the intersection of two identical particles moving in completely opposite directions (vst mix) (for thru)

ok...

so, to understand this piece, it's necessary to go back to 1998.

i was working out primitive sequencer parts for the first inri demo and it just sort of crossed my mind that there was really nothing stopping me from composing symphonies except for a lot of music theory. well, if i could write electronic music without training, why couldn't i write symphonies without training? i mean, the score writing program exists in front of me. it was just a question of experimenting with it. i could do it myself...

...but i actually already had a pretty hefty disdain for music theory by the age of 17. i'd managed to come across a music history textbook that traced the deconstruction of western theory from beethoven through to schoenberg and this, combined with my experiences as a guitarist, was enough to prevent me from taking it seriously. the perception i had was of modern composers viewing music theory sort of like how biologists viewed creationism. i use that analogy fairly frequently. it just didn't strike me as relevant.

now, i've softened a bit over time to a view that music theory is best understood in terms of the underlying physics. this renders the theory useless, but upholds the basic relationships between tones as physical, mathematical realities. the thing is the next step of abstraction is understanding that these mathematical objects can be arranged and analyzed in any arbitrary way, and the conventional theory really *is* a fallacy akin to creationism. so, i still hold to the general thesis. this is actually the first serious example of me putting that disdain for the idea that music should have a theory into real action. i remain adamantly of the view that art is not a realm where theories should exist or be viewed with anything other than scorn. theories are rigid, formal things; art is informal, chaotic.

so, it's 1998. i have a scorewriter and a very basic soundcard and i want to bullshit a symphony out of it. i did this by composing a single brief melody by randomly mashing notes into a scorewriter. i then took that melody and pasted it over top of itself at differing speeds (64th, 32nd, 16th, 8th, quarter, half, whole notes). i then took that, cut it off near the end of the half notes and pasted it over itself, backwards.

that might sound like it's going to sound awful, but it actually sounds quite lovely. one could analyze it quite easily, but it's creation is beyond the realm of any rules of construction.

which is where art belongs.

...excepting the algorithm i used, of course. i suppose it's more reich than schoenberg, but kind of more xenakis than either.

in 2001, i ran the midi file through my soundblaster live!, which as primitive as it is, has a much nicer wavetable in it than the primitive soundcard i used in 1998 and 1999 (i don't remember what it was). i also slowed it down by about 20 bpm and allowed the full file to "intersect", which let it breathe more.

why? well, i was writing a lot with scorewriters at the time and was just experimenting with the old file, really. but i was also finishing up what would be the only year i would spend in the math-physics department, and thought it sounded like i would imagine intersecting particles *should* sound like. i was generally interested in finding ways to combine science with music then - an interest that is present in older tracks as well and that has stuck with me. i may explore these themes further in time. one of the ideas i really wanted to accomplish was a physical modelling of the universe, to actually simulate the music of the spheres, as pythagoras imagined it. i think i underestimated the complexity of such a task....

of course, i never expected the music of the spheres to be tonal. and i wouldn't expect the sound of particles intersecting to be musical, either. but, we can take some artistic license. if intersecting particles are to make a sound, it OUGHT to be something like this!

written june, 1998. reimagined june, 2001. slightly rearranged and re-rendered at the end of july, 2014. this render is from july 24, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-intersection-of-two-identical-particles-moving-in-completely-opposite-directions-4

the symphony of psilocybin induced madness (vst mix)

this is the vst update, for the second half of the thru disc.

the core of this was written in my parent's basement in the spring of 2001. planning on going to a rave that weekend, i had previously purchased a large amount of drugs; i was, however, forced to stay in due to having a calculus test that sunday (the rave was out of town). well, my parents were gone for the weekend, most of my friends were out of town and i had a massive stash of drugs...

it is quite literally a symphony of psilocybin induced madness and was written directly into an ancient, hacked score-writing program. while it has been labelled as a symphony of drunken confusion in certain contexts to get around certain social stigmas, this is inaccurate.

written early 2001. this render was completed on jan 10, 2015.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-symphony-of-psilocybin-induced-madness-4


also available here:
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/vst-mix-3


inri027 has been updated:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-symphony-of-psilocybin-induced-madness

track added to symphony 2 single

jessica
hi.

i'm contacting you because you purchased my symphony #2 single at some point in the past. i've added another remix to the single, which will also appear on the second side of the midi music project i'm nearing completion of. as you've purchased the single, i feel you're entitled to a free download of the track, which is up right here:

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/vst-mix-3

now, it would seem like the easiest thing to do would be to generate a download code, but bandcamp is demanding i generate one hundred codes at a time and that would simply be a waste of codes, as there would be no other reason for me to generate codes for a single track. so, rather, i'm going to provide you with the opportunity to request the remix in the format you'd like it in, and i'll email it to you if you'd like me to.

Alessandro
Hi! If possibile, I would like to recive the track in Alac format. If not possibile, an mp3 is fine too. Thank you very much! By the way, beautiful music!

jessica
aaaaaaaaaaaactually, it turns out that you should be able to redownload the record from bandcamp.

i couldn't find a way to convert directly to mp4 without installing itunes, which i'm just not doing. i'm pretty particular about software that phones home in that i don't like it. so, i almost sent you a zipped wave file. but here's the thing: this track is so dense that the zip file only compressed it by 3 mb (it went from 93 to 90 mb). the zip process works by finding zeroes. i guess there's not a lot of zeroes in this file. that's too big to send over email....

if it doesn't work let me know, but i think the easiest thing to do is download it from the source. hey, i'm still learning how this works, too :)

hi again...

To: sirenssound@gmail.com

jessica
(pause)

sorry, hit send accidentally.

i'm the person that set up your facebook page back in 2011. i'm just wondering if you might be willing to review some of my tunes.

my bandcamp page is very large, but the following are records i've finalized over 2014 or will finalize shortly in 2015.

2000 release (completed january, 2014):
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/deny-everything

2001 release (completed october, 2014):
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj

2002 release (to be completed in january or february, 2015)
(two more songs to add):
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj-2

2004 release (to be completed in january or february, 2015):
(this will be a double, with sample-driven versions of the same material on the other side) http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ftaa

Sheizaad TheSirensSound
Hi Jessica,

I hope you keeping well and that you had a great x-mas / new year. I am terribly sorry for the late reply but I am happy to say that I've had a chance to give the project a listen and wrote an entry here [ http://www.thesirenssound.com/2015/01/12/deny-everything/ ].

Excellent stuff dear.

soon

this is a little bit condensed. for example, the synth bass is quadrupled and mixed down.

the time machine (vst mix) (for thu)

regarding this piece, my memory is blurry; yet, i have a vivid recollection of playing parts of it for my guitar teacher on a sunny day, where there was still snow on the ground. it's funny how we remember seemingly irrelevant details, but i guess the atmosphere of the performance is important because the performance is. that would date it to roughly march, 2001.

i switched the piece from classical guitar to piano halfway through writing it, and vaguely remember thinking that an impossible interval had something to do with it (a specific c# cannot be hit on a standard classical). yet, that doesn't change the fact that it's guitar music. the counterpoint is very guitar.

to further complicate things, i've long wanted to turn the piece into a jazzy idm romp. it has a kind of a jingly feel to it that belongs in the warp records sphere.

conceptually, the time machine aspect referred simply to the slowed down guitar chords at the beginning of the song. if you play it a certain way, it sounds like time is collapsing in on itself. or, so i thought, anyways. the various versions i have created here have made an attempt to take that idea to it's logical conclusion. it's a mix of the vision i had at the time and a bit of hindsight.

written early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. final render completed on july 5, 2014. as always, please use headphones.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-time-machine-5

stuck in the middle of an alley closing in on all sides (vst mix) (for thru)

this is one of the tracks that i can't date well. i do, however, remember working on it during the winter, which means it must have been late '00 or early '01. i'm going to consequently deduce that it must have been what i was working on over the 2000 christmas break and date it coming out right after it.

actually, i have another reason to date it in early '01 rather than late '00: the introductory piano part was recorded live into my notation program on my dx100, which i was given over christmas (maybe a little before; it was a cheap garage sale pickup) to act as a controller for my recently broken jx-8p, that i had tried to take apart over the summer to clean a sticky key (a common problem with mid-80s roland analog synths) but failed and left keyless. it's still keyless. yet, the dx still drives it....

that introductory piano part formed the basis of the track, which built itself up fairly quickly. somewhere, i lost the nwc file by saving it as midi, which ruined all the formatting. it's been sitting on my drive ever since.

thematically, the track is meant to orchestrate a feeling of claustrophobia with society pushing down on you too hard. it's meant to transmit a feeling of existential dread. at the time, i really felt stuck with life in general and not sure how i was going to get out of it..

written late 2000 & early 2001. initial instrumentation and render completed mar 7, 2014. minor instrumentation changes to facilitate a small wind section were implemented in late april, 2014. final render completed on may 3, 2014. as always, please use headphones.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/stuck-in-the-middle-of-an-alley-closing-in-on-all-sides-5

this thing has always been difficult to mix, because it's just a wall of fucking sound roaring at you - structured chaos to be sure but it's just loud. it's almost there, though.

i can't claim any specific improvement over the 2006 version. i mean, there's a reason i skipped over this last summer; i didn't think i could improve upon it. it's different, sure, but it's not really "better", and i'm not expecting that it's going to be. this is not an update on the final version. but it needs to be done for the thru project.

i mean, it's interesting, no doubt, but in a pretty geeky way that's only going to appeal to any segment of the fan base that also produces...

so, that was a relatively long break. it's ok, i think i needed to come at some of this stuff with a fresh perspective. but i'll be seriously back at it this afternoon.

i knew that copying information off facebook would get tedious and time consuming if i were to start it, and that is indeed what happened. my only real justification is that i was sick.

i've actually cleared off five years of facebook comments. it's left a lot of incoherent conversations on other people's profiles. but it is actually done. and that blog is not likely to come back up for a while, which i think is also positive. what's left on my personal page is a sort of a cv. feel free to sort through it if you'd like.

i have four more profiles to wipe clean (two music review profiles, a political link dump and this) but they're going to come together very slowly over many weeks - an hour or two a day until it's complete. this profile is slated to be shut down last. it could be up to six months.

for now, i'm going to be adding to the following single this afternoon by creating a vst mix:
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-symphony-of-psilocybin-induced-madness

this vst mix will also appear on the second half of the 2xcd thru collection:
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/thru

200,000 hits

you know, for once, it'd be nice to see a parody of existentialism that doesn't miss the point altogether (and i'm not sure how he's characterizing the statement about artistic integrity as randian except by wording it in a bizarre way, although i'll admit i ran into a few people at occupy that tried to merge worker politics with support for ron paul - and were promptly made fun of).

see, it doesn't matter if he gets through college and gets a higher paying job or if he takes the job as an office temp (although reality is that he'll be lucky if his college diploma gets him a paying job in an office, that's where mom's social standing plays a role). whether he's making $50/hr or $10/hr, his life will still lack meaning. he'll still be forced into employment he has no interest in. the point is that the effort and the social standing that comes with it doesn't make a difference in an individual's happiness.

nor is the doctor's ferrari anything more than a temporary alleviation of the deep emptiness that defines his existence.

it would be easier if more people realized all of this, as building a movement to create a system that provides meaning would actually become possible. alas, we're instead persistently driven into the false promises of illusory happiness that consumer culture provides for us.

now, if you'll excuse me, i am going to ponderously play a single chord on an out of tune guitar for an hour as i meditate on the purposelessness of capitalism.

uploading nothing to say to youtube

so, the track switched on wednesday but i was too sick to say much about it. maybe it's sort of fitting.
this is the last track on cassette demo #2 and will be up until the end of january. the demo material will then cycle around for a bit, but i won't post that here. that means this is the last youtube update on this page until the beginning of may, when the feature switches out of my mid 90s punk phase and into my late 90s electronic phase.

hopefully, i'm out of my sophomore slump by then, too.

i actually expect to be a good ways into the discography by may - perhaps as far as 2006.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ37S6tpDJ4

i'm trying to get off facebook...

this page will be shutting down, accordingly. it's going to be a longer wait than the main profile, though.

i ended up catching the flu, which had this turn in to a longer break than expected.

back to work today or tomorrow.

obligatory influential on song of the month post...

i can't figure out what the hell was influencing me on this particular track, but i can hear a bit of deleo in the short guitar solo, and it's head-scratching enough that it fits. i'm reaching, though. it's not characteristic of my own work.

this record? i think it's aged well. i gotta lean towards the preceding record as the better crafted disc, but this is a perfectly worthy follow-up - and remains the only thing they've released that comes close to matching that universally acknowledged classic.

(relevant tracks: nothing to say, but deleo is a general guitar influence with that jazzy classic rock grunge fusion of his)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSuyEpcj_D0

"mom" seems to have snuck by 2,000 listens when i wasn't paying attention and is my first upload to do so. it's separated out from "boogeyman" by about 200 hits since october, meaning it remains my top track by a good margin.

this version of "mom" will not appear on the front page ever again, as the first demo is completed and it's not on the mix tape. as i mentioned before: it was sort of predictable, given the nature of the track. but i'd really rather something else was in top spot, because i don't expect it's popularity is a result of the track being understood properly. so, it's kind of fitting, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. "boogeyman" has 8 days left over the mix tape cycle (that's inri003), which will be enough to close the gap a little.

however, barring some unforeseen event, it seems like "mom" will retain the top spot until i get to inrisampled (inri004) which represents the segue between period 1.1 and period 1.2. this will be in the front slot for nearly four months and should consequently shoot rather far out ahead of everything else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oSadVCVav8

it's funny how the coughing itself can tire you out, even as you're just getting over it, making it seem like you got kicked back to the start of it. woke up feeling like somebody spent eight hours jumping on my chest....

it was the perfect storm to ignite my asthma/bronchitis. it's a result of living in a second-hand smoke environment when i was a kid, and comes up whenever i get a flu in the winter. it happened before i started smoking, smoking hasn't made it worse and quitting won't make it better (although i haven't been smoking a lot lately). the flu comes and goes in 24-72 hours, but the bronchitis it triggers can last for up to six weeks after it's gone.

i'm a pretty strong advocate of the idea that people between 17 and 60 should *not* be getting yearly flu vaccines - we're better off fighting it ourselves. unless we get a nasty strain.,..

...but i think i'm finally accepting that the bronchitis has put me in the "special" category, and i may finally crack next year.

i honestly think i just sort of got used to it.

that was another 15. one of the nice things about not having any responsibility is that when you get a 48 or 72 hour flu you can just sleep it off. everybody *should* have this right. but, most people don't.

i think i'm awake now...

yeah.

i'm groggy.

but i'm ok.

i feel a little bit better, but am still unlikely to be able to do anything besides copy & paste for the next 12-15 hours, if i don't fall asleep (like i did this morning).

definitely a virus....

i just woke up from about 21 hours of straight sleeping, which itself came after a short awake period of about two hours. i've basically been sleeping since about 5:00 monday afternoon. which means i need to eat.

deciding to sit down and clean this up over the next few days worked out fairly well, because i'm so sore right now that it's just about my only option regarding things to do.

i've been noticing a sort of stretching issue for a while, now. i guess i spend a lot of time with legs under a desk, or with legs curled up when i'm sleeping (i can't help it, i go full fetal over night no matter how i fall asleep), and i walk a lot on top of it, so slightly sore legs are not a strange thing for me. when you're sore, you should stretch....

what i've been noticing stretching for the last little bit (specifically the one where you push your legs out from your body while lying flat) is that there's a point where it almost seems like my limbs are pulling out of their sockets. it's only ever happened previously with one leg at a time, but it's this mix of pain and numbness that's sort of hard to describe in any other way than it feeling like the leg is about to pop right out...

i've ultimately concluded that, despite the displeasure, this is probably good for me - because it tends to work. however, i need to, once again, point out the ms-ness of such a circumstance. it's part of a number of things pushing that way, but, i mean, there's not much to do about it..

before i went to sleep yesterday evening, i got a little stretch in and it hit me in both legs for the first time, which actually collapsed me off the bed and down on to the floor (i'm ok, obviously). but did it ever hurt. if you were here, you would have seen me collapsed on my thighs and sort of gasping for air.

given that i woke up with a cough, i'm now not really sure if the reason i'm sore is due to sickness or due to falling the wrong way. but i *am* sure that i'm not likely to move far from this spot for two or three days.

which should be enough to get this cleaned up. unless i can't stay awake...

deathtokoalas
obligatory influential on the track of week post.

i'm struggling to find my guitar influence in this track. the general construction is very edge, and the feel is largely corgan. i've kept track of this repeatedly on multiple videos though so i'm not going to post it again. there's also an extra sort of jazzy sophistication to this, though. keep in mind i'm still 17 on this track, and maybe a little shy about doing things with the instrument, so it's a little bit stifled.

i think there's some gilmour in there in the lyricism of the playing, but i hadn't hit that heavy animals period yet. i think that what i'm hearing is more the kind of thing that fripp did in something like starless, but interpreted through my suspicious-of-prog punk rock filters. so, it's a little grungier sounding.

(relevant tracks: idiotic, untitled, evil is a human construction, liquify, book it, all of the symphonies, most stuff after 1999)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRHvD6h3-C0

i think the bassline in the blues guitar solo near the end of the track is a good way to explore how some people misunderstand a small handful of prog acts - king crimson and genesis in particular, to be very specific. ironically, i think missing the point comes in overanalysis.

if you sit down and try and figure out what the fuck it is that you're listening to on a mathematical level, you're going to hear a confusing time signature and an agile scale run and it will appear boring and academic. it's only when you step away from that that you can hear the bassline as controlled collapse framing the mayhem around it. these increases in the complexity of the music actually begin to affect the feel of the piece, which is what the tools of course have been developed for in the first place.

i've pointed out repeatedly that the critics of prog were often right. but these two acts in particular really legitimately went over people's heads, and that needs to be corrected and reevaluated. i think this is slowly happening, and i'm actually reinforcing something that's already happening. but i think it can't be said enough until the narrative really changes.

holiosys atRandom
drummer here and I totally agree, the mid song bassline is like 13/8 and as a drummer I'm quite amazed, but yeah, take a step back and let it all unfold and you shall see.  tip, give reflection from tool a listen, beautiful.

deathtokoalas
i've been a tool fan for many years (although i found their last disc to be mediocre), but i consider them to be a grunge band with little influence from something like this. you could confuse a lot of people by telling them undertow is a soundgarden record.

tool's biggest influences were bands like melvins, black flag and swans.

(deleted post)

deathtokoalas
again: the only trace of crimson you're going to hear in tool is a bit of syncopation in the rhythm section. this is bruford/levin period crimson. but it's not dominant. tool is, first and foremost, a hardcore punk band...

fripp has stated he doesn't hear the similarity, either. and it's for good reason - there really isn't one.

i'll be a little more detailed.

the primary reason it's a bad comparison is that tool basically never plays in overlapping timings. they'll mix it up a little. but, again, i'm going to point to soundgarden or black flag (or led zeppelin) for that. the "crimson sound" is a sort of corollary to minimalist music theory - each instrument plays in a different time, in a way that unfolds metrically, but seems somewhat chaotic. fripp has claimed he developed this independently of steve reich, but i've always been skeptical of the claim.

the "tool sound", on the other hand, is very monolithic. when they play in off times, everybody is playing together. it's a full band attack. because it's punk rock...

now, yeah, you'll get this flashy bass part here and there, or this drum excursion jumping out from time to time. but they're fills.

so, when fripp claims he doesn't hear it, he's right. there's really no similarity on a compositional level. even if you can hear that touch of bruford & levin on the odd offbeat or in the odd figure...

removing tracks from youtube

i've deleted a few files. i just want it publicly acknowledged that this was not due to reaction (or lack thereof) but because i couldn't work the tracks into the cycle i've set up, which runs into the distant future. in fact, i picked some of the less popular versions. it's just not useful for me to have all these excess tracks up here, and i don't want to put my rabit reworkings off to 2033 to make room for the vocal versions. so it's been condensed to conform to the cycled feature track. hey, i just lost something like 500 hits, actually.

everything remains available to stream and purchase at the bandcamp archive, which is where youtube is supposed to herd you to in the first place.

so, it seems like the production of hair is something your body does to help remove harmful cholesterol. and i'm growing increasingly uncomfortable with modifying that excretion system, such as via electrolysis. testosterone is produced from cholesterol...

it's pretty wacky, looking into this sebaceous gland. it's constantly producing clones that it then smashes in order to expel the cell contents, which get converted into hair. that's almost how a virus works. now, supposedly the cholesterol is good for your skin, and that's fine. but, your body seems to see the need to expel it. generally, when your body expels liquid it's to get rid of something it doesn't want.

if i go in there and smash up all the glands, i'm going to end up with a build up of that cholesterol somewhere else. and, if you want research money to do a salacious research report on, i think it would be interesting to try and measure a relationship between heart disease and hair removal.

so, my listening day has convinced me that it's a good time to go back over the material after inri023 and double check it's all what i want it to be, which may include making a few new remixes. that means the untitled techno tune is on hold until i get there, which i think is what it needs right now, anyways.

i needed to do this soon, whether it's now or in two weeks is being driven by my concern that the track i'm working on needs space.

i mean, i was planning on doing it when i was done the disc. but i'm doing it now instead. so, that vst mix of the second symphony is probably up next.

ok. i wanted to do some listening this week, because it's the time of the year for listening aids, so it's going to be a day or two before i come back to this, which is probably for the best. i guess i still have four mixes to do on this single...

untitled (vst mix)

this takes the midi file as it was created in 2002 and updates the playback to utilize modern vst synthesizers and guitar modellers. render finalized on dec 26, 2014. 

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-vst-mix

the reality is that canada benefits from warming in just about every way - longer growing seasons, better exploitation of resources and a more enjoyable climate. to any body governing canada, this is not a crisis but an opportunity. and i think that this fundamental calculus needs to be understood in approaching ways to deal with canada. canada will never respond to this as a crisis situation - because it is not a crisis situation to canada. it is just about the best environmental conditions that are even possible for canada. it is optimal.

but, see, that screws the rest of the planet over. so, as a canadian, i'm torn between recognizing what is good for my area of the planet and recognizing what is good for the planet in general. and, that's difficult because it means that this region is going to have to make sacrifices for the well being of other regions. which doesn't tend to happen. this region is actually notorious for that.

and, it's particularly problematic because we're actually even in control of the factors increasing the warming. it's not just us, it's russia as well. but we're a dominant factor due to our extraction techniques, and our permafrost.

the reality is that putting the frozen person in charge of the thermostat is going to lead to higher temperatures. that is a fundamental calculation that has to be recognized about how future canadian governments are going to react to this concern.

if we get a liberal government in, they may increase foreign aid to areas undergoing desertification out of a sense of legitimate guilt. canadian liberalism is really the last remaining branch of the original british liberal tradition, and by far it's most complete extrapolation of thought in the canadian constitution and charter of rights and freedoms. i think it's reasonable to project into the future this legitimate feeling for the necessity of reparation, and to have that feeling shared by a broad sense of the population. canadian liberalism can still produce this sense of legal fairness - i'd argue probably uniquely in the british tradition.

but none of that will stop canada from increasing emissions, it will just a set a self-imposed price on it's behaviour.

another strain that's going to develop is that canada is going to see itself increasingly isolated with russia. now, the current government is behaving rather stupidly in regards to this, so any kind of natural aligning is going to be stunted until they're removed from power. but, it's increasingly inevitable that we're going to see closer co-operation between canada and russia as their policies align internationally, if not domestically.

the reality is that the basis for canada as a non-aligned state is already well established from the trudeau and chretien years. the liberal party in the second half of the twentieth century didn't want nato to define it's international relations and often acted as a semi-neutral go between for american interests, while resisting nato operations in favour of united nations operations. it wanted an independent foreign policy, and had one up until the current prime minister took over. if a liberal government is able to re-establish an independent foreign policy, that kind of relationship might develop between canada, russia and the united states - the latter of two which are on the path to direct conflict. that kind of third power actually has a very important role to play right now and canada is kind of uniquely situated, between them in multiple ways, to play it.

given the american psyche, and we've seen this repeatedly in american history, it's more likely that americans will get up and leave the regions they've damaged than stay and try to fix it. and, the direction that californians and texans and others are going to move towards is north. the question is how far north.

the idea that canada has any real say in the matter is pretty tenuous. we're utterly dependent on the americans for security, and if they decide to move a few units into montreal or toronto we're not really going to have much to say about it. there have been concrete plans, even, to do this - some as a contingency plan for world war two in case the british fell and some as recently as the succession referendum in quebec, which would have ended with clinton declaring montreal the capital of the new state of quebec.

so, is the reality that canada has similar security issues to a country like poland? i think this discussion immediately requires an acknowledgement of the difference of scale. canada is lightly armed, but very large and there's a dramatically different (shorter) history there, despite much of it being unfriendly. yet, it's the same basic dynamic, where canada could conceivably be in need to seek protection from a force which has no future historical role but to dominate it. there's no need to work out the hypocrisy, because there's no need for consistency.

with russia, further, the situation is far less ominous - we really have nothing but commercial relations to look forward to, as russia couldn't possibly pose anything but a pyrrhic threat to canada, no matter how hard it tried to.

i think that sets up some historically strange dynamics that are going to need some foresight to navigate around.

one could even say that russia has met it's match with canada, in terms of natural defence barriers. i mean, they could maybe pull it off. for a week. then, they've doubled their size and are open to immediate dismantling. from all directions. it'd be a race with china for central asia.

which opens the country up as equals, which is my point. cross-polar trade could be the dominant economic relationship in canada within a few decades.

the thing about the kennedy assassination is that it remains unresolved. whether the resolution ultimately ends in filling in details to the official story or in a different story altogether remains an open question, but what is clear is that the story is incomplete. so, theories, in this context, are valid hypotheses to be checked - even if they seem ridiculous.

i tend to lean towards lbj as the most likely suspect. but there were of course a dozen other people with motives and ability. in the end, the story may never be told.

you have to wonder, though, if, at the root of it, it wasn't just some high tory reaction to the irishness of the whole situation. i mean, you have to imagine that these conversations happened in london.

"history has turned upside down, i tell you. there's an irishman in charge of the empire."

british heads of state have been killed for similar crimes of ethnicity in the past. and, really it's not clear that the mindset of the british lords is altogether much different today, when it comes to certain things, than it was a thousand years ago.

given the conspiratorial complexity of certain theories, i just sort of like the simplistic stupidity of this one.

when you spend several days on a specific part, you want to make sure you get it right. then, when you spend a week on it, it'd better be almost perfect. of course, it's complexity grows when you spend that much time on it, as well. so, the importance of getting it right increases. then, when you've spent two weeks on it you're not satisfied with anything less than an impossible ideal.

then, when you're struggling with old age, and you're still cursing the machine for not getting it right, you shit in your diaper and realize the futility of the whole endeavour.

i'm just about done convincing myself this is perfect.

actually, i'm going to have to do a dark mix, too. let's make this an interesting single.

i made a last minute addition and it's extended the time for the vst mix, but it's really almost done. really. i keep saying that, and i have to be right eventually.

most of the singles i'm releasing lately are practically lps in themselves, which is something i may revisit a little - there may be extra mixes added to some of these singles to fill them out.

for the few people that have bought these singles, i'll send out free download links. i'm going to finalize all discs on the date shipped though - meaning clarity and spin are finalized. they're both done anyways, conceptually. there's at least one new psilocybin mix coming. the time machine has multiple mixes, but is under 50 minutes, so it's more a temptation to use the space than to complete the idea. same thing for time. and box. and maybe even stuck. i want these to come to me organically, though. meaning it will likely be slow revisions with no final end point besides death...

for right now, this untitled single is going to be pushing 80 minutes again. and i'm content with that. if i'm going to do this the way i'm doing it, the discs really should be full.

to extend the torture of mixing this track, i've decided to do at least one more mix of it. it's techno-jazz. and i'm focusing on the techno. but i think one mix should focus on the jazz.

the techno vst version will be up before the sun is, i can guarantee this.

so, the mix is finalized, i'm just fighting with the sampler.

it's different every time i play it. and it's bluntly driving me bonkers. i think this is probably by design to make it sound "more real", as nobody plays the same thing the same way twice. but, they seem to have picked rather annoying variables to modulate in order to create this effect, and i can't figure out how to turn it off.

i'll have to adjust in the future by rendering guitar outs to wave essentially immediately. it's going to kill a little bit of flexibility, but at least i'll have control over the sound.

for right now, to get this mix out, i'm forced to keep experimenting with the render until it comes out right. it can't possibly take more than a few more hours to do this...

this is a softer argument that i think i ought to try first and foremost, and continue moving back to...

the fact is that i went in to see the doctor in the first place because i wanted to discuss factors that were disabling me from finding employment. i went through a long process from that point, but the essential premise has remained in stasis. i remain in need of that discussion about factors that are disabling me from finding employment. that needs to be a basic step forwards, and it's unlikely to resolve itself in a period of three months. so, if you're not going to diagnose me on the spot then you need to put the things in motion to have me have that discussion relatively quickly, so i can get another year or two to either be diagnosed more rigorously or to try and carry out any recommendations.

it's funny how you meet these people that think they can conquer any odds. it defies the entire concept of odds to think you can conquer all odds. so, there's an implicit misunderstanding of the concept inherent in this perspective. so, to me, the more interesting question is how such absurdity can arise?

i think there's a simple psychological explanation that essentially renders the concept as relative - despite all arguments to the contrary. it's ultimately just not carefully thought through, of course. but, i think the way it works is basically this - if you've never put yourself up against serious odds, if all of your challenges in life are things that you're more likely to succeed at than fail at, then you might gather the perception that odds aren't important. if you've always been favoured, and you've always won, it's possible to delude yourself into thinking you'll always win. see, that's the odds working, though. kind of comically.

so, you get these situations where people are faced with 100:1 odds and they approach it with the attitude that the situation is inevitably going to unfold in their favour, like every other situation always has. which is the comfort of modern existence, i suppose.

hey, google..

do you think people might enjoy being notified when somebody they subscribe to changes their lead video? i know i'm abusing your system, but i think it's an abuse that could be expanded into a functionality. but, i'm not sure. part of me thinks it's invasive, part of me thinks it's a good idea.

at least the way i'm thinking about using it is a good idea. see, i'm running through my discography in a one-to-one relationship with the time it took to create it. what that means is that my lead track is consistently about 18.5 years ago, which means when i change it is an interesting idea for a long term feed to follow, as you're following a relatively unusual life. it's a character to follow. slowly. i'll probably actually set up my own rss for this when i get around to doing a number of things that are like this. but i still like the idea of using youtube for it directly. put another way, i'm a musician, so the storyline of the "channel" requires a slightly different set of tools to set up to follow.

but, it could be used for pure evil, too. this is a privilege that requires careful checks and balances, and it might be impossible to keep it in line.

so, i dunno. maybe notifications on the lead video change aren't the best idea. but i think that the ability to set up specific feeds to subscribe to kind of really is a good idea.

i know i can set up a playlist and use rss feeds on the playlist adds, but there's no social front-end to this besides facebook, which i'm trying to get away from. and if i'm going to update an appspot site, i don't need an rss feed for it so it's kind of a non-answer.

it's something that would be much better to present inside of youtube...

hell, i'll build it for you if you want to let me hang out in california for a few months.

:).

put simply, it's just the idea of channels having multiple feeds that subscribers can subscribe independently to.

obligatory influential on the track of the week post.

sunday bloody sunday. could i be more iconic? well, it's sort of the point. that martial drum beat exists in many places (before and after 1983) but is likely forever attached to this specific track.

(relevant tracks: idiotic, others)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQZLPV6xcHI

obligatory influential on the track of the week post...

it's right about the point in time where my concept of sound and music was being entirely reshaped by this band. i'm pulling out riverz end, specifically, though, because the track was removed of samples in the final version.

(relevant tracks: idiotic)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84fvBST9o0w

but there are rationalistic explanations for morality, and focusing on supernatural explanations in the form of universals is missing out on an opportunity to study something in detail.

when you're dealing with questions of biology, and the key point to get across is that it is a question of biology, the kinds of laws you see in physics are usually not applicable - because we're experiencing things at the micro level. you zoom out enough, you'll see those laws start to work. but that doesn't mean that what we're observing is universally "true" in some sense. it just means that things begin to demonstrate an order when you view them from a far enough distance of abstraction. which is basically a tautology, and doesn't imply anything of any value.

so, when you're looking at the moral systems of individual cultures this universalizing approach is completely backwards. those universals are just aggregate data. rather, each culture is going to develop an entirely individualized set of moral codes and ethics that apply uniquely to their environments. in other words, it's a question of evolutionary biology.

so, a culture with more scarce or less developed resources might have a tendency towards competition, whereas a culture with more developed resources might have a tendency towards a more social distribution. these things can get crossed when cultural values change slower than the technology does, which is essentially the situation we're in right now. when you look at specific examples of the way that settled people constructed moral systems vs. the way that nomadic peoples did, you see these kinds of differences come out starkly.

i just remember getting into this debate with profs into law or philosophy, and feeling like i was talking to somebody stuck on the other side of an epiphany that should really be old news by now. our morals don't come from a higher being. there's nothing universal about the way they operate. they don't exist in some cloud somewhere; they can't be revealed through mathematics, logic or empirical discovery. rather, they're attempts to ensure our own survival (some failed) that can be understood relatively well when looked at in an evolutionary perspective. nor are they entirely unique to humans in anything but their reflective complexity.

i've got a new lead track up, but i'm going to hold up on the ritual until i'm done mixing what i'm mixing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP2oGdZxFl4

if you really want to entertain the notion, breaking the cycle would necessarily mean erasing yourself entirely from history. there's interesting consequences of that (as history would take a different path without you, however miniscule), but it's not what i was thinking about at first.

what that means is we could never know of anybody that's actually succeeded, because all trace of them would cease to exist.

it follows that all claims of enlightenment through this process are necessarily false.

but, frustratingly, it doesn't eliminate the possibility. it even opens up explanations as to why the event seems so rare - we can only remember the fakes.

it's remarkable how these ideas can reinforce themselves through seeming absurdities.

do dogs understand that they're being used for nefarious purposes?

like a drug sniffing dog for example. do they have enough awareness and empathy to say "yeah, i smell it on this person, but they seem cool so i'm not going to draw attention to it.".

well, we know that dogs are very good at sensing personalities. they seem to react differently depending on your emotional state. so, it's not pure fantasy.

i don't think i'd want to be the one that tests that idea....

you have to wonder if wolves have similar capacities. i mean, they're pack animals. it makes sense that some kind of concept of emotion would develop out of that. but, i would think that contact with humans would be a driving force in evolving that trait. knowing which humans are cool and which humans are assholes is something a semi-wild dog needs to be able to do on a day-to-day basis in order to survive.

you can see something similar in elephants. apparently, they react negatively to people who speak certain languages, because they associate poaching behaviour with those languages. that's something of value to pass on to future generations, even if it's kind of racist.

but what i'm thinking of is pretty sneaky. i think dogs may need at least a few more centuries before they can do sneaky things like that...

i'd love to come across a file of mine deep in the state (i think i'm getting my psychiatric evaluation, just from a distance) somewhere that has this broad stamp of deduction on it, in startling blunt clarity. like, a file marked BONKERS in red stamp. presented as a medical diagnosis...

our evaluation of this suspect is that she is simply bonkers.

....signed off for by a doctor, illegibly, but with credentials typed in boldface. to scream it's legitimacy.

yeah. this guitar sampler has consistency problems, overall. the idea that i could have created this ideal sound by mixing several streams together isn't sustainable. no two renders sound exactly alike.

in fact, i've had to mix a few of the guitar parts down to lock them in place, then add some filters and eqs. i was trying to find stasis in flux and becoming confused by it. i may have to lock a few more down. so, it's looking like it may be a tomorrow upload.

it turns out i have an email list...

so, i just randomly checked my bandcamp settings and out of the blue realized i have a small email list. i've never asked you for your email addresses, because i kind of didn't plan on doing this. but given that you seem to have gone out of your way to provide me with your email addresses, i'm going to oblige the request.

i've been releasing a lot of singles lately, and i'm not generally going to send out an email update when i do. part of the reason i didn't want to do this is that, as a consumer, i find the email update route a little invasive, but i can't tell you how to interact with things and people and ideas, so hey, whatever, man. it does mean i'm going to reserve these messages for major updates. so, email updates will happen only when official records are finished. that's my own rules and bounds for this.

i'm in the final stages of finishing the material i wrote during a "serious music" phase i went through from roughly 2000-2002. putting the singles aside, i'm going to get two official full length records and a number of lps that are not official records out of this. so, this is the update:

1) i finished my fifth disc back in october, which is this one:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj

it's comprised of material written mostly over 2001 and recorded between 2001 and 2014. it's heavily oriented towards the idea of music as a written form.

2) i'm putting the finishing touches on my sixth record over the next few weeks, which is this one:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj-2

this record also has a lot of written ideas, but integrates more fluid writing as well. it was written mostly over 2001 and 2002 and finished mostly over 2014.

3) there are two lps of rabit is wolf material from this period, but they are not official releases in my album chronology.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-wave
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/rabit-is-wolf

4) there will be a double-cd concept record housing the written music written over this period. the first disc will feature the tracks played through a 1990s soundblaster card. these versions are what the songs sounded like as i was writing them, and there's an interesting quality to the sound produced. the second cd will be a mirror image of this, but updated to include more modern vst-synth arrangements. it will exist here:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/thru

so, that concludes this update. until we meet again....

j

if mixing is about making decisions then the mix is done. i just have to make some final edits in the morning.

so, i'm going to do that vst record after all - as a mirror image of the midi disc, to prevent it from seeming superfluous. so, i'm going to release it as a double. hey, it's a neat concept to have the thing flipped over like that, to demonstrate the changes in technology (available to me) that occurred between when the songs were written and when they were finalized.

i guess it turns out that there's more than one way to coherently present this material. rather than fight against that, i'd rather present multiple options.

so, there will be the two proper jjjjjjjjjj discs that have mixes of sequenced music and non-sequenced music. records 5 and 6. then there will be the flip of the midi disc, which has just purely sequenced vst versions of some of the material on the two proper jjjjjjjjj discs. then, there's the collection of singles that have all the versions of each specific track.

2^2*3^2 = 36.

i have to...

there's just too many variables to keep fiddling. this is actually the more efficient approach. which is what i said in the first place, then argued against, but it really is.

except everything came out weird.

i'm going to have to use a spreadsheet instead.

i'm also glad the days are getting longer, again.

i think i'm pretty much used to that hour difference, now. it's from moving from one end of the same time zone to the other end. i'm used to the sun being up by 6:30 pretty much the entire year - and becoming visible not longer after 4:00 during the summer. here, it's quite often not up until well after 7:00. even at the peak of the summer, you're pushing 6:00, which kind of makes it feel like spring the whole year. i made it home in the dark from a compost-drop at 7:45 the other day.

the flip of that is that the sun is still up at 5:30 for pretty much the whole year. which has got me feeling like fall never ended, because i never got the cue of night time at 4:00 on a cloudy day.

i've actually tried switching to central time to recapture the difference, but i just found myself constantly converting in my head. it was just reminding me of it, rather than helping me forget it.

so, i think i'm used to it. but i'd still be nice to get the sun up a bit earlier...

you know, i was going to say something about how people have to go to work in the dark here.

but i guess it's also true that people have to go home in the dark in ottawa. i can remember getting off work in the dark quite frequently.

i think it's kind of better to get off work in the dark, because it just plunges you directly into the night, which is where you want to be when you're working during the day, anyways. but that's just a perception.

i think the more valid reflection is that you're stuck with one way or the other up to a relatively high longitude.

you know, it's true - cats really are always plotting to eat us. like, that cat that's been following me around..

see, i always knew that the cat was really stalking me as a possible prey item, but i was trying to rationalize ways around that obvious deduction, because it's not something you really want to come to terms with. that cat is following me around because it would like to eat me. how pleasant.

i think if it was a really serious concern to me, i'd of course react differently. but it's a cute, black and white furry cat with a bit of a swagger in it's steps. it doesn't really strike me as ominous, even if i know what it's really thinking.

when it comes down to it, though, do i really want to get into a fight with a cat? they seem cute and harmless. but, they're very agile and absolutely capable of catching you by surprise. we have a weak spot - our necks. and, cats are entirely aware of that weak spot. it doesn't take much to take you out through your neck. a smart cat would be able to exploit this.

you think past it, though. it's just a cute cat.

a cute cat that sees you as a possible prey item, if it can just get the right opportunity.

i think these studies that suggest that people that listen to specific types of music are more intelligent because they listen to that music are getting the causality backwards.

first, if you're focusing on a specific genre, you're doing this wrong. if the idea is the abstraction in the music, no specific genre has a monopoly on that. you may get different correlations, depending on personality. debussy is going to appeal to a different type of person than mozart does. and skinny puppy is going to appeal to a different type of person than genesis does. but, it's all abstract music and it should all have basically the same effect, if the factor is the abstraction in the music.

focusing specifically on "classical" music is going to mostly simply produce class differences, which are well understood as having an effect on test scores. it's a situation where x is correlated with y, y is correlated with z and a fallacious conclusion is being drawn that z is therefore caused by y - when it could very well be that x and z are where the causal relationship is occurring.

but the point of this shouldn't be to isolate "intelligent people". "intelligent people" is a pretty broad category, that encompasses humans with a wide variety of tastes. rather, the useful conclusion is something like as follows:

"if you actually legitimately enjoy mainstream pop music, it is probably because you are not of above average intelligence."

but you don't need a study to understand that.

even that's maybe a little unfair, as it's not impossible that you could be into abstract music and still like pop.

maybe something like...

"if you *only* listen to pop music, then chances are high that you're not that bright."

i think the key thing that bugs me about the studies is that they tend to focus so much on mozart. mozart was not the most abstract, creative or interesting writer of his era from any perspective. even people that really like mozart will acknowledge how prodding he could be from time to time. if the studies were based on something a bit more difficult....

i'd expect that if they did a direct comparison between kids that listen to mozart specifically and kids that listen to a spectrum of other "classical" composers, mozart would actually rank near the bottom in terms of test results.

i entirely agree that things are constantly in flux, and the causal model has problems at the micro level. i think the intuitive understanding is that things are happening too quickly for causality to apply. i say intuitive, but that's a tricky thing to understand if you try to break it down, despite it being the intuitive way to kind of understand it.

i think you can try and put some kind of conceptual bounds around it, though. every causal reaction requires a finite amount of time. if there's so much energy in a system that it pushes the cause through faster than a reaction can occur in, then you'd see causality seem like it's not working. you could think of it like a censor failing, by missing a signal because it's too fast - or in some cases like a censor exploding by taking in a signal that zaps it like a laser.

depending on the scale of the subject, the micro might be very perceptible to us. so, the question of how music affects intelligence is micro on this scale - it's reinforcing each other, because it's happening at a time scale that is shorter than a reaction can develop in.

but i think you can still pull out patterns, and the patterns are still meaningful, even if they require some careful analysis.

so, there's two ways to finish a mix.

the first is to fuck with it until you get it right. the second is to fuck with it until you numb yourself to it, and what you've been listening to starts to sound right. the second approach is not inferior, as it reflects the way you've changed your idea of what it should sound like as you've brought it into reality.

this wasn't supposed to take this long; i didn't spend a lot of time setting the guitar modelling in the first place, i just got lost in it because something changed without me controlling it. so, i got lost in finding a "lost ideal". i need to acknowledge that and just move forwards with it.

yeah, so i *did* have to reinstall my guitar sampler. and, what's annoying is that the first part very quickly fell back to where it ought to be. that is, it didn't sound right because the samples were corrupting...and i lost a full week on this....

at least it's evidence that i'm hearing what i am, rather than what i wish i was. what a piss off, though. i think the second half should now finish itself up quickly - maybe even by the end of the night.

maybe i should make a kickstarter or something. hey, it's worth a shot - i'd reflexively have to project it as a joke, in character...but, it's really not all that improbable that it might get me from project to project, if i can put the proper level of eccentricity into it.

the music business is morphing into some other kind of economy altogether. the idea of purchasing music is just kind of becoming out of date. listen, there was a time before music existed for sale in the form of media. it was always likely that a time would come after this, as well.

and, what is the media? it's a product. so, the product is shifting. that is all.

i think the future of this is still a little unclear. could we go back to the days of wealthy benefactors supporting eccentric artists? it might increase the level of discourse. substantially. but, then you need to deal with, like, rupert murdoch in total control of all art in the universe. it may dilute the pool a little, but artistic freedom is totally valuable.

maybe it's a kind of project-auction setup. i mean, if i make it a crazy enough idea, it might just be so crazy that it might work. bwahahaha. ahahaha. (that's an evil laugh, of course mocking of myself, because i'm arrogant enough to value mocking myself, because i enjoy pretending i'm arrogant enough to pretend i value mocking myself, because i enjoy mocking myself, because i'm arrogant enough to ... )

grargh. now, i'm getting weird relics in the second half. distortion running through clean guitar parts. etc. i may have to rebuild it, but kind of don't want to...

i think my device is running a little hot. so, i'm going to stop for the night and hope it's running normally when i wake up.

it sounds like something's crossed....

like, even if i turn the effect off i'm getting distortion, which is not something i've seen before.

it's a melodic distortion, though, so i don't think something blew. it sounds like something's...crossed. like i said. maybe some more plugin reinstalls is in order...

but, to the fucker at the mixing desk: it's supposed to have a cure-like kind of chorus sound, not that bloody overused radiohead light distortion sound.

well, i picked one. tested at multiple volumes. it's what i want.

but i'm kind of feeling like i wasted a week. because it's exactly what i had in the first place.

whatever. moving on...

this is my basic argument.

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

So, the problem isn’t really whether I’m capable or even willing to find employment, it’s more a question of whether anybody is willing to allow me to work for them. And, the answer is that nobody is, and nobody’s going to.

To be honest, I would prefer not to. I don’t think that’s all that unusual. But, I do recognize that I’m not supposed to have a real choice in this matter. So, if I were to choose, what kind of job would I pick? Well, let’s separate out two kind of jobs – high wage jobs with lots of responsibility, or low wage jobs with little responsibility.

I would actually prefer the low wage job with little responsibility. The reason is that my aspirations and goals in life are not within the workforce, they’re within art and academia. Unfortunately, my art is quite unusual (and hence unmarketable) and my academic opinions are equally unusual. If I were to work a high wage job with a lot of responsibility, I would not have the time or energy to devote to my goals and aspirations and would consequently be very unhappy. So, I believe I would be less unhappy working a low wage job with small amounts of responsibility, as it would give me more time to focus on my goals and aspirations. I can also say that I’ve determined this through experiment.

So, let’s focus on the low wage jobs with low responsibility. Unfortunately, this option is not available to me, for the precise reason that I have a lot of education. I’ve tried everything. I’ve tried removing the degree from the resume, I’ve tried adopting colloquial language, and I’m just too transparent – the hiring manager can see quite clearly that I’m introverted and bookish, have an IQ around 150 and am simply not going to fit in to that kind of environment. I don’t have the right profile for this sort of labour. So, while I would prefer this, it’s not something I can actually get. They want young, personable people. I’m simply not that person.

What about the high wage jobs with more responsibility, then? Well, ignoring the fact that I would be unhappy that way, it’s not an option that’s available to me, either, because I don’t have the psychological profile that fits into it. You need to have drive, motivation and a desire to compete. I have none of these things as they apply to private or government sector employment – my aspirations and goals are in art and academia. Worse, I’m not particularly good at integrating into systems of vertical management. Probably the best example to use is what happened when I applied for cra…

They had me write two tests. The first was an iq test, and my grades were very high. 95th percentile. This is consistent with past iq tests I’ve written. The second was a behavioural test, which I’ve failed thrice. What that means is that I’m basically certified by the state as unable to exist properly in a management system. I’m too independent-minded, too willing to take things into my own hands, too unwilling to rely on the hierarchy to make decisions. So, I’m not going to fit in there, either. We can have discussions about this, but my perspective is that the test results are essentially accurate – I’m not good at being told what to do or following what I perceive of as illogical rules for the purposes of protocol or convention. Again, I can’t change this – it’s my nature. A different system would value this, but ours rejects it as anti-social.

So, I’m left without any kind of option. I can’t do the drone work because they don’t want people like me doing it, and I can’t do the higher wage work because I can’t fit in there, either. So, I’m not left with any other option (so long as we accept that starving on the street is not a real option) besides trying to explore the reasons I can’t fit into either environment and trying to construct a disability out of it.

There isn’t a disability underlying my bookish introversion, it’s just my nature. However, I believe that there may be a personality disorder underlying my inability to fit into structured environments. This is what I’m trying to get diagnosed.

So, some examples of past behaviour that fit this pattern….

so, i've concluded that what i'm doing with this is mildly insane. and a waste of time.

i will have an arrangement decided upon by the end of the day, one way or another.

i'm about half done...

it just kind of became clear that trying to put a total order on this is stupid. i want one. so, i cleared out many that were obviously not serious candidates and am now down to about 30.

this isn't the last thing to do with this track, but it's almost the last thing to do. once it's done, the mix should be up within an hour or two.

and then i'll have to make decisions about what i want to pull into the final remaster, which i don't think is going to be anything - maybe just a few effects. i'm not even sure if it's the same timing. i *think* it is, though. i *think* i synced it all those years ago...

deathtokoalas
the title of john maus' new thesis has been leaked:

"On Projecting Pseudo-Intellectuality Through Performing Bad Retro for Stoned Teenagers."

RedPill Swallowed
Jealous.

deathtokoalas
naw. even in my late 90s synth-pop phase, i never had any aspirations towards this. and while my background is in math, and math is kind of like philosophy, my epistemology has always been empirically driven. i'm just dismissive.

RedPill Swallowed
I'm not even going to pretend that I don't need to google some of those words, lol....I'll just agree.  Have a nice day. :)

deathtokoalas
it's not that rough. if you ignore silly people like kant, like you should, and like maus doesn't, mathematics and philosophy share an approach to understanding knowledge, which is based in deducing things from assumptions with logic. this is somewhat - albeit not entirely - contradictory to a scientific worldview, which attempts to understand knowledge through experiment.

it gets confusing when you acknowledge that there are quasi-empirical branches of mathematics (like constructivism). but that can kind of be glossed over for the purposes of getting to my point.

....which is that i don't really have time for speculative branches of philosophy. well, i guess it's fun to read sometimes. and you have to define questions before you can test them. but there's not much room for jealousy, there, as a result of that.

accidentalprotégé
I don't agree with everything that comes out of John Maus' mouth but what makes his music "Bad Retro?" As someone who dislikes socialized medicine I still think Rights For Gays is a banger.

deathtokoalas
i'm a fan of the period he's drawing on, but i just don't hear anything except watered down emulation.

Me Ear
Do ya get out much? Me neither. I'm a fat, damaged idiot tho. And your aspirations to truth are fine if it gets you thru shit. Really. I'm not being sarcastic. Even your aspirations to a superiority over others are harmless here in youtube comment sections. Bluntly tho, you don't know shit. Humanity is a tribe of monkeys that fell out of a tree one unfortunate day. And there's good folks and cunts. That's it. But what do I know? lol. Best wishes.

deathtokoalas
yeah. i'm post-godel. i get that. that doesn't have much to do with what i was saying, though. if anything, it's an argument in favour of empiricism.

Me Ear
Well, thanks for replying. 1 or 2 folks were nasty to you on here. I can be nasty too, very. Godel? Not heard of him, if it's a dude. It's in humans to value truth, yes. But there isn't any. And what you believe? It's not important. I'm exaggerating somewhat, yes.

Religion, philosophy, science, can have a place, yes. But anyway, one guy, or girl, sees a cat with 3 legs, kicks it across the road. Another guy or girl feeds it. All the rest is theory, in my view. And, no, I wouldn't kick the cat, on my worst possible day.

deathtokoalas
godel was an early 20th century mathematician that produced a series of important proofs. he's been described as the most important logician since aristotle. and, in some sense he defined a type of thinking that is necessarily post-aristotlian.

i have to oversimplify dramatically. but, he demonstrated that we have a choice between completeness and consistency. what that means is that there are necessarily true statements that can never be proven true - and that we can in fact prove can never be proven, despite being true.

that has a lot of implications to the axiom-deduction approach to epistemology. it throws kant out the window, to begin with. his whole concept of synthetic a priori knowledge being superior is rendered ridiculous.

again: i don't really see any point where you're disagreeing with me. you're just displaying that you didn't really understand what i typed.

Me Ear
I drink, listen to music and type shit for something to do, which I don't usually remember because I'm mentally disordered, damaged and drunk.

A serious (not sarcastic) question - why post clever stuff on youtube? And, again seriously,  where can doing so lead to?

(There's clever folks on youtube, yes, but most of them seem to end up wanting to die fairly soon after they've posted on the toob amongst folk like me, don't they?) 

deathtokoalas
see, here's the thing: maybe people reading my ranting might click on my name and check out my channel, and then go to my bandcamp site. the more places i leave links, the higher the possibility.

it's a benevolent type of spam/marketing, in the sense that people get something out of it. and, i don't get deleted or marked as spam, either.

Me Ear
I'll look at your channel then. I used to rant til I got a troll. Who had a channel. lol. I looked at it eventually, worst music ever. lol again. You know what tho? Your enemy is your helper too. I imagine you're smart enough to have heard of the concept. Except young kids are killing themselves coz of trolls now.. There was a case of somebody in this country who trolled somebody on 6000 websites. Those 2 should've got married, they had very similar interests.lol. Peace. xxx

i'm making a little progress, but i didn't realize how similar so much of this is...

there's really three parts, with the third doubled and split l/r, but the drum is panned hard to the right so the effect is not commutative. the sound dominating in the headphones is on the left channel, with the right channel adding subtle levels of colour.

the first has some reverb and a little delay, the second is a heavy chorus and the third/fourth are a kind of heavier shadow delay, in that they have almost no dry signal. but the colouring is dramatic.

so, what i'm noticing is that each combination, if held static otherwise, is only minimally different on the right channel. which might seem like it would reduce possibilities - but not all the way down to 27 - but in fact actually requires very carefully listening to isolate the differences.

but i am making progress. splitting the set into three really helped a lot.

this round robin thing isn't working; i'm not comparing apples and apples. rather, i'm going to have to break it down into sets: some renders are "bright", others are "dark" and still others sound very compressed, almost "tinny". comparing them against each other isn't producing a total order. once i can break it into sets, i can compare apples and apples and then figure out which one i prefer as a base sound.

i can't isolate it as a single factor, either. that's why i couldn't get it right. if i take the model down on one and up on the other it will have a similar effect as if i do the opposite thing....

ok, i got the things done i wanted done this morning, meaning i now have a straight week with nothing else on my mind. i just need to get something to eat....

i need to point out that this page is going to change soon. i'm going to be moving the "journal" component off, restricting this to a strict musical timeline that is basically going to be little more than the rss feed from bandcamp...

i think it's probably beneficial. i mean, i'm keeping a journal because *i* want to keep a journal. you may be more interested in just knowing when the music comes up. which is what the rss feed is for. but it's also what a lot of people do with their facebook pages, and what i'm defaulting to.

that being said, i will post the link to the journal when i set it up.

it'll either be at tumblr or blogspot, depending on which gives me more of the options i want to integrate into my appspot site, which is where everything is moving.

there's just a lot of things about facebook i don't like. the spying is kind of a minor inconvenience. i'm more irritated by the lack of control.

it'll be a while, because i'm transferring my main profile first, but it's coming.

actually, i'm feeling a little tired right now from a lot of walking and just want to kind of curl up. i'll be back at this when i wake up.

it would be nice to just download all your facebook posts, but you can't actually do that....

rather than sit and copy and paste for a week or longer, i'm going to do a little when i wake up and a little when i go to sleep. i started this process yesterday. i figure it'll be about a month before it's done. maybe longer, though. there's a lot...

when i get that done, i'm going to want to move to a service that i can integrate more cleanly into the appspot site. i don't know what that's going to be, i'll have to play with it. tumblr. blogspot. i want something where i can control the presentation better. i'll post that when i figure it out.

so, i'll still be posting here for a while, until i figure that out. but i've set the process in motion.

a few years ago, i was arguing that rss was dead because facebook had rendered it obsolete. and, for a while, that may have been true. but, the changes facebook has made have managed to take it from being on the cusp of dominance to virtual irrelevance.

it's now a paid advertising service. they cut out posts. the end user has very little control over what appears in the feed. that's not a replacement for rss, it's a replacement for television.

if whatever replaces facebook learns the lesson, it may kill rss. but facebook has managed to shoot themselves in the foot with it. and i'm going back to the old.

if what you want is a customizable feed that gives you what you want to get, you can't get it through facebook....

rather, you get what facebook has taken payment to promote.

i'm not the first out. but as more and more people leave, it will drive more and more people out until it's a ghost town.

the future of this platform is ad servers talking to each other over a barren landscape...

in the end, it's a case study as to what not to do.

in the end, this isn't going to be empty, but i want to ensure that anybody can just scroll through and not miss posts. that's going to restrict it, basically, to record release dates and posts to essays/papers. and i *will* keep updating that here...

but it's going to look more like a c.v. than a blog. the blog is moving out...

62 of 81 dumped and i think maybe one of them is close to what i really want....

i'll just get these dumped today and start comparing them when i wake up.

so, there are three parameters to modify in the four simultaneously playing guitar tracks.

3^4 = 81 different possibilities.

i've played the thing back far more than 81 times. if i don't do this systematically, i'll never finish it. i need to ensure that i've heard all possibilities and am picking the best one before i mod it further.

so, i'm dumping all 81 possibilities to wave file...

i'll then have to put together a sort of round robin tournament, where i hold parameters constant and check for the differences in one parameter. the "winner" will move on to the next round. eventually, there will be one file left and that's what i'll go with,

hey, i studied math for quite a while. i can't abolish my nature. it just means it'll take another day...

ugh.

i've been through this before, but i keep doing it. i know the reality: trying to recreate a patch you thought was "perfect" from scratch is basically chasing a utopian fantasy. it's not real. it can never be real...

...because, what is "perfect"? it's no doubt better than what actually existed. and, so, for all i know i could have dialed right past what i had in the first place and not realized it, all the while afraid to make too many changes because i might lose the imaginary ideal that i'm projecting, the sound that never existed in the first place.

so, i just need to dial it to something close and then be a little less paranoid about modifying it. it's starting to seem like i'm going to want to add a fifth part on the high end...

yeah. i'm mad at myself. i've got this kind of thurston moore meets allan holdsworth guitar part quadrupled, and it was just what i wanted to hear, but i fucked up the modelling by freezing and unfreezing the tracks. now, i can't get it right...

it's four parts running simultaneously, so it's not tweaking one thing. it's tweaking four things that combine to create one thing.

i may have to sleep on it.

so, i got my extension pretty easily. i didn't even have to ask for it. suggesting somebody's reading this....

hey, it's alright. it's evidence in my favour, right?

so, i have until april, now. camh is on the 12th of january. that gives me plenty of time to work something out in a less dramatic fashion and pushes possible appeals forward until july. that's actually enough time that i might get the discography done, at which point plans begin to shift.

i'm hoping i can get at least two more years on odsp, which should hopefully give me enough time to (1) complete the discography and (2) get a good chunk of the reading i want to do before i go back to school done. if i can get five years, it should transition me just about perfectly into a master's program somewhere. possibly in kitchener or london. there's reasons i moved to windsor, but the local place of higher education is not one of them. i stayed at carleton for a really long time because i was tied to the city and it was really a better option than ottawa for the things i was studying (and also because i liked the campus). but i think that going to a lower ranked school actually stifled me a little in terms of dealing with less than brilliant profs and slightly tedious curricula. if i'm going back to school, i'm going to go to a good one.

the flip side of that is that i really, really like where i'm staying. i wouldn't move unless i was pretty serious about it. and i'm projecting that forwards, but it's hard to predict where my head is going to be in 5 years.

and, if i can get permanent, i can basically just work out my ideas without the necessity of having to deal with the education system at all. i think there's something to be said for being the eccentric oddball that escapes peer review by publishing papers to appspot.

but, one thing at a time: i got my extension. so i can relax for the holidays and start scheming in january.

i've been playing with levels all night. and there's a nasty memory leak in my drum plugin causing me to stop and start. it's probably the last time i'm using it.

i've got a phone call to make at 8:30 and i think this should be done by then. and i think the final mix should be done by the time i leave for camh tomorrow, if i have to leave for camh tomorrow.

i was thinking i'd probably move some of the vst stuff over, but it's not going to be much, if it's anything at all.

i think i got it. or at least i think i'm happy with it. but the undo function isn't really good enough. i want total rewind. maybe that's a use for those glasses google is trying to sell, and nobody seems to want. because, really, what the fuck are they besides a surveillance device?

i'm seriously considering installing a camera on my screen to keep track of what i'm doing, so i can rewind the thing in case i haphazardly change something and forget what i did.

i mean, telling myself doesn't seem to work. and it's not even feasible, when you really think about it.

i bet the cia'd love that, huh?

untitled (pretentious mix)

this is the version that i modified from the cakewalk output, but i ended up rejecting it because i added some guitar and synth parts that don't really work well with the track. i do a lot of improvisational noise, and wanted to integrate that aesthetic, but, instead, it just comes off sounding a little pretentious.

it wasn't long before i realized my error, but i hadn't saved a version i could go back to so i was sort out of luck. what i ended up doing was cutting the middle part out of the track when i used it for the reflections ep, then just dropped it from the symphony altogether.

nor can this be effectively reconstructed from the source, due to it having multiple paste overs after the cakewalk mixdown that are impossible to locate in the file. the result is something like a little reverb/delay on the track. it's consequently a unique, discarded mix that must simply be left as is.

dated to sept 10, 2002. uploaded, unmodified, on dec 14, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-pretentious-mix

so, i'm skipping the rejected mix. it was rejected for good reasons. there were only four extra parts to it, and they're going to end up fixed up n the final mix, so it would just be superfluous.

that means i'm already stating the vst mix after i eat.

it also means i'll have room to put an early version of the first movement of the fifth symphony on the end of this single, which is good because it's really the right place for it.

parts of the rejected mix will reappear on the seven track version of the reflections single release, because i was distributing it the way. i cut the middle out when i did this. i ended up taking the song out of my fifth symphony, so it won't be on the two track 5/6 disc. rather, the final mix will be on j^2.

but, then you're not getting everything on the single, which is the point.

gah.

ok, i need to get this up, after all. i can't modify it because i put it through a mild delay. but at least it was never compressed.

uploading already completed mixes of untitled to inri061 & inri070

1) this track was initially written as a folk punk song, but i jumped to the scorewriter with it almost immediately. the expanded guitar demo was written in a scorewriter and then performed, rather than vice versa. it was initially less about explicitly creating a techno song and more about ordering the parts in a way that could be deconstructed more effectively.

the taiko drum part was initially just to keep time; it wasn't supposed to be a part of the song. but, as i built it up i began to realize how interesting it sounded as a techno tune and sort of ran with it.

written over the summer of 2002. this render is from dec 13, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled


2) i programmed this over late july and early august, 2002. render from december 13, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/soundblaster-mix-7


3) when i initially recorded the track in cakewalk (as an experiment with the program) on a windows 98 machine, i ran out of ram after eight tracks and had to go back to my normal wave editor collage-build mixing process to finish it. unfortunately, i didn't really like the edits i made and ended up defaulting to this version for many years. however, it was only saved in mp3...

on aug 11, 2010, i converted the track to 32-bit directly from the mp3 (which i verified in dec, 2014 via phase inversion) and uploaded it to bandcamp, as a part of the never really finished and with now unclear future tetris project ( jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/tetris ). while i don't feel that the sound quality of the track is sufficient to act as a base for a final version, the process of compressing, decompressing and then converting to 32-bit produced something special on the bottom end that i feel is worth keeping for it's own sake.

dated to sept 1, 2002.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-out-of-ram-mix

just a note that things are converging towards an early 2015 shut down date for my facebook presence, which i've been planning for quite a while. i'm making that call on monday morning; if i have to stand outside for four hours, it's ok because it will be nice out. if things work out, i will have time to migrate out of facebook when i get to the shift in my discography (i'm calling it the shift from period 2 to period 3) that happened at the beginning of 2003. it's a natural point to stop and review what i've done over the last year. i'm currently in september, 2002. as an aside, my movement through will likely speed up from 2003-2005 because i don't have the pile of unfinished tracks over this period that i had from 2001-2002. 2005-2011, however, has even more unfinished stuff that will require even more work. i mean, the 2001-2002 stuff was mostly written out in scores or in my head, it just had to get it finished. i'd guess that only about half of the 2005-2011 stuff is fully written; the rest of it exists in sort of vague descriptions. for example, i have a concept record tying ideas of simultaneous "crash" (oil crash, economic collapse, aliens crash landing...there's a narrative....) together that is penciled in for 2006 but only consists of a 9 minute opening noise collage and the first few minutes of a score...considering that this may be a double, that's almost a full construction required.

i've been putting migrating off this site off because it's a two week long project and i've been prioritizing getting as much as i can done before i come up against this possibility of losing my income source. if it doesn't work out, i don't want a website to be what i have to show for my last few months. but if i'm confident i have more time, it will become a priority to get off this.

facebook just isn't the right way to get this documented. basically, i actually like the timeline. that's what i'm using, here. but even the timeline is stupid - it cuts out posts when you're floating through. what's the point of that? my life history isn't something to be upvoted or downvoted.

so, i'm going to basically convert the timeline out of this hideous server side php thing to a hardcoded html file and put it up at my appspot site. i'm going to want to find a way to get an rss feed out of it, and dump it to the music site. i'm then going to delete all of the content here and stop posting.

in the mean time, i'm still updating. but that will stop soon one way or another.

i'm realizing i'm kind of giving into the google monopoly of the internet.

but, based on what i actually want, they're simply doing everything right...and these other sites just aren't...

i'm leaving the account open because it's still the best way to find concerts. otherwise, i don't really have any use for this anymore.

as far as public commentary is concerned, i'm using google+ to rant. if you're enjoying my ranting, that's where i'm doing it. part of it is that all these privacy concerns on facebook are rather counterproductive for me; i like the idea of twitter's hashtags, but i find the character limits make the site useless. i mean, it's the internet. the internet ought to be public. if you want privacy, i'd argue you should just not post on the internet. but, for me, because i'm constantly trying to draw attention to myself, it doesn't make sense to have things housed in this space. when i post a rant to google, it gets cross-listed to a video on youtube that the whole world can access. and that's what i actually want, not this friend-zone exclusive area.