well, i got around this by finding a deleted version and carefully reconstructing it. it's back to where it should be, which tells me there was something wrong with the cubase file. i'm still having a hard time understanding what's going on without resorting to interception, but i do think that cubase can get a little bit weird when you back files up to an alternate drive and that it's a way out of thinking it's the government spying on me. the thing is i'm not convinced.

but something was corrupted, and it's been fixed by going to an earlier version before it got fucked. this basically means i have to finish it before it gets fucked up again. so expect the mix relatively soon. i was really at the point where i just had to mix some synths in before it started sounding like crap - it was basically done. the only other thing is that guitar part which i wanted to cut into a hundred pieces but may have to find some other approach to...

it's very hard for me to explain the following.

1) no latency issues.
2) sleep.
3) latency issues.
4) find old file.
5) modify old file so it's identical to newest file.
6) no latency issues.

how can latency issues depend on the file? that's nonsense...

and they appeared out of nowhere.

as mentioned, there's a pattern here. stuff disappearing. settings modifying. etc.

but i've got a window here, i need to use it...

so, who is the fucker at the mixing desk?

i've let on a few times that i'm conceiving of him as the comic book guy, chowing down doritos that are falling out of his mouth and on to the board and muttering "no, no, this is all wrong - she means to do it like *this*.", which promptly leads me to want to strangle him.

i'm getting the perception, recently, that the surveillance is a little more sophisticated, which is leading me to question my perceptions.

who is the fucker at the mixing desk? i don't know, but it's becoming unbearable and i consequently need to request - again - that this ceases. my time is being wasted, and i don't have a lot of it left...

i spent a good part of the last week on this, and got to the point about friday where i could get a rough mix out. over the last few days, i've been lethargic - partially depressed that the out doesn't sound the same, partially refraining from nicotine. today, i began to notice that the file is skipping very badly and narrowed it down to a latency issue.

now, here's the thing: there was not previously a latency issue. i did not add any effects or buses or anything at all. it's the same file. one does not go from no latency issues to latency issues for no reason.

the one thing that i did change was that i unplugged from the internet....

now, here's the thing that is consistent with the other evidence i've compiled that my audio is connected to an external server: the direct out rendered the way it should, even as the playback sounded muffled and was skipping. that itself is not unusual. but what it indicates is that the processor is picking up extra shit on playback. that it wasn't picking up before. what, exactly?

now, as mentioned, i'm unplugged from the internet. there's no wireless in this machine at all. that doesn't mean remote operation is impossible, but it means that:

(1) it would be slow and
(2) it would require some expertise.

i'm not going to pretend that i know how to do this, but if you check any electronic device manufactured in north america there's a little statement on the back that states "we can remote control this with radio". this applies to everything from your cell phone to your microwave. but it means i'm not talking about a fucker at a mixing desk, i'm talking about a fucker at csis, and the noise and clicking and screwed up mixes i'm getting is essentially a byproduct of being monitored.

the logic may be along the lines of "if she doesn't want to buy a phone, we'll monitor her mixer instead".

so, listen....

....you idiots....

...you can clearly hear that all you're picking up is the music. and, you're interfering in my music production rather dramatically, whether you mean to or not. i'm not attempting to cut you out because i'm trying to hide my riffs and beats from you. i'm trying to cut you out because you're fucking up the monitor on the mix by adding empty space, which is killing the definition and making everything sound compressed.

i tend to be transparent, because i realize it's a better idea for the intelligence agencies to understand what they're dealing with to prevent misunderstandings. for example, i think it's a good thing for them to know i don't own any weapons, because it will prevent any overreactions. so, the idea of being listened to is actually something i'm indifferent to. i recognize the potential for abuse and think it shouldn't happen, but it's not something that really seriously bothers me on a personal level.

but, this is interference, and that's something very different.

i'm not plugging back in until i'm confident that the radio hack has stopped. and, from that point forward, what i want is for the software used to be updated so that it doesn't interfere with the people being monitored. which is probably a good idea anyways.

again: i'm ignoring the stupidity of the fact that you're monitoring a composer with no income and no friends. i don't have the time or interest to drag this through court; that's a waste of my time. i'm just demanding that, if you're going to monitor me, you do it in a way that is non-invasive.

in the meantime, i'm going to have to mix from render. which means i'm going to have to render the track every time i touch the mix. this is extremely time consuming. but you leave me no choice until you fuck off...

the blunt reality is that there's nothing to monitor. i make music, i read, and i eat. i do this entirely by myself. there's no hidden network. i simply don't know anybody.

so, it's not that i'm hiding connections and you need to monitor me to find them. it's that i don't see any use in paying for a device i'll never use. and, that you're basically harassing somebody that is of no use to you.

so, stop.

let me mix....

i was able to fix it by swapping out the bus, which again only makes sense if it's corrupted somehow....

so, i'm hoping that the reset i just allowed will correct the problem. however, i'm not wasting time if it isn't corrected.

i'm getting this weird "fucker at the mixing desk" vibe again. it's completely disconnected, beyond any possible remote...yet, the sound is noticeably different...

i've decided i'm not fucking around with this. i'm not being careful about it. i'm not waiting for reversals. if i think the mix has been modified, i will drastically alter it. i may blow it up and start from scratch.

i feel i have to take a zero tolerance approach to get the message across: if you alter my mixes, it will cost you a lot of money. so stop.

i will ensure that the time i'm losing in mixing things is being lost, monetarily, by whomever is fucking with me. and, if it means i get nothing else done before i kill myself next month, then whoever is responsible for that will need to be judged by history for it....

that was a weird few days of heavy sleeping and nicotine withdrawal (again) interspersed with fatigue from dramatic temperature shifts (i don't understand it either, but it's consistent), but i'm alert now. i have a lot of cuts and edits to make but it won't be too too long...

uploading transitional untitled to the scratch pad

i've uploaded a temporary mix to the scratchpad that represents a properly mixed version of the track as it would have existed had i not run out of ram when mixing it back in 2002. i'm not putting this up at bandcamp because of it's transitional nature; the next mix will take this transition mix as a core and work in the other parts i recorded in 2002. there will be a final mix that adds in some extra synths, and maybe some new guitar parts...

as always with the scratchpad (accessible from the about section), ideas are welcome - even though i'll probably ignore them. this will only be up until i'm done the next mix, which will probably be this afternoon....

no. close though.

yeah, i'm plowing through this. soon.

i think this mix is done before the next sleep for sure.

ostrich

it's been a while since i uploaded anything totally new, so i'm going to jump ahead a little with this. it's not clear how i'll be presenting this, yet.

this is an abandoned mix from late 2002 (uploaded unmodified) and will be the track i'll be working on next.

as this is the last track of the jjjjjjjjjjj phase, i'm going to finish this as an epic. it's an exceedingly rough skeleton. i thought i had more of a score than i do, so i'm going to have to score it first. again: i thought this would be sort of quick, but it clearly needs a lot of work.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/abandoned-mix

so, i'm relatively confident i got the first half done, but i'm going to have to sleep on it....

i think i'm over the hump. thankfully.

yeah. i'm feeling myself moving out of the dead phase and into the manic phase. let's get this fucker done...

what i need to do is just sit down and put the thing on repeat and tweak it mildly until what i want comes out. i keep saying this won't take long, but i'm realizing this was a false projection. it's gonna be a while...

i feel i'm finally making some progress with this....

grargh.

i'm having difficulty focusing. with all the other stuff i'm always going on about, if you had a bit of an outline of my life you'd maybe question why i'm not wondering about add. i'm kind of textbook, actually. but it's never really been something i can't get over. and i'm not about to start popping crack-cocaine....

to answer the question directly? i don't accept the existence of add. i think it's just an excuse to sell drugs to kids. sorry.

so, what's really going on?

well, i've been through this before. repeatedly. it's generally driven by a feeling of ineptitude. meaning it's more like a type of depression that sets in when the tasks in front of me aren't easy to complete. i think this stems from not going through a lot of difficulty as a kid. i was a gifted kid. i didn't learn to struggle. i didn't learn to compete; there was nobody to compete with. i wasn't faced with something i couldn't do with minimal effort until i was in my 20s, and i simply didn't know how to approach the situation. i kind of go into these states of shock, instead, where i can't address what i'm supposed to be addressing.

when i know i can get what i want out of my tools, i tend to be very efficient. it's when i'm not sure how i'm going to proceed that i start to procrastinate. it's the same thing with all aspects of my life. if i know how i'm going to approach an essay, it's done relatively quickly. if i don't, it's not done until the last minute, or a week past the due date.

what it exposes isn't some kind of chemical imbalance that can be fixed with drugs. it's more like a reversed value system. i don't have this "protestant work ethic". and i don't glorify hard work. rather, i expect to be talented enough to do things without trying, and i get depressed when i realize i'm not.

i don't find forcing it helps. it has to pass. but what's pissing me off at this particular point in time is that the amount of time i have left is probably limited. i'll find out on the 17th. but it's very likely that i will take my own life sometime between april and july, as my disability runs out and i'm left without further acceptable options. i should be getting as much done as i can...

instead, i find myself wasting time on youtube.

my goal over this period was supposed to be to get a whole lot done. but i've wasted most of the last month, and am not really clear when this is going to lift.

if i'm not able to focus on this track within a day or two, i'm going to have to skip it and come back to it.

the first time i EVER received ANY grade less than 70 was in the second year of university.

there's been a lot written about why c students end up managing things, and a students end up as drone workers. a big part of it is no doubt due to reducing independent thought in management, which is a fundamental tactic of the class war. that is, the big bosses don't want the little bosses to be smart - they just want them to be obedient. but i think another part of it is that kids with lower grades are more resilient. they have to fight harder, younger. it becomes a more dominant component of their life.

somebody like me that walks into the eighth grade, gets thrown out for picking on the teacher and then gets an a anyways because i was at a twelfth grade level when i was 8 just spends that whole process in stasis, whereas somebody that's moving at the grade level in the way the system demands is constantly struggling and learning.

at the end of it, i spent high school tossing planes and smoking pot - and still got an a average because i could have passed an equivalency test in the 7th, before i set foot in the place. the kid that struggled through with a B- consequently learned a whole lot more than i did, both scholastically and non-scholastically. when the kid that struggled walks out of school, they're walking into a world they were prepared for. when i walked out of school, i was walking into a world i didn't understand at all.

i guess it took me ten years just to figure that out.

and, at the moment, i haven't the faintest clue how to address it.

all i know is that, when i'm faced with a challenge, i tend to get depressed and give up rather than become determined and try harder.

ok, i’m ok. back to work.

super sore right arm...

the first thing that jumps to mind is that i've been dealing with a lot of symptoms of ms lately, and it's more evidence. but i feel that's jumping to conclusions. it might be correct, but what else could it be?

sore arm = heart attack? it's on the right side, which doesn't *really* matter. but it feels like a muscle issue. i've had my blood pressure checked several times over the last few months, and it's actually very low. so, i'm going to write that off as obscure.

carpal tunnel syndrome? don't laugh. i do absurd amounts of typing, and noticed my left wrist was a little sore the other day. i think i'm going to want to monitor that. but it's a little too high up in the arm.

for right now, i'm actually going to merely assume that i pulled it a little doing groceries yesterday. i ended up with a bigger bag of fruit than i was expecting because the strawberries and bananas were both on sale. and i had a coffee in the other hand, along with a knapsack full of soy milk and oj, because it was also on sale. so, it was a big haul. i felt it as i was walking, but not when i got home; then again, you generally don't notice it until you wake up.

i do a lot of walking, but no muscle training, so i'm in very good health but weak as a twig. the solution is to fix my bicycle and start using it...

a sore arm probably won't slow me down tonight, but it might. we'll have to see if it prevents me from sitting up or if i'm going to have to spend the night in bed.

this bloody track....

i've been experimenting with it off and on for thirteen years and it just won't connect.

but it will. it must. dammit...

i'm considering deconstructing the drum collage, which is built up from about fifty samples and is going to be a lengthy process. having the bass drum and cymbal crashes in the same file just isn't mixing well, as i really want to equalize them separately.

but there's a few things i want to try before i do that, because it's going to lead to a drastic change in the track that i want to avoid. like, i want to remix it, not rewrite it. this is a track that has all the components i want, but that i could just never mix the way i wanted it.

another problem is that the source is not clean, and the effects are mostly rather dry. it was the first time working in a real daw, and i didn't have the necessary foresight....

so, i may have to redo some of the guitars, but it's going to be a last resort.

i very, very rarely feel as though i need outside production help. but with all the focus i spend on effects and mixing, it's worthwhile to point out that i'm an experimental guitarist, i'm not a producer. this is the rare moment where i might want to talk to a techno producer about some specific eq/compression choices...

in the end, though, experimenting is the only possible approach, regardless of knowledge or experience levels.

it will sound "right" soon enough. just gotta keep tweaking it

i mean, i have tools available to me now that i didn't have then. i have no excuse not to nail it. and i will nail it.

untitled (out of ram mix)

so, i've spent most of the night listening to two nearly identical versions of this track and trying to decide which one i want to use.

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. 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. however, i'm going to have to keep the track as download-only for two reasons. the first is that i'd have to convert back to 16-bit to burn it. the second is that there's not going to be room on the disc for it, anyways.

so, i'm leaving that as it is - and the next thing i'm going to do is revisit the remix of this that i did to emulate it. now, yes, i'm going to take a snapshot at this point, but it's also going to act as the core of the final mix, so it's going to have to be a little more produced sounding. that's kind of why i felt the need to make this available. it seemed foolish to sit there and try and make a clean mix sound like a muddled mp3 mix; i got a cool bass sound out of the compression, and i should just let that be. if i'm going to remix it, it makes more sense to remix it for optimal quality.

so, that's the next thing. i've got a few hours to blow while i wait for the temperature to hit zero, then i need to do groceries. it won't be done today, but it will probably be done and uploaded for tomorrow.

this is dated to sept 1, 2002.

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

i saw it again out the window tonight...

it's definitely too small to be a cougar, but the tail is too big to be a house cat.

it might be a fisher.

this is outside the fisher range, though. hrmmn. it's in the "historic range".

it could have been a pet. either way, i don't think it's cause for concern. there's my "testing" and neutralizing...

i mean, fishers are violent, nasty things. no doubt. but they're not powerful enough to pose me a serious threat the way a mountain lion would...

removing corrupted files from youtube

i just took four more songs down and will promise to be more careful about uploading things in the future. everything up here is now done, with the exception of that intro track which needs to be completed.

taken down...

1) this is out of sync and will require a re-render. it was rendered in a hurry on equipment i wouldn't normally use to render and i didn't even think to check the latency.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/orb-symphony


2) this is the track i'm currently working on completing, and a complete version will be the next upload.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/untitled-ep-single


3 & 4 were stranded versions of the following tracks:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/strung-out


https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/trepanation-nation


they were all uploaded haphazardly when my drive crashed, and, again i lost hits on that. that's about 1000 lost hits. but they weren't done...

alright, finally. back at it as of right now...

i said when i started inri042 that it wouldn't take long, and then got stuck playing with a guitar sampler before i realized i had to put it aside to come back fresh at it. the basic reality that this isn't a complex process remains true, so it should be up fairly quickly.

after this, the next track to finish is this "ostrich" thing that was initially meant as sarah's christmas present for 2002. i ended up shelving it in favour of "flying". i'm not sure exactly how this is going to work out, but it's going to finish several releases simultaneously - there'll be a single that will represent that birthday present, it will be the last track for j^2 and it will be the last component of thru (excepting a vst reversion of the birdsong). rather than produce separate singles for all of this, i may construct a "bird ep". birds were a thematic point for me, coming from several different angles; i'll explain all of this as it comes up.

my fifth symphony comes up next and i'm going to need to listen to it closely to determine the right approach. the early 2002 release will likely come up unaltered; i'll leave any mods for further releases.

there's going to be an ambient works after that, which will be a compilation. i'm going to want to sequence it, but it shouldn't be long, either.

that will take me up until i got back from bc, where i'm going to need to pause to analyze the best way to present some material. my sixth symphony is also in a completed form. there will be a few demos that will need to come up, as is, as well.

the next major project will be my seventh symphony, which is about 80% done. my eighth symphony will need to follow, and it is not recorded at all. there's a few minor projects to clean up in the middle of there. there's a programming project dated to late 2004 that i'm not sure i want to take on at all and will have to think carefully about.

i've been saying for a while that i will be rapidly jumping from late 2002 to late 2004, and it hasn't happened yet. but it will be happening right now. i want to at least get to that point by february 17th, when i have an important appointment scheduled. so, i think you can expect a lot of uploads and very little talking over the next month.

this will get me through the tail end of my second period and through the part of the third period that i have completed. the second half of my third period is going to require approaching demos from scratch and will *not* be a quick project.

symphony 5 and 6 are basically complete, and exist on youtube. symphony 7 is incomplete and only exists online right now as the third component of this gestating double record. symphony 8 will be the fourth and final component. this is the major result of my third period.

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


this is a demo of the 8th symphony:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-lost-symphony-winter-2007


that ^ actually includes the end of the 7th, as well.

and, now there's cougars EVERYWHERE....

part of the reason i'm not calling this in is that i *know* i have an irrational fear of predatory cats. like, i know there's not really a cougar lurking in the bushes across the street - even though, if there was a cougar around here, it would be a good place to check. i know it's the wind, combined with my eyes playing tricks on me (and my eyesight not being very good, when discussing distances). what looks like a cougar is probably just an oddly shaped branch. i realize this.

i have a number of irrational fears like that. usually i can work it out. this undiagnosed schizophrenia is a double-edged sword when the individual has a worldview rooted in empiricism. it pulls on you. it's nagging. but there's usually a way to *test* it, and then you know. the problem with the predatory cats fear is that if you're legitimately concerned that there's a cougar lurking in the bushes then going over to investigate isn't the best approach to dealing with it because if there *is* a cougar in there - however unlikely - then you become lunch. as i can't test this, i can't neutralize it.

i'm pretty sure it ultimately stems from studying them when i was a kid. and, this is actually something i've been dealing with since i was about eight. i have very clear memories of seeing a tiger in my neighbourhood when i was a kid, and avoiding a specific area because i was certain of it. i guess the trend over the last little while has been with dinosaurs; it's not uncommon to meet kids that can classify every type of jurassic diapsid - and i was admittedly pretty good at that myself. but i had a thing with cats, specifically. i could tell you the difference between a jaguarundi and an ocelot, tell you what their ranges were, whether they were endangered or not, etc. so, when i say i saw a bengal tiger near the pool, i meant a bengal tiger - because i knew.

but, of course, it was probably always the result of an overactive imagination. it's probably a better idea to get your kids classifying dinosaurs than predatory cats, because they're going to understand that the chances of coming face to face with an albertosaurus are pretty remote. predatory cats, however, still exist.

there's really only one that we're likely to come face-to-face with here in canada. hence, the fear of cougars.

i was a total nervous wreck when i was hitchhiking through bc, convinced i was going to be mauled. it's my most vivid memory of the trip, which i'm getting to in the musical chronology. and that might have something to do with this, right now.

but it's just a lot easier to work it out in my head than it is to actually shake it.

i expected this was going to happen...

my isp is cutting my plan out. they just doubled my usage cap from 75 gb to 150 gb and increased my bill by $3. but, these are my actual usage stats recently:

nov: 15 gb
dec: 9 gb
jan: 8 gb (so far)

i wouldn't want lower than 50 gb, for the security blanket. but i'm rarely going to go over 20 gb. 150 gb is completely useless to me.

i'm not going to make any changes, because it's still under $30, which is my breaking point. for now, i can just treat this as inflation. i refuse to pay more than that. why? because i always had unlimited access for less than that. i don't want or need more bandwidth. i want a cheap plan in the 3-10 mbps range, and i'll take as low as a 50 gb limit if i have to.

but, it's coming up on it. and if i can't find the cheap enough option, i'm willing to cancel altogether. if you don't believe me, take note: i believe phones are overpriced and haven't paid for one in over five years.

i have no problem going to the library every few days instead...

like, i guess i'm ok with usage-based billing on some level - if you cut the flat rate. go ahead and charge me $1/gb or something. if you make it flat, i'm going to save money, in the long run, because my usage is so low.

but don't sell me a service i don't want, and then deny me the opportunity to downgrade....

i guess i'm still old-fashioned, in the sense that the dominant thing i do on the internet is READ.

yeah...

if i saw a cougar zoom by, it seems to have been smart enough to take the sidewalk to avoid tracks. and i DID see it up along the sidewalk. but there's no tracks coming on or off the sidewalk. more importantly, there's no tracks coming back and forth from the tree, which is what i was really worried about.

there's some tracks across the street, but they look smaller. skunk, maybe. or even a house cat.

so, i basically have no evidence. and i'm not calling in such an outlandish claim with no evidence. i'm not going out after dark for a while, though....

i tell you, though, it sure looked like one. but it was dark.

actually, i think i just saw a fucking cougar outside the window.

i said "clear canid tracks". well, all i could tell was that they weren't human, really, and that they were quite large. clear, large paws. but could i tell the difference between wolf/coyote tracks and cougar tracks? no. but, i mean, coyotes wouldn't be that unusual. a cougar, on the other hand...

i just had a bad feeling about going out for a smoke tonight, so i had one in my back room instead. i looked out the window and saw a rather large cat zoom by on the sidewalk...much, much larger than the one that hangs out around here...

...and not the same colour. yes, it was dark. and it admittedly seemed to have more of that bobcat grey than that cougar peach. but it also had a long tail, which bobcats and lynxes don't have.

is this even possible? are there cougars around here? that's a tricky question. apparently, the answer is an emphatic yes, but it's not entirely clear what their range is or where they've come from. the official story is that they were hunted to extinction in this region well over a hundred years ago, but there have been consistent unconfirmed reports of cougars in the region basically ever since. and there have been confirmed reports in southern ontario over the last few years, with some people believing that they're migrating back into the area, others believing that some "pets escaped" and still others arguing that they never really were extinct in the first place. there have apparently been numerous sightings in the waterloo region, recently.

i didn't get a really good look - not good enough to state it was really a cougar with any certainty. those tracks are long gone. and i'm not going back out until the sun comes back up.

but i'll have to check for tracks in the morning.

i think it would be rather remarkable to confirm a cougar sighting in an urban area like this.

http://blogs.windsorstar.com/news/cougar-sighted-near-ganatchio-trail

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/alleged-cougar-spotted-in-southern-ontario-1.1252531

it seems like grey cougars are a thing that exists. hrmmn. that was my largest point of skepticism.

i think i saw a cougar on my front lawn. creepy.

ok, i just finally finished that. fuck. i'm not touching it for a while. it's a vortex of wasted time...sucks you right in...

back to work after "lunch".

987 pages, so far, btw.

yeah, i'm not doing this. or not right now. i feel like i'm forcing it.and i've bought eps with forced remixes that aren't worth it. it's not like i have a demand to print this. if i do print it, though, i'll have to think about this before i get there.

i want this to come to me more organically. it's like...i have the abstract idea of wanting to take it in that more glitch hop direction, but i don't have a concrete plan and don't want to just fuck with it for content.

more likely is that i'll be playing with something at some point and it will click. for now, on to inri042...

i've been sleepy. think it's the weather. another short day....

i'm still undecided. it's just...

that time single is not sitting so well with me. it seems a little haphazard. 35 minutes is a little short. i feel it needs at least one further remix....

but the "glitch hop" mix i want to do is sort of similar to the instrumental that is up.

i'm still thinking about this. i should really just sit down and do it. but i want the link dump cleared up until i moved to windsor before i move forwards, which is another month.

ok, i'm basically done. another hour. i've worked it down to a question of whether i want to do another remix of time or not and am leaning against it for right now....but i have to make that decision in the next hour or two...

i think i should be back to inri042 by around midnight.

some people drink 3/4 of a bottle of something on their birthday and pass out somewhere.

i ate 3/4 of an x-large pizza and passed out somewhere (safe). although it may have been the cough syrup. so, maybe not tomorrow, but the next day at the latest...

i probably won't eat for like a week, now....

i will be finished what i'm doing tonight and moving on to finishing inri042 tomorrow.

siren’s sound review

for the sake of transparency, this post came up on my request, and it seems like the "reviewer" (he's more of a link sharer than a reviewer) was a little befuddled by it.

his analysis...

A TOTALLY STRANGE FORM OF PSYCHEDELIC NOISE

well, it fits. and to an extent i revel in that sort of confused reaction; it means i'm doing something right. but it's the kind of site where the odd person that stumbles upon it might connect with it, so this is a good start with this...

http://www.thesirenssound.com/2015/01/12/deny-everything/

i'm going to get something like 1/1000 on youtube. i might get 1/100 or something at a site like that. the flip side is i'm going to get ten times as much traffic at youtube....

well, he took me *half* seriously. and it turns out he could fill out the forms, but decided not to. instead, i got two appointments in february - which is enough to string me along without pulling off the aspirin stunt. it's still possible, but not for another month. we'll see how that goes.

i dropped some hints, mentioned i may need to "generate a crisis", so it shouldn't be a total surprise. i think he's mostly got me coming back in for observation on the 2nd; i can see an actual psychiatrist on the 17th.

this message will self-destruct in 24 hours.

i just realized they scheduled me with a nurse, who can't fill the forms in, anyways. i don't think it's likely that i'm going to be taken seriously, today.

i'd consequently say it's almost completely certain that i'm going to be in the hospital by noon. i'd just point out that the purpose of this is to create a crisis, because they seem unable to react to perform on a crisis management level and solely able to perform on a crisis response level. that is, i seem to have little choice but to create a crisis situation if i want to get these forms filled in. this is a very stupid/liberal way to organize a system that is likely to cost more in the long run than a focus on prevention would, but we live in a very stupid/liberal society....

the point is that i'm not putting myself in serious danger, at least not today. i will give them a time frame before i begin to consume the aspirin. i will consume the aspirin in the medical facility, if i have to. they will have no choice but to call an ambulance, and they should be able to pump my stomach fairly easily.

i will ensure that this is done in an easy to respond to manner the first few times i do this, because the point is to draw attention to myself rather than to actually succeed. classic cry for help scenario. if this drags on unsuccessfully, and i'm faced with eviction again, i will choose a more decisive way to kill myself than overdosing on aspirin at the doctor's office. i've explained my position on this, and the rational factors that may or may not lead to my decision.

i'll update if there's a different outcome. but that would be a surprise to me.

i've given them every opportunity to respond in accordance with their public mandate, and wash my hands of responsibility regarding the consequences of their inaction.

i can only hope that more people are willing to take this kind of a confrontational stance when it comes to dealing with public institutions that have been co-opted by liberalism, and are now working against their designated purpose.

hopefully, people get fired.

well, i've got all my documents in order. tomorrow morning at 11:00 am. at least it'll be nice out....

i'm going to have to bring up the ms thing. i don't know if there's some kind of test for it. it may be the best way to do this. i mean, i can handle some muscle spasms and stuff but i've recently been getting the classic difficulty swallowing, and i think i'm really better off getting it diagnosed. if i can get them to take me seriously...

it's an mri...

detroit has a serious wild dog problem, but i'm not aware of one here and getting across the river would be rather difficult.

City of Windsor naturalist Paul Pratt said he hears reports of coyote sightings from everywhere in the city, even downtown. Coyotes took down a deer in the woodlot behind his LaSalle house about a month ago.

They’re mostly nocturnal and largely go unnoticed, Pratt said.

“If you have small dogs or cats, you shouldn’t let them out at night unattended, even if you’re in a built-up area.”

He said there are more coyotes in Windsor now because there’s more wildlife in Windsor – skunks, feral cats, groundhogs, possums and deer.

“There’s all this wildlife, something’s got to eat them,” said Pratt. “We have coyotes.”

i'm pretty sure i've heard them rustling around where i can't see them. with all the cats and the skunks around, it seemed like a matter of time. but it took the snow to reveal them: very clear canid tracks coming up across the front lawn, right to the door and across the other way. right where the cat that's been following me around sits, actually. relatively large, at that - if these are coyote tracks, it's a big coyote. may be one of those coywolves...

i suspect that may be the last i'll see of that cat.

it's said they're around, and you'll rarely see them. they know they can't really take you down. but there's kids around here. and it's enough to be a little bit more cautious about going out at night.

i haven't set up my new blog yet, and i have my meeting on monday. this post will eventually self-destruct. but, for now i'm going to post on the results of my meeting in the comments of this post. i suppose if there's no posts here by tuesday, that's bad news.

existence (vst mix) (for thru)

this was a piece i wrote up in the fall of 2001. i can't remember exactly what the root of it was, but it had something to do with a voice-leading assignment for what was the equivalent of a course in music theory 101. the root of the piece may consequently come from what was presented to me. i can't recall exactly - but i believe the assignment was to build the different voices up.

my negative relationship with music theory is stated throughout this page and was well established well before the end of 2001. i had an interest in the music theory course for the purposes of deconstructing the theory - in the context of writing, specifically, and not performing. i actually have one of those classic stories - i failed this course. it is actually the only course i have ever legitimately received an F in. hey, if einstein can fail math, i can fail music theory.

the story actually revolves around sight-reading aspect of the course, and specifically it's vocal content. there were three aspects of the course (theory, vocal sight-reading and african drumming which i'm thinking was meant to be a rhythmic component but was really just a ridiculous waste of time). i really wish they would have let me sight read on a guitar, or even a piano, because i'm just simply not a talented singer; i've never had aspirations to become one, and i had a lot of problems controlling my vocals. even with that being said, the reality is that i had a very low level of _interest_ in this. i probably could have passed the course if i spent less time on abstract algebra and more time singing in the mirror, but i just couldn't be bothered...

i really disapprove of the way the course was designed. i was interested in learning about music theory, and needed the course as a pre-req for more advanced courses, which i never ended up taking. i still don't fully understand why i had to pass a singing exam to take further composition courses. the best answer i got was that the school didn't want graduates who couldn't pass a singing exam, but i was at no point enrolled in a b. music so it's a pretty weak response.

anyways, this was a voice-leading assignment that i perverted into something mildly atonal and then built up into something else. you can hear it if you listen, except that it's all "wrong". i'd have to sit down and analyze it to come to a more detailed exposition on it's "wrongness", and i'm not going to, but it's not hard to hear how "wrong" it is, either.

i was clearly listening to a lot of glass at the time, but this goes beyond his medievalism. i'm using so many "wrong" notes that it's ultimately just chromatic - although there's no tone rows or anything that's formally serialist about it. it's not meant to abolish the structure so much as it's meant to just flaunt the rules. that gives it an almost satanic feel, in the context of a vocal piece using "forbidden" intervals.

but, looking back, i think that what the piece really explores is existential anguish. i was in the second year of a math degree (after switching from physics after switching from software engineering) and really had little idea where i was going with it. i was considering switching into music and probably would have had i not failed the singing exam. the thing is i actually knew i was going to fail the course at that point, and was just feeling lost as a result of it. i ended up in math as this sort of default choice, vaguely thinking i might end up teaching somewhere but not having any real interest in it...

so much choice, so few options. i suppose that this is how i expressed what i was feeling about this reality at the time.

i can't remember the exact way this happened, but i believe the piece was initially written for voice (as a voice-leading assignment) and then expanded into further voices and then converted into a composition for nine instruments. i've picked halloween as the date, but that's symbolic - it was around then, anyway. it would have been around december that it was put aside, because i don't remember working on it after i moved.

this version was created in october, 2014 by mixing three separate vst mixes together: the choir mix, a string orchestra mix and an arranged mix.

written in the fall of 2001. rendered, remastered and remixed in late september and early october, 2014. this render is from october 3, 2014.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/existence-4

the walk (vst mix)

this was written as the introductory walk scene to the first rabit is wolf single; this vst version is exclusive to this collection..

written late 2001; re-rendered through vst on jan 10, 2015.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/the-walk-2

lol...

so, i just tried to do a lossless compress on that last track, and it won't compress. if you know how this works a little...

what it does is it looks for strings of zeroes, which represent empty space in the wave file. now, what that means is complicated but "empty space" is intuitive - it's data that's not filled in, or is filled in with zeroes to be precise. it then combines strings of zeroes together, cutting down on the amount of bits required to store the data. what that means is that - and this is different than an mp3 - that the amount you can losslessly compress a sound by depends on the complexity of the sound. a recording of the creek outside your house will have more empty space than a recording of a symphony, and will compress much better.

so, if i run my symphony through the lossless compression and i'm only able to compress it by 1%, that means i've got data in 99% of the possible places there could be data.

that's a dense track...

so, you think you got a phat track, yo? see how far you can compress it. if your track is really phat, you're looking at 70%. but 99%? that's fucking ridiculous.

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.