i noticed i was here before, but didn't leave a post. strange, that. i went looking through my posting history, and realized i left one on a now deleted video of this disc well over a year ago, when i was just doing daily rotations, before i settled into my existing alter-reality algorithm in real-time (current date in the alter-reality april 11, 1998). and, i'm thinking i skipped over the inrisampled obligatory, waiting for a better moment. i think i was waiting, specifically, for the period 1.3 transition, which was the beginning of 1999. the influence really becomes more obvious at that point. another year before i get there.
but, the track i just switched into is too dominated in influence by the ambient sections on this disc to wait. the coil and aphex mixes, specifically, but the thirlwell ones, too. which isn't to say i'm stealing ideas, so much as it's to say it's where my head was. listening to it, one might hear eno or maybe even joy division. there's hints of autechre. but, it was really this disc that i was enamored with.
it wasn't conscious emulation. iirc, i just made a loop and started jamming over it. but, i would have likely never thought it sounded musical without interfacing so heavily with at the heart of it all.
i've done a bunch of obligatories on these nin remix discs between fixed and the perfect drug and they're still nearly unparalleled in terms of abstraction. i wish i could find something contemporary that exists at this level of quality. i can aspire. but, it's not the same thing as finding it out there. alas...
(relevant tracks: medicated to the one i love, jesus gets fucked on robitussin, symphony 1, curious george, wish, why, symphony 0, many others - almost everything, really.)
dammit, reeves. hendrix or holdsworth. fucking figure it out, already.
obligatory influential...
i remember picking this disc up in the summer of '97 on a rec from the store clerk at the local disc-go-round and listening to it on the bus quite a bit for the next few months. i was familiar with smg, but wouldn't have at all called myself a fan. i think the accusations of his work up to this point being derivative are fairly accurate, but even that isn't so much of a drawback as the fact that it's all fairly bland. the high points are due to collaborations with dwayne goettel (night returning) and solidly written cover material (strange days). it just doesn't stand out as worthwhile.
but, the guy at the counter was insistent.
"i see what you come in here and buy", he said. "this is way better than anything else he's ever done, and i think you'll like it for sure. it should be called chris randall and the die warzau backing band. and it's got reeves gabrels on it.".
it was the gabrels drop that hooked me. really.
and, i must say that this record really was a huge leap forwards in terms of songwriting and instrumentation. he's finally using the supporting cast of chicago musicians and engineers around him to their full potential, and manages to combine the city's various sounds into what is arguably a lost psychedelic pop classic. but, it's also the kind of disc that alienates people because it's too good. in the end, it's a shame that it's really the only solid disc he ever made, because you can hear the potential here. sadly, this is an often-told story in the modern era: the problem of making a record that is too good and can't move units, which leads to getting dropped.
the whole record was an influence on me over this period, but it's usually subtle and lost amidst the bowie and the reznor. i'm picking out this track today because there's a part about 3:53 where a blast of noise segues the track. it's a technique ultimately traced back to haus der luge. but, the way it's used here is not just completely unpredictable but also completely irrational and i took some influence from the absurdity of it.
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
it is clear that the remaining problem is minimizing interference, but it is not at all clear where the interference is coming from. it seems that at least some of it is coming from the devices. the rest of it is currently of unknown origin.
it's bad enough that i can sit in the same spot for hours, put a playlist on loop and never hear the same song the same way twice.
it at least seems to be the case that i can duck out of it by lying on the ground, but that's obviously unacceptable. tactics for the next few days will be related to finding ways to avoid the interference.
over the last few days, i've once again been stuck with fading.
i ripped the machine right down and was still getting the same problem from asio with everything else uninstalled and disabled. so, i defaulted back to the phones being the issue and noticed something i hadn't realized before - i didn't actually have to reset the jack, i just had to touch it.
i ended up back at interference, and was finally able to get a cause and effect relationship in cycling the receiver.
i'm not entirely sure, still, if it's magnetic or electrical. i think i may have been creating a field by coiling the wire (although that sounds ridiculous, given the voltages involved). but, i've cycled everything, reset the load on the electrical chain a little and grounded all the soundcards and audio paths through the same power bar.
i think i'm stable. if i am, expect some quick confirmations. if i'm not, i’m essentially at an impasse and have nothing left to do but buy some more cords in desperation.
i missed this in august...attention drawn to it by tour dates....just wasn't paying attention...
i've only listened to the record all the way through once, and will have to give it a few more tries. you don't really "get" a defeater record on the first listen. but, i'm comfortable in stating that if i'm going to connect to this at all then it's going to be on a purely lyrical level. that's not impossible.
i wouldn't be surprised to find out that this disc was well received by people that are closer to the mainstream core of the modern "(scr)e(a)mo" sound. hey, there's a relatively big audience there. and, it's not a complete 180 - there's plenty of things that jumped out that seemed very characteristic of the band's previous work. but, the blunt and honest immediacy - the starkly nihilistic juxtapositions and just blatant punk rock, however much adapted - that made them refreshing seems to have been replaced by what are kind of contrived melodramaticisms. i mean, i don't want to sound ridiculous. it was always contrived. but, it was a different kind of contrived - a more thematic and less calculated one. if you're a fan of the centre of the genre that they're moving closer to, you probably won't understand this criticism because it's the perfect description of every band that you're used to listening to. but, if you lean more towards older school punk rock or perhaps even straight up art rock, don't really have any affinity with "emo" and were kind of being pulled into this by bands that hover closer to the core of what punk was, you'll understand what i'm getting at. if you're that person, as i am, you probably really didn't want to hear them walk down this path. but, you probably knew it was coming, too.
i could probably handle some standardization in the aesthetic if the writing compensated for it. musically, i didn't pick up on that the first time through - i got the opposite impression. i'll have to see if i pick up on it, thematically, as i listen to it a few more times.
i'll say this though: i was initially put off by the stronger testosterone level on letters home. but, as i got to understand the story line, i began to realize that it couldn't have been any other way. it had to be badass. i'll have to see if this connects in the same way.
i know this is an extremely tentative review. maybe i'll post another comment in a few weeks or months. but, that's how this band operates. you just don't understand it the first time you listen to it; if you think you do, you definitely don't. that's why elitist critics like me are drawn to them, even if they're consistently cycling around a genre we would generally consider to exist purely in the realm of bad taste.
the real reason for the blood test was to check my estrogen levels, which was actually done on my request. i've been thinking for a while now that i should get my dose boosted. but, i was running around from doctor to doctor and just didn't really get a chance to get an empirical test done to determine what the levels were and whether they should be boosted. as expected, they're a little low.
that's actually pretty normal. it's an expected part of transitioning to increase dosages after a while. i'm actually way past due on this. so, i've been boosted from 4 mg/day to 6 mg/day. but, i'm going to wait until i quit smoking first before i do it.
i've been stuck on this remix project for months because my machine just won't behave, and have been waiting until i'm done the project before i give myself a few weeks of filing to occupy myself with. for me, quitting smoking is primarily a problem at the mental level. basically, i find myself unable to focus on anything. it's a huge problem for me because i'm always focusing on something or other. the only way i'm going to get over the smoking is by giving myself something menial to do for, like, weeks. i just have to throw that time away. that's really hard for me - even if i get the long term benefits of it - because i interpret time as the only meaningful quantifiable in the entire universe. the filing is the perfect opportunity for this. but i can't get to it because i can't get the machine to co-operate.
i've been getting impatient, anyways. i only budgeted myself $60 for cigarettes this month. that needs to be a hard limit, now. smoking ends when that budget runs out, whether i'm done the project or not. the hormone switch is just an added incentive.
first, nicotine is an estrogen suppressant. second, smoking on estrogen can cause blood clots. i shouldn't be smoking at all, really - well, *at all*, but at all when i'm taking hormones. it's a risk for people on birth control, which is something like 100 mcg/day. i'm about to jump to 6 mg/day. i'm hesitant about the safety of this. i should really be hesitant about the safety of it at 4 mg/day.
but, he also told me that i'm the "healthiest person he's ever seen". he's "never seen lower blood cholesterol". it seemed obvious to him to ask me about my diet, but he seemed rather disappointed in my responses.
in the 96 hours before the blood test, i had consumed 5 rockstar vodkas, several pots of coffee, several packs of cigarettes and had even smoked a couple of bowls. ten hours previous to the blood test, i had a large meal that included a giant plate of pasta with a third of a brick of cheese, caesar dressing (not light.) as an alfredo sauce, eight slices of crumpled salami, tomatoes and green peppers. i also had a smoothie with a banana, five strawberries, two scoops of ice cream and about 500 ml of soy milk. i've actually had exactly that meal almost every day for the last two months - although i got a pizza one day, and have had some doritos in between as well.
i'll post the link to the culinary series in my vlog as a comment.
that doesn't come off as a particularly healthy diet. he liked the soy smoothies, and didn't like the salami and the cheese. he thought i must be eating some kind of miracle foods like quinoa or something.
while my diet is consciously designed to ensure i get sufficient nutrients (the soy smoothies are key to this, but i also would normally eat a lot of eggs to get my amino acids), it is really not designed to minimize so-called harmful foods - except in the sense that i do not eat a lot. i eat, at most, once a day - most days. once in a while, i won't eat at all.
the correct way to interpret the test results is as confirmation of my approach to food, which i've posted here a few times over the last few years. that is, the important thing to realize is that it isn't the content of the food that is important, but the quantity of it that you consume.
basically, your body stores everything almost exactly the same way. it may not be the most politically correct thing to say, but the actual hard reality of it is that if you're too fat or you have too much cholesterol then you simply eat too much. the way to minimize excess fat storage in the various ways that your body stores fat - which includes blood cholesterol - is to ensure that you're not giving your body too much fuel, because it will then store it as some kind of fat.
my blood cholesterol is not low because of what i eat. it's low because of how much i eat.
but, even that said, there is an even more dominant factor, and it's lifestyle. i walk everywhere. i walked about 40 minutes to the doctor's office today, in fact. i then walked to the grocery store to get some more very high fat caesar dressing for my high fat pasta diet. the reason i do this is that i don't have a car.
that is the actual takeaway: i am the healthiest person the doctor has ever seen because i do not have a car. and, if you want to be that healthy, too? then, stop using your car on a day-to-day basis. walk as much as you can.
i'm proof of it. most nutritionists would claim my diet is terrible (but they're wrong, because the quantity of what i consume is low). i smoke two things. i don't drink a lot of alcohol, but i had consumed some within a few days of the blood test. and, i drink at least a pot of coffee a day.
there's actually three versions of this done, but only two up. i'm considering splitting it off to a single with a couple of extra mixes, as well. this is the instrumental electronic mix.
regarding the singles, my thoughts have evolved on this. at first, i was skeptical about it because of the need to add numbers - now, i think i'll need to add in an extra series between integers, somehow. then, i wanted to work it down to just a couple. now, i'm thinking that if i do any, i should do all of them.
as before, my focus right now is to finish all of the versions of all of the songs. afterwards, i'll check each possible single for listenability value.
and, i still haven't completely ruled out renumbering. i've only mailed three discs. it will just make them that much more valuable, right?
i've got a final mix of this up. it really sounds a lot better, and i'm very much relieved about it.
i wanted to get more done today, but at least i got that done. i've been playing with it the last few days. i need to do beginning/end of the month stuff tomorrow, but things should accelerate over the weekend.
initially written in 1996. recreated in march, 1998. reclaimed june 29, 2015. corrected to control for malfunctioning electronics on nov 26, 2015.
so, i will fully acknowledge - despite rationalizations otherwise - that the reason i went to the show on friday night was to get a last night of smoking in. which, on the bright side, at least suggests i'm serious about stopping. i think i have to be.
that said, i also felt the headliner was worth documenting. to an extent, this is partly what a lot of these show reviews have always been about. now that i have the camera (however low quality it may be....), i feel an added sense of responsibility to be curating. because my taste is superior. of course.
--
i wasn't sure if i was going to miss the opening act or not, and wasn't really concerned about it if i did. i kind of expected the show to start late, but not quite as late as it started - i did catch the opening act, and snapped a little bit of footage.
it very mildly piqued my interest in what it was, namely a splice of mathy indie rock with alt-country-pop-whatever. i don't know who to blame for it (wilco?), but indie rock turned into country music at some point a little over ten years ago and has basically been tedious and boring ever since. this act certainly demonstrated tedium and boredom, but the mathier aspects almost saved it...
i said almost. not quite. i'd say the rhythm section should drop the singer, if it can't convince her to drop the alt-country-pop-whatever schtick. there's nothing interesting going on there.
between sets i went out and had a smoke; i was feeling a little light-headed when i came back. probably the weather. but, it meant i watched most of the next set sitting down, and didn't get a chance to catch any footage.
the name of the band is exceedingly relevant: this is creepy shit. in an unsettling way. i think i'll leave it at that.
while it was meant to be comical, my general reaction was more that i felt embarrassed for them. which is no doubt in the range of intended reactions.
however, there was one song that had me doubled over laughing, and nearly crying. it may have been because i was feeling a little light-headed from the weather, but it was still one of the best laughs i've had in a while. i've found old footage of this track:
here is a full set:
the next band up was called nudie suits, and they seemed to be defined by a conflict: the violin player wants to do loop-heavy, post-gaze drone stuff whereas the keyboard player wants to do more conventional noir pop. the end result was that they were trying to play over each other. not always. they stopped and listened to each other a few times. but it was that conflict that overpowered.
i'm not entirely adverse to the idea of a riff-off in the context of gaze/drone vs. noir pop, but the truth is that neither had the chops to do it. the violin parts often just fizzled out into static feedback loops or two note patterns, and flopped on the builds. and the keyboard player often cycled around simple progressions, bent entirely on rooting herself in dynamics that were being completely paved over by the electronics.
the lack of footage was a conscious choice.
--
it was the material on valley hush' bandcamp page that drew me out (and made the smoking night worthwhile). While certainly pop, and maybe operating somewhere close to a successful and critically acclaimed contemporary act like tune yards, the overall songwriting struck me as worth documenting.
i only film one song and tend to pull it from between the second and fourth track. there's always the nightmare that you screw up the first track, which is also often going to be chosen to let the scragglers in. two-four is usually the meat of the set.
i pulled the third track, which meant i got one of the poppier numbers. overall, the set was a bit more developed than this, with more extended tracks that leaned into the realm of psychedelic rock without really falling into it.
it's pop. i know not everybody likes pop. i actually have a pretty hefty soft spot for it. but, realize i'm very picky about it, too. i'm only going to bite at a pop band if it's a really good one.
the show was late, as expected, but far more so than i realized. the last band was slotted for 11:15 - meaning they should have been done around 11:45. i knew it was later than that, but wasn't checking the time. the show wasn't done until 12:40; i would have guessed it was more like 12:15. but, had i been checking the clock more closely, i would have left a few minutes earlier.
while i do believe i got to rosa parks on time and should have been able to cut the bus off at the pass, i ended up missing it (unless it came out of customs well after 2:00, which is unlikely) by what could not have been more than a few minutes. i can only understand how this could happen by concluding that the bus left early.
you can imagine why this should not happen. there's more on this topic in the day's vlog:
Brooklyn Allman
Bowie always tends to reflect the world around him. I think this video is a metaphor for the darkside of religion. The book he holds up. The scarecrows in crucifix formation (scarecrows symbolic of fear which is a key element of organized religion). The blindfolds. The people who seem to be possessed by something. Somehow he ties Major Tom into all of this as his skull is treated like a sacred artifact perhaps meaning that anything can be turned into god and spun out of control. I think "Blackstar" might be like a faux-prophet or fervent disciple going around convincing people god is speaking through them. I think it definitely reflects what's going on in the world right now. I'm sure there are many ways to interpret this though, it's very abstract.
deathtokoalas +Brooklyn Allman
the kind of ritual you're seeing in the video is something that "kids nowadays" actually seriously do. there's a pretty sizable movement built up around this amongst women that are roughly university aged. they get together in forested spaces and perform magical rites to what they perceive of as pagan spirits.
if you want to get into it, it's likely a reaction to the upbringing brought on by the previous generation - a kind of rebellion against the value system enforced by the "moral majority" in the reagan revolution. the women i've spoken to about this speak in these terms. they talk of how their christian upbringing created a lot of repressed desires. they talk of catholic guilt. yet, as the rituals become so massively enforced and engrained, they create a sense of safety, as well. so, they realize there's something oppressive about the ritual, but can't quite discard the sense of peace that the oppression provides. the result is rebellion on the terms of praying to a false deity, rather than simply discarding it. on that level, it's blowback.
on another level, the ideas are all around us in our culture. there was a movie released in the 90s called the craft that is very popular in these circles, and there have been a number of similar films released since then. it comes out musically in a couple of styles, like witch house. there's a band called esben and the witch that is kind of seminal (even if all the ideas trace back to the 70s, through artists like coil, who were themselves drawing on existing themes). and, remember: this is a generation raised on magic, from disney through to lord of the rings. magic is no longer seen as an archaic relic of the past to be shunned as a process of ignorance. rather, it's become quite normalized.
i think bowie is reflecting on something here, but it's the youth culture. this is, in fact, what he's always done. what i'm getting is that he's both amused by this (it is really quite ridiculous) and somewhat disturbed by it.
the key shot in the video is at the very end, when he's dramatically recoiling from the images being presented on the screen.
"on the day of execution,
only women kneel and smile."
it's the secular society being executed. but, from the inside out.
see, i think the key to understanding this is having a clue about contemporary youth culture.
the images in the video are what the contemporary musical underground looks like. the exaggeration is only very slight. true to form, bowie is merely reacting to the underground. and, my interpretation is that he's both legitimately amused and seriously disturbed by it.
musically, i'm glad we're getting another "serious" bowie disc and am quite excited about that. i was a little worried he was going to leave us with that last one.
but, only a fool claims to be able to understand the scope of a bowie record via the lead single.
this is the final mix of this track - for real this time. this should accelerate tomorrow.
initially written in 1996. recreated in feb, 1998. reclaimed june 29, 2015. corrected to control for malfunctioning electronics on aug 11, 2015. corrected again on nov 19, 2015.
if you're a really serious music fan, you can likely point to a handful of acts over the course of your life that have acted as epiphanies for you, that have really made you see the world differently. my list begins when i was pretty young and runs through a number of successful alternative rock bands [REM (89-91), nirvana (91-93), the smashing pumpkins (93-95), nine inch nails (94-96)] before absolutely plateauing with skinny puppy, over about 96-99. the next thing that slapped me upside the head was gybe's moya in early '99. but, skinny puppy were the band as i was going through the portal of mid adolescence and entering into adulthood. before puppy, music was formative; after puppy, it was more of a process of identification. it's very much the pivot point between when i was figuring out who i was and when i was pretty sure i knew who i was. as such, there's quite a lot of this band in the core of my being - both musically speaking and ideologically speaking.
while i would have been too young to see them anywhere anyways, the reality is that skinny puppy did not exist during this period. they have toured sporadically since 2000, but i had yet to have an opportunity to see them until now. so, this show was sort of a big deal for me.
they had a guitarist and a drummer with them and consequently focused the setlist around this. this meant that the material was largely from records like rabies and the process, which feature more prominent guitar work than some of the other records. while this is only one facet of a band that has several facets, one can only facilitate so many facets at one time. i'd have loved to sit there for six hours as they ran through everything they ever did, and maybe the odd tear garden & download tune, but that's not reasonable. the truth is that focusing on the drums/guitar aspect is maximizing their appeal as a live rock band, and that's perfectly understandable. it would have maybe been nice to see something like the center bullet, circustance or jackhammer mixed up in there somewhere, but i had a great time nonetheless.
here is an actual complete show:
it's less that the show was over earlier than i expected and more that it started earlier than i expected. it was doors at 7:00, and the band was on some time around 9:00. they actually played for close to two hours. but, the bar closed down and started pushing people out around 11:00, which left me stuck outside in pontiac for five and a half hours. if they had come on at 11:00 and finished around 1:00, as i was expecting, and then left the bar open until at least 2:30, maybe pushing 3:00, i would have only really needed to procrastinate for about an hour.
as it is, i hung around outside for a bit, went to a gay bar for a few hours and then just hung out with some random kids sitting around smoking in the parking lot. i was starting to freeze over by the time the bus finally showed up, and ready to collapse when i finally got back to canada at about 7:00 am.
attending this concert was a last minute decision that i played over in my mind repeatedly. did i really want to go? was it worth the walk? customs? should i stay in and work instead?
i decided to go because i wasn't going to get any meaningful mixing done that night anyways and i felt it should be in the list of shows i've seen. i also decided that i had an obligation to stop by at the christopher bissonnette release party in windsor because release parties for kranky artists don't happen in windsor every day. so, the plan was to stop at the release show for a few minutes, see what it was about and probably catch the 9:30 bus across to detroit. i was expecting to miss the opening act, and maybe some of the second set.
when i got to the release show, i noticed something i hadn't seen before: this bar sells absinthe. i'll acknowledge that my understanding of absinthe was somewhat vague. well, it's not necessary working knowledge on a day-to-day basis, right? i'd heard it was a hallucinogen. i hadn't really looked it up, because i hadn't really been in the opportunity to need to know about it. but, i figure i'm standing in the bar, i should try it...
i asked the bartender what, in hindsight, seem like ridiculous questions.
"i've never done absinthe before, but i've done plenty of mushrooms..."
"....will i be ok to go through customs on the stuff?"
i decide that i'll take a "strong" shot and see how i feel. by the time i'm done, it's clear to me that the release party is just a dj set (which is not my thing....), so i'm out to the noise show.
i must have missed the bus by three minutes; i'm stuck waiting for the 10:00 bus. but, i'm thinking i still have plenty of time to get there, because they'll be on third.
as i'm waiting, i can feel the burn of the vodka, but i'm not feeling any hallucinogenic effects. i do start to feel some waves as i'm walking up gratiot, but they're gone by the time i get to trinosophes....
...where the band is halfway through their set. they played second. fuckers...
i did catch about twenty minutes of what i'm guessing was probably a 30-40 minute set, and the above shot of noise is a decent representation of it. i mean, it's exactly what one would expect, whether they are familiar with vampire belt or merely with corsano and/or nace. it's just raw, unsculpted, jagged sound.
some people were complaining after the show. "that was fucking terrible", one person said. i had to agree, actually. but, see, that's the point. i guess there's a sort of least upper bound on noise, where you don't get more offensive with increasing intensity. this was achieved some time in the 90s; it really hasn't evolved much since. however extreme extreme music gets in the upcoming decades, what the collection of mostly east coast bands that sound similar to vampire belt did then, do now and will do in the future will never lose it's edge in the realm of irritating the uninitiated. it's just past the limit. some people claim it's the most pure form of contemporary punk; i think that this idea is absolute fucking bollocks, but the sentiment has something to it in the sense that it's a "fuck you" that will never lose it's sting. so, you go to the show expecting to enjoy a half hour of absolutely incoherent nonsense. at the same time, you expect that almost nobody else in the audience will enjoy it.
here's a full set, if you dare:
i stayed a few minutes into the next act, mostly because my stomach was hurting from the absinthe, but left fairly briefly in order to go get another shot. understand that i'm still operating under the idea that this is a hallucinogen. i'm feeling like i didn't get enough to get to a peak and need to take another shot before i can come to any conclusions on the value of the drug. the act was mixing horns with theremins; you've heard this before, and you weren't excited when you did.
i didn't even get a vodka buzz off of the second shot. it was just entirely unfelt.
it wasn't until i woke up in the morning that i realized i was operating on bad information. it turns out that absinthe has a chemical called thujone in it that can cause muscle spasms at high doses but is not hallucinogenic. that is, absinthe does not have hallucinogenic properties. it's really just very potent alcohol.
the machine is fixed, but i was at concerts the last two days. i'm hungover on four hours of sleep, so today is going to be about doing some filing and probably getting to bed early. i have an appointment tomorrow. so, i'll be back to work - seriously, and with intent - on wednesday.
i seem to have been taken in on an urban legend regarding the absinthe....
"Absinthe has been frequently and improperly described in modern times as being hallucinogenic. No peer-reviewed scientific study has demonstrated absinthe to possess hallucinogenic properties."
that would explain why i didn't feel anything. the initial waves may have been psychosomatic and a consequence of expectation.
also note that i had to reupload this video to remove an approximately one minute section (beginning around 18:40) where the bar i was walking by happened to be playing a michael jackson song. sony claimed copyright over the entire vlog, the right to place ads of it's choosing on it and total control over revenue to those ads. to put it mildly, this is absolute bullshit. i have no intention of profiting directly from these vlogs (please visit my bandcamp site to support me financially), but the idea that i'd be allowing sony to profit from it because the bar i was walking by for forty seconds was playing a michael jackson song makes me want to vomit.
in order to prevent these kinds of absolutely frivolous claims, youtube should have an independent arbitration process in place that takes power away from claimants and puts it in the hand of a neutral third party.
i am finally certain that i understand the problem, have fixed it and can resolve it if it reappears. after four months, you have to expect it's something simple.
the driver installation for the mixer has an error in it. the package needs to install two drivers: one basic driver (also used for asio) and a second driver on top of it (used for wdm). however, it was only installing the basic driver. so, i was getting various sound degradation and inconsistency due to the system using the wrong driver.
i was actually about to give up on the kmixer for the device. i wanted to verify i was getting a good sound out of asio, so i disabled wdm in the mixer and tested through cubase. it sounded right. out of curiosity, i re-enabled the wdm with the asio running and the secondary driver installed. it has since passed all stability testing; the issue seems to be resolved.
i have a higher confidence in stating i'm done, now, because i feel i understand it. i have some more listening to do tonight. i need to edit and upload a vlog from the last three days. i also need to eat. and, tomorrow i need to do laundry and test one more time. but, i'm confident i'll be back at this within 24 hours, and could even get some new mixes up by saturday.
i didn't notice this previously because the wdm installed disabled and i had to manually turn it on. i don't know why that behaviour changed.
i've been quiet here, i guess. troubleshooting updates in the vlog, if you're so inclined.
a
little while back, i noticed that cycling the mixer was creating a new
driver entry in the registry and realized this had something to do with
the problem. i think i've finally figured out that the way to get the
mixer to load properly is to turn it on before the computer starts. this
may be a conflict with the soundblaster, but i'm not sure.
it
says to do this in the manual, but i've basically never done this. it
would require restarting the computer every day. so, i may have to
prepare myself for some wrong sounding mixes, and need to adjust them.
basically, everything is up for analysis right now.
i still need to do some testing, but i'm convinced i'm very close and should be done in the next 24-48 hours.
if it's a conflict with the soundblaster, i can at least point out that i had the soundblaster disabled for a long time.
and,
the issue is wdm-specific, so it wouldn't really be relevant to the
mixing over asio. i think i'm probably safe from having to redo
anything.
see, the thing is that i wasn't sure it was
wdm-specific. i thought it was. if i knew it was, i wouldn't have
bothered with all this, but i couldn't know it was until i figured it
out, right?
i think it's making sense now. but i've said that before.
going to ferndale for a show is always somewhat of an adventure. it's a 40 minute bus ride from the tunnel, which means it's a 40 minute bus ride back, and the last tunnel bus is far too early - it's at 1:09, which isn't even after last call. that means the show would have to end by 11:30 to get back, and that had yet to happen. i can understand why they don't want to run all night, but they should run until at least 2:15 to give people a chance to get back from right downtown around last call. the thing is this: i'm not going to take a 40 minute bus ride out to ferndale and then leave early to catch the bus. if i'm going to go that far, i'm going to stay for what i'm there for, even if it means having to wait until the morning to get home. but, tonight i went specifically to see the opening band, and so expected to get home by leaving halfway through the headliner. as it happened, the headliner was done by a quarter after eleven, so i got to see the whole show and then get home. but, i shouldn't get used to that.
i was perusing the gear on stage, and just about ready to take some camera shots of it, when pinkish black came on a little earlier than i expected - pretty much 9:00 sharp. the set was exactly an hour, too. no sound check, and that was decisive. i started off a foot from the drummer, dead center, but realized quickly that the bass was coming straight at me and i'd need to move a little bit away to avoid the mic in the camera from distorting. so, that's why i shifted to where the camera shot is. but, i went back to the place i started at after i got my shot in and spent the rest of the show there.
the set was interesting, but i'm not sure exactly what to make of it. i spoke to the band after the set, and they acknowledged the mix was poor - that the synths and vocals were not loud enough to compete with the drums. but, it seemed to me that what was coming at me was more than just a mix issue. i'm fairly familiar with their previous work, and it really seemed like the drumming in the tunes had evolved dramatically in ways that often seemed rather off kilter. in multiple spots in the show, the drums fell into what were simple patterns that were punctuated by strange dynamics in volume and syncopation. overall, that converted the aesthetic from the claustrophobic pop sound that they're known for into something more schizophrenic that brought to mind acts like swans and skinny puppy.
because i'm familiar with the material, it kind of threw me a bit but i can't say i didn't enjoy it. what i'm just not clear on is whether turning the synths down focused more attention on the nature of the drumming, whether the songs have evolved over several years and this is some indication of where they're pivoting to or whether it was even just a tactic to compensate for the low volume on the synths (i.e. that the drummer couldn't really hear what was happening, and had to adjust). regardless, it certainly made the sound a bit more raw in converting the material out of headphone music and into something more live. they're worth checking out, but maybe don't expect the tracks to sound the same way they do on record.
here's a full set:
i got to see zombi as well, but i really wasn't expecting a lot from the set and wasn't particularly impressed by it. so, at least i wasn't let down - but i wasn't turned around, either. i'll give the drummer credit on the basis of pure talent even if a lot of it was derivative - it was easy to tell when he was trying to sound like phil collins or trying to sound like neal peart. but, the songwriting was mostly limp and repetitive post-rock, punctuated only by horrifically cheesy delves into the worst kinds of 70s prog. i'm a fan of the more creative sides of both of these genres, but the way they mix it up is just about the worst formula possible. i mean, tortoise spliced with floyd, or gybe! spliced with genesis, sounds like a great idea. that's awesome*awesome, which would have to compute to awesome. but, yes spliced with and so i watch you from afar is cheese spliced with cheese, and could only possibly produce cheese.
for example, there was one track where the drummer was playing something very reminiscent of a trick of the tail era collins (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBcnjx05a1s), while the bassist/synth guy was moping out a two chord minor progression. i may have been heard thinking out loud that it sounded like what phil collins must have felt like the day that his dog died, which is not the thing of compelling music. there was another track where the drummer was literally playing the pattern to tom sawyer, while the synth guy did some kind of slow motion krautrock thing. i may have been heard thinking out loud that this was the chapter twain could never get published, where tom got baked and passed out near the creek.
silliness aside, they were also very tense. when people yelled in excitement "keep it going!", they defensively pointed out that it's only the second set of the show. i mean, shit. imagine somebody getting excited to see their favourite band at a show. clearly disrespectful!
but, i think that serves to explain what's wrong, here. these guys need to chill out a little. if they were to breathe a little, maybe the song structures would open up a bit, which would lead them to more compelling arrangements. it may not be sufficient, but i claim it is a necessary condition to get them to turn the corner on what they're doing.
i've been recording, i just haven't edited or uploaded because i wasn't
sure which day was which. suppose you wake up at 4 pm and crash the next
day at noon, then get up at 6 pm and crash the next day at 7 pm. how do
you date that?
i wanted to edit tonight, but i'm already fading so it will wait until i wake up - clearly starting a new day on nov 5.
so , by tomorrow morning, there will be two vlogs for the last three days, probably with the 3rd and 4th combined into one day.
i've been toying with whether or not i wanted to upload a promo for inrijected, being that it's rejected tracks, but have decided to due to the schedule (which would have otherwise had me focus on an offspring cover for three months at the end of 1998).
i caught a jazz band in detroit last night that included jimmy chamberlain. i was expecting percy jones in the band, but he wasn't there.
my reviews tend to focus more around scenarios, and leave actual analyses to one-line statements. the band was kind of lackluster, really, but i enjoyed the show enough anyways (for other reasons) that i'm glad i went.
but, the narrative last night had mostly to do with the camera, and the truth is that i've already stated everything on camera that i would normally type in a review of this sort. rather than repeat myself, i'll post the vlog.
i doubt that this will be the new normal. in fact, i expect that i'll start writing reviews before i post vlogs to ensure that it isn't - i like writing these reviews. but, for tonight, because that's entirely where my head was, that's what i have - and i don't see the use in writing out what i have on film.
vlog:
concert footage:
this is a late review, but i'm adding it to ensure i continue with it. i have a large collection of reviews, now, and don't want to have this fall into disrepair.
i hadn't been to this venue previously, and had forgotten to write down the address; i knew it was on a sidestreet behind woodward, between the park and the fox, so i just turned left blindly - and luckily found it very quickly.
it was no more than fifteen minutes past doors; it seems as though they started immediately. this might be cultural. i mean, does the opera say "doors at 8", then wait until 9:00? or is it on at 8:00 sharp? i can't say; i've never been. i'm just so used to "doors at 8 and the opening act some time around 9" that it didn't even cross my mind that the time on the ticket may have been a start time.
so, i paid my entrance and walked up near the stage. this venue was a restaurant, and a fairly nice one, so it had servers moving food out to tables and no space at the front. there was a bar stool with a good view a little to the right of the stage.
i get a tap on my shoulder...
"what can i get you?"
"that depends. do you have cheap beer?"
"$3 pbr."
"yeah, that's good."
the first set laid down the tone, which was that we're mostly in for some jamming for the night. there were some standards, but most of what got played was based around solo parts and cycled around. the piano played a solo, then the bass played a solo, then the sax played a solo and then sometimes the drums did a solo. this basic formula was followed by almost every song that wasn't a standard.
i noticed something in the intermission. there's a guy standing right in front of me, with something in his ear. i had to say something...
"dude. is that a j in your ear?"
he laughs.
"no. it's just a cigarette with the top twisted."
"k. 'cause, i was thinking you probably forgot it there and should put it away."
he laughs again.
"hey, want to take a walk out front?"
so, the second set had a hazier, looser feel to it - this is jazz after all, and i was channeling satan after the excursion outside. jimmy seemed to relax a little in the second set, when he realized he was mostly playing for old pumpkins fans rather than stuffy bourgeois jazz people. the hooting and a hollering may have been frowned upon by the bar, but he definitely fed off of it in terms of dynamics. i explain this at the end of the vlog.
walking back to the bus stop was a little strange, as i remember this feeling of avoiding being run down. every car was in on it and needed to be avoided. a kind of game of paranoid gta, in real life.
i get on the bus, and hear it from the driver.
"you're baked."
i shrug.
no problems getting through customs. and, frankly, there shouldn't have been problems, either.
microtonal music is actually just about everywhere, even if it's not always called that.
the blues are named after something called the "blue note", which was bending the string up a microtone. essentially all blues music makes use of this microtonal technique, which means large amounts of rock music make use of it as well.
it was also huge in prog & fusion music, through things like vibrato, harmonies from alternate tunings and playing with echo machines. miles davis, chick corea, yes, genesis - there's microtones all over all that stuff.
it became very much cemented in the more chaotic aspects of punk rock and hit a height of mainstream appeal in the 90s, when it became known using the term grunge. one of the better examples of microtonal music in pop is alice in chains.
and, it's been widely implemented across the "intelligent techno" sphere by artists like autechre and aphex twin, by using algorithms, frequency generators and other such fun things.
this idea of eastern v western music is a false dichotomy. microtones have always existed in the west, it's just that the church thought they were "evil" and tried to destroy them.
boptillyouflop +deathtokoalas The western music microtones you're talking about are much more articulations than independent notes (for the jazz blue notes), imho, and that's how they're played on instruments that don't bend like pianos. Plus they're not really used in harmony (it's much more a solo).
Same goes for vibratos and bends... even though they're physically not tuned on the target, lexically they're just normal notes with an articulation.
deathtokoalas +boptillyouflop i don't agree. and, i think you're missing the historical truth, that a lot of it comes from celtic music, which had a very defined concept of microtonality. that worked it's way down into british folk music and into the various modern western forms from there. traditional latin & byzantine music also had concepts of microtonality.
most texts will talk to you about equal temperament, and how western music theory discarded microtones as a kind of mathematical model of music theory. but, this is at best a half-truth. to understand how western christianity (and this is, at it's core, a religious thing) interpreted certain intervals, you need to go back to a strain of greek philosophy that began with pythagoras. a system of mysticism developed out of a crude understanding of number theory that gave special properties to certain ratios. they'll teach you in first year calculus that they thought the square root of two was some kind of evil omen, because it was "irrational" - in fact our very concept of logic stems from this archaic number mysticism. this developed over time into this idea that certain ratios (4ths and 5ths) were approved by god himself, and all these other ratios were tainted by the influence of satan. it sounds utterly ridiculous, but it's the actual truth of it.
there were microtones in western folk music the whole time, but the church cracked down on them as representing something evil. and, it's only out of this extreme form of religious censorship on artistic expression that we develop this concept of "western music". equal temperament was built as a mathematical model to cement this christian conception of "allowed intervals" - but that suggests the existence of "forbidden intervals". the whole thing is really an entirely contrived construction of western academia. but, of course, the church was powerful enough to write history for over a thousand years, and what we have is what they've allowed us to have.
so, when you talk about a blue note or an alternate folk tuning in a prog piece, or even the dissonance of grunge, it's not merely articulations. it's very much a continuation of the deep cultural legacy of microtonality in western music.
to put it another way: the hierarchy may have taken away our ability to write these ideas down, and explain them, but the ideas were there in antiquity, never disappeared in western folk music and are, in fact, still with us today.
i know that what they teach you in school is that western history is the history of christianity. it is from this enforced, entrenched narrative that the idea that church music is the same thing as western music comes from.
but, it's really a type of brainwashing. if you scratch the surface a little, it is easy to see that the history of western culture is a struggle against first rome and then christianity - from the perpetual celtic uprisings in france and spain, to the german and viking invasions, to the renaissance and the enlightenment right up to the hippies and the modern period. in era after era, and all over western europe, there is this single defining counter-narrative of struggle against everything rome has ever represented that truly defines us as the barbarians that we are.
the truth is that our folk music traditions, as they continue to exist, and as they have always defined us, have always been microtonal, as best as we're able to understand them from a distance. remember that the celts lived all over europe in antiquity. the germans were late invaders, and their culture has been so thoroughly destroyed by the romans that we have no concept at all of what their music was. but, we understand celtic music, and we know it utilized microtones.
this narrative even exists in upper class music, starting with beethoven and completing with webern. the foundations of western music theory were all but discarded by western musicians practically the moment they were created. in the terms we define western music theory in, the only true western composer is mozart.
boptillyouflop +deathtokoalas Byzantine music has REAL microtonality yes, and has had it since forever.
The real reason western music doesn't have microtones is that our harmony is ridiculously overdeveloped, and this literally FORCES everything into the circle of 5ths and makes microtones sound bad.
If we didn't write everything with chord progressions and independent bass and harmonized melodies and overlapping lines, we'd have microtones up the wazoo.
deathtokoalas +boptillyouflop but, that simply isn't true. and, of course, byzantine music did not develop in a vacuum - it is sourced from the same greek and latin sources that arabic music is, and those sources carried on in the western roman world for quite a long time.
if you look at even your standard celtic jig, on guitar (lute), you see all these grace notes, slides, bends, hammers, etc. where do you think those came from? they're not just random elaborations or disconnected stylistic flairs. they're artifacts of a microtonal music system.
so, when you hear the blue notes, and you put it in context, you have to realize where it's coming from. the notes were banned by the authorities as "satanic", yes. they were written out of the history books. but, they never stopped getting played.
boptillyouflop +deathtokoalas Grace notes, slides, bends, hammers and so forth are totally normal. They happen in pretty much every musical tradition, both in traditions that are intensely microtonal (ex: Arabic) and in traditions that aren't (ex: Chinese).
They can easily evolve out nothing - for instance, Chiptune's ridiculously fast arpeggios evolved around 1990 out of trying to cram chords in songs on computers with only 3 or 4 sound channels (C64, Amiga).
Church music is low on articulations simply because it has to be sung by a whole bunch of people inside a church hall. Grace notes aren't banned by the church, they're banned by the acoustics of the building!
deathtokoalas +boptillyouflop again: i think you need to read up on this a bit more. seek out specialist material, and ignore general texts. out.
point was to the op: microtones are everywhere. what we call "western music theory" is a failed christian model, like creationism, that simply doesn't describe the world around us very well.
boptillyouflop +deathtokoalas Western music theory isn't a model of anything, it's a harmonization technique. Writing a melody is intuitive, but turning that into multiple parts is much more technical.
So Western theory breaks down earlier songs into techniques that can be applied to a simple melody to turn it into a full blown song.
If microtones were useful towards this goal in typical Western musical styles, believe me, musicians would be getting sheets with half flats and comma alterations all over the place.
deathtokoalas +boptillyouflop again: you're clearly approaching this from a point of extreme ignorance, as though the voice leading created the theory, rather than was a result of it. you're just repeating church propaganda.
please research the history of this topic before you reply further. as mentioned, you want to begin with the pythagorean music theory, but you need to get beyond the introductory mathematical explanation and get into the philosophical underpinnings. our primary source for this is aristotle.
boptillyouflop +deathtokoalas Fine then. The Christian church lobotomized Western music and confined it to the simple diatonic scale.
From that low point, Western music built itself back mostly by layering on independent voices and complexifying harmony.
This is why Western music nowadays has built up so much theory about chords, basslines, harmonization, key changes, orchestration, counterpoint and voice leading.
It invests all its complexity points in making multiple happen at the same time, which leaves other areas underdeveloped:
- Only 2 scale families (where Arabic music has 10~ Maqam families)
- Only 4/4 3/4 6/8 as common time signatures (Arabic music easily uses 5/4, 7/4, 11/4 etc)
- Underdeveloped melodic ornamentation
- Underdeveloped intonation variations (a Turkish Kanun player has multiple mandals per string and can practically move it up or down in comma steps).
- Underdeveloped improvisation (though this is getting better)
Gene Ruffalo +deathtokoalas "...the blue notes, ...banned by the authorities as satanic..."_
Not the Dimminished Fifth?!! Bastards banned it, did they? Black Sabbath wore the hell out of that interval.
So fill me in, how is a "blues" note microtonal? I've been a violinist and guitarist for well over 40 yrs, tuned pianos since the 1980's, basically a well seasoned hippie born in the early 60's. I am sure you know this, that the "blues notes", in lets say a major pentatonic scale, are a minor 3rd and a diminished 5th. Both are ½ steps away from the notes surrounding them in the scale. Granted you might "choke it" short of the ½ step if you are bending into it on a guitar, but theoretically they are within the divisions of the 12 note octave. Does it truly make it a microtone if it is unintentional? Is there any structure, any set frequency divisions in these so called microtones? OR is it just the "if it sounds good and feels right, go for it" approach? In a violin you would actually play the 7th note (known as a "leading tone") as close as possible to the 8th (octave) in a major or harmonic minor scale (etc...), no longer making the two notes ½ step apart, but depending on who is playing the instrument and how thick your fingers are would decide the frequency of said leading tone. I have slender fingers so it is tight w/ me. So, is that really considered a microtone? In other words, have I been playing these mother fuckers for decades and not intentionally knowing it? I mean, it sounds good and feels right! Can these microtones be created in the natural world through harmonic vibrations? I know, these are a lot of questions, but you seem to have answers! Please don't make fun of me for not knowing things like this.. what does Christianity and the church have to do with any of this? Does not ancient Japanese bamboo flute music and Native American war chants use 5 note pentatonic scales? ONE LAST QUESTION, what do you have against koalas?
Kinkzoz +Gene Ruffalo I don't think it's microtonal if it's an accident. The violin (and other similar instruments) could all be considered microtonal, if you put your fingers inbetween where two notes are. Yes. The internet just hates religion for some reason idk. Maybe. I'm too lazy to google it. I have nothing against koalas.
Hope that helps.
deathtokoalas +Gene Ruffalo a blue note is roughly a quartertone. when it's vocal, it's usually about that flat. blues guitarists will emulate this by bending flat.
the wolf interval is the only part of this discussion that finds it's way into modern music theory. as mentioned, you have to understand pythagorean number mysticism and how it was applied by christian platonists to understand how this process came about. it's really just about finding ratios that exist within the set of rational numbers. the textbooks don't get into the number mysticism, as it isn't viewed as relevant to understanding the theory. but, in this context it's necessary to understand what western music theory actually is.
the last response from boptillyouflop was acceptable, except to point out that the church was unsuccessful in entirely expunging "irrational tones" from western folk music.
but, you're going to have to track down the pythagorean number mysticism yourself - it's obscure and complex, and (correctly) widely viewed as a lot of nonsense. it's easy to follow from the source, but.....well, if you can find an easy to follow summary (or write one yourself), let me know. don't expect this. the traditional academic history of music theory begins after this discussion for the reason that it's not worth teaching this stuff in almost any other context besides understanding the role of microtones in the history of western music.
http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2010/blue-notes/ Gene Ruffalo +deathtokoalas Thanks, I know all about blue notes, been playing blues for decades. Technically it is a 1/2 step. In a C Major Pentatonic Scale it would be an Eb and in a C Minor Pentatonic Scale it would be Gb. Instruments like blues harps, saxes, and guitars that can bend notes you can cut it short to a quarter step, but on a piano you are limited to the half step adjustment, which sounds good too. Of course they are always just quick passing tones, you would never ride one out. I was really more interested in the other questions I threw at you, which I see you just responded to.
deathtokoalas +Gene Ruffalo it really isn't a half-step, and the link i posted did a good job of disarming that. as mentioned, it was historically a consequence of vocalists coming down about a quarter to an eighth step flat, which created a slight dissonance in harmony. that was ported to other instruments quite consciously, and there are plenty of examples of using the technique to create sustained notes on just about any instrument. fusion and prog players have used sustained blue notes to great effect; there's a hancock example there, but you can hear it across the spectrum from tony banks to miles davis. and, as i pointed out before, those sustained uses became very integral aspects of the noisier reaches of punk rock, through intermediaries like frank zappa and can. that eventually developed into grunge.
you really can't play blue notes on the piano and there's no use in even talking about it.
boptillyouflop +deathtokoalas Yeah, discussions about microtonal stuff in western music always seemed to be basically numerology for music to me. It's displayed in its full glory on the Xenharmonic Wiki.
Pythagorean theory is also numerological and mystic and crazy, it's just that the wide array of 5ths and low tolerance for mistuned 5ths in western music kinda leads towards it (or a close approximation like 12tet or well temperament, or an extension like Danielou tuning).
deathtokoalas +boptillyouflop or is it that the reason we put so much emphasis on fifths, and react so negatively to them when they're out of tune, is due to the socialization that has followed from the importance that our ancestors put on the mystical properties of the ratio? Gene Ruffalo +deathtokoalas where's this link at you say you posted? we are talking a lot of semantics here, for there seems to be a difference of terminology between your "blue note" and "the blues (plural) note" that is in a minor blues scale, normally fretted on a guitar and played by a quick hammer on or trill. I can think of a lot of old BB King licks that play the actual semitone "blues note", but I'd really like to hear this Zappa stuff and other examples you mentioned. Thanks
deathtokoalas +Gene Ruffalo i was referring to the ethan hein link above.
boptillyouflop +deathtokoalas The importance of the fifth is not just cultural. It's structural. Musical cultures with different structural requirements tune differently.
Indian music pitches are all intervals up from a drone bass, so they tune in just intonation (logically).
Arabic music tends to center around small melodic steps within a tetrachord. Neutral seconds make structural sense: they make an interesting contrast to major seconds and minor seconds.
Indonesian Gamelan and Thai music are somewhat polyphonic and use a lot of bells and gongs and metallophones, which have irregular frequencies as harmonics, so they don't tune in fifths - instead, they tend to split the octave in roughly equal parts with some gaps.
Chinese and Japanese music are similar in polyphonic structure to the Gamelan, but they have a lot more string and wind instruments (which have regular harmonics). They tune in fifths.
deathtokoalas +boptillyouflop everything will always make perfect sense when you explain your observations in terms of the observations themselves. it's tautological.
it's only structural in terms of the mathematics. we built the instruments to use the math; we didn't write the math to explain the instruments. it's consequently actually more of a social construction. so, to understand why we built instruments that tune in fifths, we need to understand why we wanted music to sound that way - and the answer is because we thought these ratios had special properties.
we don't say we write in fifths because the instruments push us in this direction. that's mixing up cause and effect.
Scott Wallace +deathtokoalas You say: so, to understand why we built instruments that tune in fifths, we need to understand why we wanted music to sound that way - and the answer is because we thought these ratios had special properties.
I would put it differently. These ratios do have special properties: people perceive fifths as being consonant even if they have no idea of the mathematics. Sure, part of what we consider consonant or pleasing is cultural, but people all over the world sing in unisons, octaves, and fifths, and it's not hard to hear why: the ratios of 1/1, 2/1, and 3/2 simply clash less than, say, the Pythagorean third, 81/64. Simpler geometry makes for consonance because the waves fit together nicely.
In other words, we don't write in fifths because the instruments push us in this direction: our ears push us in this direction.
cheers from warm Vienna, Scott
deathtokoalas +Scott Wallace this is the perspective that musicologists will go well out of their way to push aside, and that bop isn't arguing. if you talk to somebody that grew up in india or in an islamic culture, or in an indigenous culture, they really won't have the same perceptions about 4ths and 5ths.
there's a mathematical basis to it in the way the string vibrates - there's some method to the madness. but, we construct these conventions.
there's nothing physical about major keys being happy, minor keys being sad and other keys being "mysterious". it's just what we've been taught. this is a point that virtually everybody agrees upon.
my only point was that if you look closely you can actually determine why it's what we've been taught.
Scott Wallace +deathtokoalas Oh, I agree with you about different perceptions of fourths and fifths. But it's also a fact that fourths and fifths are part of almost every musical culture on Earth, including India's. And there's a physical basis for that, which is based on mathematics.
And yes, the conventions of major/happy, minor/sad are not universal by any means. You only have to hear all the European medieval love songs to realize that.
