soiled rug on a concrete floor basement (2000-2001)
i didn't know it at the time, but my parents actually didn't have nearly as much money as they liked to pretend they did, they just borrowed absurd amounts, and were able to convince people to let them borrow it as long as they had two incomes. but, the company my dad worked for relocated around the year 2000, which sent him back to school over 2001-2002. they had to downsize, which meant i had to relocate from this posh three room suite into an unfinished basement, with cracks in the floor and a house fly infestation, to boot.
they still had leverage in their mortgage, though, and they managed to buy some property in a good area for cheap and then sell it off to somebody that wanted to rebuild, which let them move back up the ladder within a few years and eventually into a mansion that they couldn't afford. i don't know why this was so important to them, but it's not uncommon amongst people born in the late 50s, this "generation jones" mentality, where it's absolutely imperative to seem like you have money, even if you're driven hopelessly into debt in order to do it.
so, everything disappeared in the course of about a week - the drum kit was sold, the piano was sold and the house was sold along with it. i kept the things that were mine, which was a large percentage of the items that had built up, but i ended up in a 10x10 room, and fighting off the flies. this kind of dramatic shift in perceived wealth is something i'd already been through a few times (i grew up with my mom, who lived in a rent-subsidized townhouse) and would go through a few more; it's kind of indicative of reality, for me. i could very well go through it a few more times, too...
so, there's no new fancy gear in the next few basements, just a lot of use out of what i actually had.
- the one new piece of gear that shows up in this basement is a dx100, which my dad found for dollars at a garage sale. near the end of my stay in the last basement, i took the jx-8p apart to fix a stuck key, and i couldn't get it put back together again. listen - i didn't break it, it was already broken. but, i needed a controller for it, now, and the dx100 was ideal. i also used the dx100 itself in a lot of the rabit is wolf material, most of which was started in this basement.
- i sold my main classical guitar in 2003. a second mini classical guitar appears in this basement, which was purchased at a garage sale. i still have this one, and it's frankly better suited for my freakishly small hands.
- an old 12-string acoustic guitar made by a budget guitar company from japan was found underneath the stairs, apparently left by the previous owners, which i then inherited. my sister appears to have stolen this from me when i left it in storage at my parents' house in 2011, probably because she incorrectly deduced it was worth money due to it's age, and she probably sold it for peanuts. in fact, it had a vicious warp in the neck. it's very sad to see what drives people in this world. it's heard in the end of clarity and in strung out.
- there was another no-name guitar found for nothing at around this time that i kept for alternate tunings and shows up on a few tracks. it was also very old, but essentially worth nothing. it also disappeared in 2011.
- i don't remember where the harmonica came from, but it first appears in clarity.
- i think the altec mic first appears here, as well.
- my dad kept buying and selling basses, because he never played them, but pretended he did. so, when he had money, a new bass appeared, and i could play it; when he didn't have money, he'd sell the bass almost immediately. i got fed up and bought a red washburn bass that i hung on to until i left in 2003.
pieces recorded in this basement were:
- little suite
- preludio
- strung out
- give 'em hell, harry
- stress
- me, myself...
- time
- clarity
...but i spent most of the time writing into noteworthy composer, including:
- stuck..
- time machine
- symphony of psilocybin induced madness
- intersection of two identical particles
- existence
it was late 2001 or early 2002 when i ended up in the next basement.
(this post was started on the evening of may 27th and worked on over may 28th, then abandoned on the morning of may 29th as i focused on a number of more personal concerns. i am resuming it and finishing it on june 7th 8th.)
three room basement concept, 1999-2000
my parents moved a lot, and i tended to end up with some kind of space in the basement - be it a finished bedroom, an enclave near the laundry or, in this case, access to two adjacent bedrooms, along with a large open area full of gear.
as before, my dad had a desire to have an open jam space, but nobody ever showed up. this was his last attempt at this, but the initial set-up was absolutely amazing - he put a new maple drum kit in beside a giant grand piano, and a huge fender bass amp (which i still have). i was supposed to get one room and my sister was supposed to get the other, but the sister didn't want to live there (?) so i ended up with both rooms, instead.....at least to start. slowly, my stepmother reclaimed one of the bedrooms as an "exercise room" and the various instruments started getting moved out of the recording area (some into my now cramped bedroom), which was reclaimed as a "family room". this was on some level a tragedy, but the fact of the matter is that nobody was using any of this stuff, except me. but, i sure used it...
so, what have i got to look at here?
- the one extra piece of gear on liquify was a dan electro dd-1 fab tone that was temporarily left in the space by my friend greg. out of all those dorks i knew at the time, greg was the one that actually had some raw musical talent (as a guitarist, a drummer and a singer), but he went through this yoga rebirth anti-pot phase in his early 20s that set him down an extremely different path as a human being, one that we weren't really going to base much commonality around. i fucking hate yoga - it just destroys people, as individuals. i've been through this with too many people. it's a fucking awful cult. he was a legit good guy, though. no, really, he was. but, there was a new greg and an old greg, and i found myself voting for the old greg, the one with silly, flappy hair that did too many mushrooms and played guitar like a jimmy page wannabe, not the one on some bullshit "spiritual journey" to buff up and get laid. we just kind of drifted apart...but i wish there was an explicit greg + j recording, and there isn't. he actually left it in the basement by accident sort of thing, and i mostly used it to create a feedback loop in the bridge as i found it wasn't hot enough to get the tone i wanted (it would have sounded better with a boost in front of it, which i didn't have) and i also realized very quickly that it was ridiculously noisy, and consequently difficult to record in such a way as to allow it to be driven later (amplifying it in cool edit just blew up into noise, and you put a gate on that and ruin it). the distortion on the track was actually mostly created manually in cool edit, over top of a very low send. and then i pasted it back on, after. so, it ends up sounding doubled because it is. i mean, you can tell that that isn't my normal guitar distortion by comparing to the other guitar parts, and the dan electro is in fact the reason why (even if i had to find a way to predrive it, as mentioned). so, it's integrated into a few of the guitars and a component on some of the drums, but i was actually trying to use it as a send on a track when i fed it back accidentally, and that's what really ended up sticking. so, if somebody can find a vst of this, i'll archive it, but i wasn't particularly enamoured with it (good guy greg loved it, though - and it worked well with his good guy riffs).
these things have somewhat of a following, but they're just, like, utter noisy cheese, imo:
...although, as mentioned, i wonder what kind of screech you could get out of it if you put something like an electro harmonix linear power booster in front of it....
if i saw one for less than $20, i'd probably snag it.
- it seems like the first use of the new soundblaster is in the track "tribute", which features me feeding my guitar through the environmental audio processor - and it's easy to see how warped it sounds, almost immediately. it's like instant frippertronics. i was lucky enough to get a new pc as a combo birthday/christmas present, which had the soundblaster live in it. as posted previously, here's a vst emulator of this that i hope works well:
- it was around this time that i started using a leslie rotating speaker emulator fairly frequently. like, on almost every song. it's very heavily utilized on 'stress'. i still install this.
- there was a hyperprism plugin pack that i used extensively from about 1999-2004. this company no longer exists and the files don't appear to be available anywhere online. i do still install these, though.
- i started using a program called "sounder" that lets you generate midi sequences using an interface similar to the video game "pong". you tell the computer which notes to play, so you reduce the randomness to note length and dynamics, while picking the key it's working in - making it sound more like a jazz musicians than a computer. it was the kind of generative app i felt was actually useful, to the point that i was frequently jamming with it. i could never get this to work on xp, not even in a virtual machine, but i intend to reinstall it to the 98 system - in fact, it's one of the reasons i'm doing it. this program formed the basis of the track "entropy", and is used in a number of other places.
- there is some tactical use of an old version of acid at this point to mess with some horn and string samples, but i've always found the interface sort of stifling. yes, i said that. in fact, you'll notice that - i don't make music that is loop based like that (sometimes, the differences are subtle, but everything is live, and it's very consciously so). that said, i more seriously toyed with the idea of using it to build a string library, but even the new computer had problems with using it in any meaningful way due to the program's extremely heavy use of ram. acid is not currently in the list of programs i'm installing on this machine. acid is no longer owned by sony, apparently. you can hear this in "entropy", as well, but you'd never guess it was acid. in the end, i just preferred to write midi scores than try to use samples.
- i picked up a morley pro series wah around this time for pretty cheap but i found the effect to be a little more subtle than what i wanted. i mean, i was hardly interested in doing 80s hair metal whammy dives, but, after playing with direct x filters in cool edit, i wanted a much more dynamic instrument that i could warp like a dj or sound engineer warps filters with their hands, but in real-time with my feet, and found this was really designed to be the opposite of that. there was no doubt a mental disconnect between the world this was made for (southern rock guitarists) and the kind of sounds i was imagining (warped sound effects from contemporary experimental techno, like download). i mean, i knew better, but i guess i didn't. that said, i made some sufficiently demented use of it in the climax to "entropy", as well as in the intro solo to "ignorance is bliss" before i swapped it for a digitech xp-100 a few basements later. the pod has a couple of wah sounds in it; it wouldn't make sense to try to model this in a daw, unless you have the right kind of controller. so, you need hardware here, one way or another.
- audiomulch makes it's first appearance here - try the "v2" sounds in gravity's rainbow, or the jungle drum sequences in the "curious george suite" or the weird sequence at the end of the curious george suite. i still install this, although i don't think i used it over my last recording binge phase (i would expect to use it for cycles/second, along potentially with max, reason and a few other overwhelmingly nerdy things. that's a research project of it's own when i get there.)
- i use a bass sequencer program called "rubber duck" by d-lusion (that is based on a tb-303) on a few tracks for the deny everything period (you can hear it squelching in acidosis, and gravity's rainbow):
- the drum sequencing for "curious george" was done using leaf drums, and took in a number of odd sources, such as a donald duck sample. i also used rubber duck as a source for some of the samples. there was also a "leaf effects".
- the secret effect on the guitar tone in curious george is the "megatrancer" direct x plugin, which i can't find anywhere online or in any of my files just right now.
- i made some use of a generative sound program pushed by brian eno called "koan sound" that has since been purchased by wotja and that i should look further into:
- hammerhead, coagula, granulab and sound raider were used extensively during this period. some of the synths on ignorance is bliss used coagula to generate samples that were then pitched using a soundfont program that came with the soundblaster (vienna?) and performed on the jx-8p.
- there was a program used to generate "ukelele permutations" which was some kind of guitar chord teach-to-play software, but i've forgotten the name of. it might have come with the soundblaster, but i don't remember.
- there is some use of the synthesizer in the soundblaster, as well, just as a midi bank. specifically, the "orchestra hit" is used in ignorance is bliss (and then warped mercilessly in cool edit)
- i also picked up a creamy dreamer, which is a modded russian muff intended to sound like the tone that corgan used in siamese dream. i still have this, and in fact still use it. regarding emulations, there are attempts to pin this sound both in the pod and in guitar rig and i'll leave it at that. i have a regular muff as well, and we'll talk about that a few basements up.
- around this time of his life, my dad tended to disappear on sunday mornings for a few hours. in later years, it was obvious that he was trying to avoid going to church, and he even used routine breakfast with myself as a way out of it (after i had moved out). but, in these years, it's a little less clear what he was really up to. however, he'd often come back with things he'd purchased at garage sales - which ranged from speaker parts to beatles lps to obscure, out-of-print prog cds and whatever else he could get his hands on. it was a hobby, no doubt. and, from time to time, he'd come back with some old guitar effects that cost him a buck or two each, which included the following:
- mxr m-168 stereo flanger, early 80s. i still have this, but it is finnicky and often doesn't work. i think it's a power issue. this is kind of a basic flanger; universal audio emulates the rack version, if you insist on it.
- mxr distortion II, late 70s (the big one, with the plug, in the gold box). i still have this, and it's noisy, but it works - i'm no fan of hair metal, which is what it's associated with, but it gives a good noise rock tone if floored appropriately, as well and is used on numerous recordings from 2000-2002, although i never left it in my normal signal due to the noise. these units are very expensive ($600?), and i don't want to sell mine, but i can't imagine why - they don't sound particularly good. i'd rather use a boss sd-1 for that kind of light overdrive sound as it's a bit tighter. the mxr+ is widely emulated, but the mxr II is kind of obscure. like i say - i'd suggest using an sd-1 for normal use, anyways. but, i like having it around as an oddball secret weapon if i want a particularly noisy, live sound (most of the amped guitars in little suite were done with this, as one example).
- mxr m-102 dyna comp (this was broken on arrival and appears to have disappeared. i think he gave it to his friend larry, actually. so, maybe larry got something in return for his broken phaser, after all.)
- ibanez ge-601 (this was broken on arrival and never fixed. i still have it, though.)
- i picked up a mooger fooger mf-102 ring modulator that spring, hoping to drive it with the morley and get that dramatic foot driven techno-oscillation filter, but it didn't actually work; it just didn't convert to an expression like i hoped. i never got another expression for it. guitarists kind of have their hands busy, so this became an expensive trick item. that said, it is used extensively as a bass (acidosis) and vocal (trepanation nation) processor over the next few years, before i cashed it in as having done it's purpose. it's also become very expensive ($600?), but isn't any more useful than a freeware vst plugin - it's expensive because it says "moog" on it, and likely of little actual functional value to you, unless you're doing very modular synth work. just about any old ring modulator with a carrier signal should be just as good.
i wish i could find a demo with the expression pedal plugged in like i wanted to set up, but what this demo does is really demonstrate how kind of useless the thing really is:
...with the mxr distortion II set up off to the side.
you can hear at least parts of that chain on "entropy", on "ignorance is bliss", on "being a good little monkey" (which uses the ring mod) or on "acidosis", as well as on some tracks recorded in the next basement - like little suite.
and, there's really nothing in there worth looking for a specific emulator for, that i can't get in the pod, or in guitar rig.
- up until this point, my guitar training was in blues and rock music, and i felt i needed something a little deeper, so i started taking classical guitar lessons. i just wanted to get a basic footing before i ran with it on my own. so, there was a classical guitar in the house now, too, which is heard on "acidosis" primarily, until it picks up a little in the next basement. i took about a year's worth of lessons before i stopped. i still had the ibanez, the epiphone sg and the obese strat at my disposal, along with an electric-acoustic.
- a found an electric mandolin at this point at a garage sale that eventually developed some electrical problems and had to be disposed of. it's heard on "acidosis" and "strung out" amongst other things.
- another item i picked up at a garage sale in this period was a bontempi electric air reed organ. this was a noisy, half broken piece of gear that i had to use digital noise reduction to remove the motor from, when recording. it's heard in a number of tracks from 2000-2003 (acidosis, 9:46..., little suite), before my stepmother discarded it under the claim that it was "garbage". sadly. i can get an organ sound from any vst synth, and then mess with it further from there, but nothing quite sounds like this old thing that probably end up in the landfill.
this is similar:
- an ebow was purchased while living in this basement, as well, which i still have. it's heard on "acidosis" amongst other things.
- as mentioned, there was a drum kit in my bedroom at this point (heard on the curious george suite, a commercial break, gravity's rainbow), along with a grand piano a few feet outside of my door (heard on acidosis) and a large fender bass amp (used to record most of the guitars, which i still have).
- there was a peavey bass/keyboard amp (gone) and a cheri guitar amp (still have)
- the wood flute is used in "acidosis" and "book it!"
- the jx-8p is the main synth, still. the ry30 is used sporadically, because the memory was full and i didn't know how to back it up.
- there was a bass, but i don't remember much about it.
- the equalizer i had been hauling around for a few years went belly up around this time, and you can hear me taking advantage of it near the end of "acidosis".
nothing's clicking or whirring, and it's running a little hot, but it always did.
this machine was built in 2007. it's an old machine. i don't need it to emulate a quantum computer, but i do just need it to stop freezing.
and, before i do that, even, i should run chkdsks on all four drives in the machine.
it might be bad sata cable or something stupid like that, but i have to strip it right down to figure it out.
alright. so, i don't really want to troubleshoot this machine, but i unfortunately have to as it keeps freezing, and i'm not convinced it's hardware. i simply don't know what the problem is.
there were some periodic freezing issues back in 2015 that i thought was ram, but i'm no longer convinced is. there were also base issues with chipset drivers when i first bought the machine, years ago.
what i'm going to do is reinstall the machine in the most minimal way possible - just the programs integrated on the disc + the drivers for the most minimal hardware configuration possible. and, then i'll bring things in further as i need them, rather than all at once and carefully observe what happens.
i suspect i may need to reprogram the board again like i did in 2014. why do i have to keep reprogramming the board, pigs?
the reality is that there's a lot of software on here that i barely use and that the next phase is not going to be heavy on things like vst synths so much as it's going to be about guitars, actual hardware (like drum heads) and abstract sound design. so, i shouldn't get caught up in getting all of these virtual vstis to work, because i'm probably not going to use them much anyways.
and, once i'm convinced that i've found the problem, i can rerun the script again.
Monday, June 7, 2021
alright, let's hope that stays put until i'm finished doing what i'm doing, at least.
what else could be wrong?
i think the drives are fine, but i'm a little iffy on the processor.
and, i vaguely recall needing to reinstall cubase after the script, due to resetting some system files...
well, i recently bought some new lithium batteries, so why not try a brand new one?
no, that didn't do it...
the only thing that ever seems to work with this thing is flashing the bios, and i wish i understood why, exactly.
i messed around with the page file and environment variables, and i'm running a defrag.
i know these are old timey concerns, but it seems like it's either that all of the ram is bad or none of the ram is.
it was stable with 3 gb for quite a while...
yeah, i'm far less convinced that the issue with this thing is related to ram...
i got the board to read all 4 gb, and i'm going to stick with that for a bit. instead, i've unplugged the card reader, because i don't use it in that device anyways.
yeah, it seems better after doing that. good.
it sucks not having confidence in your hardware, but i haven't been able to demonstrate that there's anything wrong with any of it, either.
i'm trying to remember if i had this problem before and i don't remember.
however, i vaguely recall figuring this out a while back. i backed up my appdata directory so i copied it back over and the load process was instantly different.
i don't need every single plugin to load every time i launch, what i need is to figure out if i've got a ram issue or not, and there's no easy way to do that....
the immediate concern is just making sure that the plugins i recently downloaded actually launch. so let's hope i can get through that without it freezing further, then try to bring some more ram back in.
of course, the idiot cops seem to think i'm hiding secret messages from the kremlin somewhere, and they seem to keep fucking with my bios, so i might need to get in the habit of clearing my cmos whenever i come in from somewhere in order to get the machine to run properly.
*sigh*.
i've swapped the ram around and it keeps halting, so i'm going to have to shut everything off in cubase to start, then bring it all in one by one.
naw, it crashed with 2 in it, too...
i know i have a questionable stick, but i lost track of which one it was.
so, let's try with 1.
of course, i could also have some unstable plugins, right.
so, i launched cubase to check to see if the eax plugin was loading, and it froze with the third stick in.
i took it out, and it booted.
here's what i don't know right now - is the stick bad, is the board funny or is cubase having difficulty with this hybrid ram channel thing? what i mean is this - if i have two sticks in, it loads them together and if i have four sticks in it loads them in parallel. but, when i put three sticks in, it does this weird in between thing.
i have to experiment with it, but i want to make sure everything is loading first.
in the end, if i decide that one of the sticks is bad, i might have to choose between 2 and 4 gb if i want the machine to run. but, i should be able to get 2x1 gb of ram relatively cheaply nowadays, right?
so, like everything else, the next process is going to be a little bit convoluted.
i want to finish my train of thought regarding all of the extra plugins before i do a narration of the last week of events. so, let me rewind to about ten days ago...
Friday, June 4, 2021
ok, so i've got the machine installed, finally. i still have some filing to do, though.
i need a nap...
Thursday, June 3, 2021
let me put this all in one place in case there are questions about it, and i'm going to do it running backwards from the order of last modification.
when was the last time i altered these releases?
early 2018:
inri068 & inri069: constructed over late 2017 and early 2018 from tracks finished over 2014-2015 and written over 1996-2003.
late 2017:
inri026, inri031, inri034: remixed from orphaned demos from 1999
inri030, inri038: constructed from mixes done over 2015/2016.
inri042: constructed from 2017 mixes of 1999/2000 material
inri043, inri044, inri047, inri050: rebuilt from midi over 2014 by adding extra recorded parts, final mixes added over late 2017.
inri048: recorded more or less from scratch over late 2014. extra mixes from 2014 source added over late 2017.
inri055, inri056, inri058, inri061: demos from 2001/2002 were completed over late 2014 by adding extra recorded parts. extra mixes added in late 2017.
inri065: midi file completed in may, 2015 by transcribing demos from early 2003, which was then used to build multiple extra remixes. last mixes complete in late 2017.
inri071, inri072, inri073: compilation from 2015 of tracks completed by that date, but updated in late 2017 with more appropriate alternate mixes
inri074: initial version from 2003 was stripped of samples in late 2017 and added as a hidden track. will also appear that way on trivial group 2xlp.
over 2016:
inri004-inri015 & inri017-inri022 & inri024-inri025: this is the proper inri/inriched release cycle. remastered, with much difficulty due to interference from some unclear source, over the summer and fall of 2015, and finally remastered and rebuilt with many stops and starts over the course of 2016. the first singles were finalized in january, 2016 and the last comp was finalized in december, 2016. minimal midi parts and one new vocal part were added in this time frame, as well.
late 2015:
inri066: all ry30, soundblaster sequences and jx8p tracks from the late 90s or early 00s. some added sequencing and production work from late 2015.
early 2015:
inri035: mix tape constructed from material recorded 1996-1999.
inri046: lead mix finished in 2006 from files written in 2001. extra mixes added in 2015.
inri049: a new ambient mix was created in may, 2015. all other files are unaltered from late 2002.
inri062: new recorded vocal mix added to demo from 2002 in may, 2015. all other mixes from 2002/2003.
inri063: 6th lp. final version compiled from material remastered and finished over 2014/2015.
inri070: soundblaster & vst renders of material written before 2003, as output between 2014-2015.
late 2014:
inri052: 5th lp. final version compiled from material remastered and finished over 2014.
inri054: remixed, remastered and completed over late 2014. demos from 2001/2002.
inri059: constructed in late 2014 from disconnect parts recorded in mid 2002
inri060: remixed from existing tracks from 2002
inri079: imminent release, hopefully in 2021. but, all tracks for this release were done by late 2014.
early 2014:
inri041: 4th lp. final sample-less version remixed and compiled from existing source material from 1999/2000
late 2013:
inri000-inri001: remastered late 2013. otherwise unaltered from 1996/1997.
inri002: mix tape compiled in 2013, from source material from inri000-inri001.
2003-2013: black hole to be filled in.
2004
inri078 - demo tape from 2004, released as is in 2019
2003
inri075, inri076, inri077: unfinished demos from 2003 as of now.
2002:
inri053: released in 2014 and again in 2017 from unaltered 2002 files.
inri057: released in 2014 from unaltered demos from 2002.
inri064: released in 2015 from unaltered demos from 2002.
inri067: releases in 2017 from unaltered demos done from 1999-2002.
2001:
inri045: files from 2001 were released unaltered in early 2014, and project was closed down due to mysterious disappearance of sheet music attached to it
inri051: released, unaltered, in late 2014
2000:
inri036, inri037, inri039, inri040: compiled and released from existing recordings in early 2013
1999
inri027-inri028: released as is in late 2013
inri029: released as is in late 2013 and expanded with alternate version from same time period in late 2017
inri032: appended to in early 2014 with existing mixes from the time period, but not otherwise altered since.
inri033: 3rd lp. last trick split off in early 2014, otherwise unmodified
1998
inri016: released as is in late 2013
inri023: compiled from remixes created over 1998 in 2013 and expanded in late 2016
1997
inri003: compiled in 2013, but files unaltered from 1997.
this machine should be installed by the end of the night...
what i was doing yesterday was trying to finish a rough install of the recording pc, before i finished up a number of notes regarding the gear i used in the various places i've lived, with the intent to build emulators out of all of it. i've currently got 3 sticks in the machine and it unfortunately did something when i turned my back that i didn't catch.
so, we're starting the install from scratch, and we're iffy on that third stick...
i was going to do some running around today, but i clearly got distracted. i'm going to make some eggs and get ready for a big day tomorrow, instead.
it'll be nice and warm, at least - nice, hot weekend coming up.
Thursday, May 27, 2021
in fact, that strat is so heavy that it weighs more than my sg:
like, a lot more.
go back to the previous video, though, and check out gorgeous maple neck. like i say: nobody can figure out where the body came from, although it has a typewritten number on the inside of it, suggesting it's fairly old. like, just the font suggests 60s or 70s. but, it seems like somebody put the coronet neck on it.
one hypothesis is that somebody smashed it and put the coronet neck on to replace it, but that doesn't help us understand where this heavy hh strat came from to begin with.
here's the obese strat:
you could maybe call it an obese strat...
open concept basement bedroom, 1997-1999
- my parents moved across the city in mid-1997, and i lost the soundproof room in the process :(. i lost the drum kit & the tascam in the process, as well. however, i gained a computer with internet access and windows 95 (my previous computer had no internet access, and had windows 3.1. in fact, my first bedroom pc was shipped with ms dos 6.2 and wordperfect, the latter of which was actually reasonable, given that i grew up in ottawa (corel disappeared, but the big adobe building remained a presence in downtown ottawa for years.). i've actually kept up on the old software reasonably well, mostly because i never stopped using most of it: cool edit 96 (https://www.audacityteam.org/), noteworthy composer (https://noteworthycomposer.com/), the windows 95 sound editor, a hacked version of logic that never ran smoothly and a guitar tablature to midi program called "bucket of tab" (https://antisleep.com/bucket) were where i got started on this. but, this pc did not have the resources for even the most basic sound recording.
- i got an ry30 mid summer, to replace the drum kit. my dad was sad; my stepmother wasn't. that ry30 stuck with me until 2003, when i sold it to go to bc. of all the gear that got sold, that's the piece i think i most miss, and i'd love to see a serious attempt to emulate it. i can load samples into battery, but it's missing the point - this was a powerful little drum synth, and i made massive use of it for years, all the way to the end of the rabit is wolf period. that said, the reason i sold it is that i felt i grew out of it, and there kind of wasn't a lot left to do with it. i couldn't justify spending $400 on it given that i can do everything with free plugins nowadays, but i will eventually replace this thing...
if you know where to get an actual vst emulation of the ry30 - not samples of it, but a vsti of the actual machine - let me know.
- a bass reappeared. i don't remember the model. it was green, and played very smoothly, which was necessary because i have freakishly small hands (to this day, i play a mini ibanez bass).
- i actually synced the noteworthy composer sequences with the ry30 parts manually because nobody told me i could sync them automatically. so, it's all very meticulous, but using very simple hardware. i would have had a basic consumer grade soundblaster in this thing, and the initial sequencing is all using general midi. it's for that reason that i went looking for general midi a few years ago and came away with bandstand, by native instruments (a very big company in music creation circles):
bandstand was central to the recordings i did over 2014-2016, because i needed a way to emulate general midi using updated sound fonts. this has been discontinued, and i think it's the last attempt by the industry to save general midi for recording, as it seems that the standard nowadays is to use specific sample libraries rather than a general sound font library (and native instruments suggest the use of kontakt, instead). i think this is unfortunate, myself, as i liked the standardization of being able to take a midi score and plug it into a daw, but the industry doesn't seem to be interested in scored music in much of any abstraction at all anymore and rather more interested in just creating textures out of existing sound. so, the standard nowadays is to sell you this pile of violin scratches, rather than a collection of violins to sequence - and tell you to hire a violinist instead i suppose. but, of course, i still have soundblasters i can track if i need to. i will eventually install kontakt on the 64 bit machine, as the experiments i had with the 32-bit machine were just simply that i needed more ram. but, i actually found that kontakt was unnecessarily inefficient (it loads everything on start-up, even if you're only using a fraction of it) and that the freeware sound libraries actually even sounded better....
i would like to find an update for bandstand, but nobody seems to really want there to be one. this seems to be something people have moved past, and something you're going to need to curate old software for if you want to hang on to.
- the jx-8p & tascam 4-track both show up about this time, with the jx being my only and primary keyboard for years after. this is of course the last version of the roland juno series, and combines analog style juno sounds with more modern digital sounds. the jx has been keyless for years and driven by a dx100, and i've had a midi frontend installed on it for years and never used it, but this is a vsti of it in case i want to sequence it (i could of course sequence it manually, too):
- my aunt sent me back a flute from a trip she took to india that shows up on several tracks
- somewhere along the way, the cassette deck stops working properly, and a song is constructed out of it.
- it was some time in late 1998 that my dad asked me to go to songbird with him to help him pick out a guitar for my sister, who was going through a difficult phase. as mentioned, she had been doing a lot of piano playing since she was very little, and now wanted to play guitar and was threatening to run away from home if she wasn't gifted with an expensive brand name guitar (in fact, i think she was trying to get my dad to buy her boyfriend a guitar, and i don't think that ever clicked). so, my dad got baited into buying her a guitar.....which she didn't accept, because it didn't have a brand name on it. and, it definitely pissed him off, yeah. meanwhile, i continued to play my entry level ibanez, right? it's worth pointing out that my sister was a delusional, spoiled brat at this point, but i really never said anything about it. the guitar i picked out has yet to be properly understood by anybody i've presented it to; it seems to have a coronet "batwing" neck, the dual humbucking pickups seem to have been installed manually and the body, while shaped like a strat and built like a paul, is of unclear origin. so, this is a guitar that somebody seems to have built from parts. the reality is that i picked the guitar out from the store because it played better than any other in the store due to the beautiful neck on it; after my sister rejected it as not sufficient because of the lack of brand name on the headstock, i ran it off to my friend greg's before it could get sent back, where i let it sit until everybody forgot about it. it eventually found it's way back to my studio, and has been my main guitar ever since.
- while i never said anything about it, i get the impression that my dad eventually felt a little bit stupid about asking me to pick out an expensive guitar for my sister (who did not play guitar), while i continued to play a starter ibanez roughly ten years on. i didn't care about the brand name, but that frankenguitar i snagged from songbird had a beautiful neck on it, and i sure appreciated it. nonetheless, he seemed to realize, in hindsight, that it was kind of a shitty deal for me, and went and bought me a red sg, along with an electro-acoustic. the black guitar itself is somewhere in the sg/guild range in terms of weight, in the sense that it's lighter than a paul and heavier than a strat, but i've always treated it like a sort of a fat strat due it's shape and construction. so, in the end, i got three guitars out of my sister's hissy fit and she got zero. all three of the guitars start showing up in recordings over the end of 98 and start of 99.
let's go way back.
1996-1997 basement room
when i was a kid, my dad built a soundproof room in one of the basements of one of the houses he owned. i suppose he intended to use it himself, but he was a 40 year old man with a day job and it just didn't work out that way; i was a 15 year-old kid on summer holidays, so you couldn't pull me out of there. so, my earliest demos were recorded in this little insulated room i was lucky to have. what gear did i have that i could look for?
- i was using an ibanez guitar with a floating bridge. i actually don't regret selling this guitar, as i found the bridge to be annoying and i don't have the attachment to ibanez that a lot of metalheads might.
- i still have my ancient cheri amp
- i still have my zoom 1010 effects pedal, and wouldn't imagine anybody would want to model this. google suggests "no" on first pass. it was a beginner floor guitar effects pedal that...it didn't sound very good, or at least not as a guitar processor. i didn't know any better. it was useful as a noise generating device, even if it wasn't so useful as a guitar pedal. so, there's some great sounding distorted cymbals recorded through it. i would be interested in finding an emulator for the reason that it's so overwhelmingly noisy that it's almost useless in scenarios where it would be great if it wasn't. in later years, i've put the jx-8p through it and that's all i'd ever use it for nowadays. but, all my guitar parts used this thing, for years.
- my dad's friend larry left a broken mxr phase 90 (script logo.) down there that i still have. it still works, if you pay close attention to the pot on the inside, and i used it quite a bit. he just never retrieved it. hey larry, do you want your mxr back? he was a van halen fan; i was a corgan fan, and even at that age i understood the influence and the value of it. this is a classic pedal - it's both in the pod and in guitar rig - but i wonder if there's a standalone....
...but nothing official, i don't think. if i was mxr, i would have this, for sure.
- there was a bass down there to start (i don't remember the model), and then there wasn't, so i bought a boss oc-2 to try to create bass parts out of my guitar, and it didn't work out that well. i ended up using it mostly for keyboard parts, but i sold it without getting too much out of it.
- my sister, who was a serious pianist at a young age, had an electric piano with some organ sounds and stuff. she was strangely propertarian about the item, and repeatedly refused to allow me to record in her space. so, i had to sneak into her room when she wasn't around. i eventually got the jx-8p...and she eventually got a grand piano parked in the living room, that was great to record on when nobody was home. i don't remember the model.
- her metronome is also heard a few times
- there was a peavey bass amp down there that i held on to for years and think my sister ended up with, in the end. i can get all manners of peavey emulation from the pod or from guitar rig, even if i actually prefer the sound of roland or vox amps.
- there was a drum kit down there; don't ask me about the details. again: i never saw him actually play it. in hindsight, maybe that was intentional.
- larry also left his tascam down there, and he did pick that up, along with an acoustic guitar that belonged to him.
- there was a graphic equalizer hooked up to a luxman receiver
- i never mic anything any more, but the mics i was using were dixon md-1178s, and i actually still have both of them. i have some mic emulation software, but this is something i pay very little attention to because i line almost everything in through the pod or the alesis (including the electronic drum kit), and almost all of my music is instrumental. i later picked up a very old altec 683 b, and it's the mic i use when i need one (and the mic sean used to record everything, as well).
- ....and my sennheiser 440-IIs, which i still have, were what i listened to everything through.
if that plugin works well in cubase, it could get a lot of use, especially on the lost symphony, as it would have been fundamental, if i had actually recorded it at the time.
if you're curious, this is how i tend to work - i go looking for what i need when it comes up, i don't tend to just download things and experiment with them when they're brand new.
but, i wonder if i should actually even go out and find all of the old gear that i've lost in plugin form. how possible is that? what is really missing, actually?
this soundcard is actually an older model than i thought it was.
it's at least designed for nt, so maybe the software might work, if i get the right peripheral for it.
but, it also has a firewire, so i wonder if i could drive it from the alesis....
right now, i just want to get drivers and script them.
the key shift in approach should be this:
it may be true that 24 bit is technically superior to 16 bit, but, in the end, it's, just, like, your opinion, as to which sounds better.
don't believe me? go ask that kid with a record player.
so, i want to mix towards an output, not just get superior quality for the fuck of it.
but, i need to understand what people are actually listening to, and the answer appears to be the following: spotify is currently upgrading from streaming lossy mp3 to cd-quality audio. and, youtube seems to be pushing downsampling. so, for right now, 16-bit seems like the way to go, still.
my previous build of the 32-bit xp machine had the soundblaster live drivers built into the os install. since putting the live back in the 98 machine (which i'm calling 16-bit but is actually also 32-bit) where it came from, i've put the audiigy that my sister's first husband gave me (he decided to be a douche bag mac user around '05ish, so he didn't want it) in the 32-bit machine to replace it. it also has what was the last line of m-audio delta series pci cards in it, which i got for very cheap at the end of it's lifecycle explicitly because it has an actual rca out on it, and the dac is dealt with right away kind of thing - it's about minimal amounts of conversion, although i later found out that the windows kmixer sort of ruins it and i have to connect via asio to make sense of that. and, i'm connecting an alesis 16-track mixer as a recording interface via firewire, as well as a pod xt via usb for direct guitar ins. old gear - like i said. and, none of this is going anywhere any time soon....
anyways, i didn't need to script up a driver install for the live because the drivers came with the os and the software didn't work on xp anyways, but i'm going to need to script something up for the audigy. i'm currently searching for an install cd, and will probably hold off on anything complicated until i can get one of those interfaces like i have in the other machine. the major reason i'm going to use this device is to make use of the dsp in it, which is intended for gaming and is consequently a little thicker than you'd get out of most normal audio-focused applications. a large percentage of the weird guitar and drum reverb i used from about 1999-2004 was actually using that eax as a pre-amp; i lost it when i upgraded to xp in 2004 and put it aside when i couldn't get it to work when i built the 32-bit machine in 2007.
but, i'm sorting through articles to try to find exactly what i'm looking for, and the obvious question presents itself - is it time to move to 24 bits?
wait. i'm recording at 16 bits? what? well...
see, this is my actual logic, here - the machine i did everything on until my system collapse was built to use 32-bit software, and almost all of the plugin software (like guitar rig) is written for 16-bit audio manipulation. so, what happens when you send 24 bit audio into software written for 16-bit audio? if it's well written software, it should actually stop you from actually doing it and tell you to downsample the audio or buy a new plugin. but, what most plugins are going to actually do is simply truncate the file and then spit it out with a bunch of zeros, meaning you end up downsampling your 24 bit recording to 16 bit by accident as you process it. and, you probably will not be able to tell the difference, as you're doing it.
on top of that, you downsample in the end anyways, right? see, that's the assumption. is it true? for now, let's assume it is. now, some people will tell you that you want the extra space for the calculations, if your software allows for it. ok. but, that's the rare scenario where you probably can tell the difference between 16 and 24 bit - when you've run the project through a thick reverb and filled all that space up with data. and, then what happens when you mix it down?
the answer is that you just delete it - and you've wasted your time getting something to sound great as a 24-bit sound file, only to have it sound entirely different as a 16-bit product. and, are you going to even notice, are you going to listen to a 16-bit file through your shmancy sound system? nooooo.
oops.
so, i developed a policy of sticking to recording to the output quality. that is, i decided that if people are going to listen to the end result on 16-bit playback devices (or, god forbid, fucking speakerphones) then i'm going to mix them at 16-bits. logical, right?
but, how true is that, still? i mean, nowadays nobody listens to anything on cds - what they actually do is stream it, probably. and, are they therefore able to stream it at 24-bits? i mean, their hardware can probably do it.
the 32-bit machine that i'm reinstalling this morning will remain 32 bits and geared towards 16 bit recording. that's not going to change.
but, as i get around to building that 64-bit machine and wondering how i'll be recording into it, the question i'm actually going to ask isn't about maximizing recording quality so much as it's about trying to understand actual listening habits. i know that i still listen to everything in 16-bit. am i out of touch on this? if i am, and people are listening to 24-bit flacs on their phones, then i should adjust to mixing final outputs in a way that conforms to how they're actually going to listen to them.
if i mix everything in 24-bit and the world listens to it in downsampled 16-bit, i'm just deluding myself through the process - all of that effort exists strictly in a parallel reality that nobody actually inhabits. however, if i mix everything in 16-bit and the world upsamples it to 24-bit to listen to it, i'm missing out on an opportunity to expand the quality of the mix.
all the technicalities and specs are fun to analyze, but it's the user experience that i'm really concerned about.
ok, so that was a wasteful few days due to needing to undo the cops breaking my computer (yet again.), but i have my machine coming back up now. i was in fact able to isolate a crc error on the dvd; the reburn is booting from the dvd, as intended.
but, listen, you fucking idiot thugs...
the chromebook is the only machine i use to post to the internet and, so long as this continues, that is not going to change. the 90s laptop is being used strictly as a phone, right now, but will eventually also be used as a tv. and, the recording machine is kept off the network and used strictly to record and compose music on.
the computer you want to hack for kremlin codes is the chromebook. please leave my recording pc alone.
is that simple enough for you to understand?
yeah, the disc seems to have some problems, for sure. i mean, it reads some of the time, but sometimes it doesn't...
so, i was having difficulty booting the install media from the dvd drive and i had to figure that out because that's how this sits - i just leave the install media in the bottom drive and let it sit there, so i know what the most recent version is, and i have it available in case i need it.
but, as i was doing some troubleshooting, i started to suspect that it's the media itself that's corrupt. thankfully, i do in fact have a backup. of course. so, i'm going to try to reburn that and try again.
to be clear: i could install it from the blu-ray drive, but i don't want to do that, i want to install it from the dvd drive. and, the dvd drive seems to let other media boot, so it kind of has to be the actual disk itself. i think....
Wednesday, May 26, 2021
so, i was sleepy when i got in, which isn't that bizarre, as i had been sleeping afternoons for the last few days. i wanted to shower, eat and take a nap, but i had to shower and then nap, instead. so, then i got up to eat and napped some more. i took some iron and napped some more...
i guess i got about ten hours of sleep overall, but i suspect that's two days worth. i actually like naps rather than long sleeps in the summer, and i'd rather sleep in the day if the air conditioning is on (as opposed to having to suffer through it). i absolutely despise air conditioning and want it off altogether, but it is currently on, despite the fact that i asked him to turn it off when he left. so, when you have the air on, it's actually warmer at night - and it's more enjoyable to sleep during the day, to avoid the a/c. but, now i'm awake, so i'm going to need to run the stove to warm the place up, instead. i'll have to try to cycle that over in the next few days, to get back to sleeping during the air conditioning and being awake when it's off.
as it is, i've been up since around 6:00 and have been trying to shift over to do some cleaning but have been stuck dealing with the recording pc, instead.
i guess the cops upstairs realized i was using the recording pc this week, and decided they therefore had to break it. i have no idea what they're looking for, but they seem to think i'm hiding some kind of data somewhere. whatever they did, they seem to have shorted the ram, and they seem to have broken the boot loader - which is something similar to what they kept doing to my windows 7 machine. the difference is that i've very purposefully kept the recording machine off the network for more or less this exact reason, and i guess it doesn't seem to matter - they'll just break into your house and break it when you\re gone.
so, i cleared the cmos and...i was in the process of reinstalling to the drive anyways, so i'm currently putting a temp install in.
this machine does not have a wireless card in it, and i don't want to connect it to any outside network ever at all. in the lalala world that the cops live in, that means i must be hiding secret codes from the kremlin on it, so they need to hack it and take it down.
i don't know how i got into this surreal, absurd mess, but they don't seem to be operating on evidence, and it seems that my only choice is to try to ignore them.
so, that's my night (eating and sleeping) and my morning (reinstalling). i need to call the doctor soon, eat again and then get to getting on with it.
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
overall, this weekend really got away from me. whoever it actually is that is upstairs is acting like a child in their habits, whether they actually are one or not, so i've been forced to clean up after them every few hours - but it doesn't stay clean. so, i have to do it again...
they've very badly triggered my asthma, which is giving me heart palpitations and forcing me to sleep more than i normally would, as well. and, again, i feel like i'm being drugged, but i can't figure out the source of it to end it.
and, yes i know they're up there - i can hear them, i can smell them. it's obvious.
so, i've just been getting up, cleaning, eating, cleaning, sitting down to do something, having to get up to clean again, getting the smallest amount done, having to clean again, etc.
ultimately, no - it shouldn't take me 6-7 hours to prepare a meal and eat it, but that's life dealing with the effects of second-hand smoke by selfish, worthless neighbours - or their worthless children, as it may be.
i was going to go over the sealing i did with an exacto knife (it's a horrible mess, i'm not very good at stuff like that) tonight, but i realized pretty quickly that that's just going to undo it. and, ultimately, who cares? so, i did a second coat over a few spots, and i'm just going to scrub the floor for now, instead. i also want to put something over the space and see if it's comparably better and, looking into it, the best thing to use is probably a dollar store tarp. so, i'll need to go grab one of those as well, the next time i'm out.
but, i think the worst part of it was the bacteria and/or fungi coming in from the cracks, and i hope that sealing them resolves the primary problem.
i'm otherwise in need of doing that clean on the other side of the apartment that i keep putting off...
Monday, May 24, 2021
let me clear about this, though - don't connect your xp machine to the internet. ever.
at this point, i only have one controller with internet access that i take files off and with an external drive, and keep everything else off the intranet.
that's the one issue, but you don't want your recording machine online, anyways.
i will do things with 20 year-old gear that you will take 20 years to understand.
yes, i'm using cubase.
sx. 3.
on xp.
hey, it works; the only issue i've ever had with it is overloading due to the 4 gb ram limit in the 32 bit os. the new sample libraries simply need more ram. but, it's going to be matlab that is going to pull me in to the 64 bit os recording world, finally. it was actually matlab that forced me to upgrade from 98 to xp around 2005 - and while i've upgraded my hardware, i've stuck with 32-bit xp ever since.
i'm ultimately the type that likes a stable, steady daw over the newest bells and whistles. from the time i got my jx/ry30 combo in the late 90s (which would have been cutting edge ten years earlier, but was just high quality last gen by the time i snagged it), i've always been about making the most of the previous generation of gear - and you'll note that i tend to actually use the features in my gear, rather than just upgrade it every six weeks to look cool.
if you're getting good equipment, it should last twenty years before you exhaust it, by which time you have another generation of supposedly last-gen gear to actually understand and make actual use of.
i'd rather listen to a talented programmer on a 20 year old tower that really knows how to use the gear because they've spent the time with it than some talentlesss rich kid fucking around with the shiniest, newest toys.
so, i'll stick with sx 3 for now, thanks.
but it's almost time to upgrade to a system that would have been cutting edge around 2015 or so.
so, i actually ended up spending the morning digitizing the last old cassette i have so that i can put it away, along with this old portastudio i recorded it on, via the same alesis over asio connection i was using previously. i'll reinstall this afternoon. and, i've even uploaded it as a temp mix to the cassette demo ep, which is not closed but i think is now constructed.
i vaguely recall recording this in sarah's apartment as a starting point one night when she was out, and it's really the only way to make sense of it existing at all. i ended up living in sarah's space (which she shared with a friend named heather) for a few weeks because my retarded step-mother tossed me out of the house for correctly calling her delusional - because she was - and refusing to apologize - because it was true. you can claim that was foolish, but where do i get by denying the actual truth? she made an absurd accusation that can only be described by her deluding herself about reality. apologizing for pointing that out would be equivalent to also denying reality and being equally delusional. like, it wasn't an insult, it was a statement of fact! so, if i were to apologize for stating the truth, it would be equivalent to accepting her delusions as true, which would be a denial of reality, and for what? i can't sacrifice truth like that. i can't walk down this dystopic path. so, if you want to accuse me of foolishness, let's at least be accurate about it - the foolishness is actually rooted in an inability to interface with nonsense. this wasn't about my ego, it was about refusing to walk into a dystopia and refusing to separate myself from reality in the process. i'd read too much orwell, i just couldn't handle it. and i knew that the next step would be even worse - that accepting one nonsense as truth would merely lay a basis for accepting more nonsense as truth. it was a shitty outcome, no doubt, but i had to stick to the facts, here - i had to hold to my principles.
truth > family. you have to protect your brain, you have to protect your sanity, or you'll end up as fucked up as everybody else, in the end.
so, i ended up without anywhere to sleep - something i'd never dealt with before (except on the trip to bc i'd just come back from) and wasn't actually taking seriously. in addition to learning that my stepmother was retarded, i learned a little bit about how to fend for myself. but, in the end, i decided i'd rather stay with sarah for a bit, anyways.
but, i lost access to my computer and recording interface...
as such, i called up my friend greg, who had been using the tascam. i mean, i didn't need it - i had the soundblaster live interface. but, now i did. proto-anarchist jessica knew how to distribute property efficiently. the only reasonable timeframe when i would have made this recording is therefore when i was staying with sarah, after i picked up the item from greg (who got a little bit annoyed about it) - which would have been the fall of 2003.
in the end, i just forgot about this recording, and am kind of wondering where the tape with "like divine amoebas" went, as i have more developed memories around recording that track than this one. i mean, this doesn't actually go anywhere just quite yet, even if the dual guitars are kind of harmonically interesting as intertwined sections. that said, this is my next major recording project, as well, and it will form the missing piece of my 8th record (a massive 2xlp set of lengthy pieces, all four of them labeled as symphonies) when it's done.
i will probably do something further with this exact recording, though, as i finally work out the lost symphony. as it is, as rough and unfinished as it is, it's easy enough to extrapolate my mindset at the time, in this kind of dour gira-influenced dirge through this dissonant harmonic cycle of down strokes.
if this is from late 2003 as it must be then it is by far the earliest recording of it that i have. i tried to record it in late 2004 and over 2005, but got distracted and ended up writing xenophanes, instead. so, this comes in last in the sequence of four intertwined symphonic works, but it was actually meant to be the third piece, before xenophanes interjected itself in between. and, that's why it got lost - i pivoted out of the trivial group before i finished it, as i so often did back then. and so often do still now....
are there further demos? well, i can't answer that question thoroughly until i'm sure what happened to the other tape. i digitized it in early 2004, so i haven't lost anything in being unable to locate it. but, i'm sort of sure that it was actually around, too.
for now, these are the only two tracks i have from that brief phase, both demoes of songs that would be completed later and elsewhere, and this is the document i can construct.
by my count, this should end up as inri077 and is essentially now done - along with inri075, inri078, inri079, inri080, inri081, inri082, inri084 and inri085. it is inri076 that will need the attention and could take me most of the summer to complete. and, that will take me up to the summer of 2004. inri083 (impressionist jazz punk, first take) and inri086 (cycles per second lp) will then require some thought as to how to approach.
new upload:
full ep, so far:
this is going to be a temp install because i'm still testing the ram - which seems to be fine, so far. i think the board was just dusty...
alright, so i got through one stack of cds and all of the cassettes, save one, and i'm deciding to go ahead and reinstall rather than continue filing because i have to to archive the cassette. there have been some minor hardware changes that will require updating the script, but i guess i'll have to just deal with it.
this machine has been in a broken state for years, as i spent a very long time troubleshooting what i decided in the end was an environmental signals problem. so, i ripped everything to do with the windows xp subsystem out and just finished the last mixes i was dealing with over asio drivers. and want to put it back, now.
i simply don't know what the signals are like down here, and am long overdue to find out.
the install is automated but it's lengthy so that's likely the morning.
Saturday, May 15, 2021
hey, we spent some time a little earlier setting up my maxxed out windows 98 pc, on a psb-f from 1998 that i got for christmas in 1999. i've had to swap out everything except the board, power supply and case, but it still runs.
i have a 64-bit pc in a box that i haven't built yet and really need to soon....
...but, i fully expect that this 32-bit machine will last another 10 years, at least.
so, i'm pretty sure about the known good gb of ram in the suspected bad slot - that's been stable.
i'm going to try a second gb of suspected good ram in parallel, to close off the first two slots.
this board can take 8 gb of ram, but it's running a 32-bit os (and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future), so i put 4x1 gb sticks of gold-plated ocz in there, but i built it in 2007, so it's getting a little bit old.
i've had to rescue it several times, and i've put a bd-r in it and swapped a few things around, but i've only ever had to replace one of the four hard drives in the machine over the last fourteen years. that's it. so, let's hope the ram is fine, after all.
i tend to like the stuff that's less pompous, and more focused on songwriting, in whatever abstraction - or more psychedelic. so, i like genesis, crimson, floyd - although i actually prefer oldfield, or tangerine dream, to the bulk of it.
i tend not to like the geekier or more randian stuff, like rush or elp or zeppelin.
and, when you bring the macho poseurism or show-offism that is more indicative of metal than prog in, i just tune out altogether. so, i just can't get into stuff like dream theatre or slayer for that reason, although the major problem with later dream theatre is less that it's too metal and more that the singer just ruins it. there's a short time window of dream theatre stuff that i've found instrumental japanese imports of, that i can actually get into.
so, i made fun of him for listening to hair metal, too. i didn't just take that shit.
i think i got him a little into tortoise, which is the kind of thing he ought to have liked, although he seemed to prefer mcentire's work with the sea and cake, and i know he enjoyed tool when given the opportunity to, as well.
but, i never saw him play. not even once. rather, it was myself that ended up playing these kits that were always sitting around...
where did i learn about sound recording?
i have taken a handful of courses both in high school and at carleton, but i don't think it helped much, and both were after i'd been recording for years. the actual truth is that my dad was a useful resource, here.
i actually wish he'd have written some kind of biography, so i could order his own life a little better; i wasn't born yet when he was in his early 20s, and he seemed to view that period of his life as something to take a bit of a step away from. but, what i was able to piece together is that he spent some time in the late 70s as a drummer and sound engineer, mostly dealing with local metal bands in and around ottawa.
now, he was a prog guy - his drum heroes were like terry bozio, bill bruford, phil collins, neil peart, that kind of thing. he was a big mike portnoy fan later in life. and, he had this kind of zappaesque disdain for punk rock as overly simplistic, although i think i was able to help him understand a little later on that the point of punk was political rather than musical. it was actually on his suggestion that i check out the dead kennedys, after i brought home a new offspring record, at the age of 13 - although he then made fun of me for listening to it.
i think this fundamentally warped his concept of punk rock for life:
...and he would constantly reference it in making fun of me for recording by myself, something that shows up here and there, tongue-in-cheek, if you look for it.
but, he wasn't exactly an expert or a working musician, either - he often insisted on owning a drum kit, but i never saw him actually play it, so i can't offer any kind of informed opinion about what he could actually do on it. i saw him noodle around on a bass a few times, and it was clear to me (as a seasoned guitarist, even at age 15) that he had no idea what he was doing. but, he fancied himself a drummer in his mind, anyways - and those were the musicians he followed, drummers in prog bands.
but, it was enough to get me started, and that's really the most important thing, right? my concepts about microphones, about room acoustics, about equalization, about recording gear and even about guitar effects are rooted primarily in questions i asked in my mid to early teens, and while i know today that he was actually even flat out wrong about a number of things, that starting point was really invaluable.
......but, only up to a point.
i'm not a digital native, but i'm the very last gen xer and i had a computer with (dial-up) internet access in my bedroom before i turned 17. so, i'm not a digital native, i had a learning curve, but i'm just about at the end of the cusp of it - there are no doubt even people my age that would consider themselves digital natives. so, i was able to take these basic things i learned from my dad, and this glossary of language i understood, and just yahoo search it. this was before google, actually.
i toyed with going to school to be a sound engineer, and in hindsight i sort of wish i did, but my dad's apprehension about that period in his own life meant he wasn't going to pay for it, and the student loan system in ontario wouldn't cover it. these were expensive programs, too - $10,000/yr on base tuition, compared to around $1,500/yr at the local university (this was still the late 90s). so, i ended up stumbling through a math degree, instead, just due to the realities around me...
i don't think i'd have ended up working in a studio, though. i fundamentally can't deal with other people, and it sort of doesn't matter what my education is or might have been - i would have run up against this same brick wall of social awkwardness, regardless. it took me a long time to kind of figure that out. i would have enjoyed it a lot more, though, and i would have no doubt walked down a very different path and had a very different journey, even if i ended up in the same place, in the end. and, we're all dead, in the long run.
but, as a path, that's not something that was available to me, due to finances and the sort of societal perspective that it's not a vocation of much actual value. i was born poor and raised poor and found myself middle class due to marriages in my middle to late teens; regardless of where i started, the government will send poor kids to school to be doctors or lawyers or professors, but they won't send them to school to be sound engineers. you need substantive capital to invest up front if you really want to do that, and it just wasn't available to me.
so, i often sound like i have a fancy sound design degree, but i actually don't - what i actually have is a math degree, although i studied physics for a while, i took a handful of sound design courses and i went deep into the computer science and law programs, too. it's more that i grew up around gear, and learned about it by actually using it, and by asking functional questions, as a child does, to my dad, who owned the bulk of it.
alright, so we've got up until the end of july done, now. i need to eat.
this is intended to be a dirty run through, remember.
Thursday, May 13, 2021
unfortunately, i can't read this external drive in xp and the chromebook can't read the codecs used by the camera. so, i can either copy the data from the external to a usb key and put it on the xp machine, or i can just upload it to youtube.
i need to reimage my busted up windows 7 laptop before i can even consider repurposing it. so, i'm just uploading it as a playlist to youtube..
and, i can start setting up the production machine for typing, while i'm waiting.
regarding the ram/board issue on the 32-bit system...
i took a known good stick and tried it in all four slots, and there was one that took a few tries, which isn't entirely unusual with old boards - they even just get dusty, sometimes. so, i'm going to try to leave it on with just the known good in the dusty slot and see if it halts or not.
these asus boards don't die (i have one from 1998 and one from 2006 that are both still running, and a third in a box from 2016), but they do get dusty and need to be reseated. let's hope it's that easy.
and, i'm going to have to start typing on the production machine, instead.
Wednesday, May 12, 2021
so, my 32-bit recording pc (which i'm still filing, periodically) has developed some kind of ram and/or board issue that i'm also troubleshooting this week. it just freezes randomly.
these asus boards just don't die, so it has to be the ram, or something else plugged into it.
i've unplugged some of the front panel connectors and, now, it seems to be stable with one stick of ram, so i'm going to rotate a different stick into the slot i took out and try it from there...
Wednesday, April 28, 2021
i guess my system started collapsing in mid 2015, and i've long concluded that i only have marginal control over it - that somebody basically doesn't want me on the internet, and doesn't care if they have to ruin my tools in order to do it. i mean, i'd guess i'm dealing with the kind of people that reject the concept of art as vocation. the idea that i'm just an artist seems incomprehensible to them - i must be working for somebody. so, they just want me offline, and all they interpret this gear as is as a means to corrupt the youth. and, they just want to listen in, and they don't care how badly they have to screw all the signals up in order to do it.
have i shaken them yet? i might never....
but, it means i have this giant pile of electronics that the cia has rendered inoperable in a flatly stupid attempt to shut me down and that i'm going to have to slowly try to salvage.
one thing at a time. i can connect to the internet using the chromebook, and i need to get the recording pc up. i'm minus a stick of ram and will want to replace it soonish; it looks like concerts are probably cancelled for the year, so the next thing to spend money on is replacement parts for all the gear that was broken. the windows 98 pc is working, as well. and, finally building the 64-bit pc is no longer a distant task, but coming up when i work on the matlab project.
i'm not going to replace the backlight on the laptop as it's too risky, but i'll need to reimage the laptop with a customized windows 7 to rip out all of the networking apps, so they can't slave the machine.
slowly. slowly....
i'm less sleepy tonight, and making progress on the filing.
let's remember why i'm doing this.
so, i finished the july, 2013 archive and went to file it, but realized i couldn't do it because my filing apparatus was all in disorder. i then realized that in order to get the filing apparatus back in order, i'd have to get the laptop back up, but i can't do that until i get the filing apparatus back in order. ack.
so, i went through all of the loose media i have, copied it all over to the music pc and now need to put it all where i needs to be. then, i can build a copy of the laptop's backup drive, and then i can file the july archive and move on to the august one.
in the process, i should be able to build the alter-reality as well as get the machine in order for inri075.
...which means a reinstalll of the disc is imminent.
if i can sort through and finalize the material from mid 2003 to mid 2006 before i face another disruption, that's serious progress.
Thursday, April 22, 2021
alright, so i've got all of the takeout stuff dealt with, and even organized my google drive shares a little.
in the process, i'm realizing that somebody may have hacked an address i use only rarely: jessicaambermurray@gmail.com. this person seems to be using the fake identity of "rosalie walker". as one example, they set up a fake kickstarter account that i've since deleted. they also set up an account at academia.edu that i've deleted. and, they subscribed to ezra levant, which is sort of embarrassing - that's not something i'd subscribe to. at all.
i had to change the password.
i have no evidence that this person is doing anything damaging to me, or any clues as to what the point of hacking into my email address might have been. that address is not associated with my bank account, for example...and, it's not as though there's much in there. this only seems to have started happening about september of last year.
in fact, that address is associated with my facebook account, only - an account i basically don't use anymore, and may end up deleting. i got off facebook because the ui was awful, and it's just gone from bad to horrendous.
the one extra thing i want to check is my carleton accounts.
Wednesday, April 21, 2021
ok, so i got through the contents of the second drive and ultimately put it away for now as an extraneous backup. i have something like ten snapshots of a 300 gb drive scattered across a dozen different types of media, some local and some not. this is partly why i'm convinced i probably haven't lost anything - it would just be hard to delete everything. and, if i catch them...
i haven't effectively caught them yet, though - i don't have that smoking gun.
but, that means i need to put it all together, now.
the other thing i spent the night doing was a takeout snapshot, and i'll have to consolidate that, as well.
while i still have a few external drives to sort through, that means i've gotten most of what i wanted to pull down off the internet for archiving and have gone through a couple of the external drives. another day or two and i'll be focused strictly on local filing, and then i think it'll pick up a lot.
Monday, April 19, 2021
i can read the data partition, but not the os partition, so i'm probably safe just getting what i can off the data partition and putting it back away, again. there's unlikely to be much useful on the os partition, but i don't want to format it, just in case.
i think i'd have to find a way to ghost it and see if it works, but it probably won't.
the chkdsk tells me there's insufficient space, but there should be sufficient space. regardless, i can't make extra space if i get a crc when launching it. what that error actually means is that it can't read the drive, either. short of cloning it, it's fucked - and i'm not seeing the value in doing that, right now.
this was the drive that i used on my main laptop years ago, before i switched to the hp laptop in early 2014. it's the drive i was fighting with in the first part of 2014, as documented in this space (and in the music journal). after switching to the hp laptop, i briefly toyed with trying to set this machine up as a guitar effect processor, but i never got around to it. and, then the hp died, and the backlight went out in the compaq, rendering it useless as a mobile device.
the os partition should have the os as it existed last time i installed to it, in 2014. it should just mostly be program files, but what's on the desktop?
virtually anything worth saving should be on the data partition. i just wanted to make sure, first.
i have a large amount of these drives to sort through, and this is the kind of thing i'll be doing for the next couple of days.
Sunday, April 18, 2021
yeah, so that's what i'm doing this morning, if i can stay awake - i need to get back to organizing the pc, and then to finalizing the journal for august, 2013.
- i need to organize the pc before i can get to working on period 3 over the weekend, and that's very soon. next week, potentially.
- i need to organize the pc and get the master document up before i can focus on the blogging section, which is the weekly task
- and, i wanted to scour documents before i got back to the alter-reality
the landlord and i decided that if we're going to defrost the fridge then we should do it at the end of the month. so, i'm going to put cleaning on that side on hold until then.
it turns out that the last step of cleaning was the most time-consuming - sorting through a giant pile of paper. it's almost done.
Tuesday, April 13, 2021
not only am i wide awake, but i've spent all day cleaning and have nearly finished putting everything in the far side away - a huge improvement over where i was. all that's left in the back now is recycle, wood and cds and books, which i can take out of the space and put on he shelves in short order.
i'm going to leave everything in the boxes they're in until i can get to the proper point in the alter-reality to put them away, and then slowly build up the shelves as is appropriate. i still need to get some extra shelves, and i may need a few more units, altogether. but, i can get a handle on where i want things, at least - the big one needs to be for cds, after all, and i'll place the books on the remaining units, as is appropriate.
what i wanted to do today was reduce the remaining "cleaning" to a process that is related to work. so, for example, i have some external drives to clean up before i put them away - which is cleaning, but getting me closer towards re-establishing normality. i'm almost there....
ok, so i've got my 90s laptop set up like an old timey phone over in the corner, i've got a first coat of wood filler on the bookshelf in the bedroom (and pins coming in the mail shortly) and i'm 90% done clearing off the effects pedal table...so i can fill it up with more stuff.
that's huge progress.
and, i'm wide awake, too.
Saturday, April 3, 2021
so, going back to the july music journal.....
- the master document, which includes all files related to the journal, is dated to mar 31, 2019
- the bandcamp archive is dated to april 14, 2019
- the deathtokoalas file is dated to april 14, 2019 - and has apparently not been touched at all since
- there is a pdf for the politics blog dated to april 27, 2019 but the word document is dated to aug 14, 2020
- the blogs.7z file, which includes the blogs saved to html format, is dated to aug 22, 2019 - which is wrong. i never updated it. i can be sure of that. i need to do that.
- the smashwords upload of the music and politics journals are dated to june 6 & 7, 2020, which is right after the noise trade site shut down.
- my most recent download of the bandcamp archive is dated to july 27, 2020 but probably includes updates from the other blogs (travel blog, etc)
- the music journal document, travel blog document and politics document are all dated august 14, 2020, but there is no pdf for the music journal or the travel blog
so, if i were to take that at face value, it would suggest that i left three of the four blogs in an unfinished state, possibly because i updated them, but didn't move those updates into the other files.
the first thing i need to do is make sure that the complete archive is the same as the master document and i can do that fairly quickly in notepad++.
...so quickly that i'm already done. good. so, that means i haven't added anything to or deleted anything from that section of the master document since mar, 2019.
now, i need to rewind all four of the blogs that are online to the start of each of them in july, 2013 and make sure each is complete relative to what i want them to be, while cross-referencing the master document on the other machine. when that is done, i'll be able to close the july portion of the blog and move to august.
i think that everything is done, and it's just a perusal process, but we'll see.
how do i even do this?
it's overwehelming.
but, i think i got it, to start - and i have a lot of backups to crossreference. if somebody's been fucking with this over the last few months, i should be able to figure it out.
so, i can probably do the start of this in one giant swoop, and it might not even be that time consuming.
in fact, some of these dates don't even make sense and are making me wonder when i last edited it myself, and when somebody else might have.
fuck.
what's the point of this? i'm simply documenting my life, as an artist. who benefits from deleting sections of it? what's the fucking point?
there's apparently all kinds of files missing on my backup drive...
ugh.
i thought i left it in good order; it's in total disarray.
i know i had deleted some files i wanted to replace, but i've lost my train of thought around it.
i really do have to start from scratch, now.
what that means is that i don't see the point in doing these aleph discs yet - i'm just going to have to redo it all because some of the liner notes need to be rewritten.
so, i'm going to have to take a step back, and i'm skipping everything else and going right back to 2013/2014 first. once i get those items fixed, i can finish the frontends properly and go from there. they should hopefully be minor changes.
and, i have to do this first - i've put it off for far too long.
that means everything is on hold until i finish this, but it should hopefully not be too long.
...everything except the alter-reality. i need to start that next friday.
