Thursday, April 23, 2015
taking a walk to detroit’s local anarchist punk house on a nice spring night to see pile (and animal faces)
i spun the wheel of detroit again last night and ended up down option #5 - grand river, up a ways, with an eventual hard right up to the venerated detroit trumbullplex....
grand river was a short walk defined by juxtapositions: casinos tower over devastated apartment complexes. ruins, simply. windows are not merely smashed out, but scavenged, leaving oddly tidy orthogonal squat escapes - if it weren't for the black mold, which has overtaken the space to the point that it looks like fire damage. if you didn't know better, you'd think you were walking through a war zone at points, with bombed out buildings - collateral damage on the aerial assault on the industrial heartland. foreboding side roads fall off the main street, with invisible DO NOT ENTER signs. but, passing glimpses sometimes suggest portals to a past era. there is early twentieth century architecture in tact and in good shape here; one expects to see a classic ford car spin the corner, perhaps trying to outrace the cops to the speakeasy to disappear into a basement tunnel. other side streets have nothing but dilapidated wood buildings in immediate sight, and may very well have lost pets as their primary tenants. abandoned fields give way to large educational institutions and government buildings, which give way to more abandoned fields.
in fact, the media narratives of detroit's ominous urban warzone fade quickly into the context of the city's vast emptiness. walking up this strip of the city, there is simply nobody around to potentially harm you. the most immediate danger seems to be coyotes.
the turn up trumbull took me into a slightly different neighbourhood, full of crumbling victorian mansions - the kind with four or five bedrooms, personal balconies, fenced off porches and, of course, those decorative pseudo-minarets, which i'm sure were interpreted as pretentious (that would have been a good monty python skit...) when they were built, and today just seem bluntly absurd. if these towers ever had princesses, it seems clear that they've long dispersed.
the venue comes of as an extremely large garage (for those reading from ottawa, it's most similar to the old house of targ) and, given the size of the house it's attached to, may very well have been one at one point. well, what's five or six cars in mid-twentieth century detroit? today, it seems to mostly house bicycles, in what was probably previously a storage room. to the side, in what i'm guessing was initially a sun room, there exists a "'zine library" full of an assortment of pamphlets and other literature meant for dissemination - which is actually an excellent idea. curating is important. it might not seem important, but it is.
the first band up was time cat, and they managed to remind me that i live in the midwest, now - without putting me off by it, too much. there's some rootsy elements to their sound, but it's largely a merger of blues and punk. the energy is in the right place to produce a strong set, and the frontwoman for the band is worth checking out simply for her guitar skills. the drumming, however, needs a little work - and not everybody is going to connect to the vocals. if you see them opening, and you like the raw blues punk sound from hendrix to srv to jsbx to the white stripes and everything in between, they're worth checking out. but be wary of giving them too much energy to feed off, because they will play over time if you do.
https://timecatmusic.bandcamp.com/album/quadday
animal faces surprised me. i hadn't heard any of their more recent material or seen them in a few years. i was expecting some thrashing post-hardcore with the amps and drums blaring, and i got a bit of it, but a good portion of the set seems to have focused on expanding the more sombre connecting portions of their previous work into longer sections. the result leaned heavily into the kind of post-rock that do make say think were excellent at in the early 00s.
now, i'm actually a huge fan of dmst. i've seen them something like eight times. and, they were some of the most fun shows i've ever been to - partly because i knew the material inside and out, and they're great at delivering it. given that their output has dwindled recently, i wouldn't be opposed to hearing somebody draw on it. further, this influence was apparent in their earlier releases, so it's not entirely out of nowhere. but, animal faces' attempt to walk into that space lacked the dynamics and subtlety you want out of that sound. over the last ten years, post-rock has become notorious for being monotonous and sort of boring. unfortunately, there wasn't much in the set to separate them from the mass of substandard bands that currently exist in that genre. and, what's a little frustrating is that animal faces were actually really good at what they used to do - really loud, thrashing post-hardcore.
if they're pivoting, so be it. i'm not one to push stasis. but, the shift requires a bit more work before they can say they're as good at what they want to do now as they were at what they wanted to do previously.
destroy this place were locals and they were a little too conventional for my tastes. tight. radio-ready. just not my thing.
i got to talking to the drummer from pile while out on a smoke break, and he seemed pretty chill. we agreed it would be nice if they get on to play, given the show was running about two hours late.
we did get a decent set from them, and they didn't disappoint. generally, the shorter my reviews are, the more i enjoyed the show
here's a full set from the same tour:
i didn't think the show would really be over at 11:00, but i didn't think it would run until 12:45, either. last bus back to windsor? 1:04..
i managed to walk back to rosa parks in 19 minutes (google maps estimate: 33 minutes). that's right: at the platform at exactly 1:04. but, no bus.
"shit.", i'm thinking. "missed it.".
but, i'm stubborn, so i cut up michigan to griswold, hoping it got stuck at a light or something. and, sure enough, it comes rumbling around the corner, causing me to run out into the intersection of griswold & larned, waving and hopping, which got me a stern talking to by the driver...
"what the fuck are you doing jumping into the middle of the road like that?"
"well, i'm trying to steer you into a place you can stop."
"what? really. you're not seriuh-....."
"well, you can't just stop in the middle of the road. at least you're not supposed to."
awkward pause.
"THANK YOU FOR STOPPING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD TO PICK ME UP."
close, though. it wouldn't have been so bad if i was stuck on a weekday, it's only a few hours, i just would have walked up to get a coney dog and a coffee. i think i was more irritated that i didn't bring a book...
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/04/22.html
grand river was a short walk defined by juxtapositions: casinos tower over devastated apartment complexes. ruins, simply. windows are not merely smashed out, but scavenged, leaving oddly tidy orthogonal squat escapes - if it weren't for the black mold, which has overtaken the space to the point that it looks like fire damage. if you didn't know better, you'd think you were walking through a war zone at points, with bombed out buildings - collateral damage on the aerial assault on the industrial heartland. foreboding side roads fall off the main street, with invisible DO NOT ENTER signs. but, passing glimpses sometimes suggest portals to a past era. there is early twentieth century architecture in tact and in good shape here; one expects to see a classic ford car spin the corner, perhaps trying to outrace the cops to the speakeasy to disappear into a basement tunnel. other side streets have nothing but dilapidated wood buildings in immediate sight, and may very well have lost pets as their primary tenants. abandoned fields give way to large educational institutions and government buildings, which give way to more abandoned fields.
in fact, the media narratives of detroit's ominous urban warzone fade quickly into the context of the city's vast emptiness. walking up this strip of the city, there is simply nobody around to potentially harm you. the most immediate danger seems to be coyotes.
the turn up trumbull took me into a slightly different neighbourhood, full of crumbling victorian mansions - the kind with four or five bedrooms, personal balconies, fenced off porches and, of course, those decorative pseudo-minarets, which i'm sure were interpreted as pretentious (that would have been a good monty python skit...) when they were built, and today just seem bluntly absurd. if these towers ever had princesses, it seems clear that they've long dispersed.
the venue comes of as an extremely large garage (for those reading from ottawa, it's most similar to the old house of targ) and, given the size of the house it's attached to, may very well have been one at one point. well, what's five or six cars in mid-twentieth century detroit? today, it seems to mostly house bicycles, in what was probably previously a storage room. to the side, in what i'm guessing was initially a sun room, there exists a "'zine library" full of an assortment of pamphlets and other literature meant for dissemination - which is actually an excellent idea. curating is important. it might not seem important, but it is.
the first band up was time cat, and they managed to remind me that i live in the midwest, now - without putting me off by it, too much. there's some rootsy elements to their sound, but it's largely a merger of blues and punk. the energy is in the right place to produce a strong set, and the frontwoman for the band is worth checking out simply for her guitar skills. the drumming, however, needs a little work - and not everybody is going to connect to the vocals. if you see them opening, and you like the raw blues punk sound from hendrix to srv to jsbx to the white stripes and everything in between, they're worth checking out. but be wary of giving them too much energy to feed off, because they will play over time if you do.
https://timecatmusic.bandcamp.com/album/quadday
animal faces surprised me. i hadn't heard any of their more recent material or seen them in a few years. i was expecting some thrashing post-hardcore with the amps and drums blaring, and i got a bit of it, but a good portion of the set seems to have focused on expanding the more sombre connecting portions of their previous work into longer sections. the result leaned heavily into the kind of post-rock that do make say think were excellent at in the early 00s.
now, i'm actually a huge fan of dmst. i've seen them something like eight times. and, they were some of the most fun shows i've ever been to - partly because i knew the material inside and out, and they're great at delivering it. given that their output has dwindled recently, i wouldn't be opposed to hearing somebody draw on it. further, this influence was apparent in their earlier releases, so it's not entirely out of nowhere. but, animal faces' attempt to walk into that space lacked the dynamics and subtlety you want out of that sound. over the last ten years, post-rock has become notorious for being monotonous and sort of boring. unfortunately, there wasn't much in the set to separate them from the mass of substandard bands that currently exist in that genre. and, what's a little frustrating is that animal faces were actually really good at what they used to do - really loud, thrashing post-hardcore.
if they're pivoting, so be it. i'm not one to push stasis. but, the shift requires a bit more work before they can say they're as good at what they want to do now as they were at what they wanted to do previously.
destroy this place were locals and they were a little too conventional for my tastes. tight. radio-ready. just not my thing.
i got to talking to the drummer from pile while out on a smoke break, and he seemed pretty chill. we agreed it would be nice if they get on to play, given the show was running about two hours late.
we did get a decent set from them, and they didn't disappoint. generally, the shorter my reviews are, the more i enjoyed the show
here's a full set from the same tour:
i didn't think the show would really be over at 11:00, but i didn't think it would run until 12:45, either. last bus back to windsor? 1:04..
i managed to walk back to rosa parks in 19 minutes (google maps estimate: 33 minutes). that's right: at the platform at exactly 1:04. but, no bus.
"shit.", i'm thinking. "missed it.".
but, i'm stubborn, so i cut up michigan to griswold, hoping it got stuck at a light or something. and, sure enough, it comes rumbling around the corner, causing me to run out into the intersection of griswold & larned, waving and hopping, which got me a stern talking to by the driver...
"what the fuck are you doing jumping into the middle of the road like that?"
"well, i'm trying to steer you into a place you can stop."
"what? really. you're not seriuh-....."
"well, you can't just stop in the middle of the road. at least you're not supposed to."
awkward pause.
"THANK YOU FOR STOPPING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD TO PICK ME UP."
close, though. it wouldn't have been so bad if i was stuck on a weekday, it's only a few hours, i just would have walked up to get a coney dog and a coffee. i think i was more irritated that i didn't bring a book...
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/04/22.html
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
just
to make the point clear, i'm going to post a few tracks that do not
have synths in them. these tracks may include bass and drums, but are
otherwise entirely constructed by guitars and guitar effects work...
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/time-running-out-mix
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/pop-music-a-tribute-to-carbon-dioxide
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/01
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/09-tribute
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/curious-george
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/preludio-short
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/taught-to-twist-the-affected-so-low
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/time-running-out-mix
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/pop-music-a-tribute-to-carbon-dioxide
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/01
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/09-tribute
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/curious-george
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/preludio-short
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/taught-to-twist-the-affected-so-low
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
i
want to address a point that i have to address periodically. i'm
actually not sure what it is that leads people to the conclusion that
i'm a dj working with sample libraries, but, for whatever reason, it's
something i've had to address for years...
i think it's partly just the age we live in. people just assume that a one-person project must be sample-based. it's the null hypothesis, in some sense. i also think i should probably take it as a compliment, in the sense that it suggests a perception of complexity.
but, it's not true.
i'm a guitarist by training. i've dabbled in blues, jazz and classical - and it's all there. i'm also a self-taught punk guitarist, if that makes any sense. i use a lot of effects, and some of it is in the production stage. but the actual truth is that the vast majority of sounds coming at you in my songs are produced by a guitar.
ok, you're thinking, that's believable - but what about the horn parts? the string parts? the wind sections? they must be samples, right? well, no...
they're actually sequencers. when i'm doing a horn or string part, i don't take riffs out of existing songs. rather, i write them out in a score (like a composer would) and use a sequencer to play them back. some of these sequencers are sample-based. and, i think i need a brief discussion of the three different ideas of "sampling" in contemporary music.
sampling can mean taking sounds out of existing songs and reusing them. this is popular in a lot of contemporary music - including hip-hop, techno, trip-hop and industrial music. i've never created anything with this kind of sampling. however, sampling can also mean recording individual notes on an instrument for use in a sequencer. what does this mean?
well, imagine that you've got a saxophone in front of you, and a saxophone player. you don't play the saxophone, but you might want to create a saxophone part later. so, you might ask the saxophone player to slowly run through the scale on the saxophone. sampling, in this context, means connecting each note played on the saxophone to a key on the keyboard. once this is mapped together, a composer can then use the keyboard to compose saxophone parts.
there's complexities - saxophone players breathe, buttons click, etc. but this kind of sampling allows for full composition, rather than mixing and matching existing isolated riffs and pasting them together.
what i want to get across is that these are two very different things, on a compositional basis. i don't expect most listeners to really care. but i want the record set straight on the issue, for those that do: when you hear these orchestrated things that i do, they are created by a computer mapping an original score to a sequencer to trigger samples. if you don't believe me, note that many of my eps actually come with sheet music in the download, in the form of midi files. they are *not* collages of existing snippets of sound, as is common in a lot of modern trip-hop and otherwise electronic pop music. they are compositions created the old fashioned way.
i am not a dj. i am not spinning. i am not mixing samples. i do not use fruity loops. i am a composer of original music, and my main instrument is the guitar.
that said, there is a third type of sampling, and i did make some use of it in the past. this kind of sampling reclaims found sounds for use in creative collages. i haven't created anything like this since about 1999, but a few things do exist like it in my discography. here is one example:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inrisampled
i think it's partly just the age we live in. people just assume that a one-person project must be sample-based. it's the null hypothesis, in some sense. i also think i should probably take it as a compliment, in the sense that it suggests a perception of complexity.
but, it's not true.
i'm a guitarist by training. i've dabbled in blues, jazz and classical - and it's all there. i'm also a self-taught punk guitarist, if that makes any sense. i use a lot of effects, and some of it is in the production stage. but the actual truth is that the vast majority of sounds coming at you in my songs are produced by a guitar.
ok, you're thinking, that's believable - but what about the horn parts? the string parts? the wind sections? they must be samples, right? well, no...
they're actually sequencers. when i'm doing a horn or string part, i don't take riffs out of existing songs. rather, i write them out in a score (like a composer would) and use a sequencer to play them back. some of these sequencers are sample-based. and, i think i need a brief discussion of the three different ideas of "sampling" in contemporary music.
sampling can mean taking sounds out of existing songs and reusing them. this is popular in a lot of contemporary music - including hip-hop, techno, trip-hop and industrial music. i've never created anything with this kind of sampling. however, sampling can also mean recording individual notes on an instrument for use in a sequencer. what does this mean?
well, imagine that you've got a saxophone in front of you, and a saxophone player. you don't play the saxophone, but you might want to create a saxophone part later. so, you might ask the saxophone player to slowly run through the scale on the saxophone. sampling, in this context, means connecting each note played on the saxophone to a key on the keyboard. once this is mapped together, a composer can then use the keyboard to compose saxophone parts.
there's complexities - saxophone players breathe, buttons click, etc. but this kind of sampling allows for full composition, rather than mixing and matching existing isolated riffs and pasting them together.
what i want to get across is that these are two very different things, on a compositional basis. i don't expect most listeners to really care. but i want the record set straight on the issue, for those that do: when you hear these orchestrated things that i do, they are created by a computer mapping an original score to a sequencer to trigger samples. if you don't believe me, note that many of my eps actually come with sheet music in the download, in the form of midi files. they are *not* collages of existing snippets of sound, as is common in a lot of modern trip-hop and otherwise electronic pop music. they are compositions created the old fashioned way.
i am not a dj. i am not spinning. i am not mixing samples. i do not use fruity loops. i am a composer of original music, and my main instrument is the guitar.
that said, there is a third type of sampling, and i did make some use of it in the past. this kind of sampling reclaims found sounds for use in creative collages. i haven't created anything like this since about 1999, but a few things do exist like it in my discography. here is one example:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inrisampled
you know, this might actually work out alright. i managed to talk my way
up to a supervisor, and if i send my odsp stub off to vancouver they'll
put a hold on it for six months - which should let my refund go through
for the year, so that's step one. step two is that i need to get my
odsp forms filled out in june so that it's permanent - and i think i can
do that. then, i can apply for the loan to actually get wiped. it's the
one and only way out, apparently.
otherwise, i need to send them the stub every six months.
i'm going to get the diet form when i fax the stub, anyways....
i'm pretty sincere about permanence. but if things work out some other way, the loan is gone.
i've just been ignoring this for months because it's just like....i can't pay you..but they got me the incentive to deal with it.
wait. there's conditions on the diet forms. gah...
i'm a model of physical health, it's my head that's fucked. gotta be some way around this...
the way people talk about this, it's like anybody can get it.
yeah...no. i'm not going to win this argument. so i'm not going to start it. i'll figure something else out.
i remember reading the review a few years ago, and one of the recs was to just abolish the special diet and give everybody the extra $100. i wonder how convincing that report might be if i showed it to a doctor. it's just....i don't see how an empathetic doctor could fill the thing out....
actually, i've had some dysphagia recently. i've been wanting to have this dealt with, anyways. i think i should probably do that tomorrow. if it gets me a useful diagnosis, great. i'd kind of like to get to the bottom of it, anyways.
otherwise, i need to send them the stub every six months.
i'm going to get the diet form when i fax the stub, anyways....
i'm pretty sincere about permanence. but if things work out some other way, the loan is gone.
i've just been ignoring this for months because it's just like....i can't pay you..but they got me the incentive to deal with it.
wait. there's conditions on the diet forms. gah...
i'm a model of physical health, it's my head that's fucked. gotta be some way around this...
the way people talk about this, it's like anybody can get it.
yeah...no. i'm not going to win this argument. so i'm not going to start it. i'll figure something else out.
i remember reading the review a few years ago, and one of the recs was to just abolish the special diet and give everybody the extra $100. i wonder how convincing that report might be if i showed it to a doctor. it's just....i don't see how an empathetic doctor could fill the thing out....
actually, i've had some dysphagia recently. i've been wanting to have this dealt with, anyways. i think i should probably do that tomorrow. if it gets me a useful diagnosis, great. i'd kind of like to get to the bottom of it, anyways.
stupid cra wants to take my tax refund...
which is, like...if you do that, i'm going to apply for the special diet allowance, which is actually roughly twice as much. so, i end up with an extra $50/month.
and, what you're going to gain from my tax refund is roughly 10% interest on the loan in the first place. it's just flat out stupid....
smart thing to do would be to let me declare bankruptcy. but, if you want to burst the student loan bubble, have fun - not like i fucking care.
as it is right now, if i were to get over my disability and find a job tomorrow, the loan payments would actually leave me with less disposable income than i have on disability. and, as the interest builds, i'm left with less and less incentive to get over the disability and find a job. i'm not the kind of person that's going to work for nothing. my life is not valuable enough to me to sacrifice it to the state. if i end up in that situation, i'll kill myself out of political protest. and spite. i'd enjoy it, to be frank.
i got manipulated into this loan - it was supposed to be paid off. i'd have never taken it, otherwise. but the person that made me that promise proceeded to die without following through on it. now, it's simply never going to be paid. ever.
they're telling me to wait for my notice of assessment. it might be available online, let me check...
i'm just not going to live that life. our existences are too short and meaningless to bother. it's stasis or bust.
the point is just that bankruptcy is the proper way out of my situation - but, unfortunately, you can't declare bankruptcy on student loans. nobody benefits from this, though. i'm simply never going to generate the income to pay the loan down.
no assessment, but i've got some more numbers to call. i'm not waiting for the assessment to get the dietary allowance, though. if this isn't figured out today, i'll have to do that tomorrow.
it is going to be kind of funny one day, though, if i live long enough. like, how high can the interest grow on this? can it reach a million dollars?
"in other news, there's apparently a sixty year old disabled person in windsor with three million dollars in interest on her student loan payments. when reached for comment, she simply said that they should have let her declare bankruptcy."
which is, like...if you do that, i'm going to apply for the special diet allowance, which is actually roughly twice as much. so, i end up with an extra $50/month.
and, what you're going to gain from my tax refund is roughly 10% interest on the loan in the first place. it's just flat out stupid....
smart thing to do would be to let me declare bankruptcy. but, if you want to burst the student loan bubble, have fun - not like i fucking care.
as it is right now, if i were to get over my disability and find a job tomorrow, the loan payments would actually leave me with less disposable income than i have on disability. and, as the interest builds, i'm left with less and less incentive to get over the disability and find a job. i'm not the kind of person that's going to work for nothing. my life is not valuable enough to me to sacrifice it to the state. if i end up in that situation, i'll kill myself out of political protest. and spite. i'd enjoy it, to be frank.
i got manipulated into this loan - it was supposed to be paid off. i'd have never taken it, otherwise. but the person that made me that promise proceeded to die without following through on it. now, it's simply never going to be paid. ever.
they're telling me to wait for my notice of assessment. it might be available online, let me check...
i'm just not going to live that life. our existences are too short and meaningless to bother. it's stasis or bust.
the point is just that bankruptcy is the proper way out of my situation - but, unfortunately, you can't declare bankruptcy on student loans. nobody benefits from this, though. i'm simply never going to generate the income to pay the loan down.
no assessment, but i've got some more numbers to call. i'm not waiting for the assessment to get the dietary allowance, though. if this isn't figured out today, i'll have to do that tomorrow.
it is going to be kind of funny one day, though, if i live long enough. like, how high can the interest grow on this? can it reach a million dollars?
"in other news, there's apparently a sixty year old disabled person in windsor with three million dollars in interest on her student loan payments. when reached for comment, she simply said that they should have let her declare bankruptcy."
Monday, April 20, 2015
i'm noticing that when i type comments in facebook [and it's comments, specifically - not posts], i get very weird behaviour - characters jump all over the place, the delete button ends up "padded", etc. it's almost like i've got some kind of script running that's acting as a keylogger or something...
i don't think it's anything like that, though.
1) it only happens in facebook comments.
2) it happens on multiple computers
so, i suppose if it's something malicious, it might be on both computers. but i think that's not right, because it's just facebook. so, i think it's just something at the facebook site.
when i copy and paste the comment's text into notepad, i get all kinds of weird characters interspersed randomly through the comment. well, it's just one character - i've attached a picture. but it's all through the comment.
now, these characters seem to be something nasty. when i paste them into word, they trigger some kind of macro, which puts the machine in a loop state. i can only stop it by halting the task in task manager. so, they're some kind of pointer to some kind of script or something.
now, oddly, they don't show up in firefox. however, if i view the comments in ie then they appear the same way they would if i pasted them into notepad.
i'm left to conclude that firefox is interacting badly with some kind of facebook script. i've tried disabling adblock, and it has no effect.
i can get around it by typing into notepad and then pasting the comments in, but who wants to do that? and, i wish i knew what the fuck it is. so, i'm just curious if anybody's seen these characters in my comments, if they've seen them anywhere else (i can't find any info on this) and if they can identify what is going on...
the factors that lead to the characters appearing seem to have to do with the backspace and delete buttons. meaning it *seems* like facebook itself is actually keylogging - or trying to capture deleted characters, to be more specific. well, you'd expect it would be useful for a site based on ads to be able to capture the parts of the post that you didn't post. it's kind of scary, and dystopian. but i'm not left with much of another answer. i guess there's something in my hacked firefox that is "catching" that...but it would be nice to get some leads in actually proving this.
i've been planning on getting off facebook completely for a while, and just using it for shows - until a better option appears. and, i like the idea of facebook as a sort of cv, as the timeline interface seems almost designed for it. my days here are numbered. it's why i'm not accepting friend requests. i've just been waiting for my odsp update before i sit down and do it. it's going to take several days - probably weeks, maybe months - to completely migrate. if i'm right, it's just another reason to get off. and, if i'm not? bluntly, it's a matter of time. if they could read your thoughts, they would.
i don't think it's anything like that, though.
1) it only happens in facebook comments.
2) it happens on multiple computers
so, i suppose if it's something malicious, it might be on both computers. but i think that's not right, because it's just facebook. so, i think it's just something at the facebook site.
when i copy and paste the comment's text into notepad, i get all kinds of weird characters interspersed randomly through the comment. well, it's just one character - i've attached a picture. but it's all through the comment.
now, these characters seem to be something nasty. when i paste them into word, they trigger some kind of macro, which puts the machine in a loop state. i can only stop it by halting the task in task manager. so, they're some kind of pointer to some kind of script or something.
now, oddly, they don't show up in firefox. however, if i view the comments in ie then they appear the same way they would if i pasted them into notepad.
i'm left to conclude that firefox is interacting badly with some kind of facebook script. i've tried disabling adblock, and it has no effect.
i can get around it by typing into notepad and then pasting the comments in, but who wants to do that? and, i wish i knew what the fuck it is. so, i'm just curious if anybody's seen these characters in my comments, if they've seen them anywhere else (i can't find any info on this) and if they can identify what is going on...
the factors that lead to the characters appearing seem to have to do with the backspace and delete buttons. meaning it *seems* like facebook itself is actually keylogging - or trying to capture deleted characters, to be more specific. well, you'd expect it would be useful for a site based on ads to be able to capture the parts of the post that you didn't post. it's kind of scary, and dystopian. but i'm not left with much of another answer. i guess there's something in my hacked firefox that is "catching" that...but it would be nice to get some leads in actually proving this.
i've been planning on getting off facebook completely for a while, and just using it for shows - until a better option appears. and, i like the idea of facebook as a sort of cv, as the timeline interface seems almost designed for it. my days here are numbered. it's why i'm not accepting friend requests. i've just been waiting for my odsp update before i sit down and do it. it's going to take several days - probably weeks, maybe months - to completely migrate. if i'm right, it's just another reason to get off. and, if i'm not? bluntly, it's a matter of time. if they could read your thoughts, they would.
Sunday, April 19, 2015
metz & lightning bolt in ferndale
actually, i'm not so much into writing that narrative, right now. nothing really exciting happened, so i feel it would be disingenuous to play it up...
i almost didn't go, because i was paranoid i wouldn't get in. well, everybody has a phone, right? what i thought would happen is that i'd get there, and everybody would buy a ticket in line. to make matters worse, the bus was 40 minutes late - or to put it another way, two scheduled 53s just didn't come. this slowed the bus ride down substantially because it was packed. i felt bad for some of the people on woodward that may have been waiting an hour, only to have the bus drive by...
i'd hesitate to say the show was a double-headliner, but the opening act had it's own audience. i've seen metz before, and i thought they were overhyped. in terms of what they do, it's essentially a function of the fuzz pedal - there's really not much to it, besides the roar of beating drums and fuzzy riffs. i guess there would have been a time in the mid 90s when i would have been more excited about this, but today it just comes off as sort of middling - it doesn't have the same power as something heavier like torche (which i'm dropping because i saw them in the same bar a few weeks ago), and they don't seem to have the ability to generate hooks that the best grunge bands had. when they get noisy, there's little abstraction. the result is actually borderline boring. or, at least it is to an old pair of ears like mine. some music just has an age limit, dictated by the mainstream's tendency to limit access to more interesting music.
i'll say they had more stage presence this time. they seemed a bit more confident. but i'm not really going to play that up, because when you start getting too much confidence in this genre it inevitably turns into macho cock rock. i'm not making that accusation, at least not yet, but it's apparently the path they're heading down. that confidence came with what seemed like more conventional writing - they've tightened up, moving out of "noise-punk" and into a more commercial grunge sound.
they're not bad enough to skip in an opening band situation. but i wouldn't go out of my way to see them, or recommend them to much of anybody - except a certain type of kid, and maybe aging grunge fans.
also, the pit was borderline frat boy tackling. i kept out of it.
is there any use in reviewing lightning bolt? the show was what one would expect...
the last video was relatively useful in demonstrating what the show i saw was like, in a medium-small venue. and they played mostly new material - although a passive set of ears would be hard pressed to tell the difference. but if you don't know the band, check this out:
here's a full set from a few months later:
...& here is a short clip from the show, too:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/04/18.html
i almost didn't go, because i was paranoid i wouldn't get in. well, everybody has a phone, right? what i thought would happen is that i'd get there, and everybody would buy a ticket in line. to make matters worse, the bus was 40 minutes late - or to put it another way, two scheduled 53s just didn't come. this slowed the bus ride down substantially because it was packed. i felt bad for some of the people on woodward that may have been waiting an hour, only to have the bus drive by...
i'd hesitate to say the show was a double-headliner, but the opening act had it's own audience. i've seen metz before, and i thought they were overhyped. in terms of what they do, it's essentially a function of the fuzz pedal - there's really not much to it, besides the roar of beating drums and fuzzy riffs. i guess there would have been a time in the mid 90s when i would have been more excited about this, but today it just comes off as sort of middling - it doesn't have the same power as something heavier like torche (which i'm dropping because i saw them in the same bar a few weeks ago), and they don't seem to have the ability to generate hooks that the best grunge bands had. when they get noisy, there's little abstraction. the result is actually borderline boring. or, at least it is to an old pair of ears like mine. some music just has an age limit, dictated by the mainstream's tendency to limit access to more interesting music.
i'll say they had more stage presence this time. they seemed a bit more confident. but i'm not really going to play that up, because when you start getting too much confidence in this genre it inevitably turns into macho cock rock. i'm not making that accusation, at least not yet, but it's apparently the path they're heading down. that confidence came with what seemed like more conventional writing - they've tightened up, moving out of "noise-punk" and into a more commercial grunge sound.
they're not bad enough to skip in an opening band situation. but i wouldn't go out of my way to see them, or recommend them to much of anybody - except a certain type of kid, and maybe aging grunge fans.
also, the pit was borderline frat boy tackling. i kept out of it.
is there any use in reviewing lightning bolt? the show was what one would expect...
the last video was relatively useful in demonstrating what the show i saw was like, in a medium-small venue. and they played mostly new material - although a passive set of ears would be hard pressed to tell the difference. but if you don't know the band, check this out:
here's a full set from a few months later:
...& here is a short clip from the show, too:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/04/18.html
i guess the story of last night was my first mosh pit in detroit.
there's only a handful of bands i'll really actively slam dance to - and dancing is what i'm doing, in the mayhem, between rushing the stage and pushing people out of the way so i can dance more. i don't want to get in the pit when it's a lot of frat boys tackling each other, or when it's full of metalheads doing martial arts in the air or anything like that. i'm thin, and carry almost no muscle, but i'm not petite - i'm more swedish egghead than viking plunderer, but i'm pretty sturdily built and not at all easy to knock over. i can stand my ground in the most hectic of situations, and then some. but i'm still going to stay on the edge of most pits. most of the time, i'm just not really into getting into what's unfolding in front of me.
my experience has been that lightning bolt is in the group of exceptions to this - it's a mixed gender space driven by adrenaline rather than testosterone. just people having legit, clean fun. no dominance. no macho bullshit.
i've got a few bruises on my arm, but it was from staff mistaking me for somebody else and grabbing me. listen: cops are cops. they always create more problems than they solve. i'm not going to argue that security shouldn't exist at concerts, but bar staff going into the crowd like that never does anything but cause problems. the reality is that assholes get pushed out, and the response is generally proportional. the best pit police is usually the pit itself.
i'll write up something more narrated when i wake up...
there's only a handful of bands i'll really actively slam dance to - and dancing is what i'm doing, in the mayhem, between rushing the stage and pushing people out of the way so i can dance more. i don't want to get in the pit when it's a lot of frat boys tackling each other, or when it's full of metalheads doing martial arts in the air or anything like that. i'm thin, and carry almost no muscle, but i'm not petite - i'm more swedish egghead than viking plunderer, but i'm pretty sturdily built and not at all easy to knock over. i can stand my ground in the most hectic of situations, and then some. but i'm still going to stay on the edge of most pits. most of the time, i'm just not really into getting into what's unfolding in front of me.
my experience has been that lightning bolt is in the group of exceptions to this - it's a mixed gender space driven by adrenaline rather than testosterone. just people having legit, clean fun. no dominance. no macho bullshit.
i've got a few bruises on my arm, but it was from staff mistaking me for somebody else and grabbing me. listen: cops are cops. they always create more problems than they solve. i'm not going to argue that security shouldn't exist at concerts, but bar staff going into the crowd like that never does anything but cause problems. the reality is that assholes get pushed out, and the response is generally proportional. the best pit police is usually the pit itself.
i'll write up something more narrated when i wake up...
Saturday, April 18, 2015
i'm not going to get this instrumental mix up today, and you can't
hear it yet unless you pay my rent for me, anyways. but it's total gaze
heaven. the kind with definition, though, that you don't normally hear. i
was totally enamored with this back in '02, always kicked myself for
not finishing it....but it's now finally close...
so, expect both inri042 and inri043 to be up by the middle of next week.
so, expect both inri042 and inri043 to be up by the middle of next week.
to see lightning bolt or not to see lightning bolt...
well, i know it's going to be a good show. i've seen them before. and they're good for it - i know that. but i'm kind of involved in what i'm doing. and i'm a little paranoid it's going to sell out five minutes before i get there. also, my landlord said something weird to me the other day, so i'm hoping i get home tonight. it's a trek out to ferndale, but worse is that that toll over the border is annoying if it is sold out...
i'll probably go. i just want to get close to an instrumental mix of lalala first. looking at my schedule, that will give me a solid three days to get both of these done and move on to the ostrich thing.
again: i didn't want to set up my magic fuzz chain this morning, because i'm going to need a long, solid session to finish the concerto. but, i've got the ideas worked out in my head. i've to this point avoided shredding over this track, because i didn't want it into the final mix, but it's going to come out in what's left. expect something acrobatic...
well, i know it's going to be a good show. i've seen them before. and they're good for it - i know that. but i'm kind of involved in what i'm doing. and i'm a little paranoid it's going to sell out five minutes before i get there. also, my landlord said something weird to me the other day, so i'm hoping i get home tonight. it's a trek out to ferndale, but worse is that that toll over the border is annoying if it is sold out...
i'll probably go. i just want to get close to an instrumental mix of lalala first. looking at my schedule, that will give me a solid three days to get both of these done and move on to the ostrich thing.
again: i didn't want to set up my magic fuzz chain this morning, because i'm going to need a long, solid session to finish the concerto. but, i've got the ideas worked out in my head. i've to this point avoided shredding over this track, because i didn't want it into the final mix, but it's going to come out in what's left. expect something acrobatic...
deathtokoalas
this is largely misleading. it explains why it's a waste of time to convert from 16 to 24 (including "upsampling" your cds), but it doesn't really talk about recording in at 24 bit.
the more important question is whether your ears can hear the difference between how well the d/a converter can construct an audio source from 16 v 24 bits. the noise floor is the difference between the reconstruction and the "true analog wave", and it comes out in conversion back to analog. what it means is that the 24 bit file should have a lower noise floor, because it's closer to the true analog. that is absolutely a fidelity issue, mathematically speaking...
however, there's a lot of factors, there, in the signal chain. also mathematically speaking, and under reasonable assumptions, the noise floor on the 16 bit d/a conversion is almost always going to be low enough that your ears can't tell the difference between the 16-bit reconstruction and the "true analog signal". in theory, the 24-bit has more accuracy and therefore less noise. but if you can't tell anyways then you're not gaining anything from 24 bits.
now, i find most people get this part, but then argue that you should use 24 bit anyways because it creates more "headroom" for signals processing. i've experimented with this, and i think it's funny logic. i'd actually advise people record in at 16-bit, so long as 16-bit is the playback standard.
i mean, once you get something into the computer and start adding reverb and compression to it, you're no longer discussing fidelity or quality or reconstruction. it's now subjective. this discussion makes sense if you're talking about recording an acoustic piano; it doesn't make sense if you're talking about running a prerecorded guitar part through an amp simulator, or whatever other digital thing you're doing. rather, the whole thing gets complicated because you're taking in the specifics of each plugin, effect and general "process" on the sound coming out.
it follows that if you record and mix and master in 24-bit, it has to be with the expectation that people are going to listen to it in 24-bit. the moment you downsample to 16-bit, you're altering the production. now, you might actually like the downsample. but that's just the point - this all becomes subjective. to me, the key point is this: if you mix and master at 24-bit, and your audience listens at 16-bit, they're not hearing what you intended them to hear.
the converse, however, is not true: if you mix at 16-bit, and people listen at 24-bit, it's just empty data. it sounds identical.
now, can you make the reverb sound better in 24-bit than 16-bit? i'm going to struggle against this. you may have to use more reverb in 16 than 24. but i can't think of any kind of processing done in 24 that is unable to be recreated in 16.
it's just a question of whether people are listening to what you actually created, or a damaged replica of it. if you stick with 16, you're standardizing that presentation much more effectively.
lachlanlikesathing
+deathtokoalas As I understand it, the argument for recording in 24 bit is that if you start using multiple tracks or multiple plug ins, and you start increasing gain etc., the quantisation noise will very quickly become audible in 16bit. Whereas you have a lot more headroom to do all sorts of things with 24 bit. The final master is fine in 16 bit because you are only adding one generation of 16 bit quantisation noise (largely inaudible) as opposed to multiples. I don't think that audible quantisation noise is the 'subjective' perceptual intention people have when they start adding things like reverb or other plugins.
deathtokoalas
+lachlanlikesathing it's not that the noise will quickly become audible through effects, it's more of a safety mechanism. it's paranoia, really, unless you're recording, like, flutes at low volume. in almost any realistic scenario, quantization noise isn't something that you're ever going to deal with at 16-bit. you actually did a decent job of explaining this part in the video.
the reverb thing has a lot of factors. first, the reality is that most plugins downsample to 16-bit - and you're going to potentially get more noise out of the conversion than you'd get anywhere else. but, if you can find a legit 24-bit signal path, you're just going to get a lot more calculations on the waveform. more numbers. it doesn't matter when you're capturing something physical because it will reconstruct it the same way. but those calculations are less tied to any kind of reality.
downsampling from 24 to 16 will always create noise, by definition. the way they get around this is "dithering", which is shooting random noise at the target. due to some statistical realities, the noise will become inaudible.
but, it's still there. it's not magically removed, it's just really quiet. there's not any really good reason to introduce this noise. that's not what i'm getting at though...
the idea of moving from 24-bit to 16-bit without losing anything but quantization error is based on the idea of the physical waveform being basically the same. but, you have to be careful. for example: consider moving from 24 to 16 and back to 24. that process is going to convert the extra data into zeroes: it's lost moving down to 24, then just zeroed out moving back up. the dac is going to create a minimal difference, but this is a loss of data.
now, consider the effect of this if all that zeroed out data was run through a set of effects. now, it's not a physical waveform any more. it's a digital creation. and all these ideas about dacs constructing more or less the same wave form are lost in calculation. this is of course along with the dithering process...
in the end, it doesn't really matter in terms of fidelity, it's just a question of maintaining consistency. 24-bit masters should be listened to in 24-bit or higher. 16-bit masters should be listened to in 16-bit or higher. because you're almost always dealing with digital manipulation on the master, downsampling should be avoided - while upsampling is literally meaningless.
bottom line is this: 1) if you have a 16-bit source (like a cd), it will not sound differently in 24-bit - you're just adding zeroes. even if it was mastered in 24-bit, and downsampled. that data is wiped in the downsample.
2) if you have a 24-bit source, there is technically sound degradation in conversion to 16-bit whether it happens before or after you get it - you're converting data into quantized noise, then removing it through a statistical trick known as dithering. however, you're only going to hear that difference if the source has been dramatically digitally altered in a way that makes the playback "unnatural". convolution reverb would be one way to do this.
3) the way to avoid conversion errors is to avoid conversion. unless you're recording symphonies, 16-bit from start to finish is likely good enough for you. but if you insist on 24-bit, avoid converting to 16-bit as much as possible....
===
i was just thinking about this as i was second guessing mixing decisions. i pointed out that i've played around with it, and...
this is an anecdote. but i think it's worth sharing to demonstrate why the real issue here is downsampling, and why it shouldn't be done.
i recorded one song in at 24/48 and put it through just an army of guitar effects - pods and floor pedals on the way in and on the tracks, parts doubled fifteen times, guitar rig, quadrafuzz, izotope, digital wave mods - it's just stacked with data. at 24/48.
every time i tried to decimate the file (that's a technical term for downsampling from 24/48 to 16/41, which should give you an idea of what you're doing), it came out with a deficit of "air" at the high end, and bits of static interspersed. the problem was actually that the dithering wasn't working well. the blasts of static are what you expect from decimation, as you're destroying data in conversion and forcing the ghost of it out of millions of tiny spaces, but it's supposed to "go away" if you pepper it with random static. i had too many weird numbers in there - too many jagged, digital waveforms - for this trick to work.
what i actually ended up doing was sending the track out of one soundcard at 24/48 and recording it into another one at 16/41. this obviously introduced a little noise in the waveform in transfer, but it wasn't audibly different than what you'd get out of a working decimation/dither. more importantly, it prevented the static and brought back the air - because the computer was able to get the sound via converting to analog and back to digital in 16 bit, without a destructive digital process.
i agree that it's a waste of time from start to finish, but so long as people are releasing things in 24 bit, it helps to have a way to play it back without digitally decimating it - which the fools often do themselves.
this is largely misleading. it explains why it's a waste of time to convert from 16 to 24 (including "upsampling" your cds), but it doesn't really talk about recording in at 24 bit.
the more important question is whether your ears can hear the difference between how well the d/a converter can construct an audio source from 16 v 24 bits. the noise floor is the difference between the reconstruction and the "true analog wave", and it comes out in conversion back to analog. what it means is that the 24 bit file should have a lower noise floor, because it's closer to the true analog. that is absolutely a fidelity issue, mathematically speaking...
however, there's a lot of factors, there, in the signal chain. also mathematically speaking, and under reasonable assumptions, the noise floor on the 16 bit d/a conversion is almost always going to be low enough that your ears can't tell the difference between the 16-bit reconstruction and the "true analog signal". in theory, the 24-bit has more accuracy and therefore less noise. but if you can't tell anyways then you're not gaining anything from 24 bits.
now, i find most people get this part, but then argue that you should use 24 bit anyways because it creates more "headroom" for signals processing. i've experimented with this, and i think it's funny logic. i'd actually advise people record in at 16-bit, so long as 16-bit is the playback standard.
i mean, once you get something into the computer and start adding reverb and compression to it, you're no longer discussing fidelity or quality or reconstruction. it's now subjective. this discussion makes sense if you're talking about recording an acoustic piano; it doesn't make sense if you're talking about running a prerecorded guitar part through an amp simulator, or whatever other digital thing you're doing. rather, the whole thing gets complicated because you're taking in the specifics of each plugin, effect and general "process" on the sound coming out.
it follows that if you record and mix and master in 24-bit, it has to be with the expectation that people are going to listen to it in 24-bit. the moment you downsample to 16-bit, you're altering the production. now, you might actually like the downsample. but that's just the point - this all becomes subjective. to me, the key point is this: if you mix and master at 24-bit, and your audience listens at 16-bit, they're not hearing what you intended them to hear.
the converse, however, is not true: if you mix at 16-bit, and people listen at 24-bit, it's just empty data. it sounds identical.
now, can you make the reverb sound better in 24-bit than 16-bit? i'm going to struggle against this. you may have to use more reverb in 16 than 24. but i can't think of any kind of processing done in 24 that is unable to be recreated in 16.
it's just a question of whether people are listening to what you actually created, or a damaged replica of it. if you stick with 16, you're standardizing that presentation much more effectively.
lachlanlikesathing
+deathtokoalas As I understand it, the argument for recording in 24 bit is that if you start using multiple tracks or multiple plug ins, and you start increasing gain etc., the quantisation noise will very quickly become audible in 16bit. Whereas you have a lot more headroom to do all sorts of things with 24 bit. The final master is fine in 16 bit because you are only adding one generation of 16 bit quantisation noise (largely inaudible) as opposed to multiples. I don't think that audible quantisation noise is the 'subjective' perceptual intention people have when they start adding things like reverb or other plugins.
deathtokoalas
+lachlanlikesathing it's not that the noise will quickly become audible through effects, it's more of a safety mechanism. it's paranoia, really, unless you're recording, like, flutes at low volume. in almost any realistic scenario, quantization noise isn't something that you're ever going to deal with at 16-bit. you actually did a decent job of explaining this part in the video.
the reverb thing has a lot of factors. first, the reality is that most plugins downsample to 16-bit - and you're going to potentially get more noise out of the conversion than you'd get anywhere else. but, if you can find a legit 24-bit signal path, you're just going to get a lot more calculations on the waveform. more numbers. it doesn't matter when you're capturing something physical because it will reconstruct it the same way. but those calculations are less tied to any kind of reality.
downsampling from 24 to 16 will always create noise, by definition. the way they get around this is "dithering", which is shooting random noise at the target. due to some statistical realities, the noise will become inaudible.
but, it's still there. it's not magically removed, it's just really quiet. there's not any really good reason to introduce this noise. that's not what i'm getting at though...
the idea of moving from 24-bit to 16-bit without losing anything but quantization error is based on the idea of the physical waveform being basically the same. but, you have to be careful. for example: consider moving from 24 to 16 and back to 24. that process is going to convert the extra data into zeroes: it's lost moving down to 24, then just zeroed out moving back up. the dac is going to create a minimal difference, but this is a loss of data.
now, consider the effect of this if all that zeroed out data was run through a set of effects. now, it's not a physical waveform any more. it's a digital creation. and all these ideas about dacs constructing more or less the same wave form are lost in calculation. this is of course along with the dithering process...
in the end, it doesn't really matter in terms of fidelity, it's just a question of maintaining consistency. 24-bit masters should be listened to in 24-bit or higher. 16-bit masters should be listened to in 16-bit or higher. because you're almost always dealing with digital manipulation on the master, downsampling should be avoided - while upsampling is literally meaningless.
bottom line is this: 1) if you have a 16-bit source (like a cd), it will not sound differently in 24-bit - you're just adding zeroes. even if it was mastered in 24-bit, and downsampled. that data is wiped in the downsample.
2) if you have a 24-bit source, there is technically sound degradation in conversion to 16-bit whether it happens before or after you get it - you're converting data into quantized noise, then removing it through a statistical trick known as dithering. however, you're only going to hear that difference if the source has been dramatically digitally altered in a way that makes the playback "unnatural". convolution reverb would be one way to do this.
3) the way to avoid conversion errors is to avoid conversion. unless you're recording symphonies, 16-bit from start to finish is likely good enough for you. but if you insist on 24-bit, avoid converting to 16-bit as much as possible....
===
i was just thinking about this as i was second guessing mixing decisions. i pointed out that i've played around with it, and...
this is an anecdote. but i think it's worth sharing to demonstrate why the real issue here is downsampling, and why it shouldn't be done.
i recorded one song in at 24/48 and put it through just an army of guitar effects - pods and floor pedals on the way in and on the tracks, parts doubled fifteen times, guitar rig, quadrafuzz, izotope, digital wave mods - it's just stacked with data. at 24/48.
every time i tried to decimate the file (that's a technical term for downsampling from 24/48 to 16/41, which should give you an idea of what you're doing), it came out with a deficit of "air" at the high end, and bits of static interspersed. the problem was actually that the dithering wasn't working well. the blasts of static are what you expect from decimation, as you're destroying data in conversion and forcing the ghost of it out of millions of tiny spaces, but it's supposed to "go away" if you pepper it with random static. i had too many weird numbers in there - too many jagged, digital waveforms - for this trick to work.
what i actually ended up doing was sending the track out of one soundcard at 24/48 and recording it into another one at 16/41. this obviously introduced a little noise in the waveform in transfer, but it wasn't audibly different than what you'd get out of a working decimation/dither. more importantly, it prevented the static and brought back the air - because the computer was able to get the sound via converting to analog and back to digital in 16 bit, without a destructive digital process.
i agree that it's a waste of time from start to finish, but so long as people are releasing things in 24 bit, it helps to have a way to play it back without digitally decimating it - which the fools often do themselves.
if you honestly can't tell the difference between 320 kbps mp3s and flacs of your own tunes, then you're a shitty producer making crappy music and you should get a different career.
there's lots of people that really can't tell. but it's a reflection of how shitty the tracks are, not a reflection of the parity in technology.
there's lots of people that really can't tell. but it's a reflection of how shitty the tracks are, not a reflection of the parity in technology.
Friday, April 17, 2015
hyperbola (reflections mix)
this is the version on the initial reflections ep, which was created by crossfading the forwards version into itself backwards, then splicing it with some isolated fragments. i don't recall the exact date of completion, but it was a little after the initial idea was shelved. track dated to april 22, 2003.
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/hyperbola
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/hyperbola
hyperbola (instrumental mix)
this version was constructed from the reflections source in april, 2015 by removing the samples and vocal snippets through the technique of subtractive synthesis via phase inversion. track completed april 17, 2015.
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/hyperbola-instrumental-mix
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/hyperbola-instrumental-mix
untitled (album mix)
i'm going to need to spray the apartment this morning, so i didn't want to get too involved in finishing the concerto - not enough time to sit down, let the tubes warm up and get some tracks down. instead, i set up the basics for inri043, which is the next project.
this is the first release under the rules of my new subscription service, which means you won't be able to hear it until it's done. nonetheless, the rss will update...
you'll also notice that i got track five up for the gestating elephant. and it's really a beast of a record. one more track, but not inri043.
inri043 is likely to remain a stranded track. it was remixed for inri051.
inri044 is the last track to complete for the gestating elephant and will take some rime.
inri045 is the gestating elephant and will be completed when inri044 is....
inri046 finally begins period 3, and finally shifts out of 2002 to 2003 - which will certainly be a short year, in comparison to 2001 and 2002. i spent a great deal of 2003 without a formal "home" and without access to recording equipment. most of what i got down didn't become coherent until 2004...
--
this track was initially written as a folk punk song, but i jumped to the scorewriter with it almost immediately. it was initially less about explicitly creating a techno song and more about ordering the parts in a way that could be deconstructed more effectively. i wanted a more flexible approach to production.
i may have gone over this in this space before, but my mixing process up to that point was considerably unconventional. i would record tracks in one by one using a wave editor and then paste them on top of each other. i worked this way because i just didn't have more advanced tools. while there are benefits to this approach (it's additive synthesis, which blurs the mix for soundscaping), it meant that each additional track was destructive. i could not remove tracks once they were added.
i also picked up a copy of cakewalk to help with this, but i quickly learned that my system couldn't really handle it. at around eight tracks, it just became unresponsive. with less than eight tracks, it didn't matter if the mix was destructive because it was easily reconstructed. so, i went back to the wave editor approach until 2007, when i upgraded to a modern pc.
the taiko drum part was initially just to keep time; it wasn't supposed to be a part of the song. but, as i built it up i began to realize how interesting it sounded as a techno tune and sort of ran with it. once i'd notated it, i had to convert the drums into a soundscape because the midi render just wasn't good enough. this was done using a mix of software drum machines, midi snippets and isolated jimmy chamberlain samples. i then performed the score i had notated, with the exception of a few synths which were sequenced back.
the mix never came out well, partly due to ram issues with cakewalk and partly because i got a little pretentious with some of the parts. i was also extremely distracted over this period. i attempted a few different things over late 2002 and early 2003 to try and salvage it for my own purposes, but in the end i shelved it as unworkable.
when i first set up the bandcamp site around 2010, i realized i had a collection of tracks that fit a sort of techno-guitar description and compiled them together under the name "tetris" (jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/tetris). i uploaded an incomplete mix for that project, but it was never really done and i never really felt good about it.
it wasn't until late 2014 that i came back to the track, to authoritatively finish my discography. first, a mix was reconstructed from source to include all of the existing sound files. next, three separate sequencer mixes were sculpted out of the score - a jazz fusion mix, an overture mix and an ambient mix. pieces of these sequencer mixes were then isolated and mixed into the reconstructed original mix. finally, a series of extra lead guitar parts were recorded and mixed separately into a final mix. the recording process for this was very lengthy, which was ironically partly due to consistent distractions.
written over the summer of 2002 and initially recorded in the early fall of 2002. additional recording, production and mixing occurred from dec, 2014 to apr, 2015. track completed on april 13, 2015.
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-6
this is the first release under the rules of my new subscription service, which means you won't be able to hear it until it's done. nonetheless, the rss will update...
you'll also notice that i got track five up for the gestating elephant. and it's really a beast of a record. one more track, but not inri043.
inri043 is likely to remain a stranded track. it was remixed for inri051.
inri044 is the last track to complete for the gestating elephant and will take some rime.
inri045 is the gestating elephant and will be completed when inri044 is....
inri046 finally begins period 3, and finally shifts out of 2002 to 2003 - which will certainly be a short year, in comparison to 2001 and 2002. i spent a great deal of 2003 without a formal "home" and without access to recording equipment. most of what i got down didn't become coherent until 2004...
--
this track was initially written as a folk punk song, but i jumped to the scorewriter with it almost immediately. it was initially less about explicitly creating a techno song and more about ordering the parts in a way that could be deconstructed more effectively. i wanted a more flexible approach to production.
i may have gone over this in this space before, but my mixing process up to that point was considerably unconventional. i would record tracks in one by one using a wave editor and then paste them on top of each other. i worked this way because i just didn't have more advanced tools. while there are benefits to this approach (it's additive synthesis, which blurs the mix for soundscaping), it meant that each additional track was destructive. i could not remove tracks once they were added.
i also picked up a copy of cakewalk to help with this, but i quickly learned that my system couldn't really handle it. at around eight tracks, it just became unresponsive. with less than eight tracks, it didn't matter if the mix was destructive because it was easily reconstructed. so, i went back to the wave editor approach until 2007, when i upgraded to a modern pc.
the taiko drum part was initially just to keep time; it wasn't supposed to be a part of the song. but, as i built it up i began to realize how interesting it sounded as a techno tune and sort of ran with it. once i'd notated it, i had to convert the drums into a soundscape because the midi render just wasn't good enough. this was done using a mix of software drum machines, midi snippets and isolated jimmy chamberlain samples. i then performed the score i had notated, with the exception of a few synths which were sequenced back.
the mix never came out well, partly due to ram issues with cakewalk and partly because i got a little pretentious with some of the parts. i was also extremely distracted over this period. i attempted a few different things over late 2002 and early 2003 to try and salvage it for my own purposes, but in the end i shelved it as unworkable.
when i first set up the bandcamp site around 2010, i realized i had a collection of tracks that fit a sort of techno-guitar description and compiled them together under the name "tetris" (jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/tetris). i uploaded an incomplete mix for that project, but it was never really done and i never really felt good about it.
it wasn't until late 2014 that i came back to the track, to authoritatively finish my discography. first, a mix was reconstructed from source to include all of the existing sound files. next, three separate sequencer mixes were sculpted out of the score - a jazz fusion mix, an overture mix and an ambient mix. pieces of these sequencer mixes were then isolated and mixed into the reconstructed original mix. finally, a series of extra lead guitar parts were recorded and mixed separately into a final mix. the recording process for this was very lengthy, which was ironically partly due to consistent distractions.
written over the summer of 2002 and initially recorded in the early fall of 2002. additional recording, production and mixing occurred from dec, 2014 to apr, 2015. track completed on april 13, 2015.
http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/untitled-6
Thursday, April 16, 2015
well, digital > analog. and lou reed had no idea what he was talking about.
personally? i'm not into this streaming service idea. i want to interact directly with artists. it doesn't matter how this is done, it's just creating a bourgeois layer. in order to pay for the bourgeois layer, you either need to not pay the artists or put prices through the roof. then you're just overcharging to pay marketing departments. and, i think that's the reason they're trying to put an artist face on this. i think they understand this, even if the consuming public doesn't quite understand it quite yet.
these services have some use - as a kind of a library. spotify is great if it's full of pink floyd records. as a way to house new music? i think this has no future. in the long run, it becomes a closed space for major label artists, because independent artists and independent labels abandon it.
i think you want to forget about spotify as a model. i think the future looks more like bandcamp...
it's a step forwards, though. people pay $100/month for cable. that's a more realistic price to make this sustainable. if nobody gets there, or seems willing to move in that direction, then these services all fail.
as an artist, my primary condition for signing up to something like this is that i want an exchange value on a per-second basis written into a contract that is not dependent on revenue. that is, i'd want to lease the rights to the music to the streaming site. and it's not going to be fractions of pennies on the stream. it's going to be between ten and twenty-five cents per stream, depending on it's length. not once. every time you listen to it...
that has to be in writing, irreversibly. not interested? not signing....
and i don't really care how they charge you, either. i might suggest that a minutely rate is a better idea than a flat rate. but i'm carrying out a transaction with the managers of the service, not with the customer. i don't really like it, but that's how i'm forced to look at it. that transaction is for the use of my art. how they sell it is their concern.
personally? i'm not into this streaming service idea. i want to interact directly with artists. it doesn't matter how this is done, it's just creating a bourgeois layer. in order to pay for the bourgeois layer, you either need to not pay the artists or put prices through the roof. then you're just overcharging to pay marketing departments. and, i think that's the reason they're trying to put an artist face on this. i think they understand this, even if the consuming public doesn't quite understand it quite yet.
these services have some use - as a kind of a library. spotify is great if it's full of pink floyd records. as a way to house new music? i think this has no future. in the long run, it becomes a closed space for major label artists, because independent artists and independent labels abandon it.
i think you want to forget about spotify as a model. i think the future looks more like bandcamp...
it's a step forwards, though. people pay $100/month for cable. that's a more realistic price to make this sustainable. if nobody gets there, or seems willing to move in that direction, then these services all fail.
as an artist, my primary condition for signing up to something like this is that i want an exchange value on a per-second basis written into a contract that is not dependent on revenue. that is, i'd want to lease the rights to the music to the streaming site. and it's not going to be fractions of pennies on the stream. it's going to be between ten and twenty-five cents per stream, depending on it's length. not once. every time you listen to it...
that has to be in writing, irreversibly. not interested? not signing....
and i don't really care how they charge you, either. i might suggest that a minutely rate is a better idea than a flat rate. but i'm carrying out a transaction with the managers of the service, not with the customer. i don't really like it, but that's how i'm forced to look at it. that transaction is for the use of my art. how they sell it is their concern.
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
a trip to the ufo factory to lift off with noveller
i get silly when i'm tired...
i wasn't able to sleep yesterday morning, and here i am, now, still wide awake. i'm pushing a 40 hour day. which is not that odd for me, but it's been a while. and, certainly, this lack of tiredness at the end of it is a little unsettling.
after some appointments yesterday afternoon on no sleep, and a second failed attempt at it, i rolled out of bed, grabbed the proverbial comb, and stumbled out to explore another new area of detroit: michigan street. the thing you've got to realize about detroit is that it was obviously built by the illuminati, because of the geometry. it's clear as day. hundred mile long roads rotate out of each other at increments of thirty degrees, winding out to suburbs where no bus is allowed to go. michigan st is the fourth option i've taken so far...
of the four, the end point is actually the shortest walk. and, it seems to be the punk rock district. i will be back in this area fairly often.
when one mentions that they attended a show at the ufo club, it's fair game to ask if they played astronomy domine, to which the answer is: fuck off.
"what? not even interstellar overdrive....?"
well, detroit has it's own history - and this place is actually important in it, being across the street from the old tiger stadium. which appears to basically still be there, just fenced off. rumour has it that the likes of babe ruth himself liked to hit a few out of the park at this place. it's a very old building. those days are gone now, but you can kind of still feel them walking up to the bar...
mexican knives are a local act, but i've seen them written up in review sites. those.....hipster (said with somewhat of a plugged nose).....review sites. and, the accusation may be an accurate first impression, but it's not really fair.
hipster is really a different animal than this. it's goofier. it thinks it's more modern, but that's why people with better taste laugh at hipsters, right?
i think something like "generalized punk" is more accurate.
"generalized punk", as i'd put forth it's use, is a kind of amalgam of punk styles, without any concept of time or geography. which is why hipster is a forgivable immediate reaction. for a minute, it's some early dk thing, then it's got a teenage jesus vibe - wait, now it's joy division with...dude is actually strumming like johnny ramone, get out of here...
see, it's not the worst idea to take all these ideas and try and mix them all up. it's better than flat out copying somebody, at least. but it turns into a "who are they now?" game. and, then you're not really listening to what they're doing anymore.
i'll probably see them open at least a second time, and probably a fourth time. they get plenty of gigs. but it needs to be taken to the next level if it wants to really be taken seriously. whatever that means. maybe doing overlapping duelling medleys instead....
"i just gotta tell you what i'm thinking right away while it's fresh: it came to me in a dream, man. the next movement in punk is recursion. i'll come back around to this, i just need to cycle it through my head. it's really spinning."
google recursion. click on "did you mean recursion". those google kids, always playing silly games...
==
so, noveller was the artist i went to see tonight...
i'm generally pretty dismissive/critical of these "think they can play with a loop pedal" types. almost nobody does this well. it almost always instantly turns into fripp does reich - with lobotomies offered in place of 3d glasses.
"now, with free lobotomy!"
noveller's a cut above, though. it's a completely different talent level. the loops are largely atmospheric, and she's setting off more than a few things as they spin around...
she was visibly unhappy with the sound, even stopping a few times. it's hard to believe that she didn't know that tube amps break up a little at high volume. personally, i thought it sounded fine.
she makes a nice - and often rather beautiful - racket. recommended.
here's a full set:
i caught about a half hour of the soft moon, and then left for the bus. i was a little cautious about timing, it being my first time up that way. one of these days, they'll open the tunnel to bicycle traffic. until then, there's no bus service between 1:00 and 4:00, and i'm stuck in detroit if i'm going to stay late. wasn't into that last night...
it turns out i could have stayed an extra twenty minutes, which probably would have nearly closed the set.
i can't say i really regret leaving early, though. the noisy joy division vibe ends up somewhere near late nine inch nails, and i just wasn't nearly drunk enough for it. despite loving noise. and joy division. and early nine inch nails.
it's just really blunt. they've shifted their sound around through different takes of post-punk, and can at times conjure up some decent soundscapes. it's just that there's no subtlety in the writing. that's a problem that no number of sonic facelifts is going to fix.
this is a short clip, but it's pretty accurate.
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/04/14.html
i wasn't able to sleep yesterday morning, and here i am, now, still wide awake. i'm pushing a 40 hour day. which is not that odd for me, but it's been a while. and, certainly, this lack of tiredness at the end of it is a little unsettling.
after some appointments yesterday afternoon on no sleep, and a second failed attempt at it, i rolled out of bed, grabbed the proverbial comb, and stumbled out to explore another new area of detroit: michigan street. the thing you've got to realize about detroit is that it was obviously built by the illuminati, because of the geometry. it's clear as day. hundred mile long roads rotate out of each other at increments of thirty degrees, winding out to suburbs where no bus is allowed to go. michigan st is the fourth option i've taken so far...
of the four, the end point is actually the shortest walk. and, it seems to be the punk rock district. i will be back in this area fairly often.
when one mentions that they attended a show at the ufo club, it's fair game to ask if they played astronomy domine, to which the answer is: fuck off.
"what? not even interstellar overdrive....?"
well, detroit has it's own history - and this place is actually important in it, being across the street from the old tiger stadium. which appears to basically still be there, just fenced off. rumour has it that the likes of babe ruth himself liked to hit a few out of the park at this place. it's a very old building. those days are gone now, but you can kind of still feel them walking up to the bar...
mexican knives are a local act, but i've seen them written up in review sites. those.....hipster (said with somewhat of a plugged nose).....review sites. and, the accusation may be an accurate first impression, but it's not really fair.
hipster is really a different animal than this. it's goofier. it thinks it's more modern, but that's why people with better taste laugh at hipsters, right?
i think something like "generalized punk" is more accurate.
"generalized punk", as i'd put forth it's use, is a kind of amalgam of punk styles, without any concept of time or geography. which is why hipster is a forgivable immediate reaction. for a minute, it's some early dk thing, then it's got a teenage jesus vibe - wait, now it's joy division with...dude is actually strumming like johnny ramone, get out of here...
see, it's not the worst idea to take all these ideas and try and mix them all up. it's better than flat out copying somebody, at least. but it turns into a "who are they now?" game. and, then you're not really listening to what they're doing anymore.
i'll probably see them open at least a second time, and probably a fourth time. they get plenty of gigs. but it needs to be taken to the next level if it wants to really be taken seriously. whatever that means. maybe doing overlapping duelling medleys instead....
"i just gotta tell you what i'm thinking right away while it's fresh: it came to me in a dream, man. the next movement in punk is recursion. i'll come back around to this, i just need to cycle it through my head. it's really spinning."
google recursion. click on "did you mean recursion". those google kids, always playing silly games...
==
so, noveller was the artist i went to see tonight...
i'm generally pretty dismissive/critical of these "think they can play with a loop pedal" types. almost nobody does this well. it almost always instantly turns into fripp does reich - with lobotomies offered in place of 3d glasses.
"now, with free lobotomy!"
noveller's a cut above, though. it's a completely different talent level. the loops are largely atmospheric, and she's setting off more than a few things as they spin around...
she was visibly unhappy with the sound, even stopping a few times. it's hard to believe that she didn't know that tube amps break up a little at high volume. personally, i thought it sounded fine.
she makes a nice - and often rather beautiful - racket. recommended.
here's a full set:
i caught about a half hour of the soft moon, and then left for the bus. i was a little cautious about timing, it being my first time up that way. one of these days, they'll open the tunnel to bicycle traffic. until then, there's no bus service between 1:00 and 4:00, and i'm stuck in detroit if i'm going to stay late. wasn't into that last night...
it turns out i could have stayed an extra twenty minutes, which probably would have nearly closed the set.
i can't say i really regret leaving early, though. the noisy joy division vibe ends up somewhere near late nine inch nails, and i just wasn't nearly drunk enough for it. despite loving noise. and joy division. and early nine inch nails.
it's just really blunt. they've shifted their sound around through different takes of post-punk, and can at times conjure up some decent soundscapes. it's just that there's no subtlety in the writing. that's a problem that no number of sonic facelifts is going to fix.
this is a short clip, but it's pretty accurate.
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/shows/2015/04/14.html
i was reading something, and it got me to thinking how hands-off of a
parent i would be. like, i'd barely even pay attention. i'd answer
questions, make the odd suggestion. but, i'm not interested in living
vicariously through my kids or whatever. i'm pretty opposed to hierarchy
in general, but i'm really just exceedingly liberal when it comes to
raising kids...
that makes me very different than most people my age, who are very conservative on this issue. what would happen if i got stuck raising a kid with one of these control freak nutcases?
well, here's the thing: i might not want to steer, but i'd be absolutely unable to allow the other parent to go full helicopter on any kid of mine. no fucking way, man. i'm going to stand up to tyranny anywhere i see it, and with my own kid? that's....that's personal....
...and it got me to thinking that it would be an excellent television show. well, first i thought it would be a good novel. then i thought it's more of a subplot, just because it needs that randomness to be effective - it would get boring as the dominant focus. but, a tv show...yeah....that's where this really belongs...
it's gotta be rooted in the anarchist's tendency to deliver these over-the-top, eloquent drama queen speeches in favour of delivering the child from tyranny, total enlightenment era language, while the helicopter parent responds in favour of order and grooming...
they've gotta constantly be at each other.
and the twist has to always be that the kid decides in the end, in some kind of vaguely dialectical manner.
"to deny a child the beauty of the forest,
for what? for age?
did you not pick your own berries?
did you not dare your friends to eat the unknown, in case they might be poison?
did you not chase squirrels, and think you smelled skunks and run from imaginary bears?
and did your mother stand over you as you did so?
did she steal your dreams?
did she write the rules of your games?
was she as convinced of your incompetence,
as i am convinced of your tyranny?
the children shall rise, foul madam, and abolish your cruel authority.
and when they do i shall aid them.
solidarity, children!
the fight is ours to win,
should we work together!"
that makes me very different than most people my age, who are very conservative on this issue. what would happen if i got stuck raising a kid with one of these control freak nutcases?
well, here's the thing: i might not want to steer, but i'd be absolutely unable to allow the other parent to go full helicopter on any kid of mine. no fucking way, man. i'm going to stand up to tyranny anywhere i see it, and with my own kid? that's....that's personal....
...and it got me to thinking that it would be an excellent television show. well, first i thought it would be a good novel. then i thought it's more of a subplot, just because it needs that randomness to be effective - it would get boring as the dominant focus. but, a tv show...yeah....that's where this really belongs...
it's gotta be rooted in the anarchist's tendency to deliver these over-the-top, eloquent drama queen speeches in favour of delivering the child from tyranny, total enlightenment era language, while the helicopter parent responds in favour of order and grooming...
they've gotta constantly be at each other.
and the twist has to always be that the kid decides in the end, in some kind of vaguely dialectical manner.
"to deny a child the beauty of the forest,
for what? for age?
did you not pick your own berries?
did you not dare your friends to eat the unknown, in case they might be poison?
did you not chase squirrels, and think you smelled skunks and run from imaginary bears?
and did your mother stand over you as you did so?
did she steal your dreams?
did she write the rules of your games?
was she as convinced of your incompetence,
as i am convinced of your tyranny?
the children shall rise, foul madam, and abolish your cruel authority.
and when they do i shall aid them.
solidarity, children!
the fight is ours to win,
should we work together!"
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