listen - i'm struggling to make sense of my experiences.
i'm grasping at absurdities. but, i seem to be being presented with them, fairly consistently.
Tuesday, December 14, 2021
so, this is inri002, updated (again) to remove any sound corruption, and let's hope it stays that way:
i've tested this one, and in fact re-uploaded it repeatedly, and the results are sort of confusing. it sounded wrong, until i downloaded it, and then it sounded correct. but, then it sounded wrong, again. and then it sounded right again after i started typing up this complaint, and then wrong again when i started focusing on filing. it's almost as though they were waiting for me to actually download it for the a/b, and then reverted once i called them on their bluff, and then reverted again once they thought i'd stopped watching, then back again, and then back again. and, that means what, exactly? that they're playing stupid games?
fuck.
i'm not disturbing this by measuring it - it shouldn't change under observation. that's not quantum theory, it's just silly woo.
so, it keeps modulating between a higher volume, "higher gain" version that boosts the mids (the correct version) and a more compressed sounding, incorrect version that wants to boost the bottom, instead. i seem to be able to get the correct version by refreshing, sometimes, but it seems to default to the incorrect version, over and over.
but these are imprecise human observations. the math is that it nulls.
what else can i say?
i've hypothesized before that i'm actually hearing an echo from a background listener that is cutting in and out on the line. the sum of it is that the bass gets boosted, but it could be the effect of a reverb feedback loop - and that's what you'd expect. so, for example, try putting a guitar through a delay effect and then feeding it back through an amp - it builds up very fast on the low end. so, i'm complaining that the bass is too loud and i can't hear the highs on the guitars, but maybe i'm actually hearing the feedback from the cops.
i dunno. i know it comes and goes, and i know i don't get it.
but, these files null, so what else can i say? it is possible to hear them correctly. i've made my displeasure clear, on the case that they're being altered. if i'm dealing with a malicious actor that insists on altering the files despite repeated instructions not to, what can i do besides point it out and demand otherwise? and, if i'm dealing with the technical consequences of internet streaming, what can i do?
i'm necessarily streaming this on the chromebook, so i can't disconnect. that's the point.
*sigh*
it nulls.
i wish i could upload some kind of signature file somewhere and get people to download it.
so, i've been spending the last several days trying to win a stupid argument about artistic freedom by overpowering whatever's going on via sheer will power, and i really don't know how long it'll hold for. but, it sounds ok right this minute.
there's four possibilities:
1) somebody is messing with the bass response at the server level, and my control over it is minimal. it comes back and forth with no real pattern.
2) i'm hearing interference from the cops.
3) it's compression introduced by the server, and i'm unusually sensitive to it, given that it's my own mixes.
4) subtle differences in the volume on playback are messing with my head.
re: (4), i'm used to listening to this with the volume cranked - while mastering, on my mp3 player, on my home system, etc. but, it actually sounds much better from bandcamp when it's run at a slightly lower level. it could be that some kind of normalization algorithm at the site (they may insist on boosting the volume before they convert to low quality mp3s for streaming) is essentially distorting the output at high volume, and i just need to turn it down to compensate (and maybe run it through an external amplifier if i need more volume). the quality of the dac in this chromebook is no doubt not helping much, although it does sound fine at a lower level.
as it is, i've found a sort of "sweet spot" and i hope to exploit it. if it keeps breaking in the same way, though...
Monday, December 13, 2021
these recordings use the ry30 primarily, but may also use hammerhead (a 909 emulator) and just random loops of random noises and bloops and blips:
these recordings utilize random blips and bloops for drums exclusively or almost exclusively:
these recordings utilize loops produced in various standalone software drum machines (all 808 or 909 like):
these tracks use drum parts that were composed in scorewriters, primarily:
these recordings do not have drums at all:
these demos, recorded when i was 15-16, feature live acoustic drums that i played on my dad's kit in the old basement studio:
these recordings have live drums that i played on a different kit my dad bought a few years later:
these tracks feature greg playing the drums, but note that they were spliced and looped and also feature drum machines:
these tracks feature drums that i played on sarah's drum kit:
and, these are the three (not two. three.) tracks with the electronic drums:
everything else is programmed and/or sampled and looped and/or spliced.
Sunday, December 12, 2021
and, no i don't see anything wrong with telling you that much of the orchestral parts are written in a scorewriter and sequenced by a soundcard.
it's in the liner notes.
i'm not hiding anything, and i'm not ashamed of it - yes, i'm an electronic music composer. that's what i do: i write and record guitar-driven techno music.
it's baffling to me that people don't want to listen...
i got a very stupid response to my kijiji add and i want to clarify a few points.
1) i don't play violin. there's a number of string parts in my various recordings. it states very clearly in the liner notes that those parts are played by a computer.
2) i have had access to various live drum kits for parts of my life. my father sometimes had a kit, sarah had a kit available to her from time to time (although i only ever had partial access to it.... i think her father technically owned it....) and my old friend greg had a kit in his basement, which gets sampled in a handful of tracks. however, i am not and never have been a drummer, and most of the drums in my recordings are constructed using various electronic tactics. i generally take a kitchen sink approach to drums - i'll use live parts, samples, machines, sequences, whatever i can get my hands on. the very minimal, bottom of the line kit i have in my possession was purchased in 2007 with microsoft severance money (it's worth maybe $300) and has appeared on a handful of tracks, but it's purpose is primarily for recording. you couldn't do much with it besides basic kick-snare punk or new wave, and i wouldn't see any use in getting a live drummer to perform something in that style. i need an exceedingly talented, intricate jazz drummer to do the kinds of parts i'm thinking of, which is a part of the reason i've held off on recording some of them - the drums i need are simply too complicated to be able to do on a five piece electronic kit.
that said, these are some examples of pieces i've recorded with the electronic kit:
1) this was done in my old apartment in ottawa:
2) this was done in the previous basement in windsor:
everything else - i think without exception - has percussion done in a different manner. most of it is done with drum machines.
while my use of the electronic kit has been relatively minimal, it is a necessary part of the studio. remember: i'm a recording artist, i'm not a performing artist. the performing part is a necessary evil, and something i'd actually rather mostly avoid. but, you kind of have to at least try to play things live, if you can. even if i think it's mostly going through the motions and sort of pointless...
so, i need to have the kit, even if i only use it every couple of years. and, no, the costs of it are not important, and i don't have an interest in making money from it, just because i don't use it every day. there's gear in some studios that hasn't been touched in 20 years. i can't say that.
i can continue to try to explain that i'm a recording artist, and a composer, and therefore need access to a fully built studio, but i need people to try to make some attempt to understand it. if you continue to try to judge me via the perceptions of a performing artist, you're going to continue to get confused.
i mean, i keep telling you that i'm a composer and i don't want to be a rock star, and you keep criticizing me for not being a rock star. that's right, you fucking dipshits - i'm not a rock star. i'm a classical guitarist and a written composer. i don't even like rock music...
Friday, December 10, 2021
so, what's going on with me?
i was finally making progress on the filing, and then i got distracted by that book. it was one of the lengthier asimov texts. worse, i tried to plow through it in one sitting and had to nap repeatedly, instead. i don't want to say i lost days, because that was supposed to be for last week...
so, what do i need done this weekend?
1) the fourth robot novel, robot and empire
2) at least two of the three empire novels
3) i am behind on the actual journal writing
4) i have to get the legal writing done by monday morning
5) filing
6) re-uploading, and checking: are the files stable or corrupt?
that's a lot.
let's focus on 5 & 6, first.
ok, i got through the third volume (the robots of dawn), and i don't have much to add, nor do i think that the text was very worthwhile. i might even label broad swaths of it to be worthless pornography with no redeemable qualities that probably shouldn't have been published. so, do i even want to review this at all? i'm being comprehensive...
but, i'm not really excited about it, or have much of an urge to type about it. and, i don't want this to turn into a chore.
i think the key point is really realizing the 25 year difference. whereas the asimov that i knew and i respected was writing for a contemporary audience in the 40s and 50s, there were dramatic social changes that occurred in the 60s and 70s, and asimov would seem to be required to adjust to them for this book published in the 80s, if not voluntarily than no doubt by his publisher. so, that 25 year time lag is a sort of a clean break, conceptually. they're the same characters to start, but this novel is really twice as long as it needs to be because it needs to house certain types of additional characters, which people are expected to be more able to relate to, as per the norms of mass marketed fiction that developed at that time. so, the aloof and likeable solarian (gladia) is transformed into a somewhat disgusting, contemptible slut that has nothing worthwhile to say, including about her orgasm (why put that in your robot novel? who wants to read that kind of smut? who cares?). further, they had to include some kind of 70s hipster kid with ironic facial hair that's unable to get laid, to try to appeal to a certain segment of reader. none of this adds anything to the specific story or to the broader arch of the narrative and probably should have been cut - if the truth no doubt wasn't that it was included on the urging of the publisher, in the first place. so, asimov becomes a sad reflection of the empty society that he's writing from, at the dawn of reaganism. hey, could you prove reagan wasn't a robot? he survived a bullet, didn't he?
so, i'm not reacting well to the more contemporary style, i'm finding myself missing the classic asimov that's above gratuitous sex and not interested in empty plot development. in the 40s and 50s, science fiction was just a mechanism for dystopian literature, so it was not fundamentally different than other types of literature, really, it just had a different setting. and, that would have been true through the 60s (you can really see that in the initial run of star trek, which frequently played on everything in the traditional canon of literature, from shakespeare to classical mythology), up until star wars, which sort of broke everything and left the genre in a juvenile state of focusing on special effects, like any other adventure film. this third robot novel was written and published in the early 80s, in the midst of the major shift in the genre that was happening. the reality is that it appears that asimov was actually coerced (perhaps by large dollar figures) to return to writing fiction within the context of the blockbuster scifi films of the late 70s and early 80s, given that he was responsible for so many of the ideas underlying them. for that reason, the text seems to lack the more allegorical writing of his earlier years - it's just a run-on story about the adventures of an earthling and two robots, designed for the all-of-a-sudden very large market for vacuous adventurist science fiction.
this text also goes over a lot of previous ideas for the apparent reason of acting as a subtle means of advertising for his previous stories. the calvin references work their way into the story, but they don't add anything to it.
that said, asimov isn't entirely embracing this new reality, either. the critique of the sex life of aurorans seems to be a reflection of asimov's views on sexuality within the bourgeois elite in new york city, specifically, in the 70s. asimov seems to be suggesting that bourgeois american culture has overdone it on the sex, and reduced it to something meaningless and boring - so much so that the promise of unhindered sex with robots offers an escape from the ubiquitous mundanity of sex with people. i have to admit some sympathy with this perspective. this marxist critique of bourgeois sexuality (in an auroran society that is otherwise broadly communist - the same confusing juxtaposition that is in the second novel) is the closest thing to a purpose in the text, although he drops the narrative about a third of the way in, and instead detours off into pointless character development, to expand the length of the text for no real apparent reason, other than to try to create these characters that are supposed to generate feelings of identity in the reader. i might actually suggest that asimov may have been trying to write a third robot novel in the same framework as the first two (they all represent a potential failure point leading to a communist dystopia: the overcrowded kibbutz of earth, the marxist alienation of solaria and the empty bourgeois hedonism of vanguardist aurora), but got cut-off halfway by a publisher trying to create something that would appeal to star wars fans, who co-opted the novel into just aimlessly going on for hundreds of pages of empty action/adventure nonsense. sadly...
so, if the point of the story is that it's supposed to be about the emptiness of capitalist excess and unchecked bourgeois hedonism, it is even less cohesive and less developed than the second volume. but, the idea is there - if just barely. i can identify no further discernible purpose in the 430 page paperback, besides to waste the reader's time. the middle section really wasn't necessary - he could have gone from gladia to amadiro and maybe should have.
i think it's important to point out that asimov is repeatedly pretty rough on baley, and sort of passive aggressive with daneel, indicating that he might not be so excited about these characters any longer. i'd strongly suspect he was toying with killing them off. in fact, daneel has a very minor part in this story; the more important robot is giskard. baley is repeatedly treated as a fool that is unable to fend for himself, as a consequence of living in the kibbutz; there are frequent allusions to his child-like state, to the robots as his caretakers and even to gladia, at one point, as his mother. baley is not killed in the end, but he doesn't appear in the fourth installment, which i'm now dreading reading.
in terms of his broader narrative, asimov introduces a conflict between the pro-auroran globalists and the pan-humanity humanists that the humanists win, in this installment. you'd have to imagine that asimov (acting director of the humanist society) would be most sympathetic to humanists. it's a bit of a hint as to who represents his own views, in truth - something that might be different in 1980 than it was in 1955. asimov's subtle slights on baley may be another indication that he's changing hosts in the story, so to speak, and that he now looks down on baley, whereas he previously saw him as his own voice. asimov's globalists - a vanguard elite that puts itself first and looks down on the broader swath of humanity - is not all that different than the contemporary concept of "globalist", which comes from a strange merging of far-left and far-tight anti-elitism. asimov seems to want to present humanism as a truer from of egalitarianism, a less corrupt concept of liberalism and a more authentic left. fastolfe's "decency" is presented in this context of representing humanism. asimov and i may quibble over details as to what the anti-vanguard left ought to look like (he was a liberal, and i'm an anarchist), but we seem to agree on the need to present a counter-left as a movement against vanguardism. but, once again, this is about leftist infighting - it's not some broad ideological discourse. only the primitivist utopians on earth seem to offer any opposition to the spread of communism throughout the galaxy.
so, i'd have to broadly describe this as "disappointing", but i really do get where it's coming from, and in some ways it might have been impossible to avoid. i suppose that if you want to read the whole thing then you can't skip it, but i'll tell you: you're not missing much if you did.
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