: 5th lp. final version compiled from material remastered and finished over 2014.

inri054: remixed, remastered and completed over late 2014. demos from 2001/2002.

inri059: constructed in late 2014 from disconnect parts recorded in mid 2002

inri060: remixed from existing tracks from 2002

inri079: imminent release, hopefully in 2021. but, all tracks for this release were done by late 2014.

early 2014:

inri041: 4th lp. final sample-less version remixed and compiled from existing source material from 1999/2000

late 2013:

inri000-inri001: remastered late 2013. otherwise unaltered from 1996/1997.

inri002: mix tape compiled in 2013, from source material from inri000-inri001.

2003-2013: black hole to be filled in.

2004

inri078 - demo tape from 2004, released as is in 2019

2003

inri075, inri076, inri077: unfinished demos from 2003 as of now.

2002:

inri053: released in 2014 and again in 2017 from unaltered 2002 files.

inri057: released in 2014 from unaltered demos from 2002.

inri064: released in 2015 from unaltered demos from 2002.

inri067: releases in 2017 from unaltered demos done from 1999-2002.

2001:

inri045: files from 2001 were released unaltered in early 2014, and project was closed down due to mysterious disappearance of sheet music attached to it

inri051: released, unaltered, in late 2014

2000:

inri036, inri037, inri039, inri040: compiled and released from existing recordings in early 2013

1999

inri027-inri028: released as is in late 2013

inri029: released as is in late 2013 and expanded with alternate version from same time period in late 2017

inri032: appended to in early 2014 with existing mixes from the time period, but not otherwise altered since.

inri033: 3rd lp. last trick split off in early 2014, otherwise unmodified

1998

inri016: released as is in late 2013

inri023: compiled from remixes created over 1998 in 2013 and expanded in late 2016

1997

inri003: compiled in 2013, but files unaltered from 1997.

this machine should be installed by the end of the night...